Collins shrugged. ‘I’m not suggesting it, I’m stating it. She kept Hilaria Blake stocked with enough booze to float a boat.’
‘Why would she do that?’
Collins glanced towards the reception area, then back at Cormac. ‘You’d have to ask her. And I’m sorry, detective, but I have an appointment now.’ He stood, hovering expectantly, waiting for Cormac to get up and leave.
Cormac took his time closing his notebook. ‘I’d like to talk to you again, Mr Collins.’
Collins looked like he was considering it, his head tilted to the side once again. ‘What’s this really about, detective?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Why are you asking me questions about Hilaria Blake? She’s been dead for twenty years.’
Cormac said nothing. He knew Collins wouldn’t believe that he was looking into Jack’s background in this level of detail because of the suicide. There was no reason for police to want to understand every aspect of Jack’s past. As his childhood was well documented, it didn’t really warrant further investigation. An inquiry into Jack’s suicide would have focused on any signs of depression or other issues in his adult life.
‘Just one more question, Mr Collins, if you can spare the time.’ Cormac didn’t wait for Collins to respond. ‘You’re sure that Hilaria Blake could not, did not, leave her home in the last months of her life?’
‘You’re not here about Jack,’ said Collins flatly.
‘Questions have been raised about Jack Blake’s death. Specifically, as to whether it was suicide, or something else.’
‘Questions have been raised. By whom, exactly?’
‘That information is not your concern, Mr Collins.’
‘Okay. So there are questions about Jack’s death. That doesn’t explain what you are doing here, asking me questions about his family life twenty years ago.’
‘Questions about Jack Blake’s death inevitably lead us to look into his family background.’
‘Right.’ Collins was not convinced. ‘Well, I’ve answered your questions, detective, and I’m out of time.’ He put his hand on the door handle, waited for Cormac to stand.
‘Just one more question, Mr Collins,’ Cormac said. ‘The morning after Hilaria Blake’s death you visited Jack Blake in the hospital in Castlebar.’ He watched Collins’s face intently. ‘You were there by nine a.m. that morning.’
Collins’s face was impassive.
‘How did you know that Jack Blake would be in hospital that morning? How did you know where to find him?’
Collins waited a beat, but no more. ‘Really detective, it was twenty years ago, and I was fifteen years old. I can hardly be expected to remember.’ And with that he turned and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three people had been in the house the night that Hilaria Blake died. Two of them were dead, and the third, it seemed, was the suspect. But if Jack had spoken to anyone about his mother and sister, it would surely have been his girlfriend. Jack Blake’s last known address was in the system. He’d start there. A house in the Claddagh, walking distance. Cormac was hungry, but not in the mood now to stop for food. He bought coffee from a place on Dominick Street and drank it as he walked. Tom Collins had told him very little that he didn’t already know, or at least should have known. He needed those social worker files. He put a call through to Children and Family Services, dialling one handed. He got a receptionist, who asked for his name, before taking what felt like ten minutes to come back and tell him that no one was available to speak with him.
‘We’re amalgamating,’ she said. ‘With the Family Support Agency and the National Educational Welfare Board. Everyone’s at a workshop.’ Her tone was upbeat, almost chattily helpful.
He left a request for an urgent call back, was irritated and chided himself for his impatience. He would have to wait for the information he wanted. Workshop or no workshop, a request for a twenty-year-old file was never going to take priority with a bunch of over-extended social workers.
He’d certainly requested the file back in the day. Cormac tried to remember. He’d been moved onto other work – traffic duty and pub raids mostly – but he’d been working in the same station. If the files had come in, wouldn’t he have known? If they had come in there would have been copies, and they should still be on the file. If they hadn’t come in, someone should have followed up, and a note of that action should be on the file also. Instead there was nothing.
He should have tried harder to continue working on the case. It wasn’t as though Jack Blake had been easy to forget. That night in the hospital had been the first time Cormac had come face to face with a child who had been badly hurt by someone they should have been able to trust. How a mother could hurt her child like that was beyond him. Some of the things he’d seen since should perhaps have made Jack Blake’s circumstances seem less appalling, but it didn’t work like that. There was no grade curve for child abuse. The more time Cormac spent with this case, the more convinced he was that there were questions to answer. Even as a rookie, instinct had told him that there were layers that he wasn’t seeing, that there was a story he hadn’t heard. Maybe he’d get to the truth this time. Maybe he owed that much to Jack.
Jack’s address brought him to a terraced, two-storey house in the Claddagh. The terraces had been labourers’ cottages once, but their proximity to town and the sea had made them fashionable, and many had been renovated. Most were painted pastel colours that were a little sickly up close, but from a distance had a cheerful, seaside appearance. Number 43 was painted a deep blue, in pleasing contrast to the pastel shades. The blinds in the ground floor window were drawn. Cormac searched for a doorbell, rang, then knocked loudly. He waited for a minute or two before trying again.
The front door was glass, and through it could be seen a little enclosed front porch, with a second, solid wooden door inside that led into the rest of the house. Cormac could see two pairs of well-worn runners inside the porch – they must have been Jack’s, they were too big to be his girlfriend’s – and an umbrella, propped in the corner.
