by Bateman
I stood in the doorway and said, ‘You made him bacon?’ because I could now see the plate before him, and a rind, and some evidence of egg.
‘Well,’ said Alison, ‘he’s been here most of the night, and we were both hungry.’
DI Robinson finally turned in his chair and looked me up and down and said, ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve been here trying to give her the Three Degrees but she hasn’t given me anything. But I’m not too stressed about that. I know how you work, how you like to put on a show, and besides, the bacon was lovely. She makes a mean fry.’
He turned back to the table, and I joined Alison at the sink. She took hold of the bottom of my sleeve. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I had no choice. He was going to take me in for questioning, and I couldn’t leave Page with Mother.’
‘Why? I thought she was God’s gift to babies.’
‘I may have misjudged her parenting abilities. I caught her giving whiskey to him.’
I gave her a reassuring smile. ‘It’s an old wives’ thing, a wee dab of whiskey on the tip of your finger, to help him sleep.’
‘This wasn’t a dab, it was a shot. That’s why Page has been so placid in her company. I thought they were bonding, but she was getting our baby pissed so he wouldn’t cry so much.’
‘More ammunition,’ said DI Robinson. ‘I’m going to have all of you locked up, including the baby for underage drinking.’
I said, ‘What do you want? Why are you here?’
He sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. ‘Take a wild guess. You break someone out of a not very secure mental institution, and half the police in Belfast are out looking for him. You interfere repeatedly in a murder investigation, and you expose your wife and child to extreme danger which might have resulted in their untimely deaths if I hadn’t been hanging around keeping an eye out for you.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
Alison chewed on her lip. Her eyes flitted up from the linoleum and back down. ‘Someone tried to break in,’ she said, ‘in the early hours.’
‘The house? Did they touch . . .?’
‘They had the outer door open,’ said DI Robinson, ‘before I chased them away. I thought they were just a couple of kids in fright masks on a burglary and didn’t go after them, but then your girl here found something, once I’d roused her.’
‘Did you not notice on the way in?’ Alison asked. ‘The new plant pot in the front? I bought it in B and Q yesterday. To replace the one you destroyed?’
‘Yes,’ I said, though in truth, I had not.
‘Well, once DI Robinson roused me,’ she gave me a wink, and my stomach lurched, ‘and bearing in mind what has gone before, I checked out the pot, and lo and behold . . .’
She turned to the oven, which was on, and picked up a pair of oven gloves draped over the handle. She opened the door, and I could see on the top shelf a plate stacked with bacon and eggs and sausages and potato bread and soda bread and black pudding, a Belfast Deathpak for Mother, but for which she would have to wait until I examined what was on the bottom shelf, which was very clearly a defixio. Alison reached in and retrieved it. ‘I was drying it out,’ she said.
She set it on the draining board. DI Robinson, who had clearly already examined it, did not move from his seat at the table. ‘And before you ask,’ he said, ‘she had it all washed smooth before I knew what she was playing at, otherwise I would have had Forensics all over it.’
‘It’s just force of habit,’ said Alison. ‘We never have recourse to fingerprints and DNA. We rely on Superbrain,’ and she indicated me.
I did not glow (a) because it was the truth, and (b) because I was too busy trying to hide my pleasure at reading the inscription, which was a mild variation of the O’Dromodery curse:
This curse on the house of Anthony Boucher
Let them suffer, let them boil
Bring fear and death down upon
The forever cursed house of Anthony Boucher.
Alison peered over my shoulder and said, ‘I don’t get it. Who the hell is Anthony Boucher? And why are you grinning like a loon?’
44
A cold hard rain had enveloped the mourners at the burial of Bernard O’Dromodery at Roselawn Cemetery, and they had not dried off sufficiently before stepping into the cranked-up central heating of Sean O’Dromodery’s house on Balmoral Avenue so that they were, literally, steaming. I watched from the top of the stairs as Sean, under the firm gaze of his security guards, welcomed them one by one, with a firm handshake, and quickly directed them towards the young staff from the Milltown Road Catering Company, on hand to dispense glasses of Bucks Fizz, and then on into the main lounge, which was large and wood-panelled, and for the purposes of the day had been largely emptied of comfortable furniture and set out with folding chairs. Their entrance was to the little-known Fourth Concerto by Alexander Khorsikov. It wasn’t loud enough to be truly distracting, but you couldn’t help but notice it. This was deliberate. I desired an unsettling ambience.
