James McMahon – an arrogant, svelte man-about-town who is not shy about using his influence to stay out of trouble.
Gerry Maguire – a handyman who is a bit too handy when it comes to women. His cool and friendly exterior belies an evil temper and a cruel streak.
Mary Maguire – married Gerry years ago when he swept her off her feet as a teenager. Mary is struggling with her situation, her marriage and the remote place where she now lives.
Gerry Byrne – a philandering paint salesman who travels the country for work but manages to fit in a good few leisure activities as well.
Superintendent Finbarr Plunkett – a wily old character who is politically savvy, he manages the detective unit with subtlety. He’s well connected in Galway and exploits his connections to good effect.
Piotr Palowski – Lisa’s brother who lives in Poland. Piotr is an emotional person who believes in family values, and is protective of his younger sibling, to a point.
Inspector Kowalski – a tough Polish policeman who cut his teeth during the communist era in Poland and isn’t beyond using some of the old techniques to solve crimes.
Inspector Nowak – an ex special forces Pole who can’t forget how easy it was to extract confessions years ago before Poland joined the EU.
Sally Fahy – a shy civilian worker attached to the Gardaí in Galway, Sally is careful not to cross the line, but enjoys police work all the same.
MURDER
AT THE OLD COTTAGE
DAVID PEARSON
Chapter One
Mary Drinan sat uncomfortably behind the small wooden desk in the room at the back of Tolan’s Pharmacy in Clifden. Mary was a large woman – too large for the desk, and too large for the small room in which she sat. It was called a private consulting room, but this was very much an exaggeration. It was more like a cupboard or a cell, with just a small window of frosted glass that had bars on the outside, a single bare light bulb, and barely room to open the door inwards.
The billet had been arranged for Mary by the Health Service Executive, who had decided in their wisdom to overhaul the Clifden Health Centre, a 1960s building located on the Galway road leading out of the town. So, this was temporary, but not nearly temporary enough for Mary’s liking.
Mary was the district nurse. She had been a nurse for almost thirty years, having gone into the profession straight after school at eighteen. In those days you didn’t need a degree to look after sick people, just three or four years working under an impossible ward sister, or worse still, a matron.
Mary’s clinics were held three mornings a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between half past ten and noon. Unfortunately, no one came in until well after eleven, often even half past, so she never got away on time, which annoyed her greatly. It was usually after one in the afternoon by the time she had finished seeing her last patient, or ‘client’ as she now had to call them, in case they might be stigmatized by use of the correct term.
In the afternoons Mary called on the sick or very elderly in the area. She responded to phone calls requesting her attendance, and had a regular schedule for the old and infirm even if they had not asked for a visit.
Clifden had a lot of older folks living round and about. There was very little employment to keep young people in the area, so after they had finished attending Clifden Community School, and had done their Leaving Certificate, most of the eighteen or nineteen-year-olds departed. Some went to university in Galway, or even further afield, well beyond the normal commuting distance. Clifden was left with mainly middle-aged people who ran the shops and bars, immigrants who worked cheaply in the summer months in the hotels and gift shops, and older people, many of whom lived alone in small, often forlorn houses dotted around the countryside.
Mary’s patch stretched from Cashel and Carna, through Roundstone and Ballyconneely, past Clifden and out to Leenaun, taking in Cleggan, Renvyle and Tully Cross along the way. It was a very extensive area but thankfully sparsely populated, except during the summer months of July and August when the area became thronged with tourists. It was at this time that many of the houses, locked up for the rest of the year, showed signs of life. These were the holiday homes enjoyed by the trades and professional people of Galway and even Dublin, who could afford to escape the madness of the city for a couple of weeks of peace and tranquillity amongst the beautiful scenery of Connemara. None of these transient dwellers featured on Mary’s list, for which she was eternally grateful, although being big hearted as she was, she would not have refused help to anyone who was in need should they come to her attention.
To manage this extensive territory, Mary had devised a series of route maps that she now knew by heart. Some days she would leave Clifden where she lived in a small terraced house down by the harbour, and travel south to Ballyconneely, then east to Roundstone, and then on around the small twisty but very scenic roads to Carna before heading along the N59, getting her back to Clifden around half past five or six in the afternoon. She had other routes going north out of Clifden towards Westport that allowed her to see her clients in that area, and her trips were arranged so that she visited each of her charges approximately once every three weeks. Fortnightly would have been better, she thought, but the pressure of the long drives and the clinics three days each week in Clifden simply did not afford her the time to increase the frequency of her visits.
On this particular day, it was a Wednesday, she remembered – as if she could ever possibly forget – her clinic finished late as usual at quarter past one, and by the time she had eaten a hearty lunch of soup, a ham sandwich made from home-baked wholemeal bread, and a generous slice of hot apple pie smothered in cream, it was two o’clock. Mary had made plans for just this situation. She had clients to see this week, but the timing would only allow her to visit two, or maybe three during the afternoon. She had that number on her list between Ballyconneely and Roundstone, so that’s where she would go. One old man in particular was overdue a visit, as she hadn’t seen him in the previous two weeks.
