Silent Night: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Geraldine Hogan

  Iris knew they were taking a chance on every curtain-twitcher in west Limerick ringing the station, but it was a chance they needed to take.

  ‘So what are you looking for exactly?’ Bill McMahon, a reporter with the local paper, poked a familiar face through the crowd.

  ‘The usual stuff, Bill. If anyone was hanging around, anybody who knew anything about the victim…’ Grady looked across at Locke, giving her the cue to take over.

  ‘Anna Crowe and her family kept themselves to themselves for the most part. We’re interested in talking to anyone who knew her, anyone who can give us an idea if there was something worrying her of late. We are interested to hear if she’d been bothered by anybody hanging about the cottage. Even if, as Superintendent Grady has said, it seems foolish to ring up, we’re urging people to pick up the phone.’

  Locke pointed to the numbers that covered the wall behind her back. In large blue font were displayed the local station number and a Crime Stoppers national number. When she finished there was a sea of camera flashes. She knew she had the additional potency in this room of being known to the media – it couldn’t hurt Anna Crowe to keep the press interested for as long as possible. There were a few more questions, but Grady called proceedings to a halt quickly. They got what they wanted. Last thing they needed was the general public to go off the boil. The trail would only be warm for a short time. After that, they were depending on what people had seen or heard; sometimes information came in second- or third-hand. Often, soft information was the only lead they had and at this stage, Iris knew they would take anything they could get.

  The phones started to hop as soon as the conference went live. TV West aired a newsflash. The killer of the family of three had not been arrested; a murderer was still on the loose, or something to that effect. By eight o’clock June’s complexion was almost grey. She had been answering calls all afternoon since the press conference. The first call to Iris’s phone had been from her father – well, she’d been expecting that anyway. She fended him off with background noise and promises of catching up when she called out to Woodburn.

  In the evening, Iris dragged a heavy chair next to June and planted a strong take-out coffee on the desk for them both.

  ‘Anything?’ Grady asked, pulling another seat alongside June’s desk.

  ‘On the Crowes?’ Iris asked.

  ‘On anything at all…’

  ‘Sweet damn all worth writing up, and less to follow up – just the usual cranks and weirdoes. Maybe tomorrow, yeah?’ June yawned.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Any word from Slattery?’ June’s eyes were filled with the kind of concern that comes from working with people for a long time, even if it appears you may not like them very much.

  ‘Nothing,’ Grady answered shortly.

  ‘Well, that has to be good, hasn’t it?’ June was grasping at straws; Iris had caught it on the air that they all knew Slattery’s daughter would not have called him unless it was very serious.

  ‘Does it?’ Grady said. ‘We should have sent him in a car, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Maybe, but it was all too fast,’ June said. ‘Anyway, we’re not his keepers, Grady – he’s got to do this on his own.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘Will he?’ June finished off his sentence.

  Obviously, she’d known him long enough to know what he was thinking now and again, Iris supposed.

  ‘Have a little faith,’ Iris said lightly and she lifted up a small glass angel from June’s desk. ‘Sometimes it’s all anyone can hope for.’

  ‘I think, Iris, if you believe in all that palaver,’ Grady paused, ‘maybe you’re one of the lucky ones. You might have to have faith for all of us here as long as it’s not knocked out of you in Murder.’

  Chapter Ten

  Slattery knew it was time to get back to work; he needed to, and maybe he knew Angela needed him to be gone also. There was no change for Maureen. The next doctor, a fresh-eyed youngster, spoke with the energy of one just coming on shift. He was hardly old enough to have finished school, in Slattery’s opinion. They would keep her sedated for the next few hours at least. Angela would stay by her mother’s side until she regained consciousness. That she was going to be a martyr like her mother was as pre-ordained as night after day.

  Corbally station was nearly empty when he made his way back into the incident room. He’d been tempted to head straight to the pub. God knows, he felt entitled after the last few hours. Only the thought of those two kiddies and their mother burnt in their beds had propelled him back into the station.

