by Alan Gorevan
Joe felt a prickle of excitement. “What’s his name?”
“Graham Lee.”
“Graham Lee lives here?”
“Not anymore. He hasn’t paid rent in four months. Can you help us?”
“Call the station,” Joe said. “My colleagues will be happy to help you.” Joe was already getting back in the Honda. If Graham wasn’t home, Joe had a good idea where the bastard was.
He eased the car a short distance down the road. Stopped in front of Lisa’s place. Behind him, Cunningham stopped again.
Joe made his way up to Lisa’s door and rang the bell.
Lisa took a minute to open up.
“Joe,” she said. She squinted at him. “Why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
She thought for a moment. “Smug.”
Joe shrugged. “That’s just my face.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Is Christopher here?”
She scowled. “Of course he’s not. He’s at school. And I’d like you to leave him alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you acted crazy last night.”
“Me? What about you? You made such a big deal out of nothing and then you asked that stupid ‘painter’ to—”
“I was upset.”
“Is Graham here?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Well, you might want to tell him his landlord is up the road, evicting him.”
“What?”
“The guy said he hasn’t paid rent in four months.”
She shook her head. “I’m sure there’s been some mistake. He was only talking to his landlord yesterday. He told me. It’s a misunderstanding.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Lisa. By the way, do you know where his wife went?”
“His former wife.”
“Aren’t they still married?”
“Only technically.”
“Being married is a technical thing, is it?”
Lisa gave an exasperated sigh.
“Joe, what are you going on about? Why are you here?”
“I’ve been trying to contact Graham’s wife. I haven’t been able to.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “So what? And why are you trying to contact her?”
“I have a bad feeling about Graham. And his landlord just confirmed it.”
Lisa leaned back against the doorframe and actually laughed. “So you’re having a fit of jealousy sixteen years too late.”
“What? No. It’s not about that.”
“I think it is. You see me with someone else, and suddenly you feel wronged.”
Joe felt blood rush to his face. The accusation was so unfair.
“That’s not why I feel wronged.”
“Why then?”
“If you want to know, I feel wronged because you lied to me and abandoned me and broke my heart.”
The words came out in a rush. He’d never meant to say them, and now that he had, he felt like a fool.
Lisa must have agreed. She closed the door in his face.
Chapter 64
After closing the door, Lisa squeezed her eyes shut.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She turned, and, with purpose, strode up the stairs. No fighting, she reminded herself. She wanted to be in a good mood for Christopher’s recital.
Graham was snoring loudly as he lay in her bed. She looked at him, sprawled out topless, one leg splayed across her side of the bed, his mouth hanging open. A worn pair of boxer shorts the only thing that gave the scene a scrap of decorum, though one testicle peeped out the side like a baby mouse.
What had she ever seen in him? She couldn’t understand it. It was as if she’d had cataracts, and during the night they’d cleared. She went and pulled the curtains, then opened the window. Graham shifted in the bed.
“All right, love?” he said.
He stretched and yawned.
“We need to talk,” Lisa said.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“About what?”
Lisa hesitated. Maybe she was being a bit unreasonable. He wasn’t even awake properly yet. “I’ll make breakfast,” she said.
“Thanks, love. Give me a shout when it’s ready, will you?”
She went downstairs, and got out a bowl, thinking she’d try a pancake recipe she’d seen recently. It used cream of tartar to make the pancakes fluffy. Should she make bacon too? Or would Graham prefer fruit on top? Bacon, of course. He was never going to be a vegetarian. She got out the flour, and a carton of eggs, and was reaching for the milk when she froze.
Lisa was meant to be confronting Graham. But here she was spoiling him with culinary treats.
Alright then. No fancy breakfast.
She took another look in the cupboard and found some small packets of cereal. The kind that contained enough to fill a tiny bowl. There were a variety of flavours. Lisa picked the plainest one she could find – cornflakes – got out a bowl, and was about to pour the cereal into it, when she stopped herself again.
Let Graham do it.
She threw the unopened carton of cereal into the bowl and put it on the table.
“Breakfast’s ready,” she called.
She heard nothing back. Maybe Graham had gone back to sleep. That would be just like him. The life of an artist.
“Breakfast,” Lisa shouted.
His voice, sleepy and surprised: “Okay, love.”
She sat down at the table to wait. Coming into the kitchen, Graham glanced at the cereal. He came over and kissed Lisa’s cheek.
“Good morning. Any milk?”
“In the fridge.”
“Lovely.”
He got it out and sat down, shooting furtive looks at Lisa.
“Everything alright?” Graham said.
Lisa sighed. “Are you behind on your rent?”
“What? Why do you ask about that?”
“Can you just answer the question? Is that why you decided you want to live with me?”
Graham looked appalled. “What’s with the interrogation?”
“Joe was here. He said your landlord is outside your place.” Lisa jerked her head sideways, in the direction of Graham’s house. “Evicting you. Accusing you of not paying rent for months.”
