As Cormac pulled up outside the Keane house he saw a woman leaving, pulling the door shut behind her. She was too young to be Domenica Keane, in her mid-thirties if he had to hazard a guess. She was dressed comfortably in jeans and a fleece jacket. Her dark hair was escaping from a ponytail, the wind blowing it about her face.
‘Hello,’ he said, as he shut the car door behind him.
‘Hello yourself,’ she said, and waited near the door for his approach.
‘I wanted to see Domenica. Is she in?’
The woman nodded. ‘She’s in the kitchen.’ A pause, during which she gave him a friendly look over. ‘She didn’t mention that she was expecting visitors.’
‘Is that the kind of thing she would mention?’ Cormac asked.
The woman laughed, a warm and genuine sound. ‘You’d better believe it,’ she said. ‘Are you a relative?’
Her eyes were still assessing, and Cormac thought she knew already that he wasn’t. He shook his head. ‘I’m not. I’m a guard. I need to ask Domenica a few questions. Nothing to worry anyone, just a bit of ancient history.’
She nodded slowly, her eyes still considering.
‘Are you a friend of hers?’ he asked. ‘Do you think she’d be up to a few questions?’
The woman extended her hand for a shake. ‘I’m Caoimhe O’Neill,’ she said. ‘Public health nurse. I’m here most days.’
‘She’s not well?’
‘Just dressing changes. Leg ulcer. Not unusual for a woman her age.’
‘Right,’ Cormac said. ‘She’ll be all right for a few questions?’
Caoimhe blew out her breath. ‘If you mean is she senile, then no she’s not. If you mean will she tell you the truth, I wouldn’t count on it.’
Cormac laughed himself now. ‘A garda can never count on that one.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘My husband’s a guard. I never get tired of hearing about it.’
The wind was a little higher now, and a light drizzle had started. Cormac would have moved forward but she continued.
‘I’m not joking,’ she said. ‘You’d want to watch yourself with her.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m telling you to watch yourself with her. She’s dangerous.’
Cormac was smiling now, waiting for the punchline. ‘Does she keep a pistol under her cushion?’ he asked.
The woman, Caoimhe, rolled her eyes again. She took a phone from the pocket of her jacket, and held up the screen so he could see it. ‘See this?’ she asked. ‘It’s set to record. It’s always set to record while I’m in that house. I’m not the first public health nurse to be assigned to Miss Keane. The last one ended up being transferred because she made a complaint.’
‘Which was?’
‘She went to the guards claiming that the girl assaulted her. Keane had a black eye and a split lip. The girl, she was only a young one. A midwife really, not a public health nurse, and just out of training college. It’s hard to get fully trained public health nurses out here. But she was a nice girl. Loved her job, very enthusiastic.’
Cormac glanced towards the house. It was early evening, but so overcast that the light had been sucked out of the day. The windows were dark, hostile. The house looked empty, but he knew it wasn’t, and he was conscious that the conversation they were having would be better had elsewhere. He didn’t have time. He wasn’t going to drag this thing out any more than he absolutely had to. He wanted it done.
‘You don’t think she did it.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Was the girl charged?’
‘Yes, but in the end Domenica dropped the charges. Afterwards the girl was suspended, and she went home to her parents.’
‘Why would she make it up, if the girl did nothing wrong? And where did she get the black eye?’
Caoimhe shook her head, glanced back over her shoulder at the house. ‘Honestly? I think she did it to herself. It would have been worth it to her. She would have seen it as taking the girl down a peg or two. Domenica doesn’t like happy people. I think what she wanted was to damage that girl’s confidence, to poison her enthusiasm for helping people.’ Caoimhe walked to her car and opened the passenger door to put her bag inside.
‘If you’re right, she sounds like a lovely person,’ Cormac said.
She turned to him. ‘I think she’s a sociopath,’ she said, matter of factly. ‘So remember that, and watch yourself.’ She held her phone up again and wiggled it at him.
He nodded. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.
She was walking around her car to the driver’s door. ‘Not a bother.’ She smiled at him. ‘Good luck with whatever you’re after.’ A last smile, and a wave, and as she reversed down the drive he felt absurdly bereft. As he approached the front door he wasn’t thinking about the interview ahead, but that Caoimhe O’Neill’s husband, whoever he was, was doing all right for himself.
He rang the doorbell and waited. Rang a second time. He could hear movement from within the house, but it was a full ten minutes before the door opened slowly to a gap of a couple of inches, as wide as permitted by a security chain firmly in place. The woman standing inside the door peered through the gap, but said nothing. She was a little stooped with age, but tall nevertheless. Very tall for a woman, not quite his six foot three but she wouldn’t have been far off it. Cormac held his ID up to her.
‘Mrs Keane, I’m Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly. I’d like to speak with you about something if you can spare a few minutes.’
