‘Must have been a bad connection.’
Hamilton was looking over my shoulder for this potential customer he was waiting for.
‘We want to speak to you about whatever you were doing on Wednesday of this week.’
‘What time?’ he said impatiently, to get shot of us sooner.
‘Between ten and twelve, morning to noon.’
‘If you want to ask me something you can take me to the station.’
‘Fine, Terry, would you accompany us the station?’ I asked.
‘Am I being arrested for something?’
‘You are not, but we would like your assistance.’
‘I’m not in the mood for assisting anyone today,’ Hamilton said.
‘Do you cut grass in the Summerhill area?’
‘It seems that answering that would be assisting you.’
‘Need I remind you of the name Darleen Boyle, who you were convicted of murdering in 1994?’
He glared at me. ‘Fine, what is it? Do I cut grass in the Stormont area? Yeah, I do and I have done. Is that illegal now?’
‘Mr. Hamilton, refusing to answer simple questions makes you look very suspicious.’
‘To you, maybe.’
‘Mr. Hamilton,’ said Higgins, ‘you may have heard of the death of a young woman in East Belfast? Chloe Taylor, aged twenty-one, she was attacked in the office of PACT.’
‘So I heard.’
‘When did you hear about the incident?’
‘I heard on the news that night. Okay, are you done?’
‘I believe you were her gardener,’ I said.
‘Was I? That’s new information to me.’
‘I have been informed that you had an altercation with Chloe at one point.’
‘Where did she live?’ Hamilton asked.
‘Summerhill Park.’
‘Rings a bell.’ His face broke into a smile. ‘I know that wee girl now.’ He laughed. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Tell us about it. It must be funny.’
‘It was. Her new next door neighbours were having a flap because they needed to turn the water off but they couldn’t find the mains. I went in and turned it off under their sink and it didn’t help.’
‘That was nice of you.’
‘They were potential new customers.’ Now he looked at Higgins. He slid his tongue up under his top lip.
I nodded. ‘Go on, Dan … Or Terry, is it?’
Hamilton gave me a double take, then said, ‘I went out looking and there was no manhole in their garden – there was, actually, I’m their gardener now and know the place better, it was just grown over with grass – but I explained that sometimes it’s in someone else’s garden. I turned the water off in their house … Jackie, that’s the fella’s name, he let his wee girl run the show.’
I didn’t know why he’d stopped. ‘Keep going,’ I directed him.
‘The wee girl came out in a towel and went, ‘‘Hello, what’s going on?’’ and the woman in that next house, it’s the Gormans that live there … well, the Gorman woman told her the craic and the wee girl said she was in the shower and, on and on it went, anyway.’ Hamilton clapped his hands. ‘Time wore on and we couldn’t get the water stopped. She, the wee girl, was ringing the doorbell, and – all dressed now – was … just bitching at me, you know.’
‘She was annoyed that you turned her water off.’
‘That’s the length and breadth of it.’
‘Did you ask if you could turn it off?’ I asked.
‘It was only for a minute. I did ring the doorbell and she wasn’t answering.’
‘Because she was in the shower and couldn’t hear you?’ said Higgins.
‘Fuck! We know whose side you’re on!’
‘We’re just trying to understand the altercation,’ I told Hamilton; Dan, Terry, whatever he needed to call himself to strip himself of his past, and the unprovoked murder of a young single mother.
‘This wee girl at Summerhill was just going daft and I was saying, like, “Keep your knickers on”.’
‘Were you aggressive towards Chloe?’
‘No,’ Hamilton said. ‘Ask the Gormans, they were looking at her like she was mental, too.’
‘What was Chloe saying?’ I asked.
Hamilton exhaled heavily.
‘We’re just trying to find out how she was acting mental, as you put it.’
‘She was just saying, it didn’t matter how many times I had to ring the doorbell, I had to get her permission. She was a kid, like, telling me I needed permission. I was only trying to help people.’
‘That is a funny story,’ said Higgins, dryly.
