‘So, he’d kill her just to get out of a disciplinary meeting?’ Slattery shook his head. ‘Seriously, for the likes of Hegarty, that’s chicken feed – no, if he had a motive, it’s around that missing money.’
‘You’re right, of course, you’re right.’ Iris slumped down in her chair. ‘Hegarty is the one person there who had the means,’ she said softly. ‘He could have let himself in and out of that unit seamlessly. But then, what about Eleanor?’ Because she knew, that regardless of how much she wanted to ignore her as a suspect, Eleanor Marshall had motive and opportunity and there was no getting away from that.
‘This isn’t good for either of us.’
‘Yeah, come on, let’s go out and get on Tony Ahearn’s nerves for a while.’
They pulled the car up at a stile; beyond it the ground had turned to mulch, thanks to the damp and increased traffic. Just a little way along, a trestle table stood, with huge flasks set out and the remnants of a lunch quickly eaten and then abandoned. In the distance, Iris could see the occasional flash of dayglo green where officers were searching through the undergrowth. They were making good progress, which at least was heartening.
Behind the official search, she spotted Susan Marshall’s bent back, her thick platinum hair weaving and bobbing along. Her form was steadily juddering up and down, searching in places that could never hide Eleanor. There again, knowing that she wasn’t there was probably better than always wondering.
‘Hi.’ It took an age to get to the woman and Iris felt out of breath by the time she’d ambled the short distance. ‘How are you holding up?’ Iris found herself cut short when she looked at the other woman’s drained face.
Susan Marshall stood straight, replacing the blanket of ivy and moss that she’d just displaced in her quest. She quickly pulled down her sleeve but not in time to hide the scars that stretched well up her left arm.
‘Ah, you know, as well as can be expected.’ She pulled her wax jacket close around her body. It was the most expensive designer brand, no doubt, too good for walking in inclement Mayo weather. ‘This is good…’ She gestured a slim hand around the woods. ‘Just being involved, it feels like something is happening, as though I’m helping her now.’ The corners of her mouth twitched shakily upwards, there was little to smile about really. ‘There’s no news, it’s just looking under every tree, but it’s something, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes, every pair of hands, it’s all good.’ Iris caught her breath. Pain seared up her back and she flinched involuntarily, almost losing her balance. It was strange, but since that night in Woodburn – when her whole world had been swallowed by the revelations that were still settling around her – she had aches and pains throughout her body, and only now did she realise that until this, she never had much more than an occasional stress headache.
‘Are you okay?’ Susan Marshall reached out a steadying hand.
‘Fine, really, I’m fine – just stiff probably, too much sitting down and it doesn’t suit me.’
‘You need to look after yourself.’ Susan Marshall lowered her voice.
‘I couldn’t rest if I wanted to… not knowing Eleanor is out here,’ Iris said simply and honestly.
‘I knew you felt that.’ Susan’s voice was little more than a whisper. Her hand reached out towards Iris. She gripped Iris’s arm tight, her eyes locking, her face haunted. ‘She didn’t do it, you know, I’m quite sure she didn’t.’
‘I don’t believe she did either, but we don’t have a lot to go on.’
‘I’m not a lot of help to you there, I know. But the people who worked with her, any of them, they knew her, surely they’ve told you. She…’ Her eyes lurched, searching out answers in Iris’s pitying face. ‘No…They don’t think…They can’t… They loved her too… I know they did…’ Susan Marshall recoiled, almost shrinking down into the luxurious jacket.
‘They haven’t said anything, Susan. They don’t know what to think. Everyone is still in shock.’ Iris looked around them, the search was moving forward without Susan now, giving them a little more privacy. ‘Have you visited? Have you been to see Eleanor more recently than you said?’
‘Not exactly, no.’ Susan’s face had the empty look of hopelessness. ‘I couldn’t just turn my back on her though, switch off and get on with things. It’s not like that; it could never be like that.’
‘You had some contact?’
