Beck pushed his rage down inside.
‘So you’re out,’ he said. ‘What a small world. We meet again.’
Tiery turned his head and looked out the window, folded his arm. ‘Cut the shit. Why are you here?’
‘We’re investigating a very serious crime, that’s why.’
‘It’s the murder, isn’t it? I heard. Hard luck. It’s not me.’
‘Yes, Jonathan, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’ve been out now a couple of weeks, is that right?’
‘So.’
‘And you come to a kip like Cross Beg to hide away from the world. Where you thought no one would know you. Where you could live happily ever after. What were you thinking?’
‘You can’t believe how much easier it’s made my life.’
‘Oh I can imagine. It’s made your life a whole lot easier. Good for you. By the way, you go out much?’
‘Jesus, am I ever going to be left in peace?’
‘Probably not. Maybe you should have stayed in Dublin.’
‘Believe me, if I could…’
‘… You would. So why didn’t you?’
‘I hate you people. So callous.’
‘You dying, Jonathan, is that it? You look like crap.’
Tiery looked into Beck’s eyes for the first time, his expression one of sadness, but defiance mixed in there too.
‘You are, aren’t you? You’re dying?’ Beck said.
‘Happy now? Stage four bowel cancer, had all the treatment and its spread everywhere now. So yes, I am fucking dying.’
Beck thought: good, but we’re wasting our time here.
Tiery suddenly jerked his head to one side. ‘Hey, what the fuck are you doing?’
Beck walked to the bed and pulled back a corner of the flimsy duvet. Underneath was a laptop, an image frozen on its screen, of a woman, spread-eagled by her wrists and legs, tied to something out of camera shot, a plastic ball in her mouth, a man behind her, holding a long cylinder type object in one hand. Tiery moved from the window towards the computer. Beck blocked his way.
‘Play it,’ Beck told Claire. ‘See what it’s about. Anything illegal on there and we have him.’
‘It’s a DVD,’ Tiery said. ‘See for yourself. An over-eighteen. There’s nothing illegal about it.’
‘You got anything else in here?’ Beck asked. Then, to Claire. ‘Check out the DVD.’
Claire crossed the room and opened the computer drive and took out the disc, peered at it, then tossed it onto the bed. ‘“Exclusive Fetish Series Three. Carla Goes Extreme.” Over-18s.’
‘I have nothing else,’ Tiery said, his tone sad, like someone who’d had his toy taken away.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Beck replied. ‘Mind if we have a look?’
Tiery’s vocal pitch dipped. He said, ‘Don’t you need a warrant?’
‘Correct,’ Beck replied. ‘I do. But not if you invite me in to have a look around. The only reason you wouldn’t invite me in to have a look around is because you might have something to hide. And in that case, I’d have to apply for a warrant. At this hour…’ He checked his watch, ‘… hhmm, it’s getting late, at this hour, that’d take a little time. I’d have to leave someone here, to make sure you didn’t destroy any possible evidence, you know, while I went for the warrant. And before you ask, Jonathan, yes, I can do that.’
Tiery shoulders slumped. He walked over to the bed and sat down, cradling his head in his hands. ‘I’ve stage four cancer. It’s spreading into my liver and spine. I just, look at those things sometimes, that’s all.’ He turned his eyes upward to Beck, demeanour now one of sadness and pleading. ‘Couldn’t you just leave me in peace? To die? That’s all I ask.’
Beck, who had been trying to operate inside Garda Mission Statement guidelines, really trying to do the right thing, to show respect and tolerance and all that, tossed them to one side now.
‘You mean like the little girl in the park, the one you took behind the bushes, you miserable bastard. Why couldn’t you leave her in peace? You sick pervert. You sick pervert! I’d love to get a sharp blade, hang you upside down, peel your skin from your body and leave you in a sewer. And even that, even that, would be too fucking good for you.’
Beck was shaking. The images were still there. Of his own abuse. They would always be there. Even if he had made sure he would never be able to see them. Because he’d stored them in an iron vault deep within himself. A place where he did not go. Where he never would go. Where he never could go.
