‘There’s no way,’ Slattery said, because he couldn’t imagine Imelda McDermott having sex with her own husband, not to mind having an affair outside of wedlock.
‘Well, unless she was an immaculate conception.’ Prendergast shook his head laughing softly.
‘So who?’
‘What am I now? The Holy Spirit? I don’t know, but I know one thing, she might have been her mother’s daughter, but she was never William McDermott’s child.’
‘Come on, Harry, I know what old women are like, God knows I’m married to Maureen long enough to know the way they can rattle on for hours. Who did they think might be in the frame?’
‘Like I always said, Mrs McDermott was a fine-looking woman. I’d say she could have had her pick of men at the time, but the thing is, when whoever did the deed didn’t step up to the plate, well, it’s plain to see, isn’t it?
‘Is it?’
‘Course it is, sure, it had to be a married man, or one that didn’t want to lose face if word got out that he’d been having it away with the freshest widow in town.’ He stuffed his cigarettes into his pocket as they entered the pathology suite.
Harry Prendergast had a habit of leaving thoughts in the air, like rabbits that didn’t belong in a hat, but still, Slattery wanted to jam it back in. This had no more bearing on Rachel McDermott’s death than the premature death of her father, did it?
‘Ah, there you are.’ Rafiq Ahmed was waiting for them, gowned and gloved in the heavily disinfected theatre. ‘Slattery.’ He nodded towards a pile of hospital garments that were left out for the police attending the post mortem.
Slattery grunted. It felt like it could be a very long afternoon.
Eighteen
Ten past eleven and they were almost through interviewing the rest of the staff who worked with Eleanor. There was nothing here. Iris was convinced of that. She pulled the short straw this morning; it was either Slattery or a uniform called Kenny. And Kenny had asked if he could come along, so she figured better the willing officer than Slattery who looked as if he would have to fight to keep his eyes open if he had to take another statement.
‘Didn’t notice anything at all, well, not that evening anyway, there’s been something off about her for a while. But then, she goes through phases, you know.’ They were speaking to Julia Stenson again.
‘So, how long have you worked here?’
‘Oh, almost two years, on and off, but you get to know Eleanor pretty quickly, especially since she’d been on her own…’ She continued to examine the glut of hardened yellow between her thumb and forefinger. Iris tried to forget that she shook hands with Julia on arrival.
‘She’s all right, I mean, I expected her to be a spoilt rich kid and most people probably told you all the bad stuff. I mean, she’s here for a reason, right? But, from what I could see, she was no worse than any other youngster trying to push their parents’ buttons.’ Julia looked up at them now, her eyes almost pleading; biting her lower lip, there was more to say.
‘Go on, we need to know everything.’
‘Some of the staff, well… we think some of the staff picked on her…’ Julia’s voice trailed off.
‘Did Rachel McDermott pick on her?’
‘Rachel? No, never, Rach wasn’t like that, she was quiet, she hadn’t a cruel bone in her. But Nate Hegarty, now he’s a different kettle of fish altogether.’
‘You think he picked on her?’ Iris leaned forward on the desk; some small part of her didn’t need to ask the question.
Julia opened her eyes wide and brought her shoulders in a shrug. ‘I don’t know for sure, it’s just a feeling.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I should have said this sooner, but… to be honest, that morning, when I found her, I couldn’t think, not really.’
‘What’s she like? Eleanor?’ Iris was conscious of Kenny’s pen poised and waiting, like a court stenographer. It was off-putting; if Iris could feel it, she didn’t doubt that this young girl could feel it too.
‘Well, she could be cheeky, but then that comes with the territory of being a teenager. She had a soft side too just like the rest of us, I suppose. She wasn’t all tantrums and throwing things, you know? Sometimes, she’d like to snuggle up to you, watch a movie, while you brushed out her hair. When she was like that, she could melt your heart. I think that’s why most of us kept on coming in here every day. God knows it’s not for the money.’ She threw prematurely world-weary eyes heavenward. ‘Probably have more out of the dole if the truth were told.’
‘Was she like this with everyone?’
‘She gave everyone a whirl. If she liked you then you got to see her like that more often. If she didn’t like you and there’s a few she didn’t like, believe me, well they’d need to watch out – she was like any other kid here, she could make a shift hell with just being angsty and argumentative.’
‘What about Nate Hegarty then?’
‘She hated him. Well, I don’t know if it was hatred exactly. Sometimes, I wondered if she was afraid of him. Some of the girls thought he might have hit her or something at some stage. I wouldn’t put anything past him; he’s a nasty piece of work.’
‘Did you see anything?’
‘No.’ Julia was silent; her eyes veered towards the left and sideways. Both officers knew that she was racking her memory, not depending on her imagination for whatever came next. ‘None of us actually saw anything.’ She looked Iris in the eyes. ‘Look, I know it’s probably too late for Eleanor now, but there is just something about him. This last while, I always kept a closer eye on him than on her when he came into the bungalow.’ She was silent for a moment, her hand moved across her soft leggings, feeling for the comforting edges of her mobile phone.