  ‘You all right?’ June asked. Of course, they both knew what she meant was, how’s Maureen?

  ‘As well as can be expected.’ His words were gruff and he knew that he sounded as if he somehow blamed the woman for her stupidity. June knew that wasn’t how it was, though.

  ‘Anything we can do… you know that, Ben.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder, just for a moment and it made him stop. No one touched him any more. Even at the hospital, Angela didn’t reach out – it just wasn’t who he was.

  ‘Nothing anyone can do now,’ he said absently, but he looked at June and winked, ‘not unless you fancy rhyming off a few novenas for us.’

  ‘I’d have a go for Maureen, but let’s face it, Ben, you’re just a lost cause.’ She sat back in her seat again, rubbing the tension from her neck. Good luck with that, Slattery felt like saying, but the words for a change did not fall from him.

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘You heard that Deaver is out of the picture?’

  ‘Yeah, I figured he would be anyway, but Grady let me know before it was on the news.’ He rifled through some loose papers on his desk. One of the younger uniforms had been busy; he’d marked up as many of Slattery’s notes as he could make out from the scraps of paper lying about his desk. He managed to capture quite a lot, since the investigation had begun. Being decent, the youngster left them for Slattery to give them the once over. Smart kid. ‘Any calls when I was gone?’

  ‘Anything that came in…’ June looked over the rim of her reading glasses, ‘should be filed somewhere on your desk. McGonagle’s been doing a good job of keeping your corner warm for you.’

  Slattery flopped into the chair and pulled it close up to the desk. The lad certainly had left the place ship shape. He pulled out a pile of Post-its. Calls he had to make, messages left and dead ends confirmed. ‘Did I hear right we might have a new chief on the way?’

  ‘That’s what Grady says.’ June avoided his eyes. ‘It’s Anita Cullen.’

  ‘Christ, tell me that’s just a bad joke.’ Anita and he had what others would call history – one bad case that she still blamed him for losing on her. ‘Is she still on the gargle?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice. They say she managed to clean up when they sent her to Templemore.’

  ‘Shit or bust time, I suppose.’ Cullen had been in line for a commissioner’s job, until word had got out about Slattery roughing up a suspect – it was a shame, because the bugger got off and Cullen missed her promotion. If there was anyone he could do without having around now it was Anita Cullen and he knew she’d feel the same with bells on. ‘Hopefully, it’ll be just a temporary arrangement,’ Slattery said, digging deep to find his inner optimist. He switched off the light on his desk, knowing that somehow things had just managed to get worse for him and he’d have to suck it up. ‘Where’s everyone, June?’ he asked, eying the cheap digital, that had lasted much longer than it should have, on his wrist.

  ‘Grady has us all following up new leads.’ She pointed to the whiteboard, filled with the names of each detective and their duties for the day. Slattery squinted towards it, made no difference to him. He’d nip into Coleman Grady’s office, see if there was anything specific needed doing, but chances were, he knew that Grady would have discounted him for the foreseeable, and that suited him just fine for now. It would give him a chance to follow his own nose and that still worked no matter how mu
ch the whiskey pocked away at it.

  June looked across at him. ‘Ben, no one expects you in yet, go home, go back to Maureen and sit with her… this,’ she waved an arm around the incident room, ‘this will still be here when you get back.’ Of course, she was right, but when had he ever done anything that was right.

  ‘Grady about then?’ He dropped his eyes from hers as he asked the question.

  ‘You’re a grade-A prick, Ben Slattery, you know that?’ June flashed her temper rarely, but she was one of the few Slattery could take it from.

  ‘I know that.’ He spoke quietly. ‘And you know that I can’t help what I am.’ He got up from the desk and walked towards the door.

  ‘You do know that’s bullshit,’ she called after him and he knew she was right. He stopped for a moment, nipped into the men’s toilets and swigged the last of the small bottle that sat nearest his heart. Then taking a deep breath he looked in the mirror. He knew everything about him was shit. Anything decent he might have had he’d managed to fuck up. He looked into the dead eyes of his increasingly unfamiliar face. It seemed to him that he was ageing far quicker than he could keep up with. Perhaps he could do some good; perhaps there was some way for him to redeem himself. He snuggled the empty bottle deep into his inside pocket and headed for the third floor – Traffic division.