He wanted to kill Tiery. Knew he was capable of it, at this moment. And not only that, he would relish it.
He felt Claire’s hand on his shoulder. She whispered, ‘Steady Beck, don’t let him get to you.’
Tiery spotted it, and it excited him. ‘Why don’t you listen to Miss Bulldyke there? What’s your name by the way? We weren’t introduced.’
Tiery grinned, exposing small, crooked, teeth. It was then Beck noticed his hands in his pockets, mooching around. He was feeling himself.
‘Tell me Bulldyke, what’s it like? Do you wear a strap-on?’
In one fluid motion, Beck took a stride and clamped one arm around Tiery’s neck, hoisted him up and smashed him against the wall. The wall, just a partition, quivered, making a hollow sound. Claire made a move to follow him, but stopped. She was uncomfortable. This was an assault, the same as all those assaults she’d witnessed down through the years, whether in pubs, outside on the street, in the living rooms of family homes, big, small, rich or poor, it made no difference. Except now it was a guardian of the peace who was being the aggressor.
For now, she said nothing.
Beck squeezed, the sleeve of his jacket acting like a dampener, stopping Tiery’s skin from bruising. Tiery’s eyes went so wide they looked like they would explode. His breathing sounded like air through a straw in an empty glass. His hands came up and pawed at Beck. Beck relaxed his grip.
‘Wha’ya got, Tiery? Wha’ya got?’
‘Please… you’ll kill me… please… I have cancer…’
‘Good. I hope you die screaming, you deserve it, you prick.’
‘Please… please… under the sink, in the press under the sink… ’
Beck slowly relaxed his grip, finally took his arm away.
Smiling, he said, ‘Why didn’t you say so in the beginning?’
Claire watched Beck. What made it worse was that Beck seemed totally relaxed about it. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He’d done this before. He looked almost… she searched for a word, satisfied.
‘Have a look under there,’ he said to her, nodding towards the sink.
Claire stepped over, got down onto both knees. She opened the press door and maneuvered a torch from her belt with her free hand. She fumbled about, lay down on her belly, and wiggled in under the sink up to her shoulders. Grunting noises, what sounded like skittles falling over, and she came wiggling back out. In her hand was a sheet of paper.
‘There’s about six of these in here, I just grabbed the first one I saw.’ She stood. It was a glossy A4.
She looked at it, went ‘Whoa,’ and turned the sheet over for Beck to see. On it was printed images no normal person should ever want to see.
Claire took her handcuffs from her belt and said, ‘Place your arms out straight in front of you and your wrists together. I’m arresting you, Jonathan Tiery, for the possession of child pornography…’
It took an hour to process Tiery back at the station. He did not dispute the charges. Beck warned him that if he did, he would crush his balls in a nut cracker. Tiery believed him. By lunch time, a car was taking him back to Arbour Hill prison in Dublin, the prison where the majority of sex offenders in the country were housed.
Twenty-One
The news had travelled quickly. As bad news always does.
And those people who had grudges and resentments and normally stayed away from any community activity, set aside their grudges and resentments. And those who were busy, or feigned b
eing busy, they made time. And those who were lazy, found the energy. Rich and poor. Small fish in a small pond. Big fish in a small pond. They all swam together now.
Because it didn’t matter.
Not now.
Because there was a baby missing. That transcended everything. No one, not even the most cantankerous, bitter or introverted individual in Cross Beg or its hinterland could ignore that. And they didn’t.
Over 200 people had assembled in the general area of Kelly’s Forge, trailing back along the narrow roadway and gathering on the far sides of gates into fields. The local meals-on-wheels had already assembled a refreshment station: two trestle tables piled with sandwiches and urns of tea and coffee. It was a coming together, a common raw bond of the most basic form, a search for a child, one of their own, the baby named Róisín.