‘Where were you on Wednesday morning?’ I asked now he was speaking freely.
‘The Ulster Hospital, on dialysis,’ Hamilton said. ‘I have kidney failure.’
Higgins took notes. ‘We’ll have to check that up.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you will and all.’
‘Great, we’re all on the same page,’ I said.
‘Can just about do the odd job these days, like I told you when you called pretending to be a potential customer.’ Hamilton looked at Higgins. ‘I don’t have it in me to go stabbing people to death.’
‘Nope, but you did. You did before,’ I said walking towards the car, watching him lug the lawn mower out of the trailer. He kept looking back.
‘Was young and fit then,’ he shouted over. ‘Was a mad bastard with a lot of problems.’
‘And now just a mad old bastard,’ I said quietly as I got into the car.
‘Active though, for a man on dialysis,’ said Higgins as he drove off, on up Kings Road. ‘That’s much more than a flower bed he’s working on.’
‘He’s a fucken liar,’ I said.
We wasted no time and by four p.m. were at the hospital. The staff was finished for the week. Nobody knew anything, even when I said my partner was Dr. Paul Coulter and even when I told them what we were there for. A murder, and a suspect. A potential alibi, or lack of one. The receptionist was as much of a gatekeeper as I’d ever seen.
‘Sorry,’ she said, but she didn’t seem sorry. ‘Someone will be back there on Monday. Why don’t you try then?’
*
I thought of Chloe’s mother Glynis when I washed the boys in the bath that night, and after I stroked their backs. I felt weepy again and if I wasn’t on my period I’d have worried I was pregnant, but then, despite Paul claiming to be sterile, I still took precautions. And hadn’t we only slept together five times in our fifteen-month relationship? To think that any of those times could have made a baby would be another huge disappointment. I couldn’t keep letting my fertility hang over me like that. I resolved to get sterilised, but how could I explain that to Paul? I could say it was because my periods were a pain, but he had surely already garnered that they were not. I’d never complained about them to him. Plus, he would know the person putting me under for the op. It is a small world in anaesthesia.
Since Jason, my fertility felt like it belonged to others and not to me, but to men who tried to own it or did not even know that they did.
I fed the babies with Paul and put them to bed, and decided I was just emotional because the love I had for them eclipsed everything. Which is not to say that I wanted to extend that year at home with them. It was work, too. Harder in some ways because it was newest to me.
That night I got into bed and watched the highlights of the wedding.
‘It is lovely,’ said Paul. ‘Look at the way he is looking at her, and her at him.’
‘You’re an old romantic at heart,’ I said.
‘Very much so.’
‘It is lovely,’ I said looking at Prince Harry and Meghan looking at each other, looking beautiful.
‘I don’t know why you’ve been fighting it,’ said Paul. ‘It’s only love.’
‘I’m just waiting for someone else to walk in and steal her show,’ I said.
Chapter 14
On Sunday afternoon we got on the
road to Bangor. There we met with Detective Reynolds who I had trained with all those years ago at Garnerville.
‘Hey, I heard you were back,’ he said.
‘With a vengeance,’ I said.
‘How are the kids?’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘And yours?’
I’d never asked a colleague that question before, but I made sure to ask him. No one spoke about kids or family when they mentioned the men in the service. It was alright for a man. It was alright for a man. They escaped the how do you juggle question; they were not talked to as if they were clowns.
‘I’ve three now,’ Reynolds told me.
‘Good-o,’ I said. ‘Times have changed since training days.’
‘We all have to grow up sometime.’
I tried to get off the topic, I did not want to be known as that detective with twin babies. ‘It’s a bad time in East Belfast, at the moment. You’ve had it bad in Bangor, too,’ I said.
‘Yes, with Erica,’ said Reynolds. ‘There are similarities, I suppose.’ But he was pulling a face like he was not convinced the similarities were strong enough to warrant a half-hour drive to Bangor.
‘So tell me about Erica McClelland.’
