‘And they kept coming?’
‘Oh aye, say what you want about social workers, but they never let a week go by, but they weren’t knocking about the place. Up at the house, down at the school. He gave up the job after. I wouldn’t think they ever had much of a life. Sure, in the end, I think they had to sign her in. How does a woman live with that? Drove her mad in the end – the guilt of it, probably.’
‘But the baby was never found. You can’t know for certain that she did kill it.’ Slattery kept his voice low.
‘No, the baby wasn’t found, but sure, maybe there are currants for cakes and raisins for everything.’ Bridgie Brennan joined her hands together.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sure it was back in the days when the priests and the guards ran the country, Mr Slattery. I’d say even if they did find the child, they’d never have said. Sure what good would come of putting the poor creature away for the rest of her natural? No. No. They did the right thing; they left us all to get on with things, kept an eye on the child that lived and maybe hoped that someday we’d all forget Baby Fairley.’
‘So where do you think the child was buried?’
‘Like I said, Mr Slattery, it was between the priest and the guards.’ Bridgie Brennan moved towards the teapot now, a lavish affair of flowers and gold leaf. ‘You’ve hardly touched your tea.’ She topped up his cup and he sat back into the cold velour of the cushions at his back.
‘There were no winners there, so,’ he said thoughtfully as he looked at the electric fire that gave an occasional rattle to let the room know it was labouring away.
‘Aye, no winners, but the important thing for you is that there are no losers left about the place now.’ She nodded at him and he knew she was right. The people who’d lost out in the Baby Fairley case were all gone now and Slattery had to wonder what that meant for the Anna Crowe investigation.
Chapter Fifteen
‘For the tape, Mr Darach Boran is being represented by Nathan Cosgrove, Senior Counsel, with particular expertise in murder trials,’ Iris said loudly. She had read Boran his rights, clearly and slowly, enunciating every word so crisply that everyone knew the nuns had done themselves proud by her. Grady had chosen interview room number three, the least comfortable of the rooms available to them. Not that the others were all that much better, but this was by far the most cramped, with no window and no air conditioning to speak of. It wouldn’t take long to draw sweat from a guilty man inside its putrid green walls.
‘I don’t think that has relevance or bearing on your current investigation.’ Cosgrave was in, quick as a flash.
‘Well, unfortunately, Mr Cosgrove, we can’t strike it from the record here – it’s not as easy to wipe our tapes clean as it is to make sure a smear of DNA doesn’t see the light of day,’ replied Grady.
Locke looked across at him. What the hell, her eyes silently screamed, and they told me to tread softly? Iris took a deep breath, reached for her water and looked across at Boran. He seemed much calmer now than he had been earlier, which was in itself unusual – Iris would have laid money on him shitting himself in the intervening days, thinking about this.
‘So, we’re here to ask you about Saturday the twelfth of October – can you account for your whereabouts between five and seven on the morning in question?’ she asked.
Boran shifted in his seat, leaned forward, his breath sending a rasp of earlier inhaled stale tobacco across at Iris. When he smiled he bared even, yellowing teeth that probably hadn’t truly smiled since childhood. ‘Yes and no is the answer to that question.’ Boran sat back then and began to examine his long fingernails. Iris couldn’t help but notice they were very clean. Not the fingers she would imagine of an artist. She looked across at Nathan Cosgrove who nodded silently at him. ‘I… and a group of some fifteen others, from the local Women’s Institute travelled to Donegal on Friday the 11th. The plan was, with a bit of luck, we might catch the Aurora lights – they’ve been particularly visible over the last number of weeks – you may have heard.’ He gave a withering look towards Grady. ‘But then, perhaps not. Either way, we set off, early afternoon, about three, I’d say, left Limerick, headed for Donegal. Booked into a very nice hotel.’ Cosgrave slid a single sheet of paper containing the hotel address across the table so it sat in the no man’s land of the middle. ‘We stayed there until the following day, returning home sometime after a light lunch in the bar of the hotel.’