He stepped back. There was no sign of life at the first floor either. The curtains in the windows were open, but the rooms were dark. The policeman in him was distracted by the way the little porch roof provided perfect access to the first floor window above it, which was slightly ajar. If she wasn’t home, her approach to home security left a lot to be desired.
‘You looking for Aisling?’
He turned to see a woman at the neighbouring terrace, paused in the act of locking her front door. She was examining him carefully, perhaps warily.
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘She’d be at work.’ The woman leaned down to take the hand of her little boy and turned to go.
‘Can you tell me where, exactly?’ Cormac asked.
She hesitated.
‘I’m a garda. A detective. I’m acting as a liaison of sorts in relation to her partner’s death. I’d like to speak with Aisling but our file doesn’t seem to have up-to-date contact information.’ Cormac gave the woman a rueful smile that invited her to join him in a critique of bureaucratic ineptitude.
‘Have you ID?’ She wasn’t impressed. She held her hand out.
Each terrace had a tiny walled front garden. The wall came to knee height only – just enough to give a suggestion of privacy between the front windows and the public footpath. The wall was low enough to step over, but Cormac stayed on his side as he moved closer, holding out his badge for her to see. She looked it over carefully, taking her time. At last, seemingly satisfied, she stepped back.
‘She’s works at UCHG, at the hospital. If you ask for her at the A&E reception they’ll send her out to you. If she’s not too busy.’
‘Thanks. Appreciate your help.’
She nodded, but didn’t return his smile and he wondered if she’d had a bad experience with police. He watched her walk towards the seaside for a moment, holding tightly to her little boy’s hand. He tr
ailed behind her, and after a moment his mother scooped him up and carried him on her hip. The little boy slung his hand around the back of her neck and rested his head against her shoulder. Cormac watched them for a long moment before turning to walk back towards town. He would pick up his car before heading to the hospital.
Twenty minutes later he was regretting his impulse to drive. The hospital carpark was full, the entrance ramp already clogged with cars waiting for others to leave. He cursed and drove a hundred metres or so from the entrance, parking in a fifteen-minute bay. A ticket at least he could take care of.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and Accident and Emergency was, as usual, busy. He walked over to reception and took out his ID.
‘Aisling Conroy, please. Is she here?’
The nurse was completing a form, and after a brief glance at him she returned to it, ticking boxes until she reached the end of the page. Finally, without making eye contact, she gave the ID a cursory once-over.
‘She’s with patients. Take a seat and I’ll let her know you’re here.’
He sat for forty minutes before Aisling finally appeared. Her hair was tied back and she wore a white long sleeved T-shirt under her pale green scrubs. She looked tired – there was a sickly tinge to her skin – and far too young to be a doctor.
She glanced around distractedly for a moment, then the receptionist gestured in Cormac’s direction and she walked over to him.
‘I’m Dr Conroy,’ she said. ‘You’re a garda?’
‘Yes. Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly.’
‘This is about Jack?’
He nodded.
‘Okay,’ she said. She looked at the the waiting room, visibly rejected the idea. ‘There’s a canteen, if you’d like to get some coffee?’
He nodded his assent, and she led the way to a small canteen in the basement. She offered to order, but he insisted, and she found a table for them while he bought two cappuccinos and carried them over.
‘Thanks for this,’ he said. ‘For taking the time.’
She shrugged. ‘Of course.’
‘Is your shift over?’
‘No.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m afraid I only have ten minutes.’
It was odd that she was working again so soon after her partner’s death. It had barely been, what, a week and a half?
‘I’m following up on a few things, and I wanted to speak to you particularly.’
She waited.
‘I understand that Maude Blake has some concerns about the investigation into Jack’s death. That she doesn’t believe it was accidental, or that he committed suicide. I’m sorry, I know this must be very difficult to talk about, but I wanted to speak to you, to get your thoughts.’
She stared at him. When she finally spoke it was with a slow, measured tone.
‘I think what anyone would think, given what Maude has discovered. I think that there is a very good chance that someone killed Jack, and dropped his body into the river. The murderer then called the police and reported a jumper, to make it seem like Jack killed himself.’
‘I can understand why you might think that,’ Cormac said, speaking carefully and worrying that he sounded condescending. ‘But there is more than one explanation for the confusion around the telephone call. The call didn’t come in on the emergency line, and it wasn’t recorded. It is possible that the person who made the call, or the person who took the call, mixed up the names of the bridges. It is possible that they were reporting a jump from a bridge further up the Corrib and they confused themselves.’
He was interrupted by a loud beeping noise. Aisling took a pager from her pocket and checked the number, then silenced it. He was reconsidering his initial impression of her. She was young, but there was an unusual self-assurance about her, here on her home turf.
‘And have you checked the CCTV footage for the other bridges?’
‘I’m sure my colleagues are on that.’
‘Are you? I’m not. Maude told me that guy Rodgers made it very clear that you are not going to investigate, that you’re not going to ask any questions or check the other bridges, or do anything at all in fact.’ Her eyes were guarded.