‘You mean tell you what you haven’t already been able to read online,’ he said.
‘They’ve had a field day with her.’
Reynolds agreed.
‘Tell me.’
‘The victim wasn’t found until six a.m., that was a busy night for us.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Between teenage girls beating up their own at Pickie on the seafront, and vandalism …’
‘Was it kids doing the vandalism?’
‘No, the vandalism was done by someone in a car, at Bexley. They … actually, Sloane, do you remember Officer Kinahan?’
‘Kinahan,’ I wrung the name out.
‘The firearms officer,’ said Reynolds, ‘he did the training at Garnerville.’
‘Oh, yeah. Pat; Pat Kinahan?’
Reynolds said, ‘Yes.’
‘I do now.’
‘There was vandalism and damage to personal property at Pat’s house. His wife woke to someone putting his car windows in at three a.m.’
‘Was that the same house the handgun went missing from?’ I asked.
‘It was. You heard about that?’
‘I tried to stay in the loop when I was off. I don’t recall anything super specific, I just heard a gun went missing. Any more details on the car?’
‘Yes … don’t you worry about it. We have our ears to the ground in Bangor.’
‘Are you sure?’ I teased him.
‘What are you saying?’ Reynolds acted offended.
‘This is a cushy number, compared to Strandtown.’
‘You reckon!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s plenty of rough in with the smooth out here, and sometimes the smooth ain’t the smoothest.’
‘Yeah, well, you don’t catch us closing over lunchtime in East Belfast.’
‘We have to.’
‘Well for you!’
‘Like a village shop,’ said Higgins out of nowhere, but his joke landed badly with Reynolds who gave him a death stare. I offered Higgins a smile for taking the trouble to back me up.
‘So that makes sense,’ I said, ‘that the house was Kinahan’s. That the gun was Kinahan’s.’
‘So, the victim …’ said Higgins.
‘Yes … getting back to Erica McClelland … that’s why it was a busy time for us anyway, that day.’
‘The vic was stabbed,’ I said.
‘Yes, but McClelland’s cause of death was drowning, in the end.’
‘She was found in the water,’ said Higgins.
‘It was shallow,’ said Reynolds, ‘but she was weak, had lost a lot of blood by then.’
‘Wow!’ I said.
‘But yes, she was stabbed three times.’
‘So was Chloe Taylor,’ I said.
‘With the utmost of respect …’ started Reynolds.
‘I know what that means,’ I interrupted him.
‘What?’ he asked, trying to look innocuous.
‘Usually the opposite. Contempt, right?’
‘No … I don’t see why you think it is linked, Sloane. I get that you’re looking into it, and there are some similarities. Well, one.’
‘Tell me more about Erica, something that isn’t in the public domain, if there is anything,’ I said.
‘She was found at Ballyholme beach.’
‘That’s public,’ said Higgins.
‘There was a bite mark on Erica’s arm,’ said Reynolds.
‘That isn’t,’ said Higgins glancing hopefully at me.
‘We surmise that at one point the victim must have had the perpetrator in a headlock. It didn’t match the DNA profile of anyone in her family, friends, colleagues.
We took swabs of fifty taxi drivers who were working in the area, because she was obviously driven there. Imprints were made of the bite.’
‘So they know about the bite mark, family, friends?’
‘No. No one does.’
‘Erica was conscious, to a point, then?’
‘Yes, she fought alright. But … she was drugged.’
*
‘There’s the link,’ said Higgins as we drove along Abbey Street.
‘What with?’ I asked.
‘Erica was drugged,’ he said.
‘But Chloe wasn’t.’
‘Maybe not a link to Chloe but to those other girls who claimed they were drugged in bars and nightclubs.’
‘What girls?’
‘You’d have missed it, being on holiday.’
‘Maternity leave!’
‘Weren’t you in Florida?’
‘Not the whole time! Go on,’ I said and he told me.
The next day Higgins was gone.
