Grady had just sat at his desk with a mug of over-brewed coffee when he picked up a message on his pager from Anita Cullen. She was headed towards the incident room for a look round. Timing couldn’t be better, he thought. Most of the team were out of the place and she wanted to have a look-see. This would be quick.
‘Don’t worry, just getting a feel for the incident room,’ she said nonchalantly as she swung her ungainly frame into a precarious-looking wooden swivel seat. ‘Corbally station – they don’t make them like this any more,’ she directed her comment towards June.
‘With good reason too,’ June laughed. ‘You should be here when the winter sets in and the heating freezes in the pipes and if you need to run to the loo the nearest one is across the yard in those fancy offices that we otherwise avoid like the plague.’
‘They’re not that bad, are they?’ Anita Cullen would know more of the big brass based in the adjoining regional headquarters than she did of the team she was assigned to.
‘Aren’t they?’ June snorted. ‘Unfair of me, I suppose; I wouldn’t know since they’re far too high and mighty even to acknowledge us most of the time.’
‘They’re busy people, I’m sure,’ Cullen half apologised for them.
‘No one is that busy,’ Grady said, but his voice was too flat he knew and he raised a hand to pull an errant dark lock of hair from falling across his eyes.
‘Aye, you’re right, I don’t know why I’m making excuses for them – and if they are, well, they’ll find out some day that maybe they shouldn’t have been.’ Cullen’s eyes strayed off into the distance. Grady figured that she wasn’t noticing anything beyond the old Victorian windows that framed a view of the impressive opera house opposite.
‘So, what’s your story?’ She turned on the youngest officer in the unit, McGonagle.
‘Me, ma’am?’ McGonagle looked surprised. He’d been sitting against a radiator, taking in the woman who would run not just this department but two more also. ‘I’m just a rookie… hoping to get my foot in the door if they ever let me.’ He smiled a heavy, long grin that managed to pull not only his mouth, but also his eyes, ears and forehead higher than Grady would have imagined possible.
‘You’re McGonagle so?’
‘That’s right…ma’am.’
‘It’s Cullen… better that than what some of them call me, and I’ve no interest in being your mammy, sonny, so we’ll keep it nice and civil, yes?’
‘Of course M—Cullen, that’s grand.’
‘How are you getting on here, do you think?’ She eyed him now, with the gaze of a hawk, assessing him. Would she double check his answers later, make sure he was telling the truth? Grady felt sorry for the lad. He had the makings of a good guard and a fine detective, given half a chance.
‘I love it,’ he said, flushed with enthusiasm. It was true; standing next to him, Grady wondered if he couldn’t charge his phone off the excitement that seemed to be running through the lad. ‘Like, I mean, it’s very sad, you know, what happened to Anna and Martin and little Sylvie, but for me… well, to work here, with the Murder Team, you can’t imagine what a buzz that is.’
‘Oh, I think I can, McGonagle, I think I can.’ Anita Cullen crossed her stocky legs, ran her hand through her cropped hair and said softly, ‘Don’t cod yourself, McGonagle, we were all like you once, hungry for it. If we hadn’t had that, we wouldn’t still be here. Careful, though, because I’ve seen youngsters get eaten up by it. It manages to consume some, so they have nothing else.’
‘Are you here for long?’ June asked.
‘Long as ye’ll have me; honestly, I’m delighted to get out and do some real police work again. You get stuck, you know.’ Cullen nodded towards Grady and walked towards one of the full-length windows. ‘So, everyone else is out, yeah?’
‘You picked the wrong time, I’m afraid,’ Grady said and picked up a file from Iris Locke’s desk. He thumbed through the first few pages. It all seemed to be meticulous; perhaps she was extra careful after the McCracken fiasco. Grady suspected she’d be thorough anyway; if the fault in the McCracken case was on their side, it had probably not been on the part of Iris Locke. There was nothing personal on her desk, apart from her notes. Not even a calendar or a photograph. Perhaps she liked to keep things separate; that was what undercover taught you.
‘Big into paperwork, this one, isn’t she?’ Cullen was at Grady’s elbow. She took up a report. ‘Locke? Nothing to…’
‘His daughter.’
‘Christ.’ The word escaped her softly. ‘So little Iris is a detective? He won’t like that.’ She spoke over her shoulder, to no one in particular, and moved quickly along the next desks.
Grady left down the notes, watched as Cullen made her way around each desk, picking up a page here, a photograph there. She stopped at Dennis Blake’s desk, flopped in his chair and pulled out a copy of the inventory that categorised everything so far collected in the case.
‘That’s Dennis—’
‘Blake,’ she cut him off before he had a chance to finish. ‘I know, don’t worry, sure we go back a long way.’ Anita Cullen’s voice was low and friendly. There was no doubt, she probably knew every other guard in the country, she’d been around long enough. That she’d remember them all was a tiny miracle, but there again, Grady reminded himself, she was sharp as a buzz cut. She sauntered over to Slattery’s desk. Moved around the pages cautiously, opened the top drawer, only slightly, but enough to pull out a pack of Slattery’s fags. She murmured something about Customs and Excise under her breath and in that moment Grady had a feeling that all might not go so smoothly in his team after all. ‘Who sits here?’