‘Rachel kept me up to date. When she accompanied Eleanor for walks, sometimes I’d watch from the car. She’d be so close, but a million miles away at the same time. Terrible really, I just wanted to shout out. Call her over and wrap my arms around her. What can you do? They probably do know best.’
‘And your husband?’
‘Kit? He didn’t have a clue. He thought it was all just teenage rebellion. That it was a stage she was going through – that with enough money put into caring for her, she’d come good in the end. He couldn’t cope with it all, with her, with what it meant for him.’ A small tear rested before those striking green eyes and she rubbed hard at it with the back of her hand. ‘I keep hoping this could be good. You know, that somehow things can work out for the best. You have to think like that though, don’t you?’
‘Why is he afraid that Eleanor might be coming to Duneata House, to your home?’
‘He’s not.’ She took a hanky from her pocket, rubbed the end of her nose for a moment. ‘He’s just worried, I suppose, about Karena. We’ve always thought Eleanor was jealous of her, but Karena won’t hear a word against her sister. Still there’s always that worry, after what happened last time.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Kit really does love her, even if it’s hard to see it sometimes with everything else. He didn’t send her away because it would be easier for him; he thought it might help her.’ The words seemed to drift between them, as if they might convince Susan as much as Iris.
‘He’s requested Gardai security.’ Iris watched as Susan Marshall took this in. ‘For your house, did you know?’
‘Oh God. He thinks she killed Rachel, doesn’t he?’ Susan Marshall’s eyes began to water and she let out a light hysterical laugh.
‘It’s possible.’
‘Do you think so?’ Susan’s face was so earnest, it was hard not to tell her the truth.
‘We hope not.’
Iris searched the other woman’s haunted expression. She watched as she pulled up both sleeves of the jacket. Both arms, as far as Iris could see, were marked with what looked like scorch marks; scratches ran the length of both.
‘This is why I had to let her go in the end. I always knew that there was a chance she’d do something terrible… but now… well, now it looks like we just sent her from the frying pan to the fire, doesn’t it?’
Thirteen
The incident room tingled with nervy excitement: something had happened, something big. Iris sat behind her desk, two messages, one from her mother from earlier. Must have missed you, give me a call when you get this. Iris picked it up and crumpled it into a ball, then dropped it in the wastepaper basket. The action was almost automatic now, but still she paused for a second, everything had changed. Her reflection in the window before her confirmed that. She was unrecognisable from the cocky detective she’d been only months earlier. Now, instead of walking with a spring, her feet moved with grim determination. Her pretty face had become gaunt and her eyes that had once smiled in spite of her mood were now troubled. Even the tarnished copper of her hair seemed to have faded to an ordinary brown. None of it mattered – Theodora Locke was the reason everything in her life had turned into a lie; she had taken Iris from the sister who loved her more than life itself and made a lie of everything she thought she was. Iris didn’t want to become bitter, but it was too early not to blame Theodora for the mess that her life had become. Certainly, she was responsible for the death of Jack Locke and her sister Anna Crowe. Iris kicked the bin out of sight beneath her desk.
The second message was from Susan Marshall. Good to talk today, hope it was helpfu
l, take care. Iris slumped into the uncomfortable chair at her old desk, waiting for the room to fill up after the search party returned. She’d never felt so tired, as if she’d spent the last twenty-four hours running into a concrete wall. Maybe coffee, she thought, but she was too tired to walk to the machine.
‘Have you heard?’ Pardy said. ‘Tony Ahearn has been nudging some of the druggies around the town…’
‘He’s meant to be running the search party,’ Iris said flatly and then wanted to bite off her truculent words.
‘Some people can multitask,’ Pardy said quickly. ‘Anyway, it looks like Nate Hegarty is missing money. A couple of grand possibly, according to Ahearn’s sources. Hegarty was putting the word out that when he found whoever took it… well, they wouldn’t be sticking their hands in his pies again.’
‘Hardly a surprise.’ Iris had suspected at one stage that Ahearn and Pardy could be shagging each other; they were so well suited it almost made horrible sense. Now she wondered; no one could remain in awe of Ahearn that long and still play second fiddle to the wife and kids, surely? ‘So that’s the big news, is it?’
