‘There were never too many flies on you, Maureen.’ Slattery smiled, because back in the day – and it was a long time ago now – Marshall had everyone he met fooled. He’d been a personable, eager young entrepreneur. It seemed to many as if he’d been lucky in his choices. Slattery always had a feeling that where he thrived, some unfortunate chump had been trodden on to get him to the next step on the ladder.
‘He had a thing for another girl who worked at the bakery with me too. Lizzie, her name was. They went on a few dates and then she threw him over for some other boy.’ Her eyes drifted, as if going back to a time, long, long ago. ‘He sent her a dead rat in the post.’
‘Marshall?’
‘Well, she was sure it was him. It arrived into the bakery, delivered by some youngster on the street. Wrapped up in brown paper, it had a pink ribbon tied around it and a note that told her as much. After that, he never came into the bakery, I suppose he had what you’d call closure now,’ Maureen said solemnly before handing Slattery his keys. ‘Says something about him though, don’t you think?’
Slattery headed out into the darkness willing Maureen to shut and bolt the door behind him, but instead she stood obstinately in its frame, knowing perhaps that he would prefer to believe she was locked up safe and sound. Perhaps he should count his blessings; too often he arrived here and she wouldn’t let him cross the threshold – this had been a good evening. Maureen was like he remembered her, before they put a label on her that changed everyone’s expectations of how things would work out in the end. He got into his car, turned over the engine and decided he would drive around the block a few times and then double-check the door himself, once she was inside it and deep in the middle of her prayers for the night.
The one thing he was fairly certain of, rat or no rat, Marshall was not their murderer. For one thing, he had spent the night at the other end of the country on a golfing trip that had finished up in the nineteenth hole around the time Rachel was being bludgeoned to death. That had been checked and for another, there was simply no motive. Marshall had nothing to gain from any of this. If anything, Eleanor Marshall roaming the countryside was making his life worse not better.
No, if he was putting money on anyone, he believed that she was killed not because of her connection with the Marshalls, but rather because of her link with Nate Hegarty. He was a bad egg and there was something he wasn’t sharing with them. At this stage, Slattery thought he’d wager his week’s wages on Hegarty: he had opportunity, means and now all they needed was a solid motive.
Although it was late, that nugget of annoyance was enough to send him back out to Curlew Hall. Suz Mullins was no different to her mother. Short and stumpy, old Gloria had spent her life draped over the gambling machines at the nearest chippie. Suz had the track of the Cloisters in everything about her, from her coarse Limerick accent to her mean mouth and darting eyes. Slattery didn’t like her, but he knew if anyone could tell them how Curlew Hall ran, it would be Suz. He could see it: every movement registered with her, it came from a habit of looking out for the next opportunity. Suz had been served with bench warrants for shoplifting before she’d made her first holy. She’d learned from the best, her older sister stole like a pro. She was the square pin here, even if she wore the same expensive labels as the other girls. Theirs had been bought by parents who cared enough to pay through the nose to clean up their mess before it got too out of hand. Suz was here because there was nowhere else to take responsibility for her – the state had run out of options. She was too young for the women’s prison and the only detention centre in the country was trying to empty out its residents, not make space for more.
‘Drugs,’ she volunteered before Slattery knew he wanted to ask. ‘Off me face when I stole a car and rammed it into the back of the Lord Mayor’s Mercedes.’ She snorted when she laughed, remorse was obviously not weighing her down too heavily.
‘You’re clean now?’ Slattery asked.
‘Sure I wasn’t even addicted. It was all just about having a laugh, but you couldn’t tell the judge that. Me ma said I’d like this place, it’s not bad either. Food is decent, all the channels on the telly and apart from all that counselling, it’s a bit of a lark,’ she said, looking then at Pardy as if she was trying to gauge her.
‘Right, well, the way I figure it, Suz, you’re the only one here who’s going to have a choice about talking either way. Those other girls? All I’ll have to do is ring up their rich daddies and they’ll spill the beans quicker than it’ll take to say their double-barrel names.’