I did not attend the funeral service or the burial afterwards, but instead sent Jeff. He was one of the last to arrive back at the house, and joined me on the stairs, dripping. He said, ‘That was a miserable experience. Why does it always rain at funerals?’
‘Does it, Jeff, or have you been watching too many movies?’
He said, ‘Good point. But still, I’m drenched. But happy to report that the internment passed without incident.’
I smiled and said, ‘Really?’
And he said, ‘What?’
‘Internment, Jeff? Were they detained without trial?’ He looked at me blankly. ‘Interment, Jeff. Interment.’
‘Same difference,’ he said, and he was probably close enough to the truth.
Alison was busy setting up my laptop and a small projector in the lounge. The mourners milling around her probably thought they were going to be treated to a celebration of Bernard O’Dromodery’s life, rather than a PowerPoint demonstration of who did what to whom and why.
A woman with short dark hair arrived at the door, looking rather overawed by the size of the house, and during the pleasantries it became clear she was Sonya Delaney. Martin Brady came next; there was a handshake with Sean, but I could see that there was no love lost.
Jeff said, ‘I overheard him talking at the service. It seems Bernard’s house was owned by the O’Dromodery Brothers building company rather than Bernard himself. Sean’s given him six weeks to get out.’
I saw through the landing window a yellow Lexus pull through the gates, and a few moments later Fat Sam’s widow Gloria dripped into the porch and gave Sean a hug. The next to arrive was Gary Drennan, the manager of the All Star Health Club; he was wearing a tracksuit, and clearly had no idea why everyone else was in suits and black ties. All he knew was that he had been summoned by who he thought was the owner of the Health Club. Sean solemnly shook his hand, while at the same time glancing up the stairs for my approval that a man so incongruously dressed be allowed in. He repeated the same routine for Dr Winter, and for Rory Quinn, the Vice Principal of St Mary’s.
DI Robinson was one of the last to arrive. He was wearing a beige trenchcoat which showed up the rain; his hair was plastered across his head. He had interviewed Sean several times during his investigation. As he shook his hand he looked up the staris at me and raised an eyebrow. I gave him a condescending nod. I always enjoyed showing DI Robinson how to do his job.
When it appeared that all the mourners had arrived, I nudged Jeff and said, ‘Okay, you better go and get them.’
He looked out at the rain and sighed. ‘Why do I always have to do the donkey work?’ he asked, without immediately realising that he had just answered his own question. But he saw the look on my face and said, ‘Oh, very funny.’
I accompanied him down the stairs and then stopped with Sean by the front door. We watched as Jeff hurried across the pooling tarmac to the Mystery Machine.
Sean said, ‘I hope you know what
you’re doing.’
‘I am brimming with confidence,’ I said, ‘though there is always the chance that something will go catastrophically wrong.’
He said, ‘That is not very reassuring.’ We stared at the teeming rain for several moments. He took a deep breath. ‘I can’t believe this,’ he said. ‘I’ve just shaken all those hands, but one of them may have wielded the knife that killed my brother. The rest of them are going to think I’ve taken leave of my senses, allowing you to just . . . take over.’
I had already explained to him that this was how I worked, that statements and interview rooms and solicitors protecting one’s rights were not for me, that the important thing was not being able to literally prove someone’s guilt, it was sufficient for me to demonstrate conclusively in the room, in front of witnesses, that a person or persons was or were guilty of the crime; nobody leaving his home today would be in any doubt. That was my job. Actually hauling them before a court – that was DI Robinson’s.
I said, ‘This way you will know the truth, in yourself. That’s why you’re paying me the big bucks. Which, incidentally . . .’ I raised an eyebrow.
He said, ‘You want paying now? At my brother’s funeral?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You don’t pay for a meal before you’ve eaten it,’ he said.
