Murder at the Holiday Home

by David Pearson

  “What’s bothering you about it?”

  “McCutcheon seems to have more money and assets than a pound shop could reasonably deliver. I know he gets his stock dirt cheap, but still – there’s a limited market for that stuff and Westport only has so many customers. So, I think there may be something else going on.”

  “OK. Is there any evidence to suggest what it might be?”

  “No, no there isn’t. Call it intuition or whatever you like, that’s why we’ll have to be very discreet. I don’t want McCutcheon to know we are investigating him. You’ll need a bit of time off if this is going to work. I’ll square that with Séan for you. Are you in?” Lyons asked.

  “I am to be sure. It’ll be a bit of a diversion from shop-lifting and speeding tickets,” he said, smiling.

  “Good man. Don’t be too obvious with your questioning if you do manage to hit it off with one of the girls. Play it cool.”

  “You can count on me, Inspector. Don’t worry. If there’s anything going on, I’ll find out what it is. And thanks for the opportunity.”

  “Think of it as making amends for doing nixers, Peadar. I’m sure you’ve told McCutcheon that all that’s finished with?”

  “Oh, I have, of course. There wasn’t much in it anyway, to be honest, just a few quid now and then when something went wrong up at the Glen. I put him on to another friend of mine, not in the Guards. I told him with summer coming on I’d be too busy to keep it up, and he didn’t question it.”

  “Good. Right, well that’s it. Let me know how you get on. I’ll text you my mobile number – oh, and not a word to anyone about this, and you report back to me and me only. Understood?”

  “Yes, no problem.”

  Lyons got up to leave, and Tobin stood up too.

  “Thanks for the coffee. Talk soon,” Lyons said.

  As she drove back to the city, she hoped that this little side-show wouldn’t backfire on her.

  * * *

  When Lyons returned to the station, Eamon Flynn knocked on her door.

  “Come in, Eamon. What’s up?”

  “I think we may have had a bit of luck, boss. I was down on Buttermilk Walk earlier, looking for more CCTV cameras, as you suggested. As I was looking around, a man came out of one of the buildings and we got chatting. He was asking me what all the fuss was about, so I gave him some brief details. He had a nice new black Mercedes parked at the side of the road, and when I asked him about CCTV on the street, he told me that his car had a dash-cam that recorded all the time if there was any movement near the car. He had installed it after his previous Mercedes had been vandalised in the very same spot.”

  “Interesting. Was it any use?”

  “Yes, it was. He gave us the little memory card out of it and I brought it back to John. It had recorded what looks like our man coming towards the car, and getting into an old Nissan Micra parked a few places in front of the Merc,” Flynn said.

  “Nice one. Any useable facial shots? Did we get the number of the Micra?” Lyons said, now excited by this development.

  “We got quite a good facial picture. John did a bit of work on it to enhance the definition, and he’s given a print of it to Inspector Janssen. The camera didn’t capture the reg number of the Micra though. Oh, and there’s more.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sinéad did some more work on the bullet and shell casing we found at the scene. It appears that the gun used is an old Russian military service revolver – probably a Makarov IZH-70 or 71. It may have a built-in suppressor to make it a bit quieter. Just the job if you want to bump off someone in an occupied building.”

  “Excellent. So, now we have identified the weapon; we have a mug shot of Matis’ killer; we have his DNA; how hard can it be to find the bugger? I want you to get Liam, Mary and Sally out and about with the photo of this guy’s face. Get them to go around all the places where the eastern Europeans congregate and make it clear that this is a serious business. We might be able to get someone to talk. Get them to lay it on thick – you know the drill – deportation, incarceration – put the frighteners on and let’s see what shakes loose. Tell them to hint at a reward for information too, but not to be specific,” Lyons said.

  “Right, boss, nothing like a bit of carrot and stick! I’ll see to it.”

  Lyons made her way back out to the open plan where Garda John O’Connor and Inspector Luuk Janssen were huddled over a PC screen. She walked up behind them for a look, but was surprised to find that the text on the PC was in a language she didn’t recognise.