Crabby slowed as he passed the turn off for Kelly’s Forge. On either side of the hard shoulder, along the main road, cars and pick-ups were parked bumper to bumper. People were heading down to the Forge, some carrying long beating sticks, some in groups, some on their own. Subconsciously he took a hand from the steering wheel and ran it over the fabric of his Italian cotton shirt. The wound was sensitive to the touch, but already beginning to scab over. He took his hand away again, thinking. How did his wife know he’d been there? Yesterday. How did she know? The sat nav pinged once. Crabby glanced at it. And then it pinged again. He cursed, reached out and turned the tracker off. He had just found out.
Twenty-Two
Sergeant Connor had been waiting over half an hour already, sitting on a hard wooden chair in the hallway at the back of Crabby’s supermarket. He drummed his fingers on his leg and glanced at his watch again. Opposite were three red painted wooden doors. On the first was stuck a piece of paper with a strip of Sellotape across each corner, the block handwriting on it: ‘Toilets for customer use only. Please ask for key at front desk. Leave as you find. Thank you.’
In other words, go do it somewhere else.
Connor was sitting opposite the last door. There was a sign on that too, a thin metal stripe on a wooden block screwed into the door panel, the word ‘Office’ in black across it. He looked at the door, then got up and massaged his arse cheeks with the thumb of each hand, looked down the hallway and walked out into the main body of the supermarket. To his right were banks of freezers, to his left the butcher’s counter. Other aisles stretched ahead. He detected a smell, a mixture of freshly baked bread and cooked meat, the result a chalky aroma that reminded him of wood shavings.
He saw Crabby ahead now, coming in through the main doors. Behind him his wife. The sergeant could not remember ever having seen them both together. Crabby was without his usual flourish, his shoulders were drooped, head hung down between his shoulders. Not as normal, like he was master of the universe, head held high, rotating slowly, almost in a full circle, an owl, taking everything in. His walk today was little more than a shuffle. His wife waddled behind him like a duck minder.
‘Mr Crabby,’ Connor said as he approached.
The man did not acknowledge him.
‘Are you deaf,’ his wife snapped. ‘Someone’s talking to you.’
‘Mr Crabby,’ the sergeant said, louder this time. ‘CCTV. Someone spoke with you earlier in connection with it.’
Crabby stopped.
‘Yes. What is it?’ He seemed not to have heard a word the sergeant had said. He finally looked up and took in Connor. Immediately, his expression changed. He forced a smile, displaying those unnaturally white teeth of his, like he’d just had them spray-painted. His eyes, however, couldn’t hide it. To the sergeant’s practised gaze, the man looked petrified.
Connor introduced himself.
‘I’d like to see your CCTV, Mr Crabby. Is that okay with you?’
There was a hesitation, fleeting. But a hesitation nonetheless.
‘Of course that’s okay,’ Mrs Crabby said before he could answer. ‘You don’t have to ask him.’
‘Um, of course,’ Crabby said. ‘In my office. Follow me.’
‘His office! Ha!’ his wife muttered.
He took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door marked ‘Office’ and pushed it open, turned on the lights. Connor saw now it was really a storeroom with a desk and a couple of chairs in it amidst stacks of kitchen and toilet paper, boxes of baked beans and dog food.
‘Let me just set this up,’ Crabby said, moving behind his desk and sitting down. He indicated a chair in front and the sergeant sat down.
‘This place is a mess,’ his wife said. ‘I can see I need to start involving myself more in the running of my father’s business. Yes indeed.’
Crabby began pressing keys, turning his back to his wife. He picked up the desk phone, pressed a button.
‘Would you like a tea, coffee, sergeant?’
‘Tea. Coffee. At a time like this,’ his wife said, screwing her eyes, and looking heavenward.
The sergeant nodded though. ‘A coffee wouldn’t go amiss. Thank you. And if we could start with the exterior cameras first.’
Crabby nodded quickly. His wife came and stood by the desk, making no attempt to sit, the wonky smile back on her face, her eyes hooded, watching.