‘In this restaurant, you do.’
‘And what if I don’t like the meal?’
‘That’s the chance you have to take. The chef has put a lot of work into preparing the meal, including the use of some combustible ingredients. He should be paid. In cash. Plus VAT.’
Sean O’Dromodery reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. He pressed it into my hand. As I went to take it, he held onto it, and looked hard into my eyes. ‘I knew you were a bit of an operator. We built our business the same way, cash in hand. So it’s all there. Take it. But I’m telling you now: if this all turns to shit, if you embarrass me in front of my family and friends, I will take every penny back, and I’ll break your legs into the bargain.’
I gave him an equally hard look back. I was getting better at it. One day I might even be able to stare down Alison. I didn’t mind the threat. It kind of went with the territory. It didn’t make him a bad or guilty man. Worse things happened in the book trade.
Sean let go of the envelope, and I slipped it into my inside jacket pocket. He said, ‘Okay, do what you have to do. But can you do me one favour? Will you turn that fucking music off?’
DI Robinson stepped up to the table with my laptop on it and called for order, and aked if everyone would take a seat. Two staff from the Milltown Road Catering Company, in the act of distributing mushroom vols-au-vent, didn’t quite know whether to stand where they were or quietly exit, but I whispered to them that this wouldn’t take long and they should take a seat. In passing I took one of the vols-au-vent and placed it whole in my mouth. It seemed as good a time as any to discover if I was allergic to them, and it was pleasing to discover that I was not, although this one tasted like a warm slug encased in cardboard.
The mourners were still chatting amongst themselves as they took their seats, and weren’t paying huge amounts of attention to DI Robinson as he held up his warrant card and thanked them and then said that we weren’t about to pay tribute to the recently deceased builder, that that had all been done at the service. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I am a detective. I am investigating a series of murders, including that of Bernard O’Dromodery. I have reason to believe that his killers are in this room. I should warn you that all of the exits have been sealed.’
That got them.
Martin Brady said, ‘What the fuck?’
Gloria Mahood let out a cackle and said, ‘Priceless.’
Malachy Quinn stood up and said, ‘What on earth has this got to do with Saint Mary’s?’
Gary Drennan unzipped his All Star tracksuit top all the way to the bottom and then brought it right back up to the top.
Sean O’Dromodery nodded around them, studying their reactions for clues.
Everyone, at some point, looked to the lounge door. DI Robinson had used some dramatic licence – there was only one exit, and that was being guarded from the other side by Alison, holding a poker. If anyone tried to make a break for it, she would attempt to take them down. The security guards, who might have been called upon to prevent an escape, had themselves been herded into the room and warned by Sean O’Dromodery not to interfere unless instructed to by DI Robinson. Nobody but I had any idea if they themselves were involved in the conspiracy.
DI Robinson ignored the rumpus, and waited for everyone to calm down before he went on: ‘Some of you I know, many of you I don’t. Bernard O’Dromodery’s death is one of nearly half a dozen which I believe are related, but as to exactly how they are related, I just don’t know. However, there is one man who does believe he has not only established that relationship, but also discovered who is responsible for those deaths, and he is . . . this bloke.’
He pointed at me, sitting in the front row. I nodded around them as I stood up, and drank in the confusion, and the concern, and the bewilderment.
‘He runs a fucking bookshop,’ said Martin Brady.
‘A mystery bookshop,’ I corrected, ‘and this is a mystery.’
‘And watch your language,’ DI Robinson added. ‘This is still a funeral. All I’m asking you to do is indulge him. If he’s right, then we may unmask a murderer. If he’s wrong, he will be returned to the mental institution from which he escaped.’
Several laughed, as if it was a joke. Nevertheless, I stepped forward to the accompaniment of increased rumblings and took my place beside DI Robinson. He whispered, ‘You better know what the hell you’re doing.’
‘More or less,’ I said.
He shook his head, and moved through the chairs to the back, where he took up position just to the left of the door.