‘So these women, the WI ladies, they can account for your whereabouts right through?’
Boran looked once more at Cosgrove, who nodded much too sagely for Iris’s liking. ‘Well, they can tell you that we sketched and photographed the Aurora lights together. It’s up to you to figure out how I might have managed to transport myself in the time frame it would have taken to make it halfway down the length of the country.’ His expression turned to self-congratulatory. Iris knew, that for now, at least, they had nothing much else to ask Darach Boran.
After all that, it seemed they had nothing. His alibi would be checked, but of course, he wasn’t stupid enough to give an account that wouldn’t stand. For the first time since undercover, Iris needed a drink. The incident room was emptying when she texted Slattery.
Slattery was waiting when she arrived at the Ship Inn. He called drinks for them both. He looked like shit, but then, he did have more on his plate than any of them now.
‘Things any better with your wife?’ she asked, knocking back a measure of the whiskey she hadn’t asked for, but Slattery had placed before her anyway. It almost winded her, but she was glad of it all the same. Suddenly she felt emptied out, perhaps it was just this case, it felt as if there was something personal about it; still it was road blocked.
‘Same,’ Slattery grunted into his pint, obviously not the reason for his newfound inner joy, then. ‘I spent the afternoon out in Kilgee, met a very chatty woman called Mrs Brennan.’ He was adept at changing the subject to suit himself. He smiled at Iris, a strange rearrangement of features that had long since set in bitterness. If his eyes were anything to go by, Iris reckoned he’d been in the Ship Inn for too long, getting well oiled-up.
‘Oh?’ She settled her fingers around a glass of larger that had arrived as soon as the whiskey shot glass was taken away. She wiped the damp from outside her glass, her moving fingers steady and deliberate.
‘I think you’re right, if it’s any consolation,’ he slurred.
‘How’s that?’ Iris asked, leaning a little closer.
‘Well, there’s no such thing as a coincidence in a murder case.’ He shook his head, looking up as June arrived beside them.
‘Anita Cullen was asking for you today.’ June slipped in the far side of Slattery.
‘Well, be sure to tell her I said hi, with bells on, won’t you?’ Slattery sneered at June. Iris leant back; she didn’t want to be in the way if these two exploded at each other. ‘Ah, feck it,’ he said then, moving off to the far end of the bar to wrap his mind around his worries.
‘I’m sure it’s an emotional time for him,’ Iris said finishing off her drink.
‘He doesn’t give a flying donkey for Maureen, and we all know it. That’s not natural, whatever you say, that’s not natural at all.’
‘Has he always been the same or is it just me?’ Iris asked, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.
‘No, don’t worry, he’s been like a cactus as long as I’ve known him. They used to say he had a soft underbelly once, but I’ve never seen it myself,’ June said staring at her glass of soft drink. ‘The thing is, Iris, everyone in this job gets fucked up. Slattery can blame it on the drink or the sister he lost all those years ago…’
‘The sister?’
‘Oh, it’s all ancient history now, but back when Slattery was hardly ready to finish school, his younger sister was found murdered in a flat here in Limerick. Someone told me once that Maureen found her body and after that, well, none of them were ever quite right again.’
‘Maureen – his wife?’
‘That’s right, so then, they got married and I suppose something like that, shared between a couple… well, it’s only going to fester, isn’t it? Then Angela came along and apparently, she’s the spit of her aunt Una with the spirit of her mother and Slattery just went off the rails; he’s never quiet managed to get back on them again.’
‘Christ.’ Iris let out a long sigh. ‘And I thought my life was complicated.’ It was no secret in Corbally that Jack Locke’s wife was delicate nor that she was a drinker and, now, it had to be fairly public knowledge that his daughter was doing her best to emulate her father rather than her mother. Freud would have a field day at their Christmas party if they joined up with the Slatterys.
‘Anyway, I’m not making excuses for him, he’s a prickly bastard, but he’s a damn fine detective when he hasn’t got his nose stuck in a pint.’