‘Well, I’ve been…’ McGonagle started.
‘No, I mean, who has had his arse planted in this seat for the last five to ten?’ Her eyebrow rose only slightly, alerting McGonagle to the dangerous ground upon which he might be walking. He looked towards Grady.
‘That’s Ben Slattery’s desk.’ He kept his voice clear, his eyes straight on her.
‘No reason, just getting a feel for the place… and the people.’
‘Sure, well, he’s around as long as I am, a good detective.’ Grady wouldn’t add the horror story of Slattery’s career as a guard. He didn’t have to, not to Anita Cullen at any rate.
‘Ah, well.’ Cullen lowered her voice. ‘Change is as good as a rest, isn’t it?’ She smiled sweetly before moving on to the next desk, but Grady could feel June beside him stop breathing and he wondered if she’d managed to stop her heart beating also, so dead and quiet had the room become.
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence?’ Iris Locke was standing in front of Coleman Grady’s desk, her long copper hair catching the light. The flecks of gold that flashed in her green eyes gave away more about her passion than any words could. She’d caught a scent of something and nobody, certainly not Coleman Grady, was going to stand in her way.
‘Yeah, I think it could be just that, a coincidence.’ He looked at her now, met her eyes and perhaps they both knew that given a few short years, she could be his equal, and someday, in the not too distant future, she would probably outrank him. ‘They do happen, you know; just because he won prizes a long time ago, doesn’t mean he’s going to keep his skills up by murdering his entire family in one go.’
‘But the psychological report…’
‘Which we still don’t have here.’ Grady lowered his voice. ‘It means nothing, not until it is verified, not until we have it in black and white and double checked by someone with more letters after their name than screw you too.’
She walked to the window that looked out on the incident room. ‘We have to start really looking at him. I think we should bring him in for questioning.’
‘Well, since it’s not up to you who we bring in for questioning, it looks like we might stick to gathering evidence first, like real detectives.’ Grady took a deep breath. He looked tired, they all were.
Now, for a moment, she regretted comin
g in here, after all, they probably all felt the same, needing something to move, something to break so they could see a result. She wasn’t a wet week in Murder and already she was attempting to call the shots. ‘It’s just…’
‘Yes, and a few days ago you were dying to get your hands on the Baby Fairley files.’ It was an offhand comment, but it threw her a little, she hadn’t expected him to hear she’d been snooping about.
‘Well, I’m covering the bases, nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘Of course not, it’s highly commendable.’ He raised his head to look at her again now, lowered his voice. ‘Whatever you’d found out, which I suppose was a big fat nothing, you never reported back at a briefing. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to remember you’re part of a team.’
‘You know I couldn’t have found a lot anyway, the computers are playing up.’
‘I have IT on it, but just so you know, they’re not hopeful of unlocking the Fairley case any time soon. It wasn’t the only one affected by whatever kind of bug has eaten in to them, but it seems to be the worst affected, which is just shit luck for us.’
‘So, you checked too?’ she said softly, not in an effort to create some kind of one-upmanship, but as she didn’t like coincidences, perhaps Grady felt the same. The truth was, she was divided between the past and the present, but there was no getting away from the smell of something shady about Adrian Crowe either.
‘Look, Sergeant Locke,’ he used her title neutrally, but it served to remind her of her relatively junior rank, ‘I appreciate that you’ve worked really hard on the case and I’m going to spend some time going through your notes to date, but…’ He watched as her shoulders tensed now. ‘If you want us to pull in someone for questioning, you have to give me more than your gut feeling. I’d say your best bet is to sit out there in front of that CCTV footage and see if there’s anything to put Crowe near that cottage when he shouldn’t be. Okay?’
‘Christ, but we could get as much if we just brought him in… I’ll get McGonagle to look at the CCTV and…’ she looked at him now, ‘there’s something not right here, and you know it as well as I do.’
‘It doesn’t matter what we think we know – we need to be sure before we bring anyone in. Or, haven’t you noticed the line-up of reporters just outside the station? Last thing we need is another false promise. No, we hold tight, you give me something, something worthwhile to go on. In the meantime we keep digging.’
Locke turned on her heel, her silky hair swishing insolently behind her. Anger and disappointment made her walk with even more cockiness than usual, but it was only on the surface, deep down she wanted to get a result and she wanted to get it now.
‘Oh and Locke,’ he waited while she closed the door, ‘go through the CCTV yourself. McGonagle is going to be working with Slattery now he’s back. He’ll benefit from Slattery’s long experience on the Murder Team, I think.’ Iris just caught Grady’s smile as she banged the door behind her. The message was loud and clear, there was a pecking order and he was telling her where she stood in it. Know your place.
Chapter Thirteen
Veronique sighed. She hated this place now and she hated Ollie Kerr. She had only come here to escape her old life. Outside grey clouds canopied the fields blotting out any hope of sun. It seemed every day was wet and depressing in this overcast village. Still, she’d been glad to come here a few months earlier, anything was better than the streets, and Veronique knew that from experience. If she had hung around Limerick much longer, the welcome she’d almost worn out would have forced her back into a life that she swore she’d never fall into again. Now, as she stood looking out through faded net curtains that smelled of turf smoke, she wondered what was the difference between sleeping with Ollie Kerr in exchange for a roof over her head or taking her chances turning tricks when she needed extra cash.