  “What’s up, John?” she said.

  “Inspector Janssen is consulting an overseas database that he has access to, to see if he can identify our mystery man from Buttermilk Walk.”

  “Cool. Any luck Inspector?”

  “Give me another half hour or so and I think I will have some information,” he said not lifting his eyes from the screen.

  “OK. We’ll have a meeting then with the whole team.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The meeting started at five o’clock. The team that had been sent out around the city were back. Lyons asked for an update from Sally Fahy to kick things off.

  “Nothing, boss. I’m sure one or two of them recognised the man in the photo, but no one was saying anything. They’re scared,” Fahy said.

  “How do you know they recognised the guy?” Flynn said.

  “Just the way they looked at the pic and then avoided eye contact with me – you get to know the signs.”

  Janssen was just finishing up at O’Connor’s PC, and he came across to take his seat and join the rest of them.

  “Inspector, I think I may have something.”

  “Yes, Inspector, go ahead,” Lyons said.

  “I took the photo from the man’s dash camera, and sent it to colleagues in Utrecht who used it to search some databases. They came up with a hit for a man with several identities, and who is known to be a very serious criminal.”

  “Do you have a name, Luuk?” Lyons asked.

  “Many names I’m afraid. He appears to have a number of passports, but he often travels under the name of Dieter Essig which may actually be his name, we don’t know for sure. He has eluded capture for a number of years now, even though there are many warrants out for his arrest, so he is extremely clever.”

  “Do we have a better photograph from your colleagues, Luuk?” Flynn said.

  “We have a number, because he changes his appearance from time to time. Sometimes he has blonde hair, sometimes dark. Sometimes clean shaven, sometimes with a beard. But at present, he is fair and clean shaven according to the car picture.”

  “Right, thanks Luuk, that’s terrific. Eamon, we need to get moving on this new information immediately. Circulate the best photo from the ones we now have, and alert all the ports and airports. Get back to the eastern European community too and put some serious pressure on. Let’s see if we can flush him out. Oh, and get uniform to handbill the town too. I’ll get Séan to do the same in Clifden, and we can get Westport on the job as well. Sally, can we do anything about his car?”

  “We can try, boss, but without a reg number, it’s not going to be easy. There are hundreds of those Micras in Galway, but I can put the word out, and see if we can get anything.”

  The meeting broke up, with members of the team going about their assigned tasks. Lyons withdrew to her office for some thinking time. Janssen looked in, but saw that she was in no mood to be disturbed, so he went back to his hotel. But he wasn’t contemplating a quiet night in watching TV. He had other ideas.

  Lyons sketched a sort of mind-map out on her jotter. But try as she would, she couldn’t make sense of it. She couldn’t connect the events up in any sort of coherent fashion, at least not in a way that would allow the investigation to progress. She wasn’t happy, and not for the first time, she questioned her own ability to bring this one in. Feeling thoroughly fed up, she packed up her things, logged out of the PC and left for home.

  * * *
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  Luuk Janssen got back to the hotel just before 6 p.m. and went to his room. He ordered some food and two bottles of Heineken from room service, and changed into some scruffy jeans and a well-worn shirt while he was waiting for it to arrive. When he had eaten, he left the tray outside his room and went down to reception. Here he made some enquiries, and noted down a few bits of information the very helpful man at the desk was only too willing to impart. Then he set off into the cool evening air.

  When he arrived at the first place the hotel clerk had given him, it was almost empty. One or two men sat at the bar with pints of Guinness in front of them, but they appeared to be locals, as far as Janssen could determine from their conversation. He ordered a sparkling water and sat up at the bar, keen to engage the bartender in conversation.

  His further enquiries yielded some more names of pubs in the seedier side of town, and two of them matched ones he had been given at the hotel. He got directions, and left half the water behind, leaving the barman perplexed.