‘Can’t be easy, though, you know, with the accident and everything.’
‘No.’ June sighed, a long low sound that seemed to come from deep in her soul. ‘No. But just so you know, it’s not love that made a mess of him, it’s guilt and not being able to forgive.’ She sipped her drink.
‘Forgive?’
‘Maureen, Una – and probably himself most of all – he’s eaten up with remorse and the only way he knows how to deal with it is to work and to drink.’
In the corner at the far side of the bar, a man who had been tuning up his guitar for what seemed like the whole night began to strum out some seventies’ number that June had long forgotten and Iris never knew.
‘Time for me to be getting back,’ June said, looking at Iris’s drink. ‘You’d be better off leaving sooner rather than later too, you don’t want to get stuck into this scene… it’s…’ She looked across at Slattery who was staring blindly into the drink before him.
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ Iris said, taking up her coat. She looked along the bar counter at Slattery, feeling just a little sad at such a terrible story, she could almost feel his pain now. ‘Still, I think I’ll hang about a little while longer,’ she said and walked over to Slattery, slinging her coat across the bar stool next to him and sitting beside him for the next half hour in almost complete silence. She was about to order them both another drink when she spotted Grady watching them from a group of detectives who had spent the evening standing around in a circle discussing the case in a quiet, increasingly drunken whisper. Instead, she knocked back the whiskey and headed for the cold night air.
Limerick, with the rain sheeting down and the river Shannon barrelling along its banks, is probably the most brutal city in Ireland. Even on a sunny day, there is a backdrop of history and it’s visible no matter where you cast your eye. Tonight, Iris was struck by its beauty. King John’s Castle, lit up in the distance, fired out of the blackness of night, it had stood overlooking that water for almost a thousand years. It had watched over clans and clashes, stood stout against invaders and warriors and, even now, Iris felt its sturdy presence, a levelling force that stood for no nonsense.
They would solve this case. They would find answers. But, she wondered as she admired the crouching walls, if it would be solved because of their efforts or in spite of them.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Grady, he’s a piss head, you know it, I know it, and everyone knows it.’ Anita Cullen was eyeballing him and if she was a good ten inches shorter than him, it certainly didn’t feel like it at the moment.
‘He’s a good detective, Anita.’
‘His wife is in ICU, and he’s here, like nothing has happened. He’s a bomb ready to blow, that’s what he is.’
‘They’ve been separated for years; it’s not as straightforward as it seems. He’s been to the hospital, spent the first day there, but he can’t do anything for her, and he feels he’s of more use here.’
‘Yeah, I bet he does,’ she said drily. Grady thought Cullen wasn’t a naturally vindictive person, but she had her sights set on Slattery. If she scented even a hint of him stepping out of line, she’d be down on him so quick he’d be reeling afterwards. Already she’d made buddies out of most of the team, she knew too much about the connections that had taken years to build. Grady reckoned that by now, she knew who had slept with whose wife, and who knew about it. ‘You just tell Slattery, I won’t be made a fool out of. I’ll be watching him, and now that he’s getting the heads up, the consequences will be severe if he steps out of line.’
He needed to have a look-see at whatever Slattery was up to. In Grady’s experience, it was never good when the old man went too quiet. He was up to something; he seemed on edge. A bit like Iris Locke; he sensed something was a bit off with her today as well. For a moment, he felt like he’d missed a step. He’d watched them as they’d sat together the previous evening in the Ship Inn. They really were an incongruous pairing. Idly, he wondered what they’d found to talk about. Probably the case – Anna, Martin and Sylvie Crowe and perhaps Adrian Crowe too. He wondered if they’d talked about the earlier Fairley case. He’d lay his last euro that missing baby lingered between them, even if she had no connection to the death of her sister. Slattery hated loose ends; Grady suspected Locke would be the same. The Fairley case was old news, an unsolved case that would remain open well after they all retired. You win some, you lose some. That child was dead and gone long ago, probably buried somewhere deep in the countryside, many miles away from where hundreds of people had searched for days and probably weeks after the disappearance.