Iris willed Kenny not to say anything. Let the girl fill the silence. They could have a break afterwards, call her in again, but please let her say what’s going through her mind at this moment. Iris leaned forward again, mirroring the girl’s movements of her hands, working her left hand around the edge of her jawline.
‘Look, this is only what I thought and I might as well say it. I’ve thought it for a long time, but, I wondered…Well, I wondered if she wasn’t holding something over him.’
The room was silent. Julia exhaled, now she’d told someone. The words floated for a second or two in the air between them, like soft bubbles, perfect, honest. They’d never fit back in their box again. Julia reclined in her chair and waited as her words drifted, their effect lightening and depressing the room at once. Somehow, the burden had lifted, a weight was winched from around the corners of Julia’s eyes and mouth. There would be more questions. There would be many questions and not many answers, just a feeling that something was amiss.
Iris drew in her breath. She did not want Julia Stenson to clam up now, not now. It would be difficult to gather details of abuse; it was just too sad, unthinkably depressing and unspeakably wrong.
‘What made you think that?’
‘Nothing.’ Julia fingered the cigarettes before her. ‘Well, that’s nothing and then sort of everything. It wasn’t anything really concrete, it was more in the way she reacted when he was near.’
‘Did any of the staff notice this too? Would Rachel have had any suspicions like this?’ Iris leaned across the table, her hands lying flat, faced upwards before her.
‘God, no.’ Julia’s eyes became wide at the very notion of it. ‘No, I’d say if Rach thought there was something really off about him, she’d have reported it straight away.’
‘Not gone to Nate? She wouldn’t have asked him, tried to intervene herself?’ It seemed to Iris that Rachel McDermott was the sort who’d want to save everyone, not just Eleanor, but the weight of Nate being sacked might be something that she’d find hard to carry.
‘That’s the thing – Rach and Nate? Maybe?’ Julia looked now from Iris to Kenny. ‘He adored Rach, it was like unreal when she came here first.’
‘Were they involved, do you think?’
‘Rach was way out of his l
eague and for all his swagger he had to know that. Still, it was as if, at the beginning, he thought there might be something. These last few weeks, he just hung about, like he was waiting for something.’ She stopped for a minute. ‘She was special, Rach. She wasn’t like a lot of the other people you normally meet here. Eleanor saw that straight off and I suppose we all did. I’m not sure that she’d have dobbed anyone up, she wasn’t the sort to pass on a problem. Yeah,’ she said, confirming it for herself. ‘If she’d had any inkling that Nate was up to no good, I think she’d have had it out with him.’ She mulled that over and then continued. ‘But she didn’t…’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Well, he was still here, wasn’t he? And anyway, right up to that night, he was still hanging about like a puppy waiting for his treat.’
It was well after four when they finished up for the day. They had time to write up their notes and then, once Kenny had clocked off for the evening, Iris got herself a strong mug of coffee and settled into a half-hour drive on a mission that she wasn’t going to share with anyone else on the team. She wasn’t really expecting to find a pin that might slot neatly into the case they were working on, but she knew she had to put her doubts and questions about William McDermott to bed.
Bobby Nestor’s case notes were old-fashioned, as though they were written fifty years ago, his spidery hand ranging across yellowing pages, earnestly seeking solutions, futile in the end. At least it answered her questions. There was nothing there, beyond gut feeling and Iris felt her own instinct running with Nestor’s. There was more to learn here, but Iris was not yet sure what that could be.
‘Jack Locke’s daughter, eh?’ Bobby Nestor appraised her as if she was coming to give him a quote on a particularly important repair job to his home.
How on earth could she explain all that was wrong with connecting her to the man they’d all known as Nessie Locke? Bobby Nestor must be, she realised, the only man associated with Corbally who wasn’t aware that she was no more Jack Locke’s daughter than she was the tooth fairy’s sister. ‘Thanks so much for making the time to see me,’ she said.
‘Ara sure, it’s the one thing I have no shortage of these days,’ he said dolefully. ‘Plenty of time on my hands now.’ He glanced about the small patch of garden before his semi, as if he was daring a weed to show up, the flower beds had been pruned to within an inch of life. ‘Come on, I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’
Iris sat in Bobby Nestor’s kitchen waiting while he went about making tea for them both. It was a kitchen that had reared a family, but there was no doubt in Iris’s mind that Bobby was alone now.
‘Yeah, wife left me, just when I retired, she’s off in Spain now, living it up, I suppose,’ he said a little wistfully; obviously, he had not been included in the travel plans. ‘Anyway, what’s this about William McDermott’s case?’ He put the tea before her. ‘Well, it wasn’t even that, not really.’
‘No. I read your case notes. It was well managed and all of that and they’re very helpful. There was no case – I can see that, but I suppose, with the death of the daughter and the fact that we went out there and met Mrs McDermott, you know…’
He finished for her. ‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice?’
‘Something like that.’ She sipped the tea, it was hot and weak, but still reviving, just a bit.