‘You’ll have to wait while I get my glasses. I can’t read anything without them.’ She closed the door. The minutes ticked by, and he began to feel the cold. Cormac checked his watch. He wanted to get back to Galway in time to have a late dinner with Emma. He would interview Maude the next day, but not before speaking with a police doctor about the postmortem report. He wanted to get a clearer picture of what condition Hilaria had been in, given the advanced stage of her disease. And maybe the Keane interview – if she ever came back and opened the bloody door – would give him something to work with, an angle to take with the questioning. He had to keep a momentum going, or this case would slip out of his hands. Murphy wanted an arrest. If Maude had murdered her mother, Murphy would have to get it. But there would be no arrest without evidence to support a prosecution, at least not while it was his case and his decision to make. If he hoped to find evidence to prove Maude’s innocence, that wouldn’t stop him asking the right questions.
He stamped his feet to warm them and tucked his hands into his armpits. She’d probably lost her glasses, or maybe even forgotten he was there. He knocked again, twice, but it was another five minutes before she opened the door again, glasses on this time, and held out her hand for his ID. He held it up for her, and she took his wrist and pulled it towards her through the crack in the door, with more strength than he would have expected.
‘Special Detective Unit,’ she read slowly. He still had his old badge; hadn’t made the effort to get it changed. He’d kept his gun too, had never returned it when he left the SDU. More detectives were carrying now, even outside the units, and he’d assumed he’d be one of them. Either the powers that be felt the same way, or they’d simply forgotten to ask. Keane hadn’t released his wrist, and he didn’t like to pull away, for fear he would unbalance her. Her lips were red and unpleasantly wet, and his eyes were drawn to them as she spoke. ‘And what are the likes of you doing down here?’
‘I’d like to speak with you about something that happened a number of years ago. The death of Hilaria Blake. Do you remember her?’
Domenica Keane’s eyes were still sharp under drooping upper lids. They brightened on hearing Hilaria’s name. ‘Of course I remember her. Poor, poor dear.’
Cormac pulled his wrist slowly, but firmly, away from her. She resisted the pressure for a moment, then released him. She pushed the door closed, slid the security chain aside, and opened it.
‘Come in, detective,’ she said. He entered a hall carpeted in pa
le peach, the carpet thinning in the centre. The walls were papered in a flowered pattern up to a low timber dado rail, and painted a paler peach above the rail. The décor was so like that of his grandparents’ old home in West Cork that it was disconcerting. But this house, for all its superficial similarities, had none of the warmth of his grandparents’ place. It smelled stale and unused. Domenica Keane gestured towards a door at the end of the hall, and he turned and walked towards it, only to stop and wait for her as he realised that her progress was slow. She walked with a shuffling gait, hands clasped in front of her and eyes downcast, as if she was in a state of permanent worry. He waited for her to draw almost level with him, then he opened the door and stepped inside the room, holding the door open for her.
The kitchen was unpleasantly hot and stuffy. There was an old-fashioned three-bar gas heater at the other end of the room. He hadn’t seen one like it in years, but the thing obviously still worked, it was blasting out enough heat for a room three times the size.
Domenica Keane settled herself into an armchair that had been placed at the side of the kitchen table, facing the door. She gestured for him to take a seat, and he pulled out a kitchen chair and turned it so that he could face her.
‘It’s Miss,’ she said, as he took his notebook from his pocket.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘You said Mrs Keane. At the door. But I’ve never married. I think accuracy is important, don’t you? Certainly to a detective, I would have thought.’
‘That’s right, Miss Keane. My apologies.’
‘I expect you think that all ladies of my generation married at some point or the other. Unless of course they were utterly unmarriageable. Which I was not. But that wouldn’t be accurate, detective. There were plenty of women of my generation who made their own way in the world. Some of them foolishly and wantonly, it should be said. But some of us had a higher calling, and marriage would have been a distraction.’ She spoke very slowly and deliberately, but her voice was clear and strong and held no quaver. As she spoke she let her eyes drift to a framed photograph hung on the wall. It was a close up of a woman in her thirties, with strong features and a muscular jaw line, dressed in what looked like a wimple.
‘You were a member of a religious order?’
She inclined her head. She must have been very strong when she was younger. The hands she clasped lightly together in her lap were unusually large for a woman, and although she must have lost body weight and muscle tone as she’d aged, he could see hints of her former self in the shape of her shoulders.
‘Miss Keane, I’d like to ask you some questions about Hilaria Blake. You’ve said that you remember her.’
She tilted her head to one side. ‘I do remember her. Poor dear woman. Such a terrible waste.’
‘You mean her alcoholism.’
‘Do I?’ Domenica Keane was smiling gently at him.
Cormac suppressed a flair of irritation and smiled back at her. ‘You were aware that Hilaria Blake was an alcoholic?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, detective. I’d say she liked a little drink, but who could blame her. She was lonely I’m sure. Her husband left her to raise two children alone. Terribly difficult thing to do in that day and age.’
‘Hilaria Blake was not married, Miss Keane. And her children had two different fathers.’
‘Oh dear. It seems she misled me.’ But Domenica Keane kept smiling. Her mouth was wet, her lips slightly parted.
‘I understand that you were quite close to Hilaria. That you visited her. That you provided support to the family.’
‘My Christian duty.’
‘Did you object when Children and Family Services wanted to take Maude and Jack into care?’