  ‘So, you’re still about the place.’ Kathy Tarpin nodded towards Slattery from a bank of screens that kept watch over Limerick city drivers night and day.

  ‘Just wondering, Kathy, can I have a look at an accident that took place yesterday?’ He had no time for small chat now, things to do and this was just one of them.

  ‘Of course, Jesus, I nearly forgot, your wife was involved in a crash, wasn’t she? How is she?’ Tarpin got up from her seat, and moved a second seat beside it, making room for Slattery.

  ‘Ara, she’s in hospital, they can’t tell us a lot yet, but it was a bad auld smash.’

  ‘Right, when and where?’ She’d blanked one of the screens, her fingers moving fast across the keyboard.

  He gave her as much as he knew, as much as they needed to know and within seconds he was watching Maureen’s little Fiat in a line of cars waiting to pass through the O’Connell Street junction. She moved with the snaking line of traffic, slower to start than the rest, holding up those behind her for two changes of green to red. She was top of the queue. The camera position changed and he could see her face quite clearly behind the wheel. He watched as she sat, her expression blank, staring straight ahead into nothingness. Then the lights changed and she did not move. The cars on either side took off quickly and sped past her, through the junction and on towards their destination. Angela had told him she was on her way to a doctor’s appointment – having an ingrown toenail lifted. He looked at the screen wondering, was she thinking about it now? Was she thinking about where she would park? What the doctor would say? If it would it be painful? Her expression said she was thinking of absolutely nothing and he wondered for a moment if perhaps she wasn’t experiencing some kind of absent seizure. Then the cars around her came to a halt. It looked for a moment as if she’d turned to her left and spoken to an invisible passenger. If right was right, there should be three more changes of lights before it was Maureen’s turn to sail off into the sunset and abuse the doctor with a long list of medical complaints.

  But Maureen didn’t wait for three changes of the lights; she didn’t even wait for two. Instead, she waited until Peter Hynes drove into the yellow box before her in his battered old Ford Fiesta and then she took off like the clappers so when she rammed her bonnet into the driver’s side of his car Slattery thought he could hear the collision. He imagined he could hear young Hynes thud against the steering wheel, then his head thrown back violently so his neck snapped in one loud crack. Even if the internal bleeding hadn’t killed him, he’d never have walked again. He’d never have forgiven Maureen either and Slattery knew that Maureen lived with enough guilt already. She carried with her the divine mixed blessing of being so thoroughly devout. The last thing she needed was to know she’d killed that boy by manslaughter as surely as if she’d taken a gun to him in the heat of her worst temper. The tape was still rolling twenty minutes later. He watched but only half saw the ambulance crews arrive on the scene, recognised some of the faces. He watched Warren taking down details, directing the scene so that the whole sorry mess caused as little disruption to Limerick commuters as possible.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Kathy Tarpin handed him a very strong cup of tea. He drank it mechanically. ‘I couldn’t imagine having to watch that if it was…’ She looked into her own chipped mug for a moment.

  ‘You couldn’t not watch it either, love.’ As he said the words, he knew they were true. They were both cops, long-timers; they always had to know the worst.

  ‘Do they think she might have had some kind of attack?’

  ‘I haven’t even asked them that yet. Couldn’t get my head that far around it.’ He still wasn’t sure he had, but now, as he sat here, little things were coming back to him. Things like missed phone calls he’d returned and she couldn’t remember why she’d rung him. Things like no card or call for his birthday this year. The small things hadn’t bothered him at the time, he wasn’t even sure if he noticed on the day, but now, somehow it seemed ominous. Maureen never missed a date. Never missed an occasion. Everything, even the cat’s birthday, had to be commented on, they had to be marked. Life is too short, Ben Slattery, as some day you’ll find out.

