The Galway Homicides Box Set

by David Pearson

  “Hi. How can I help you?” Susi said.

  Flynn went through the ritual again, adjusting the day and date to the day that Maureen Lyons had received her threatening email. Susi seemed a little put out by the request.

  “We are not responsible for what the customers do on the net,” she said in a defensive tone.

  Sally interjected, “We just want to see if we recognize someone who was here that day. It’s not going to be a problem for you.”

  “Please, wait a minute,” Susi said and slid back behind the wooden panel like some vaudeville act.

  She was back a few minutes later and had a small flash memory stick in her hand.

  As she handed it to Flynn, she said, “That will be twenty euro, please, for the memory stick.”

  Flynn took the memory stick from her and feigned putting his hand inside his jacket, as if he was reaching for his wallet.

  “I don’t think so, Susi,” he said, and signalled to Sally to leave the shop.

  “Bloody cheek!” he muttered as they pulled the door open and exited onto the street.

  Before leaving Cork, the two Galwegians had a hearty lunch at the Old Oak on Oliver Plunkett Street. Over the meal Sally gently probed Flynn about his experience as a Garda, and his move into the detective unit.

  “There’s a rumour going around that Lyons is going to be made up to inspector soon,” he said.

  “When that happens, I’ll probably go for detective sergeant. I think the boss will support it.”

  “Yes, I heard that too. I hope it happens. She deserves it. That would be cool if you got sergeant out of it too,” Sally said.

  “I hope so, as long as I don’t have to move away.”

  “Have you got lots of ties to Galway?”

  “My uncle was a sergeant here. He used to call around to our house at weekends and let me wear his Garda hat when I was about seven or eight. I’d go tearing around the place arresting everyone, looking like a plonker. The hat was way too big for me!”

  Sally laughed. “I bet you looked a picture. Was that what got you into the force?”

  “I suppose it was part of it. I always wanted to be a Garda from when I was really young, and that was way before we had pretty young civilian staff helping us out,” he said, looking at Sally and smiling.

  “Ah, away with ye. Sure, we’re only here to make the real cops tea!”

  “Not in your case. Hays reckons you for a detective, you know.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes. I know it. He’s on a mission to build a strong team here, and he knows a good prospect when he sees one,” Flynn said.

  “Are you sure he’s not just trying to get into my knickers?”

  “Don’t be daft. Sure, hasn’t he got Maureen for that!” he laughed.

  Sally slapped Flynn’s leg. “You’re awful!” she said, laughing.

  The drive back to Galway was slow and frustrating. There seemed to be endless road works and slow trucks that miraculously vanished when the road ahead was clear but reappeared as soon as a series of bends arrived. It took them till nearly six to get back to Mill Street, and they decided to call it a day rather than go in and get caught up in things.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The following morning, as soon as Hays arrived, Sally approached him with the DVDs and memory stick they had collected from the shops in Cork.

  “How was Cork?” he asked.

  “A long way away,” she replied, smiling.

  He held up the DVDs and the other item.

  “Let’s hope it was worth it.”

  “Can you and John take one each and see if we can identify our mystery customer? If you see the same person in both it would be cool, but remember they will have different clothes, as it wasn’t all on the same day in both places.”

  “OK, boss, I’ll get started as soon as John arrives.”

  Hays went to his office and was browsing through his emails when the phone rang.

  “Inspector Hays? This is Sergeant Donal McGroarty from Donegal. I believe you’re looking for a man called Jerome Kelly, is that right?”

  “Good morning, Sergeant, yes that’s right,” Hays said, beckoning Lyons into the office as he spoke.

  “We have him here for you, if you want him. He was found up in a holiday cottage in Dungloe. The folks around knew the place should have been empty at this time of year and phoned us, so we went out this morning nice and early and lifted him. What do you want me to do with him?” the sergeant asked in a soft Donegal accent.

  “Any chance you could get him down here to Galway?”

  “I suppose we could now. One of my men is from Loughrea, and I’m sure he’d like a trip home. Is this fella dangerous do you think?”

  “I doubt it, but don’t take any chances with him. And if you could send his computer and his phone with him, that would be perfect.”

  “We’ll see what we can do, Inspector. We’ll have him there by tea time.”

  “Terrific. Thanks very much, Sergeant.”

  “There you go. Let’s you and I have a go at him before we hand him over to Liam in the drug squad. We’ll warm him up for him!” he said to Lyons with a smile.

  * * *

  By lunchtime, Sally Fahy and John O’Connor were dizzy from watching the CCTV footage from the Meteor shop and the internet café, but they had a result of sorts. They had been comparing notes all along and had identified what looked like the same customer in both sets of CCTV. The trouble was that there was no clear view of his face. Either he had been careful not to be caught, knowing that the shops were recording, or he’d been lucky. The views that they had of the man were mostly from above and behind, with little other than a slightly balding pate against a head of black hair to distinguish him.

  Somewhat dejected, Sally brought the results to Hays who was sitting with Lyons in his office. When they heard the news, Hays cursed out loud, but Lyons took a more up-beat stance.

  “Thanks, Sally, and John too. That’s not the most scintillating television you have ever watched, but well done in any case.”