‘And I’m just going to roll over?’
‘You have nothing to lose here.’ Slattery reached into his inside pocket and slipped a fifty-euro note out far enough for her to catch a glimpse of.
‘Sure, I have nothing to lose.’ She smiled at him then; they were speaking the same language. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything about the night Rachel died. Anything that you noticed out of the ordinary, anything you think we should know.’
‘Right.’ Suz sat back her chair, inhaling a long deep breath. When she went back over the night in question there was actually very little she could tell them, except that when she’d finished, Slattery had a feeling that even if Eleanor Marshall had her own private accommodation, Suz Mullins was the resident who’d have been better off separated from the rest of the bunch.
Twelve
Tim McDermott was not unlike his sister in some ways. Iris thought she knew every single inch of Rachel’s face now; it stared at her accusingly from a ten-by-eight that hung in the centre of the incident-room board. Whereas Rachel was dark-haired, olive-skinned and green-eyed, Tim was fair, with a more generous mouth and his mother’s eyes, a deep blue that would probably lighten as he aged. The big difference – he wore the red-eyed look of bereavement with stoic apathy. Both children thin, both of average height – he a little above, she a tad below – and they shared a certain set to them that Iris couldn’t quite place, but it was somewhere along the jaw and it gave them a look of their mother.
‘You left your card with Mam, and I knew you’d want to speak to me anyway, at some point.’ He shrugged narrow shoulders. He was wearing a faded denim jacket over a white T-shirt and although he should be freezing, he looked as though he’d never felt the cold.
‘Well, you’re very good to come in. We’d have sent around a garda anyway, just to check you were both doing okay and…’ Of course, Iris didn’t need to say it, but the truth was, she’d already told Pardy to check in and see if Tim could give them any idea of people that would rather see Rachel out of the picture. She was also meant to check where he was the night she died, but Iris had a feeling now that Tim McDermott was no killer. Iris showed him into an empty office at the back of the main reception, he declined tea, which she told him was probably wise and he smiled easily, in spite of the edge of melancholy that lingered in his eyes.
‘I imagine Mam wasn’t much help when you called to tell her the news.’
‘We wouldn’t expect anything else. She’d just lost her daughter, it’s unthinkable, and even if we see terrible things too often, it doesn’t mean we don’t understand,’ Iris said, pulling a notebook across the desk and checking in a tray for a biro.
‘Here,’ he said, pushing one from his side across to her. ‘Well, she told me you’re looking for a list of Rach’s friends?’
‘Yes, anyone at all you can think of that she might have known or associated with, really; anyone that might be able to give us some idea of why someone would want to see her…’
‘Killed?’ Tim shook his head. ‘It’s okay, sergeant, I knew my sister better than anyone. She’d always had a nose for trouble.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, she had a bleeding heart that always put her on the side of the underdog. Mam used to say it came from her being a carer, but I always thought she just sort of connected with people who were on the losing side of life, if you know what I mean.’
�
��They said she was really kind to Eleanor Marshall,’ Iris murmured.
‘Yeah, that’d be right. She’d see no badness in anyone – it was the way she was.’
‘You don’t think she’d have fallen out with anyone?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t perfect. We’d rowed ourselves, only a few days ago. My mother won’t have volunteered this, but I threatened to murder her with my own hands if she ever…’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, it all seems too stupid now. I’m sure you already know that Rach dabbled with drugs, smoking a joint was her way of chilling out. Rach never went to the pub, it wasn’t her scene. The thing is, none of us are saints, but my mother – well, we’re hardly kids she can brag about, but if she had to face her cronies at mass and they knew Rach was smoking weed… I think the shame would have killed her.’
‘Of course, the toxicology will show up…’ Iris said, thinking back to Nate Hegarty. ‘She wouldn’t have owed any money? There’s no way whoever was supplying her might have…?’