It was a pleasant enough day in Clifden that early April. There were patchy clouds in the sky, but they were very high up, and with the change in the light following the spring equinox, the place looked well, getting itself ready for the summer tourist season. Mary folded herself into her little twelve-year-old Toyota which, despite having enormous mileage on the clock, almost 200,000 miles, still carried her willingly across the boggy roads in all weathers. She had harboured thoughts of updating it, but the man who serviced the little car had said when she raised the prospect with him, “They don’t make them like this anymore. If I were you, I’d keep her till she stops. There’s plenty of life left in her yet.” And so, Mary persisted with the little car, and it hadn’t let her down.
Mary’s first house call that day was to Mrs Laverty. This woman was seventy-nine years old, and in generally quite good health for her age. But like all old people, she had some issues, and Mary called regularly to see that she was OK. On these visits Mary would check her blood pressure, check the fridge to see that the woman had something to eat, and see that she was taking her medication.
Mrs Laverty’s house was what was known in the district as second generation. The first generation of houses in Connemara were built in the nineteenth century, or before. They were made from stones carefully piled on top of one another, then the inside was covered in a mud with reeds in it, like a sort of rough plaster. They invariably had just two rooms, one on either side of the entrance, and a clay floor. At one end, a chimney was built, with a huge open fire that was used for heat, cooking, and boiling water. Of course, these houses had no electricity, so oil lamps and candles were used for light, and all the cooking was done on the open turf fire. The roof was always thatched, which worked quite well to keep out the strong westerly winds and driving rain during the harsh winters. Entire families had been reared in these humble properties, but few remained standing, and those that did were now generally given over to providing shelter for animals bet
ween November and April each year.
By the mid-1950s, the devastating poverty that characterized the region had begun to abate. Government grants were beginning to appear, and with the inflow of funds people began to build better houses. They didn’t have the insulation that we see today, but they were built of blocks on proper foundations with slate or tiled roofs, a great improvement on what had gone before. Some of the later ones even had rudimentary central heating, using a boiler at the back of the fire in the main room to heat and circulate hot water into a few radiators. When these houses started to appear, you would often see the old abandoned house left alongside the newer one.
Noreen Laverty’s house was one of these and, true to form, the old abandoned thatched cottage, now in ruins, was standing about thirty metres away on the rocky site.
Mary scrambled out of the Toyota to open the five-bar gate that separated the Laverty property from the road. She drove through, and then not wanting to leave it open behind her, struggled out again to close it. She bumped cautiously over the rocky gravel track to the front of the small cottage, and before she had struggled from the car for the third time, Noreen appeared at the front door.
Noreen insisted that Mary should have a cup of tea and a slice of freshly baked cake. This was a common practice among Mary’s clients, and was, at least in part, responsible for Mary’s considerable girth. She yielded, protesting, to Noreen’s insistence, and while the tea and cake were being prepared, Mary checked the plastic container that was set out in segments for each of the thirty-one days in the month to see that Noreen had been taking her pills, and that there was sufficient supply to last to the end of April. As Noreen opened the fridge to get out the milk, she observed that it appeared to be reasonably well stocked.
After the tea, and a chat about current affairs, and how the government was basically useless and should be doing a lot more for the people of the west, Mary gently extricated herself, promising as always to call again before the end of the month.
Although she had a schedule to keep, Mary was always conscious that she might be the only living soul that these people set eyes on from one end of the week to the other. Many of her clients no longer drove their own cars, and the bus service on these back roads was notoriously patchy, so often they had to rely on the kindness of neighbours to get into Clifden to buy provisions, or go to the chemist. There were some organized activities laid on every few weeks or so, but this hardly amounted to a dizzy social life.
By the time Mary got to her last house call of the day, she was feeling quite exhausted, and very full of tea and cake.
Her last call on this particular route was an old timer by the name of Paddy O’Shaughnessy. Paddy, a difficult man at the best of times, lived in another second-generation cottage on the mountain side of the Clifden road, quite close to Ballyconneely. To get to the house Mary turned off at the sign for the Alcock and Brown memorial at Derrygimlagh, and followed the road for about 700 metres, before turning onto the rocky track that led down into a hollow where Paddy’s house sat.
Paddy’s house, like himself, was dour and weather-beaten. It had once been painted white, but the rain had washed most of the paint away, so it was now a dirty grey streaky mess. Outside was untidy too. An old rusting Ford van that hadn’t gone anywhere for many years lay abandoned at the side of the house, its tyres deflated, and one of the two rear doors hanging off its hinges. Empty plastic bags blew around in the breeze, and various old bits of rusty agricultural machinery completed the picture of neglect and decay.
She knocked on the dark green front door of the house. There was no reply, which she found odd as it was just about tea time, and the Angelus, followed by the television news, avidly watched by anyone over fifty, would be coming on in a few minutes.
Mary knocked again, louder this time, and called out Paddy’s name, but still there was no response.
The third time she knocked, she called out, “Mr O’Shaughnessy, are you there?” But still nothing.
She started to have an uneasy feeling. It had been over two weeks since she had been here, and anything could have happened in the meantime. Paddy wasn’t in bad health, but he could easily have fallen, or had a stroke. She needed to get inside the house.