  She went on, “Can you get a few stills printed up from the best of it, particularly where the guy looks similar in both sets of images? Oh, and make sure they are date and time stamped. Is there any point in sending these out for enhancement?”

  “I don’t think so, Sarge, there’s no real features to be enhanced unfortunately,” Sally said.

  “Well, just get the stills printed up then.”

  When Sally had left the room, Lyons said to Hays, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Maureen, it’s all very thin. OK, so we can see a clear motive, but we can’t place him at the scene. Shit! We don’t even know when the poor old bugger died. And with the Super breathing down our necks, we can’t just wing it – not this time.”

  “Why don’t I get on to Julian Dodd and demand that he gives us an accurate time of death? I’ll tell him we’ll put him in one of his precious fridges overnight if he doesn’t come across!”

  “It’s worth a try, I guess. Or you could just promise to have sex with him,” Hays said smiling.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think his blood pressure could stand it.” She got up to leave.

  When Dodd answered the phone, and heard who it was that was calling, he said, “Ah, Sergeant. I was wondering when you would be back on. What’s on your mind?”

  “We need to have a good approximation of when Paddy O’Shaughnessy died. An intelligent guess will do if you haven’t got any science to back it up.”

  “Tut, Sergeant, pathology is not a guessing game, it’s an exact and precise science. Intelligence, yes, of course, but guessing – oh no, I leave that to you lot!”

  He’s getting more pompous as time goes by, she thought.

  “Well, whatever,” she said, not really in the mood for witty banter with the good doctor. “As it happens, you’re in luck. My enthusiastic assistant was doing some work on poor Paddy to inform a thesis h
e’s working on concerning bacteriological development in cadavers.”

  Get on with it you old fool, she thought.

  “There’s no point explaining the details to you, obviously you wouldn’t understand. But his analysis shows that Mr O’Shaughnessy departed this troubled earth exactly fourteen days before he was discovered by the nurse, give or take twenty-four hours as a margin of error.”

  “How certain can you be, Doctor? I mean, would it stand up in court if needs be?”

  “As I said, Sergeant,” he said, as if he regarded Garda sergeants to be a life form not much higher on the evolutionary scale than the bacteria he was relying on, “we don’t do guessing here. I would defy any defence lawyer to find an expert witness that could refute my findings.”

  “Excellent, Doctor. That’s most helpful. Could I ask you to put all that down on paper for me and email it across?”

  “Consider it done, dear lady. Now I must get on. More bodies to chop up don’t you know. Goodbye.”

  “Some day…” she said to herself.

  * * *

  Lyons recounted her exchange with the doctor in the short form to Hays who was considerably cheered up by the news.

  “Well done, Maureen. I always thought you had the makings of a half-decent detective in you,” he said, smiling warmly.

  “So, where does that leave us now?” she asked.

  “Normally I’d say we have enough to give Mr Techy from Cork a tug. But given the situation, I’d better run it past Plunkett before we make a move. Let’s see if he’s in,” he said, reaching for the phone.

  He wasn’t in as it happened, and wouldn’t be until the following morning, so Hays left a message with his secretary to say that he needed to see the superintendent for ten minutes in the morning and left it at that.

  “That actually works better, ‘cos we’ll have had a good go at Mr QFA before I see Plunkett. We will either have eliminated him, or found a reason to charge him.”

  The Donegal crew arrived as promised at five o’clock with a very dejected and exhausted looking Jerome Kelly in tow.

  Hays asked Sergeant Flannery to get him some food, and at six o’clock, Hays and Lyons joined him in the interview room.

  “Well, Mr Kelly, we meet again. Sorry to have interrupted your holiday in Donegal. Now I think you owe me your diary, your client list, and a reason why you went AWOL, don’t you?” Hays asked.

  “Look, I didn’t have anything to do with the old guy’s death. I had to get away for a while. There are some business dealings that I need to sort out, and I couldn’t do it with you lot breathing down my neck, OK?” the man said.

  “No, not OK,” said Lyons, “would these business dealings have anything to do with the drugs we found in your back bedroom, along with a sizeable amount in cash?”

  “Jesus! What were you doing in my house? Have you a warrant?”

  “Don’t be pathetic, Kelly. You know damn well we don’t need a warrant, and you’re in a lot of trouble. We’ll let the drug squad deal with your little store of goodies. What I’m interested in is how you knew O’Shaughnessy’s first name, when neither of us had mentioned it on the evening we dropped in on you,” she said.

  “Oh, all right, I may as well tell you. I did call to his house. We had a good chat – he was a nice old codger, and he was enjoying having someone to talk to. He told me he could be coming into some money, and he’d like to invest it. He said it was a good amount, so naturally I was interested. We agreed I could call back in about two weeks and he would have the details then.”

  “And when exactly was this, Mr Kelly?” Hays asked.

  “About four weeks ago. I was going to call on him this week, but it seems I’m too late.”

  “And that’s it? You had no further contact with Paddy O’Shaughnessy after you called to his house about four weeks ago? Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right.”