The difference she knew was simple – here, in this godforsaken place, she was safe. Ollie Kerr had the table manners of an animal, but he had never hurt her. She had assumed, until Anna Crowe was murdered and Slattery had arrived out here, that Ollie wouldn’t hurt a fly – now she was not so sure.
All the same, she took a deep breath, because the memories of men she’d met on the streets wouldn’t leave her, no matter how much vodka she drank. She shivered, walked to the window and pulled back the curtain; it was cosy here, but some memories always made her cold.
Slattery. God, she hated him, not that he’d ever… well, he probably hadn’t had a woman in thirty years. No, not that, but she owed him. Veronique wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but she knew that Ben Slattery had pulled her from the grip of a life that wouldn’t have been worth living if her last pimp had managed to catch up with her. Veronique had had pimps before, she knew she was lucky to get out of that situation. Slattery had saved her last time from falling back in. She should have told him everything she knew, that was what owing someone meant in her world. There was a code, the least she could do was try to keep on the right side of it. Be straight with him this once and then maybe the debt would be paid.
Mind you, it wasn’t that there was anything she could tell. Not really. After all, she didn’t know who had killed the Crowes, did she? It could have been Ollie, but there again, it could have been anyone. She looked up at the door that led out the back of the cottage. It never locked properly and before Anna Crowe had been murdered that hadn’t particularly bothered Veronique. After all, she had slept rough for much of her teenage life and when she came here first she was just grateful to have a roof over her head.
No. She couldn’t tell Slattery what he wanted to hear. She couldn’t tell him who had murdered Anna Crowe. She couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t Ollie, because she really wasn’t sure. But there was plenty she could have told him.
She could have told him that there might have been a reason for the woman’s death. She could have told him that there was one man who might have wanted Anna Crowe wiped out so she didn’t ask questions that he wouldn’t want answered. She could have told him that there was one person who had every reason to want Anna Crowe dead. The only thing was, Veronique had a feeling that this person might pay handsomely for her to keep quiet.
She bit her lip now, taking out her phone and thinking of the box of papers she’d found stashed in the back of a wardrobe in what had once been Ollie’s mother’s bedroom. One phone call, that’s all it would take and she could have enough money to get out of Limerick altogether. This could be the winning lottery ticket she’d always knew she’d find one day.
Veronique had been tumbling the possibilities of this over and back in her mind for days. Ollie didn’t want her here any more. He had no reason now and it dawned on her that before, when Anna was alive, she had a purpose. Veronique, just by being here had made him look normal, as though he was not forever alone. Now, the hard reality facing her was that she had nowhere to move on to.
She pulled out her mobile and keyed in the man’s name, taking a deep breath she waited until his name showed up in her internet search. A giddy rush of excitement bubbled in her as she came closer to searching out his contact details. This was going to change her life, she was certain of that.
Slattery stared glumly at the board behind Grady’s back. June had already filled in their tasks for the day. Again, it was another day, when they hadn’t expected to see Slattery and so, Grady had left him floating. Slattery shook his head, you’d think that after all these years Coleman Grady would know better than that.
‘It’s not a lead, Iris,’ Grady said flatly.
‘How do we know that until we check it out?’ She blew a stray strand of hair from before her eyes, meeting Grady’s with equal steel.
‘Look, Anita Cullen remembers that case, she worked it all those years ago in this station. It wasn’t a case at all, as far as she remembers it. They had it cut and dried within a week and I don’t need to remind you that they had some of the best detectives we’ve ever had here working on it.’
&n
bsp; ‘Still…’ she said.
‘What would you have us do? Conjure up the old files?’ Grady was livid. Slattery couldn’t remember when he’d last seen anyone get under his skin so badly.
‘But that too – I mean, how can files just disappear into thin air? There’s not so much as a sample left.’ She was standing now, coming dangerously close to crossing an invisible line that everyone else in this team knew was drawn out in front of Grady as clearly as if he’d marked it with chalk.
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate, but I would suggest it would be more in your interest get on with the work of this investigation. You’ve been asked to get a file from the army and we’re still waiting for that – never mind about trying to dig up old cases and we all know why…’ He let the words hang and Slattery watched as Iris Locke’s colour drained.
‘I only want to solve this case, same as everyone else here in this room and if you’re suggesting for one moment…’
‘Ahem,’ June coughed meaningfully from the other side of the room, saving Iris from herself and maybe doing them all out of a good old scrapping match which Slattery, for one, knew would end up with her getting a reputation to match his own. Iris flopped into her seat, suddenly the air expelled from her and it felt to Slattery at least as if the tension from the room went with it.
‘Right, so it’s back to today…’ Grady was saying, although no one was really listening to him now, rather, every officer in the room was filled with one question… what was Grady suggesting? Of course, Slattery and June knew only too well what, but they weren’t going to share that with anyone else in a hurry.
Silent Night: An absolutely gripping crime thriller Page 11