  Maybe that someday was coming quicker than he’d expected. He drained the cup of tea and left it on the desk before him. Kathy had returned her attention to the remaining screens. He mumbled something as he left, it counted for thanks, see you and goodbye. Kathy wouldn’t expect much more, not at this stage. He pulled his anorak closer as he made his way out into the overcast afternoon. He had things to do.

  Anita Cullen was built like a twin tub. She’d probably been taller in her youth. You had to be at least five-six then to get into the guards if you were a woman. Now she was hardly five-three and she stood as tall as she could. Years of sitting at a desk probably made you settle into yourself swiftly. Her hair was grey, her skin was grey but her eyes were quick and when she spoke, Grady had the impression that she’d thought long and hard about her words, although they fired out of her so quickly you had to listen hard to make sure you hadn’t missed anything. She probably had little more than ten years on Grady, but he knew that she’d seen and endured more in her career than all the commissioners put together. There had been no fast-tracking for Anita Cullen. She’d made the grade when they didn’t want women there. She’d made it despite them, not because they needed her to fill a narrow quota. She’d headed up some of the most high-profile cases in the history of the state. Grady liked her immediately, not just because he admired her professionally, but she had an easy manner and he figured she’d be well able to handle Byrne. From the look on Byrne’s face, he knew that too, and it wasn’t sitting well.

  ‘I’m not so sure that I’m all Byrne was hoping for.’ She chuckled.

  ‘I hear you requested to come here?’ Better to change the subject than get caught up in gossip.

  ‘Not exactly. I’d have had to go somewhere, better to pick than be chosen, I thought. So when I heard ye were looking for someone…’ She drew out a desk drawer, surveyed the contents for a moment. ‘I started out here, long time ago now; it was one of my first bases as a detective. Sure, in many ways it’s like coming home.’ She smiled. ‘Ah yes, the good old days when they moved you every couple of weeks. It tended to weed out the men from the boys, and the women entirely.’

  ‘Not completely, it seems.’

  ‘I’m a resilient weed, difficult to prune.’ She smiled at Grady. What was there not to like? ‘So,’ she sat back in the leather swivel that had recently been her predecessor’s, ‘what’s the story?’

  Byrne had already appraised her of her duties at Corbally station. She’d be overseeing Domestic Viol
ence and Traffic as well as Murder, but the deaths of Anna Crowe and her two children were top priority. Now Grady told her everything to do with the investigation to date. He’d finally got an address on Darach Boran and even now, he had sent his best officers out to question him.

  ‘I could get used to this…’ She smiled across at Grady. ‘If you didn’t mind…’

  ‘Hey, you’re welcome to it. I like what I do, I’m just glad you’re here; lets me get on with running my team. I can’t be doing with keeping everyone sweet, when I’d rather be leading this investigation.’

  ‘We’ll make a good team so.’ Anita Cullen extended a pudgy hand across the table and when Grady held it, he hoped they’d struck gold.

  Chapter Eleven

  Iris thought everything about Darach Boran’s cottage was small. The doors were narrow. The windows were beady eyes, and the rooms cramped, as if Boran had crammed every stick of furniture into two rooms. It seemed to Iris that when she and Westmont entered the tiny living room, their proportions were gigantic compared to everything around them, including Darach Boran. Westmont jostled between sideboard and sink then perched on what looked like a piano stool. Iris settled for leaning against a gaudy kitchen unit. The room was dark and Boran managed to blacken it further with a ubiquitous miasma of cigarette smoke. If fumes differed or resembled each other, there was something familiar about the smell of Boran’s fags – or at least that’s what Westmont suggested when he sniffed the air with an appreciation others might save for aromas more pleasant. She almost missed Slattery. While they sat there in silence, Boran managed to smoke his way through three cigarettes. Each burnt slowly, gently growing into grey caterpillars, in separate ashtrays around the poky room. Boran was an electric eel of a man, long and reedy, jumpy and giddy; with deep-set eyes that Iris supposed might set him aside as an artist, or in Iris’s line of work, a player.