  “We’ll need to check on your whereabouts during the week that O’Shaughnessy died. As you may have gathered, the poor man was tortured and murdered in his house, and with the tall tales you’ve been telling us, I may as well tell you, you are a suspect.”

  “Bloody hell. That’s crazy. I wouldn’t get very far if I was going around killing my clients, now would I? Anyway, I was out of the country that week, in Amsterdam,” Kelly said.

  “How do you know what week we’re talking about?” Lyons asked.

  “It was in the paper. I saw it and said to myself ‘just my luck’. That deal could have got me out of trouble with the drugs. I owe a fair bit of money to some not very nice types.”

  “Why didn’t you take the drugs and money we found in your house on Shantalla Road with you when you left for Donegal?” Hays asked.

  “I thought it would be safer there than travelling around with it in the car. I was going to go back for it when you lot had lost interest in me.”

  “Can you prove you were out of the country when O’Shaughnessy was killed?” Lyons asked.

  “You’ll get the bookings from my laptop. I flew to Amsterdam on the Sunday, and back on the Friday, and my hotel booking is on there too. And you can check with the airline and the hotel.”

  “OK, well we’re keeping you in overnight while all that is checked out. And then our colleagues in the drug squad would like a word.”

  Kelly was ushered back to a cell for the night, and Hays said he would get Sally to check Kelly’s story with the airline and the hotel in Amsterdam in the morning.

  “C’mon, let’s get out of here. I’m taking you to dinner, young lady,” he said to Lyons.

  “Oh, you are, are you? What if I just want to slob out in front of the telly with a pizza?” she snapped back at him.

  “Do you?”

  “No, of course not. God, you’re so easy to wind up sometimes. Let’s go!”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  They went for a scrumptious meal at Brasserie On The Corner in the city centre, and then made their way back to Hays’ house in Salthill.

  When they got in, after they had settled in the lounge, Maureen said, “God, thanks, Mick, that was smashing.”

  “You’re welcome. Would you like a brandy to wash it down? I have a nice bottle of good Spanish Magno in the cupboard.”

  “Yes, please. That sounds just the job,” she said.

  When they were sitting back sipping the drink from their Galway Crystal brandy balloons, Maureen approached the subject that both of them had been carefully avoiding all evening.

  “So, what about you and me then, Mick Hays? Where to from here?”

  “What indeed. Well you know you can stay on here a while if you want to. You’re always welcome,” he said.

  “That sounds like my distant cousin trying to get rid of me when I have turned up out of the blue and been there for a week!”

  “I’m sorry, Maureen. I don’t mean it like that at all. What do you want to do?”

  “I’ve thought about it a good deal. But to be honest I like my independence, Mick. I like the way we have been getting on over the past while, but I don’t feel ready for any huge commitment just yet. What about you?”

  “I feel the same. I think we’re doing just fine. It’s almost as if it shouldn’t work, but it does. Maybe I’m being too careful, but I don’t want to break it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

  “Right so. I’ll shift back to my place tomorrow after work. I don’t think I’m in any danger, except maybe in danger of getting in too deep too soon.”

  Mick raised his glass and touched it against hers.

  “Well let’s enjoy tonight then.”

  If it’s possible to feel relief and disappointment at the same time, then both those feelings swept over Lyons as they got physically close that evening.

  “Steady girl,” she said to herself. “Time and place. Time and place. You’ve always been good at it, now don’t mess this up.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Hays was summoned to Superintendent Plunkett�
��s office early the following morning, soon after he arrived at the station.

  “Come in, Mick, take the weight off, would you like a coffee?” asked the boss in an ebullient mood.

  “Yes, please, just a drop of milk.”

  When Hays had the drink on the desk in front of him, the older man went on, “Well, what’s been happening with the O’Shaughnessy death then? What’s the latest?”

  Hays explained about the CCTV from the two sites in Cork, and about the dire financial state of O’Shaughnessy’s company, as well as the evidence about the plastic tie wraps. He told the superintendent that they now had a motive, possible opportunity, but as yet no means by which O’Shaughnessy himself could have killed his uncle. He also told him about the QFA, and that whilst he had lied to them about knowing O’Shaughnessy, he appeared to have an alibi for when the old man had been killed. They were still checking it out, but it looked solid enough.

  “We can’t place the nephew anywhere near the scene of the crime yet, although we now know the day the old man was killed. It was exactly two weeks to the day before the nurse found him.”

  “So, it’s still all rather circumstantial?” Plunkett asked.

  “It is, yes, for now. What about the intervention from Dublin? Has that quietened down any?” Hays enquired.

  “It has, thank God. I put out a few discreet feelers of my own, and it seems the pols and others are distancing themselves from Ciaran O’Shaughnessy, in case you are right and it all goes tits up. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be back onto it like flies on manure if your man comes up clean.”

  “I see. How do you think we should proceed, boss?”

  “Well, Mick, if it was me in your shoes, I’d get the little bugger into a small room somewhere and put the screws on him till he confessed – figuratively speaking of course. But I never said that, you understand.”

  “Do you think he’d go squealing to his buddies in Dublin?”

  “Even if he did, I have it on good authority that it would fall on deaf ears.”