  The next establishment was much busier. Again, he ordered fizzy water, and found a seat close to a group of noisy young men who were definitely not local. He eased his way into conversation with the group, and before long it was as if they had been buddies for ever. He bought a round of drinks for them, and after half an hour, ventured that he was interested in buying a cheap laptop computer, if any of them knew how that might be arranged. He made it clear that he wasn’t too fussy about the provenance of the item, as long as it was working, and was at the right price. Although the group were a little guarded at this turn in the conversation, another round of drinks soon began to erode their inhibitions, and one of them offered to make a phone call. The young man got up and went outside, returning a few minutes later.

  “I think we may have it for you. A man will come. Have you cash ready?” he said to Janssen.

  “Yes, no problem. Thank you. If it goes well, I’ll give you €20 for your trouble,” Jansen said, which seemed to please the youth who beamed at him, and lifted his glass by way of a salute.

  Janssen kept the group talking until some minutes later Dieter Essig entered the bar with a small grey laptop computer tucked under his arm.

  “Ah, come in Walter, join us, have a drink,” one of the young men said to the new arrival. Janssen recognised one of Dieter’s aliases.

  Essig sat down, and a bottle of beer appeared in front of him. He took a generous swig, and then asked, “Who is buying my PC?” in a pronounced accent.

  Janssen told him that he was his customer, and Essig handed the laptop to him. Janssen opened it and turned it on, but the screen only lit up for a moment and then went blank.

  “Is it working?” Janssen asked.

  “Yes, of course, but I have no charger. It works fine. You can get one on eBay for a few Euros,” Essig said.

  Janssen closed it again and turned it over, as if to check the condition of the underside. He glimpsed the serial number stamped into the grey plastic, and saw that the last four digits were the same as the ones he had memorised from Walsh’s notes earlier at the briefing.

  “OK, but I am taking a chance. Two hundred,” he said.

  Essig reached out to take the laptop back, “No. It is three hundred. If you don’t want it, I sell it to someone else.” He started to stand up.

  “OK, OK,” Janssen said quickly, “Jeez man, take it easy.”

  Jansen reached into his pocket and withdrew six crisp €50 notes and offered them to Essig who appeared to have relaxed a bit when he saw the money. The exchange was made, and Janssen again feigned interest in his new acquisition, without pawing it too much.

  Essig got up and said goodbye to the group, eliciting a few moans from them, and calls for him to sit down and have another drink. But a few seconds later he was out the door.

  Janssen made his excuses too, and left as soon afterwards as he could.

  Once outside, he saw the back of Dieter Essig disappearing down the alley that ran beside the pub they had been in. He followed at a safe distance. At the end of the sparsely lit lane, the road went both left and right. Essig had turned right, but when Janssen got to the junction he could see no sign of the man. He went right himself, and moved along cautiously, peering into entrances and doorways, but somehow his quarry had escaped him. Essig had simply disappeared into the night.

  Janssen retraced his steps, then he cowered down in a dark archway himself, and waited. Essig would soon emerge from wherever he was hiding, he thought. But when more than ten minutes had elapsed, he got up again and left the area, feeling terribly stupid. But still, he had the laptop, and that was important.

  When he was almost back at his hotel, he called Lyons on his mobile phone.

  Lyons was pottering about at home. She didn’t feel like cooking, so she was waiting for Hays to arrive before ordering a takeaway for them both. Just as she heard Hays’ key in the front door, her phone rang.

  Janssen gave her the details of what had transpired, and apologised for the fact that he had managed to lose Essig so easily.

  “I am usually better than that, I promise,” he said rather sheepishly.

  “We’d better come and meet you. Try not to handle the PC. Where are you now?” she said.

  “I’m just arriving back at the hotel – the Imperial.”

  “OK. Well, wait there for us, we’ll be along in about twenty minutes.”

  “What’s up?” Hays said when he heard the tail end of the conversation.