‘Come on, Iris, it’s a break, isn’t it?’ June placed a steaming frothy coffee before her, and she knew then she must look every bit as tired as she felt. Mind you, June didn’t exactly look as if she was bursting with energy either. Then, June always looked a bit worn-out, not surprising really, a widow raising two teenage boys with a full-time job on the Murder Team. She was a good egg though, June. A fifty-something-year-old detective who still believed in happy endings – quietly, mind, because there was no point getting up Slattery’s nose over things like that. June was smart enough to pick her battles. She wore a badger stripe of grey along the centre parting of her hair, drank fair-trade tea and loved sugar-free muffins. Her figure had descended into the shape of a bag of spuds, but she was as bright as a button with a sharpness to her that people underestimated at their own expense. ‘I’d have thought you’d be delighted. Of all of us here, you seem to want Eleanor Marshall to be innocent the most.’
‘That’s not true.’ She took the cup gratefully.
‘It’s no harm, Iris. After all, from what we’ve seen she’s had a shit life so far, no one really wants to see her go down for this.’
‘You’re forgetting something.’ Iris looked across at Jo Pardy as she blew steaming air across the hot beaker. ‘We have to find her first and that’s down to Tony Ahearn, right?’
‘Okay, okay.’ Byrne had arrived in the incident room with Ahearn at his heels. ‘I want to thank everyone for coming in tonight. I appreciate it has been a very tough day for all of you – this won’t take long.’ Byrne loosened his tie and placed his uniform jacket carefully across the back of a nearby chair. ‘Just very quickly for the officers working on the search first thing, Tony?’
Tony Ahearn stood up front: standard-issue navy outdoor jacket with the collar turned up, pristine compared to the rest of the dishevelled search party. Iris suspected that he managed the rescue effort for the day from a discreet distance, focussing more on building up brownie points with Byrne than actually finding Eleanor. Iris switched out of his droning voice. But she watched as he walked to the whiteboard and pointed out the ground covered over the day and the directions the search teams would take in the morning.
‘Any questions?’ he asked as he went to sit down.
‘Am…’ Iris raised a weary arm. ‘Just, the search team have found absolutely nothing, right?’
‘Right.’ Tony Ahearn maintained eye contact; his face steely.
‘Well, we’re out there now, what twenty-four hours, or as good as, with two dozen searchers – surely we should have found something.’
‘Not all of our team are professionals, sergeant, you know that.’ Ahearn’s tone was short.
‘It’s not that, I’m not implying that the team isn’t working well, or that it’s not being led out well…’
‘That’s good,’ Tony Ahearn grunted cynically.
‘Go on, Iris.’ Byrne was leaning forward.
‘Well, I suppose what I’m thinking is, we have a good team, being well run and we have a young woman – hardly the most experienced in survival techniques, yes? We should have found something, a hair, a catch of material, a scuff mark – something. Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that we haven’t even come across a rib of hair?’
‘Iris, you know what those woods are like, we knew it would be the devil’s own job to find her there,’ Ahearn cut in.
‘Maybe she’s not there,’ Slattery said.
‘Maybe,’ June said softly. ‘Or maybe someone helped her to get away from Curlew Hall the night before last…’ The words were soft and dreamlike – of course it was wishful thinking. Most of the searchers thought she was dead. ‘Maybe she’s made her way onto a main road, maybe she’s miles away at this stage…’
‘Yeah, and maybe we’ll find another hundred officers and pull apart the whole county.’ Ahearn’s words were blunt and his face mocking. He didn’t have time, didn’t have resources and he – like everyone else in this room – just wanted to go home after a long day.
‘With respect, sir, I’m not talking about another hundred officers…’ Iris’s words were even, determined.
Byrne was leaning against the crumbling plaster of the very furthest wall from the action. ‘No, but we all know what you are suggesting, another public appeal, and I’m not having this conversation tonight.’