‘It’s a bit bigger than that…’ He shook his head. ‘This was the real reason we fought, it frightened me, like I said, none of us are angels, but…’He reached into his pocket, took out a fat envelope and placed it on the table. ‘This was left in a drawer in the kitchen.’ He pushed it towards her, opening the end slightly so she could see it was packed with fifty-euro notes, probably a couple of thousand in all. ‘After our fight, she said that was it. She promised to give this back to whoever it belonged to and well, I’m not completely naïve, I know that the sort of people who hand you this kind of money are hard to pull away from. After Mam told me, well, I had to get my head around Rach being gone and then I thought of this and I had a search about and there it was, sitting snug at the back of a locker in the spare room…’
‘You think she was killed for this?’
‘I’m not sure. I mean, I had hoped she’d give it back if it was owed to someone – Rach was just an occasional customer, never a seller or anything like that, as far as I knew, she just liked a smoke… but nobody hands you that kind of money for no reason, do they?’
‘And, if she was involved in something – who else is likely to be part of it?’
‘I wouldn’t have a notion. She didn’t have many friends outside of the people up at Curlew Hall, but I know she was close to Nate Hegarty for a while and trouble has never been too far behind him.’ He shook his head and rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘Regardless of what it’s all about, I needed you to know that there was a far bigger chance of someone like… well, Nate Hegarty killing Rachel than the Marshall girl.’
‘You’ve counted it?’
‘Yep, about twenty thousand in all…’ he said, then he stopped. ‘Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have touched it at all, should I?’
‘You weren’t to know. We’ll need your fingerprints, not that I’d expect to get a whole lot, money is just about the biggest nightmare for forensics.’
‘Sure, I’ll do anything that will help, just…’
‘What?’ Iris looked at him now and found it odd, that strange mix of grown man with a lost and vulnerable quality that seemed to sit somewhere behind his eyes.
‘Well, if you could keep quiet about the drugs… you know, my mother will die a thousand deaths of disgrace if anyone…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s probably already common knowledge, Limerick is hardly a place to keep a secret.’
‘You’d be surprised at that, Tim, you really would,’ Iris said lightly, but she had a feeling maybe he already knew this to be true.
Iris rang Slattery after she wrote up her notes. Suddenly starving, she needed to get out of Corbally. She suggested lunch at a pub far away enough from the station where they wouldn’t be disturbed. ‘Two-ish,’ they agreed and she didn’t really care if he was late, it’d give her time to think, and maybe to breathe.
‘So, Byrne gave you a flea in the ear?’ Slattery chuckled as he sat down to a tiny cup of tea from the pot she’d ordered before he arrived. ‘Better than a kick in the arse, I suppose.’
‘Maybe, but it’s not what I wanted.’
‘Ara, sure, you knew going in there he wasn’t going to agree to a second big media appeal when Kit Marshall had already had his five minutes of fame. His hands are tied as much as anyone’s. The only way we’re going to make any headway with the media and getting a new appeal out there is if we come up with a new lead or an appeal on a different front,’ he said, examining the teacup suspiciously. ‘Here,’ he barked at a young waitress who was wandering about looking to offload what looked like a barrel of soup and a hearty sandwich. ‘Any chance you could find me a proper-sized mug in the kitchen somewhere?’ He turned back towards Iris, ignoring the girl’s startled expression as she scurried off on a new mission. ‘Anyway, we can only do what we’re doing and maybe we’re doing better than we think,’ he said picking up a menu from the table before him.
They ordered soup of the day, brown bread and another pot of tea. ‘Thirsty work, this,’ he said to the girl when she presented him with a travel mug that was big enough to fit the entire contents of the dainty teapot in it.
‘Byrne said he wasn’t unsympathetic to the plight of Eleanor Marshall, but from what I can see, he’s more focussed on the annual fundraiser in aid of the local branch of Victim Support – now they’ve invited him to put in a speech.’