‘A disgrace.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Taking children from their natural mother. That is an action against God. If God had intended Hilaria to be childless, he wouldn’t have sent her those two beautiful children.’ She stretched the word out . . . beeee–yoooo–tiful. From her mouth it sounded obscene.
‘But you do understand that the children were abused?’
‘Abuse. What nonsense. They may have had to wait for a meal or two from time to time. I can tell you when I grew up that was just a normal day. Hilaria loved her children. She cared for them well. If they didn’t have hundreds of toys . . . Well. That is hardly abuse.’
‘It was quite a bit worse than that, Miss Keane. Jack Blake was beaten, his sister too. They were badly neglected. Jack was malnourished. I would think that is the result of something more serious than a few late meals.’
She gave him another slow, deliberate smile. ‘Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, detective.’
‘You spent time with the family?’
‘Yes. Hilaria and I used to pray together.’
‘You were at the house regularly then?’ And at her nod, ‘You never saw signs of abuse?’
‘I remember that the little boy was forever falling down. Clumsy little thing. But no, no abuse at all.’
‘How often did you visit the family?’
She tilted her head to one side. On her it was the most artificial gesture – as if she’d seen other people do it and had chosen to imitate. ‘Almost every day. Except Monday when I did the church flowers.’
Cormac turned back some pages in his notebook.
‘Jack Blake was examined at the hospital after his mother’s death. He was found to have numerous healed fractures. Three ribs had been fractured at least once. He’d suffered a broken tibia, and fibia. Two fingers on his left hand had also been broken. He had burns to his left shoulder.’ Cormac looked up at her. ‘In all your daily visits to the house you never saw any evidence of these injuries?’
She tutted. ‘Clumsy. Little. Boy.’ She enunciated each word clearly, but it was her smile that made his anger roar. He was careful to show nothing. He wouldn’t give the bitch the satisfaction.
‘You were aware of course that Hilaria Blake died of a heroin overdose?’
‘Did she indeed? Well isn’t that shocking?’
‘Yes. Although she was dying in any case. You must have known that she had very advanced liver failure.’
‘Are you quite sure you are supposed to be sharing all this information with me, detective? I must say, it seems very indiscreet.’ She made a show of looking at her watch, then distractedly around the room. ‘Did you have a question for me at all?’
‘Nearly finished, Miss Keane. Just another question or two and I’ll leave you in peace.’ Cormac paused. He was working on instinct now. The truism that a lawyer should never ask a question to which he did not already know the answer did not apply to detectives. If anything the opposite rule applied. You had a plan going into every interrogation, but sometimes it was best to follow your instinct, and his instinct was screaming at him that Domenica Keane knew something. ‘There is one question I’d very much like your help on. I understand that there may have been other visitors to the house. Members of your prayer group, perhaps?’
Domenica Keane snickered, as if he had told her an off-colour joke. ‘Of course. Hilaria was someone who had strayed from God’s side. She knew that, and our little group was always willing to do whatever hard work was required to bring someone back to God’s loving arms.’
‘Who, exactly?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Other than yourself, which members of your prayer group visited the Blake home?’
‘Well, let me think,’ the old woman said, again tilting her head to the side. ‘Do you know, I think I’m having some trouble recalling the details. It was all such a very long time ago.’
Cormac made a show of looking back to an earlier page of his notebook, of taking a further note. ‘I must say I’m surprised, Miss Keane.’ She didn’t respond. ‘Your memory has been very clear so far. But perhaps you just need some time to think? To remember?’ He looked at her with cool dispassion. She was old, and she was evil, but she wasn’t so differen
t from a hundred others he’d sat opposite in an interview room. People like Domenica Keane were too clever. They lied when they should stay quiet. They thought ahead, saw the risks, and moved to tie them off. They could never quite see how the slow setting down of questions and noting of answers could drive them into a trap of their own making.
She was waiting. Watching. Her eyes still amused but a little careful.
‘There wasn’t someone in particular? Someone other than yourself who developed a friendship with Hilaria Blake?’
‘Well now, let me think.’ She made a show of putting a finger to her lips. Tap. Tap. Tap. ‘I suppose there was Simon . . . what was his name again? Smith? No, a German name. Most unusual. Schmidt. Something like that, perhaps.’
‘Schmidt,’ Cormac said, his tone flat. He tried the notebook trick again, turning back a page and making a show of checking something.
‘I think that was it, but I’m such a very old lady, detective. I really can’t be sure of anything.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘I don’t recall much, I’m afraid. Simon was part of our group for only a short time. He was a teacher, if I remember correctly. Taught at the primary school I believe.’
Cormac’s confidence that he had found something dropped. Hard to see a primary school teacher as a drug dealer. But there was definitely something here. She was watchful now. ‘Did he move on?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You said he wasn’t with your group very long. Why did he leave?’
Domenica shook her head. ‘Who can say what tempts people from the arms of the Lord, detective? It’s not something I’ve ever understood.’
‘Right. You introduced Simon to the family?’
‘I really don’t recall.’
‘But you knew him?’
‘We had similar interests, certainly, while he was a member of our little group. I believe he was very involved in charitable causes. Such a good man. So very caring. Particularly good with children.’
The Ruin Page 18