Anita Cullen took a deep breath – onto other things. ‘So, what’s this about the victim’s husband not being where he says he was?’
‘The phone trace has thrown us this little nugget: he left the factory for over an hour. As far as the mobile is concerned he drove directly to his house and stayed there the whole time.’
‘But…’
‘Well, if he went home, he had to have a reason, so why not tell us…’
‘Fear he might lose his job?’
‘Maybe, but this is a murder investigation, he’s not a stupid man, he has to know that we’ll be looking at him as a suspect. Why lie, if there’s nothing to hide?’
‘Why bring the phone at all?’
‘Maybe it was a mistake, maybe he hadn’t meant to.’ Grady looked out the window now. Cullen’s office had a view upriver towards King John’s castle. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t going to kill her, frighten her just, try and get her to leave the cottage and come home?’
‘Costly mistake,’ Cullen said, checking the near-empty coffee cup before her. ‘There was nothing at the house, no smell of petrol, nothing at all when you visited there on the day.’
‘Not a thing and it’s the kind of thing you’d notice, right?’
‘So, somewhere along the way, he’d have to have a shower, change his clothes, yeah?’
‘We had a look through the house on the morning, didn’t see any clothes. We went through the place from the attic down to the bins, if there was anything dumped we’d have it by now.’
‘Okay, so you’ll have to look at the factory.’
‘There’s no way he had a shower there. Slattery got the grand tour when he went out that first day. The showers are used for storage, and they haven’t been used properly in years. No, I say we get the forensic boys out to the house, let them take apart the drains if they have to. He’ll have dumped the clothes in someone’s wheelie bin along the way, they’re well gone now.’ Adrian Crowe was smart, if he killed his wife, he’d have all the bases covered, but Grady knew that wasn’t always enough. One scrap of rogue DNA, that was all it took and he’d haul Crowe in and throw as much at him as he could to get a confession from him.
‘Right, call out the forensic boys, and Grady, get those phone records traced right back. Get someone to cross reference where he was every night he was on shift, right back to when Anna Crowe moved out to that cottage.’
‘Sure,’ Grady said, halting for just a moment. ‘I’d like to search his house too…’<
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‘Right, right… well, you know what to do,’ Cullen barked.
‘We have a warrant, I’ve divided the team into two.’ Grady was standing in the centre of the incident room. It had taken just over a day to convince a judge to sign an order so they could pull apart every fibre of their suspect’s existence. It could take two more days to examine every crack and crevice of the Crowe family home and ABA Technics just to try and find one small chink that might open up the case.
The news of a warrant injected a new wave of optimism into the team, as if somehow they were about to take a giant stride forward and that belief was sometimes as much as any team needed to break a case. Grady shuffled his papers back into a neat pile and Iris knew he felt her watching him. He turned towards her desk wordlessly.
‘I don’t think Crowe is our killer.’ Iris spoke softly, but when Grady looked at her, she knew he was listening, interested in what she had to say this time. Somehow, she couldn’t put into words how she knew that their killer was still out there and he might just strike again.
‘Why’s that?’ Grady asked.
‘I don’t know, something doesn’t quite seem right about him, I can see that, but I don’t think he killed his wife and children.’
‘Is iad na muca ciúine a itheann an mhin,’ Grady muttered beneath his breath. Iris recognised the words. Always the quiet ones.
She tilted her head sideways gathering her hair to let it fall down her back. It was something between a nod and a stretch.
‘Sure there’s nothing else?’ He probably asked the question more out of routine than any sense she might share her thoughts with him. Perhaps he figured she was getting a taste of what it was to hold people’s lives in your hands. If they charged the wrong man, more than just Anna, Martin and Sylvie Crowe would have lost out.
Silent Night: An absolutely gripping crime thriller Page 13