Cormac was silent for a long moment. He couldn’t and shouldn’t make a commitment to her about any further investigation. It wasn’t his case, and besides, Danny was probably right. Jack had almost certainly committed suicide. Raising expectations of a different conclusion would only lead to pain in the long run. And in the short term, for that matter. Who had ever hoped that their loved one had been murdered, after all?
‘I wanted to ask you about Jack’s sister.’
‘About Maude.’
‘Yes. Do you know her well?’
She sighed and rubbed tired eyes with the back of one hand. ‘I only met her a week ago. I don’t know her at all.’
‘You hadn’t met her before?’
‘No.’
‘She and Jack weren’t close?’
‘As far as I know she disappeared the day after their mother died, and she never called him or saw him again. He never spoke to her. In all honesty, I think he thought she was dead, although he didn’t speak about her much.’
Cormac saw that she had tears in her eyes, and he looked at his notebook as he asked his next questions. ‘Did she tell you why she left? Why she didn’t come back?’
‘No.’
‘She didn’t talk about her childhood, about Jack?’
Aisling looked impatient. ‘We spoke about his death. About the manner of his death. It wasn’t the time for happy reminiscence.’
‘But you know that Jack was abused as a child?’ Cormac asked the question bluntly – he wanted to cut to the chase, and he was forming the impression that she might be more comfortable with straight talk.
She nodded slowly.
‘He told you?’
‘He had scars on his body. From cigarette burns. Other . . . incidents.’
‘You never talked about it?’
‘Once only. A long time ago. Jack had left it behind him. He barely remembered those years. He was only five when his birth mother died. He had nightmares for the first year, then that got better, then Jack got happy, and he didn’t look back.’
‘He told you about the nightmares?’
She shook her head, took a sip from her coffee. ‘No. His mother, his adoptive mother that is. Aggie told me.’
‘Aggie . . .?’ He asked for her name and address, and got it.
‘Aisling,’ Cormac said. ‘What did Jack tell you about Maude? Were they close, as children?’ As he asked the question, Cormac flashed back to the night twenty years before, to the pale girl holding tightly to her little brother’s hand. He thought of the way she had carried him to the squad car. How she had put on his seat belt for him, how she had held his hand all the way to the hospital. Every instinct told him that Maude would never have hurt Jack. But instinct had been wrong before, so he would ask the question.
‘He had very few memories of her. Just vague feelings, really.’
‘Positive? Or negative?’
Aisling’s eyes went to his. ‘Positive. He loved her, and she loved him.’
‘You sound very sure of that. But if Jack didn’t remember much . . .’
Before she could answer, the beeper went off again. Again she checked the number, again silenced it.
‘I don’t know. Jack had very few memories of his early childhood. But he remembered being afraid, and he remembered how it felt to be hungry all day. He said he used to climb into Maude’s bed to feel safe at night, and she would let him stay. He had a pair of Spiderman pyjamas. They were the only thing he brought to his new family and he held onto them for years, he said. He said that Maude had bought them for him – someone must have told him I suppose, or he just remembered. God knows where she got the money.’ Tears had filled her eyes as she spoke. One rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away absently. ‘Poor Jack.’
Cormac handed her the napkin that had come with his coffee, an
d that he hadn’t yet touched. He looked away for a few seconds, giving her a moment to compose herself.
‘Jack’s memories of the abuse, were they specific?’
‘Specific?’
‘I mean, did he remember any detail, where he was when it happened, who he was with?’
Aisling shook her head. ‘He was only five when he was adopted. And his adoptive parents were wonderful. As I’ve said, Jack didn’t dwell on the past.’
‘I understand,’ Cormac said. ‘But he was clear that it was his mother who hurt him? No one else?’
Aisling took a moment to react, then a look of understanding spread across her face. ‘Are you asking me if Maude hurt him?’ she asked. Her voice was cool, but there was no mistaking her hostility. He felt slightly off balance.
‘I’m not suggesting that,’ he said. ‘Just trying to understand all of the background.’
‘I’m not sure how what happened to Jack when he was five years old has bearing on his death at the age of twenty-five,’ she said.
Cormac sipped from his coffee, grasping for something he could use to redirect the conversation.
‘Don’t try to tell me that the abuse Jack suffered in his childhood caused him to commit suicide. Jack wasn’t depressed. He wasn’t suicidal. You’re just looking for an easy label.’
‘I assure you, Aisling, that is not the . . .’
She cut him off. ‘You can call me Dr Conroy.’ She snapped the words out. ‘Why is it so bloody difficult to do a bit of work? To get up and do the bloody investigation, to find out what happened? Why are you lot putting so much time and effort in to avoid time and effort? I was sure Maude was wrong – that you would investigate properly once you saw the CCTV. But you’ve no intention of it, have you?’ She stood up, her chair scraping along the floor.
He made an attempt to hold her attention. ‘It’s impossible to know at the beginning of an investigation which details are relevant and which are not. Sometimes it’s the smallest hint of information that can lead you to answers.’
She looked down at him, hesitated. But then her eyes hardened and she shook her head. ‘You know what, detective? I think you’re full of shit.’
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