‘At the time, I’d have put money on Imelda McDermott having killed her husband. It wasn’t just the fact that the coroner couldn’t find a reason for him dying, it was a whole lot of other things too.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, something of nothing and everything too, I suppose.’ He sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘It’s funny how life changes the way you look at things. If I was leading out that investigation now, I’d probably think very differently.’
‘But you had reasons for suspecting her, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, but I wonder now, looking back, if it wasn’t my own small-mindedness that made me pursue it for as long as I did.’ He sighed, a long and worn-out sound. ‘Those were different times, Iris. I don’t expect you to understand, but back then there wasn’t the same amount of tolerance for things, if you know what I mean.’
‘I’m not sure I do.’ She smiled.
‘That man wasn’t very long in the ground before she had a baby on the way, people said… well, they said all sorts, but everyone knew it wasn’t William McDermott’s.’
‘No?’
‘No. She was a good-looking woman. I’d say, before she married McDermott, she could have had her pick of men about the place. According to the neighbours at the time, there were plenty of them sniffing about her door, although, God knows, once McDermott was gone, she didn’t need any of them. He left her well provided for – well, his life assurance did at least.’
‘So, at the end of all that, you think?’
‘I think it was an unlucky turn of events for poor old William, but quite a fortuitous one for his widow. I think, if it happened now – apart from the fact that the medical examiner would have all the answers for you either way – there wouldn’t be the judgement. If I’m honest, at the time, I saw her taking up with another bloke so quickly as a reason to suspect her all the more.’
‘As you say, different times,’ Iris said softly.
‘Indeed,’ he replied, glancing about at the emptiness his own wife had left behind.
‘What is it, is something up?’ Her voice was bleary so it matched the rest of her body perfectly, she must have dozed off. It took her a moment to get her bearings in the half light. It was Grady’s office, her office, for now at least, but it had that unfamiliar feel to it as places do when you see them from a different angle or through a lens when you’re so familiar with them otherwise; it seemed oddly – for such a small space – too big for her.
‘We’ve just had a call from a uniform out in Comeragh Pass,’ said Slattery.
Iris jerked up in her chair, the sleep draining away from her body, her thoughts raced instantly to the woods. Was there news of Eleanor? Had they found her? Let her be all right, please, let her be all right.
‘Have they found her?’
‘Not exactly.’ He coughed into his hand, but it was more to clear his throat than a sign that he was coming down with something. ‘We got a call a few minutes ago. She may have been spotted on Comeragh Pass. An old guy rang up the station out there, very upset.’
‘And?’
‘When the local garda came on duty, first thing he did was check the messages. This old guy sounded well shaken, he’d left a phone number and said he’d been involved in an accident, wasn’t sure if anyone was hurt or not.’
‘So it was an RTA, yeah?’
‘Not exactly. He was driving along one of those old forestry tracks. Apparently, he does a little fishing in the lake. A lot of those tracks are hardly wide enough to walk along, but he came around a bend and ran straight into a girl. We’re lucky because the garda had just come off overtime out in the woods. The description fitted perfectly with Eleanor Marshall.’
‘Did he question the guy?’ She hoped he hadn’t, didn’t want the eyewitness account getting confused.
‘No, don’t worry, he’s clean. Our colleague rang here straight away and we can go out now to talk to the fella.’ It was a break – a small one – but a chink of hope that Eleanor was still moving, still alive.
‘Okay, you want to come along?’ she asked, shrugging into the jacket she’d hung at the back of her chair earlier. She was making a habit of not taking for granted that he was always on duty. If she had one wish for Slattery it was that he could build whatever bridges he needed to with his wife before it was too late. She had a feeling he went to her house most evenings after work, before he ducked into the Ship Inn. Of course, he still never missed a night at his local, even if he did seem to be arriving a little later these days than he might have in the past.
‘Of course I’m coming along, what else would I be doing with myse
lf?’ he said, completely unaware of Iris’s silent glance willing him to say he needed to be at home soon.
At least it looked like Eleanor was alive today, which was something to hang onto. Was she injured? What had happened? Where had she gone? Various scenarios played out in Iris’s imagination. All the while, a silent chorus chugged through her brain. Please, God, let her be all right.
Something of the conversation with Julia Stenson hung in the back of her mind. The way she spoke about Eleanor, breaking through the myth with a picture of the girl that Iris hadn’t managed to capture until it was almost too late. She wondered if Eleanor Marshall really was their suspect.
‘Is everyone all right?’
‘Yeah, they’re fine, the driver was badly shaken, but he’s fine. He wasn’t sure what happened, probably still in shock.’ Slattery opened the door to the incident room, picking up his jacket from across a desk as he moved past the case board.
‘Do we know where he picked her up?’ Iris moved towards a magnified Ordnance Survey Map one of the junior officers had pinned up at the start of the search. It had been marked with highlighters of various shades to show where the teams had covered and spots where it looked as though Eleanor may have passed, but until now there was nothing concrete. She ran her finger along the map, tracing the perimeter of Curlew Hall.
Slattery watched the trajectory for a moment and then closed his eyes as if visualising the geography of the place.
Why She Ran Page 15