Graham pushed back his chair and stood up. “What? That’s disgraceful. I’ve always been a model tenant. There must be some mistake.”
“Let’s go and talk to your landlord then.”
“Good idea,” Graham said. He sat back down. “I’ll do it first thing. I just need some food in my stomach first. You know I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something to do with Philippa.”
Lisa sighed. She watched Graham shovel food into his mouth.
For some reason, she wasn’t surprised to find him bringing up his ex-wife. Or wife. Or whatever she was.
“Philippa hasn’t been around for ages, right? So how could she be involved?”
“I’m not sure.” He spoke through a mouthful of half-chewed cornflakes. “But I wouldn’t put it past her. She was always on the phone, talking to the landlord about this and that. She probably put him up to this.”
“Graham, stop.”
“What?”
“Have you paid your rent or not?”
“Of course I have,” he said. “Every cent. What kind of person do you think I am? I told you I gave my notice anyway, so this is bull. He’s probably annoyed he has to find a new tenant. It’s impossible to find one as good as me.”
Graham finished his cornflakes and brought the bowl over to the sink. He gave the spoon and bowl a cursory rinse under the cold running water, then dumped them on the draining board.
“Maybe we’re moving too fast,” Lisa said. “Maybe we should slow down. Spend some time apart.”
Graham gave her a hard look.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Chapter 65
At the station, Joe was following up leads that might help him catch Barry Wall.
Anne-Marie Cunningham and Kevin Boyle were following up on trying to contact Aidan Donnelly, who still hadn’t turned up. Other officers were checking out CCTV and digging up potential witnesses. Alice Dunne was at a counselling session with a psychologist after discharging three rounds into the suspect on the motorbike the previous afternoon.
Joe decided to go next door to the cemetery to clear his mind. He’d just got to the front desk when a well-dressed lady in her late fifties walked hesitantly in the door of the station. She looked nervous and clutched her handbag to her chest. She swallowed as she approached the desk.
“Hello, I – I’d…” She closed her eyes for a second, as if taking a moment to compose herself. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I should be here.”
“That’s alright,” the desk sergeant said, as he handed Joe the key to the lock on the cemetery’s gates. “What’s the matter?”
Joe walked around the back of the desk, heading for the door. He was just about to go outside when the lady spoke again.
“My son didn’t come home last night.”
“Okay,” the sergeant said. “What age is he?”
“John’s seventeen.” Joe froze as the woman gave a humourless laugh. “My husband told me not to come. He said it was nothing. I’m just – I’m worried.”
“That’s very understandable. Now, if you could give me some—”
Joe placed his hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.
“I’ll take care of this,” he said.
The sergeant looked at him in surprise.
“Okay,” he said. “Detective Sergeant Byrne will assist you.”
“Thank you very much,” the lady said.
She was small and birdlike, and Joe felt like hugging her.
He led her down the corridor to his office. There was no one else around, so he was able to borrow Cunningham’s chair. He pushed it over to his desk.
John Kavanagh’s mother sat down on it.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Joe asked.
A pathetic gesture, but he wanted to do her some kindness.
“Oh, no, thank you.”
Joe didn’t know exactly what he expected Michael Kavanagh’s wife, and John Kavanagh’s mother, to be like, but he didn’t expect her to be like this. The lady smelled faintly of rose water. She was wearing a floral blouse over white trousers. Her hair was neatly brushed and hung down to her shoulders. She looked like she was dressed for a special occasion.
Even now, she clutched her handbag tight, as if afraid of letting go of it.
Joe felt himself choking up. He blinked quickly and took a breath.
“May I take your name?”
“Ethel Kavanagh.”
Joe wrote it down, and her address too. The house was a ten-minute walk away. Close to Lisa’s place.
“Maybe you could tell me everything from the start.”
“Of course. My son, John, didn’t come home from school yesterday.”
“Where does he go to school?”
“The Highfield Academy on Clyde Road. I called him at about six o’clock, but he didn’t answer. I kept some dinner warm for him but he never came home. I called him again and again after that and I called his friend’s mother, Ann Harrison. She hadn’t seen him either. He wasn’t with her son.”
“Does your son usually come home on time?”
Mrs. Kavanagh squeezed her bag tighter. “Not always. John’s not a bad lad, you understand. But he’s… he sometimes stays out a little late. You probably know how teenagers are.”
Joe nodded. “So he didn’t come home last night? And you heard nothing from him?”
Mrs. Kavanagh shook her head. “I stayed up all night, waiting, but he never showed.”
Joe cleared his throat. He was struggling to keep it together.
“Has that ever happened before? Could he have stayed over at another friend’s house?”
“It’s possible. He sometimes stays over at his friend’s house without telling me. But usually if I call his phone, he’ll answer eventually, or at least send me a text. If he’s not at the Harrison house, I don’t really know where he’d be. I’m afraid he’s had an accident. Maybe he had something to drink... Once he went to the beach and fell asleep there. I just don’t know. I’m worried. Could you help me find him?”