She went to the front window and, shielding her eyes from the glare of the light, peered into the darkness. Inside was too dark for her to see anything at all, but she could observe that there was no light on, nor was the television lighting up the room.
Mary went around to the back of the house, picking her way carefully through the junk, and giving the old van a wide berth. She noticed at once that the back door was ajar, not wide enough to squeeze in through, not for Mary at least, but not closed either. Mary forced the door open a bit wider. It scraped along the concrete and begrudgingly parted enough to let her in.
Mary was met with a swarm of bluebottle flies, disturbed by the noise, and the sudden brightness afforded by the open door. She was also hit with the appalling stench of rotting flesh. Paddy O’Shaughnessy was home all right. There he was sitting in the 1960s armchair with bare oak arms. He was in his usual brown suit and striped shirt with no tie, but his exposed hands and face were almost black, and his body had collapsed inwards into the chair.
Chapter Two
When Mary got over the initial shock of finding one of her patients dead in his own house, she realised that she needed to call for help. There was no signal on her mobile phone, so she left the house again by the same route through which she had entered, got into her car, and drove back up along the rocky, uneven track to higher ground. There she was relieved to find that her phone now had three bars of reception.
* * *
Sergeant Séan Mulholland was alone in the Garda station in Clifden. At twenty past six, he was getting ready to call it a day, and was collecting up the open files from his desk to lock them away for the night. He should, by rights, keep the station open till eight o’clock, but at this time of year there was little doing, so he usually closed up around half past six and made his way across to Cusheen’s Bar for a few pints and a quiet read of the paper before heading home to his own bachelor cottage on the Sky Road.
When the phone rang, he cursed under his breath.
“Typical,” he said to himself, “not a peep all day, and just when you’re getting ready to go…”
“Clifden Garda,” he said rather curtly as he answered the call.
“Séan, is that you?” Mary asked.
“Sure, of course it is, who else would it be? Who’s calling?”
“It’s Mary Drinan, Séan. Look, I’m out at Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s place near the monument. God, I’m calling after finding him dead in his arm chair. It’s awful. Can you send someone out?” Mary said.
They had often had to deal with unpleasant situations together as the elderly from around Clifden passed over. He had a healthy respect for the woman who dealt with such matters professionally, while expressing genuine sympathy and compassion for any relatives remaining.
“God, Mary, that’s dreadful. I’m on my own here today, but I’ll come out myself. Has he been gone long, do you think?”
“I’m afraid he has. He’s not in good shape at all, and it’s partly my fault. I should have called in on him last week, but I was too busy,” she said, becoming a little tearful.
“Now don’t say that, Mary,” Mulholland said, “wasn’t he eighty or more? His time had come. Look, I’ll give the ambulance a call and we’ll be out as soon as we can. Oh, and, Mary, don’t go back into the house. Wait till we get there.”
Mulholland called the ambulance station which was just down the road and spoke to the man on duty. He arranged for an ambulance to follow him out to Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s house, adding that there was no need to rush. Paddy was beyond medical help at this stage.
Mulholland drove his black Saab on out past the secondary school and past the narrow bridge where the smoked salmon factory stood, on his way to Ballyconneely. The ambulance followed
closely behind, its blue lights off. As they approached the sharp left-hand turn for the Alcock and Brown Memorial, Mulholland pulled over and waved the ambulance on, knowing that there wouldn’t be a lot of room in front of O’Shaughnessy’s house, and the ambulance would need to get in close to remove the body.
Mulholland pulled in behind the ambulance and got out of his car. He walked over to where Mary Drinan was standing.
“Hello Mary. God, this is sad. Are you OK?” asked Mulholland, putting on his peaked cap so that he felt more official.
“Hello Séan. He’s in a bad way, poor soul. Do you mind if I don’t go back in?”
“No, you’re grand. You stay here. We’ll see what’s to be done,” Mulholland said, telling the two paramedics to go inside by the back door.
* * *
Inside the cottage, which was still decidedly whiffy, the two paramedics examined the remains of Paddy O’Shaughnessy, while Mulholland looked around the parlour. He saw that the television wasn’t switched on, and made a mental note to ask Mary if she had turned it off when she arrived, and if she had moved the remote control from Paddy’s chair to the kitchen table where it now rested.
“Jesus!” exclaimed one of the paramedics loudly, recoiling from the lifeless form of the dead man.
“Oh my God,” the other said.
“What’s wrong with ye?” Mulholland asked. “Have ye not seen a dead body before?”
“You’d better come and see for yourself, Sergeant,” the older of the two said.
Séan Mulholland was not one for dead bodies, especially if they had been dead a while and were partly decomposed. Nevertheless, he crossed the room and bent down to where the ambulance man was pointing with his pen.
“Look here,” he said, “and here,” pointing to Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s emaciated wrists. “He’s been tied to the chair with plastic tie wraps. And his ankles are the same, they’re bound to the front chair legs. This poor old man didn’t die peacefully in front of the fire, that’s for sure!” the paramedic said.
The Galway Homicides Box Set Page 13