  “Our Dutchman has gone rogue and tried to solve the whole bloody thing on his own. But at least he managed to get what we believe is Geller’s PC. C’mon, I’ll explain all in the car.”

  * * *

  Peadar Tobin was quite enjoying his new role as undercover Lothario. He had called into the Eurosaver shop in Westport after leaving Lyons, and spent a good twenty minutes chatting up Rami, whom he didn’t find particularly attractive, but she seemed flattered by the attention he was giving her, and before he left the shop he had an arrangement to meet her for a drink at eight thirty after the shop had closed for the night.

  She had given him her address, which turned out to be a rather ramshackle house at the edge of town, but when she appeared in response to his ring on the bell, he was pleasantly surprised. The rather dowdy and poorly dressed shop girl he had been talking to earlier was transformed into a very pretty young woman. She had clearly washed and styled her mousy brown hair, so that it now fell in gentle waves to her shoulders, and she had put on a very subtle layer of makeup and done her eyes too. She was dressed in stylish clothes, which, although not expensive, showed off her shapely figure to good effect. Tobin was going to enjoy this!

  Pretending to be a visiting businessman, Tobin asked Rami to suggest a place they could go for a drink, and maybe something to eat, and Rami steered them both to The Fiddlers – a pub that served food late into the evening.

  Tobin spent the first hour of their date asking Rami all about herself, her family and her circumstances back home. She seemed to enjoy talking about herself, and by the time she had quaffed a third glass of white wine, it was clear that her inhibitions were evaporating. She was becoming quite flirtatious, and Tobin responded in kind. But ever mindful of his main task, he gently and unobtrusively turned the conversation to Rami’s work, and her employer.

  “So what’s McCutcheon like to work for?” he said.

  “That’s all depends,” she said, her twinkling eyes full of mischief.

  “Oh yes. How’s that?”

  “Well, if you agree to meet him after work for ‘stock-taking’, he can be quite generous, so I’ve been told.”

  “Really? Have you ever done any stock-taking with him?”

  “Not likely. He’s repulsive. Even though a girl has needs,” she said, putting her hand on Tobin’s knee under the table, “but really – there are limits.”

  “So who has been with him then? And where do they go?”

  “Ineke is his favourite. She goes with him once or twice a
week and gets some nice presents. He gave her a tiny bar of gold last month. And I think he has a place down by the Quay – a small warehouse with living rooms, Ineke says.”

  “Really? Quite an operator then. Is that the main warehouse for the shop?” Tobin said.

  “No, we have big shed round the back of shop. I don’t know what he keeps in other one. But sometimes when we get boxes of stuff from China, he takes some and says he’s going to the other store. Weird really,” Rami said.

  “Yes, indeed it is. Have you ever been to the other store?”

  “No. I just work in the shop. Anyway, can we get some food? I’m starving.”

  “Yes, of course. Order what you like – my treat,” Tobin replied.

  It was after 2 a.m. when Peadar Tobin left the rather down at heel house on the edge of Westport to drive back to Clifden, leaving Rami sound asleep.

  “I’d better not call the inspector at this hour,” he said to himself as he walked towards his car.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hays and Lyons arrived at the Imperial Hotel on Eyre Square twenty minutes later. Lyons parked the Volvo out front, and put the Garda sign in the front windscreen as she had previously. They found Janssen in the lounge with the laptop now secure in a clear plastic bag beside him on the bench seat.

  “Good evening, Superintendent, Inspector. Can I get you a drink?” Janssen said.

  “Thanks, I’d love a pint of Guinness. Maureen?” Hays said.

  “A white wine for me please, Luuk.”

  Janssen summoned the waitress and ordered their drinks.

  “Well, you’ve been busy, Luuk. Tell us what happened,” Hays said.

  Janssen explained the full circumstances of how he had come by the laptop, and then the way he had intended to follow Essig to find out where he was living, so that the Gardaí could move in and arrest him.

  “I would have called you if I had been able to determine his address, I promise. I’m sorry if I messed up.”