The room was lit by a series of small spotlights on a long strip. I had taken the trouble before the mourners arrived to align these so that three of them beamed down exactly where I was standing, and the other six shone slightly more intensely onto a spot on the carpet I had marked with a small red grape I had liberated from a bunch in the kitchen. I now bent and lifted this grape, which had been tramped flat, and replaced it with a chair. I had thus, under the watchful eyes of intrigued people, established my court.
I said, ‘Thank you, and hopefully I won’t detain you for too long, apart from the guilty parties amongst you, who might find themselves detained indefinitely.’ It was a joke, and I thought, quite a smart play on words, but nobody seemed to agree.
The door at the back opened and Alison slipped in. She gave me a wink. I did not wink back, in case it made me look unbalanced.
‘I came to this case through an old friend who asked me merely to help identify a young man who had been arrested on suspicion of murdering a notorious hard man called Sam Mahood . . .’ I glanced at Gloria. ‘Or Fat Sam Mahood, as he was more widely known.’
‘That’s what they called him,’ said Gloria.
I moved to my laptop and pressed a button, and on the plain white wall behind me the first of a series of photographs appeared. ‘These,’ I said, ‘are the Faces of the Dead.’
Fat Sam’s picture was, clearly, a mugshot. It had been carried in all the papers.
‘The man they arrested was identified on CCTV footage at the murder location, the All Star Health Club in East Belfast, but arrested about a mile away, fast asleep, having broken into a house. The All Star Health Club itself was and is managed by Gary Drennan,’ I indicated him and he shifted uneasily in his chair, ‘and built by the O’Dromodery Brothers, of whom we are obviously all very well aware, and of whom Sean here is the only surviving member.’
Sympathetic eyes were turned upon him. He studied the carpet.
‘It is indeed a terrible thing to lose a brother,’ I said, ‘and how much worse to lose two?’ The second picture appeared. ‘Fergus O’Dromodery fell to his death from the
O’Dromodery Brothers’ headquarters eight months ago. The police, in their wisdom, treated it as a suicide. We now know better. Fergus O’Dromodery was thrown from that roof.’
There were gasps and cries. I did not, in fact, know this to be true. But all the evidence indicated that it was. It was like the Higgs boson – you didn’t have to actually see it to be able to prove that it existed, but if it didn’t, the laws of physics would be rendered a bit shit.
I raised my hand for calm, while continuing to fan their unsettlement. I like to keep my audience on edge. I showed a photograph of Bernard O’Dromodery. ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, ‘two brothers murdered. Fat Sam, murdered.’ I clicked onto the fourth picture. ‘This is Francis Delaney. A builder who also worked for Fat Sam in the ahm . . . enforcement business . . .’ I raised an eye towards Sonya, and she gave a bit of a shrug ‘. . . and therefore indirectly for the O’Dromoderys – also murdered.’ I moved to the fifth photograph, which Nicola had supplied. ‘And this is the fifth victim, the architect Bobby Preston, whose main clients were the O’Dromoderys.’
I stood and looked at the five pictures, now resting side by side, and my audience did the same. I said gravely. ‘This is, without doubt, a murder spree intrinsically connected not just to the O’Dromodery company but, as we shall see, to their development of a shopping centre in West Belfast.’
Sean O’Dromodery, sitting barely a few feet away from me in the front row, visibly stiffened, and his knuckles whitened where his hands gripped his knees. I caught Alison’s eye. She turned and opened the door and slipped out, leaving it just wide enough for me to see into the hallway behind her.
‘But I’m getting ahead of myself,’ I said. ‘I was, as I have mentioned, brought into this case to try and identify the man who was arrested shortly after Fat Sam’s murder – a man who, because of his inability, or perhaps refusal to communicate with anyone, and the clothes he was found in and continues to favour, has become known as The Man in the White Suit. Because of his perceived mental condition, this man was not held in prison, but rather in Purdysburn Hospital. Without doubt you will have heard on the news that The Man in the White Suit yesterday made a daring escape from this so-called secure facility and has been on the run ever since. There have been many dire warnings not to approach him because he is so dangerous; he has in fact become public enemy number one. No wonder Sean O’Dromodery is mortally afraid for his life, and has had no option but to surround himself with so many bodyguards.