‘Louise,’ Crabby said into the phone. ‘Bring in two coffees. And don’t forget some biscuits.’ He was about to hang up. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I don’t know, I…’
‘You don’t know what?’ his wife demanded. ‘I have a mouth on me too you know. She’s asking if I want something as well, isn’t she? Tea, for God’s sake.’
‘Two coffees and one tea,’ Crabby said and hung up the phone.
When the tea and coffee had been drunk, and a couple of biscuits eaten, still Crabby showed no sign of showing the CCTV to Sergeant Connor.
‘I need to get started, Mr Crabby. If you don’t mind.’
‘You want me to help? I could help you look through it. Maybe spot something that you miss.’
‘I’ll do this on my own, thanks, I’ve worked CCTV systems before.’
Mrs Crabby folded her arms, her green eyes like a lizard’s, watching. She said nothing.
Crabby pushed back his chair and stood.
‘I’ll leave you to it then. If you want to come around this side. I have it set up for you.’
Sergeant Connor pushed his notebook and pen to the other side of the desk and stood. He went around and sat in the chair vacated by Crabby.
‘Thank you. I’ll take it from here.’
‘If you need me, I’ll be somewhere about on the shop floor.’
‘So important, aren’t you?’ his wife mumbled to him as he passed by.
He went to the door and opened it, hesitated, then walked out, the door swinging shut behind him. Still, Mrs Crabby stood there.
The sergeant glanced at her.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I’m going nowhere.’
‘Then I’ll download this footage and take it back with me to the station. Which will cause a delay. Because I’d prefer to watch it here. On my own. If that’s okay by you, Mrs Crabby? I need to be sure there isn’t the potential for a security breach by having a civilian third party viewing it at the same time, you see. Do you understand?’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
‘I don’t need distractions.’
‘I don’t like your tone. This is my property. I pay quite substantial taxes. Taxes which help pay your wages. And commercial property rates too. I have every right to stay here if I want to.’
The sergeant pursed his lips. ‘Fine,’ placing his hands onto the desk, about to stand.
Mrs Crabby appeared uncertain by his muted response.
‘Mm…’ she said, but her voice trailed off.
He started to rise.
‘Fine. Fine,’ she said and crossed to the door, banging it shut behind her.
Sergeant Connor pulled his chair closer to the desk. He had memorised the registration number of the blue Citroen Picasso. Or, to be precise, the cobalt blue Citroen
Picasso. There were three camera icons in the top right corner of the computer. He pressed on the middle one. The screen became a still shot of the supermarket car park. All he had to do was regulate the speed and press play. He set the footage to play from 14.00 hours the previous day, increasing the speed to one and a half times real time.
He pressed play.
Twenty-Three
The sliding window to the public office was open, a welcome breeze blowing in through the open front doors of the station and into the operation’s room. Beck sat alongside Claire at her desk, which was directly next to a window. Already Claire had lowered the blind in an attempt to keep the glaring sunlight out. But the flimsy white material that looked like a piece of ship’s rigging did little to block it. Indeed, it seemed to radiate the heat itself. Beck could see small beads of sweat forming along the hairline of her forehead. She had reapplied make-up, and badly.
He realised he was staring. She glanced at him, absentmindedly touched the old wrought iron radiator next to her. She pulled her hand back, shaking it.
‘The bloody thing is boiling. Can you believe it? Central heating’s on. On a day like this. What a waste of tax payers’ money. Typical public service.’
‘Samantha was never in trouble herself,’ Beck said, not paying attention, nodding to the computer screen. ‘Her brother, Mikey, he had a few run-ins alright. About ten years ago. A spate of five incidents to be precise, one after the other. Public order, drink-related stuff. It was enough to make him head for a new life in Australia, I suppose. You know, people were sent there for a lot less one time. Stealing a head of cabbage, for instance, during the famine, or Travelyan’s corn. Think of it, generations of people are now Aussies because someone, way back, stole a head of cabbage… mum Colette, there’s nothing on her either.’
The Child Before Page 6