Chapter 15
It began raining just before ten on Sunday night. It lasted hours. The tyres of cars clopped like hooves down Mount Eden, but we needed that rain. I lay in bed listening to it and the crackle of the baby monitor and was happy. The next morning was cooler, cloudy and dull, perfect for a Monday. Perfect for my mood.
Superintendent Fleur Hewitt met me at the gates as I came into the station.
‘You and me,’ Hewitt said. ‘Your wee pal is suspended.’ She walked towards the main door.
‘Carl?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘Aye. Higgins is being investigated for cheating in his sarge exams, the whole lot of them are.’
‘He’d already taken that exam twice,’ I said. He’d been trying desperately and failing completely. And now, this.
‘It’s third time the charm,’ said Hewitt, ‘or, he cheated his way in, man.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’ve really been starting to warm to him.’ I was thinking how conscientious he seemed now.
‘Maybe you’ll warm to me,’ said Hewitt. ‘I’ve spent the last few hours playing catch-up, and we’re going to Queens University to talk to Chloe’s lecturer, Prof. June Lundy.’
We drove there in silence along the bridge, right beside my old apartment. We went past St George’s Market and through Ormeau, then through Botanic until we got to Queens and parked up. Then we walked through the stony grey grounds of the university arse-about-face, until we landed in the front entrance. A woman in a bright yellow shirt came down the stairs and walked towards us.
‘Are you here to see Professor Lundy?’ she asked us.
‘Yes,’ Hewitt told her. The woman asked that we follow her to a room on our right.
June met us there with a plate of biscuits and a pot of tea. ‘Chloe was doing great,’ she said.
‘Did you have any concerns about her?’ asked Hewitt, stamping herself on the case like she was in charge. I suppose now she was.
‘She was very quiet,’ said Prof. Lundy, ‘and then she had problems at the end of year one Law, and deferred for a year.’
‘She was unwell?’ asked Hewitt.
; ‘Depressed, somewhat.’
‘And after?’
‘She went travelling, came back and started a new course. Chloe transferred to year 1 of a BA in Social Anthropology, then she was like a new person.’
‘Happier?’ I asked and Hewitt looked at me.
‘Happy and vivacious, much more vocal, she was taking part in debates all the time.’
‘But you say she was quiet lately?’
‘Just very lately. But when I think about it, she was restless when she came back from Pakistan …’
‘When did she go there?’ Hewitt looked confused.
‘August 2016, till March 2017.’
‘Before or after she travelled Europe?’ I said. That journey was still a possibility in my mind.
‘I don’t recall her travelling in Europe. She went to Pakistan, it was after the Quetta attacks. Fifty-four lawyers were killed, if you remember.’
Hewitt stared on; I couldn’t remember either. Far away tragedies didn’t cut me the same.
‘Chloe wanted to go and she did,’ said the prof. ‘Her father might have tried to talk her out of it, but when she returned she talked about it in such detail … I have no doubt that was where she went.’
‘What did she do in Pakistan?’ asked Hewitt.
‘Chloe volunteered with Amnesty International.’
‘I have heard this from another source,’ I said.
‘What did she do, work-wise?’ asked Hewitt.
‘She worked in the office. Sometimes she helped support girls who had been through female circumcision. Chloe found herself in danger once or twice. When she came home we met for a coffee. She looked lead tired and fragile. I said to her, “You can save someone but not everyone”.’
Prof. Lundy’s comment brought me to think of Higgins and how, when he brought up the girls who believed they had been drugged, and told me all he knew, I’d said that we couldn’t solve every crime but that we could solve Chloe’s. I had resolved to hone in on it, but now I felt I understood Chloe, and her passion, her resolve. And I was determined to look at the cases of these other girls, too.
Five days had passed. We’d had no huge breakthrough with finding her killer and we possibly never would have that breakthrough. Parents of murdered children die waiting for justice. Hadn’t Chloe died before she got to right all the things she perceived to be wrong with the world? I wouldn’t let it happen to her case.
Problems with Girls (DI Sloane Book 2) Page 9