The woman’s trembling voice shook Joe, reminded him that the boy wasn’t a vicious bully to Ethel Kavanagh. He was her son. A young man struggling through the hardest years of his life, just like Christopher. It took all the willpower Joe had not to tell her the truth.
He said, “I’ll do all I can to see you right.”
It was the only sincere thing he could say. Joe couldn’t bring her son back to life, but he could do his best not to draw out her suffering.
He resolved there and then that he couldn’t just dump Kavanagh’s body. He would let it be found somehow, so it could be buried, so this woman would know John was dead, and at least have some closure.
Joe was about to ask for a few more questions, when he heard raised voices.
Mrs. Kavanagh looked startled.
“It’s okay,” Joe said, raising his hand. But she knew better than he did. They turned in unison to see Superintendent Michael Kavanagh march into the room.
“Ethel, I told you not to come,” he said. From his dismissive tone, he might as well have been rebuking a new recruit, rather than speaking to his wife.
“John hasn’t turned up yet.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Kavanagh said. He turned to Joe. “Forget it. My wife is overreacting.”
“With all due respect,” Joe said, “I think she’s right to be worried. If he’s missing, he might be in danger.”
“That’s enough. He’s only had a few beers and fallen asleep in a hedge somewhere. Stop arsing around, and do some real work.”
Mrs. Kavanagh got to her feet. She looked at Joe.
“Thank you,” was all she said. But it was a thank you that sounded like help me.
Then she was walking out the door.
Superintendent Kavanagh turned to Joe.
He said, “Your job is to catch Barry Wall. Don’t get confused.”
Then he turned and followed his wife out the door.
“Shit,” Joe muttered.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When he’d composed himself, he opened them again and looked at the notes he’d written down.
John Kavanagh, missing since…
He tore the page off the pad, scrunched it up, and threw it in the bin.
When he looked around, he realised that Alice Dunne was watching him from the doorway.
Chapter 66
Gravel crunched under Barry Wall’s boots. The legs of his jeans were dusty and his T-shirt was wet around the armpits. The noon sun was out, baking dry the path and showing up every stone on the ground in sharp relief.
He’d spent the morning walking around Ken’s property. Ken already had a house in Wicklow, but he said he liked this one better. He’d bought it the previous year, and this was the first time Wall had got a chance to see it.
The patch of land was a sprawling place, with a big house in the middle, pine forest on both sides, and a steep slope up to the back of the property. At the front end, there were disused stables, where they were keeping Aidan Donnelly, and a driveway that led out onto a narrow road.
The place was isolated.
Not a neighbour for many kilometres.
Wicklow was handy like that. Unforgiving. Sparsely populated. Its landscape had been shaped by the last Ice Age. It was characterised by valleys, forests, lakes and the predominantly granite mountain range that extended down to the suburbs of south Dublin.
Aidan Donnelly had spent the night hovering on the edge of a coma, and Wall hadn’t been able to question him much. Wall had shown too much enthusiasm when they got Donnelly there the previous night. He’d started beating on him, unleashing all the rage and pain he’d carried inside since Valentina’s disappearance, and he j
ust couldn’t stop. Ken had pulled him away, but it was too late.
Donnelly remained unresponsive. Unconscious. But not dead. Wall needed the bastard to talk. So he was forced to wait.
Ken walked ahead of Wall, up the steep dirt path to the back of the property.
“Here,” Ken said. “Stop and take a look.”
Wall did, once he had reached the top of the hill. Squinting in the sun, he looked down on the house, the top of which was maybe two storeys below them.
“There’s another road behind us,” Ken said after a moment. “Good for a quick escape.”
Wall scowled. His face felt hot from the sun.
“This reminds me of—”
“Home? Yeah.”
The house they had grown up in was isolated too, though not as much as this, and it had lain over the county line, in Dublin.
“I’m going to check on Donnelly,” Wall said.
“Whoa, wait for me. We don’t want you losing it on him again, do we?”
Wall set off down the path, with Ken trotting behind. The door to the disused stables creaked when Wall pulled it open. A shaft of light fell across Aidan Donnelly’s pathetic form. He was where they had left him, shackled to the wall. He flinched in the blinding light.
Wall walked over to him. “So you’re not dead.”
Donnelly said nothing. Wall crouched down in front of Donnelly.
“Ready to tell me the truth?”
“I don’t know the truth.”
“You’re going to talk. And I don’t mean some day. I mean, now.”
Donnelly shook his head.
“I never hurt your wife.”
The man’s insistence that he was innocent was infuriating. “Then who did?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m going to kill you, if you don’t tell me. What do you think about that?”
Donnelly looked Wall in the eye. His voice trembled, but he spoke firmly all the same. “I still don’t know what happened to Valentina.”
“If you tell me, I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t think you will.”
“Fair enough. But I’ll make it easier for you, at least. I’ll tell you what. I’ll release you. Yes, I will come after you again. But I’ll give you a head start. One hour. How does that sound?”