‘Well, that’d be about right.’
‘He’s a big fan of yours too.’ Iris smiled now.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised how chummy we are,’ Slattery said drily.
‘You’d have to wonder, though, wouldn’t you?’ Iris said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, they’re her parents; surely they want her back safe and sound. The longer she’s out there, the more chance she’ll be dead and there won’t be very much safe or sound about her. Marshall may be a good businessman, but he’s no detective. I can’t help but feel this needs to be said and said before it’s too late.’
‘Look, every investigation comes with something that holds you back these days, that’s the way things are, I’m afraid.’
‘I know that but still, there’s no getting away from the fact that she’s such a vulnerable girl.’
‘I’m not sure that’s how Marshall sees her. I was talking to an old mate of mine and, apparently, he’s just put in to Special Branch looking for a Gardai presence around that fortress of his he calls a home. He already has two private security men patrolling the grounds twenty-four-seven and he just requested four officers from Special Branch, if you don’t mind. From what I hear, the request has been refused so far, but if he pushed, the extra hours would have to come from existing budgets, so that would mean less bodies out on the search.’
‘Does he think she’s going to come after him?’ Iris said, amused. The notion was ridiculous.
‘Well, he was spooked enough to look for extra security, so that tells you he’s afraid of something,’ Slattery said.
When their lunch arrived, they began eating in silence. After a while, Iris spoke.
‘At least the lake is clear,’ she said absently, her mind considering the search out at Curlew Hall.
‘How do you mean?’
‘The lake. Julia Stenson said she had a thing about the water, went swimming there any chance she got.’ An involuntary shiver ran through her at the thought. Julia had shivered too when she told them. Urgh, full of eels, probably.
‘Bit cold for swimming though, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah, but remember she ran out of there in the black of night. She could lose her footing in the dark. God, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
‘Iris, they’re doing their best. We’re doing our best with what we’ve got, remember, we have to remain—’
‘Focussed.’ She cut him off. It wasn’t easy, staying detached from the horrors that befell other people; you never really managed that. But Slattery was right; becoming upset just slowed you down. It stopped you seeing th
ings, and that could literally be fatal. It was killing Slattery too, even if he wouldn’t admit it in a fit. ‘Okay, so where are we?’ she asked as much to break the silence as to actually make any progress. They had nothing, not really; apart from gut instinct, a bundle of money, a missing file and a couple of fingerprints, but sometimes that was enough. Then again, if you could get a conviction on gut instincts…
‘Good question,’ he said and they returned to the gloomy silence.
‘Come on, Slattery.’ She exhaled. ‘We know that for a girl who could do no wrong, it looks like there were a few people who had a grudge against her.’
‘Hardly enough to kill her though.’
‘Perhaps, but people have been killed for less,’ Iris said softly. ‘Those girls in the other bungalow, they said that Eleanor was exactly the sort to take revenge on Rachel for getting her transferred into that separate unit.’
‘It wasn’t Rachel’s fault that those kids attacked Eleanor.’
‘No, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t blame her in some way, you know what kids are like.’
‘Yeah, and you’re going to believe a couple of kids who can hardly tell the truth if their lives depended on it,’ Slattery said. The only motive the kids had was perhaps jealousy of Eleanor, but it was hard to see what they had to be jealous of, once you took a good look up close. Each of them had fronted up to the fact that they’d given Eleanor a hard time, but it was plain to see that they were as fond of Rachel McDermott as they were of anyone in Curlew Hall. ‘Anyway, they were locked up tight for the night, no way they could have got across that yard, even Nate Hegarty is adamant about that.’
‘Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?’ Iris said. It was Nate’s job to make sure that everyone was locked up securely, he wasn’t going to go volunteering to anything different, not unless he had to. ‘And what about Hegarty? If Rachel McDermott was taking notes, I can’t think of anyone she’d be more likely to report for not doing his job well.’
Why She Ran Page 11