Slattery smiled slyly at Iris. Nice one. But all she’d managed was to get up Ahearn’s nose and she could do without him thinking she was trying to undermine him. Byrne cleared his throat, and began to call on various detectives to brief the assembled officers on how the case had progressed over the day.
Tim McDermott had dropped in an envelope full of well-thumbed fifty-euro notes. He’d blubbered like a baby that he felt responsible for his sister’s death. He, at least, was convinced that Rachel had been dealing with some dodgy characters – his only reason for believing it being the cache of loot and his sister’s history of enjoying an occasional joint. Some of the fingerprints were back, nothing to get excited about there either. PULSE – the fingerprinting database and search mechanism – automatically cross-referenced new prints with stored files.
There was nothing in Curlew Hall that raised any red flags with previous crime scenes. Tony Ahearn’s input was what they called soft information, not much good to them, really, apart from pointing them in a general direction. Nate Hegarty had an alibi, of sorts, he’d been at work, he’d called into one of the other units. Later, after they’d pressed him further, he changed his story. He’d skived off, between his rounds, met up with his girlfriend. His girlfriend swore blind she was with him on the night in question. But, as they ran through the details again, he was looking more and more like their man. He had access, motive and, crucially, he would know how to handle Eleanor Marshall. Girlfriends, and especially ones like Nate Hegarty’s – old before her years, tough enough to sell you out if she thought you crossed her, made the worst false defence of all. Iris wasn’t worried about Hegarty’s alibi. A small suggestion of him playing away would bring any lies crashing down around Nate Hegarty’s ears faster than he could imagine.
‘Iris.’ Byrne was at her elbow. ‘Thanks for that.’ He nodded back towards the top of the room where officers were making their way home for the evening.
‘Seriously?’ She’d never understand Byrne. ‘It didn’t do a lot of good though, did it? You still said no.’
‘You’d be surprised. It’ll keep Ahearn on his toes for a day or two anyway and that’s never a bad thing.’
Iris was tired, too tired for small talk. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Hegarty and the money?’
‘I only heard five minutes before the briefing. Ahearn brought it to me in the hall when I arrived… I didn’t get a chance.’
‘Even Jo Pardy knew about it…’
‘Aye, well she would, wouldn’t she?’
‘They
’re still at it?’
‘Looks like it. It’s not going to play out well for Ahearn if he does go for promotion; no one likes a cheat.’ Byrne was renowned for his sermons; they only stopped when some of the boyos circulated a Christmas email mentioning ‘Pious Pete’. Iris looked towards the door now. The place was almost empty, desks abandoned, computers whirring on standby, a buzzing army, waiting for orders. Most of the younger officers would be down in the pub for a pint to round off the day. ‘It’s only one lead, Iris. You know how these things can pan out.’
‘Yeah, but we don’t have a lot of panning time now, do we?’ She could feel her face had scrunched into a million lines, matching each dart of pain that cruised just for fun in her head.
‘Go home. Get a good night’s rest and don’t show up here too early tomorrow, nothing’s going to happen tonight and if you take yourself out to Curlew Hall tomorrow, you’ll be in plenty of time arriving after nine.’
‘Thanks, sir.’ She dropped her voice then. ‘You don’t think she’s…’ Iris couldn’t say the word.
‘I hope not, but what you said is right, we should have some trace of her by now. Tomorrow? With a bit of luck, she’ll have shown up tired and hungry, yes?’
‘Yeah, tomorrow,’ Iris agreed wearily.
Fourteen
Slattery turned out of the cul de sac, his mind not on Maureen for once; he hadn’t called to see her this evening, no need when he saw Angela’s car parked outside. In some ways, his wife and daughter were a perfect match. They were built in equal parts to play the martyr and quietly bully each other. It made for a strangely tight equilibrium that fashioned itself into the kind of unalloyed loyalty that went beyond what Slattery recognised as any normal relationship. Perhaps he should have made an effort to spend a quarter of an hour in awkward, punctuated silence with them both, but it had been a long day and really, all he was fit for was the pub.
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