Burrows placed the report at the bottom of the pile of papers in front of him. He looked at his two colleagues. “From the evidence collected in DePRec and this family contribution we are getting a clearer profile of our victim. With the exception of Bell and Doyle, who both found her charming, Helen Breen was universally disliked.” He referred to the notes he had gathered on the victim profile and continued. “Breen’s family describes a self-centred, emotionless and manipulative person who delighted in scoring points over others. Her brothers both independently used the term sociopath to describe her. They had evidently gone into researching her characteristics in some detail. Her mother claims the pattern was originally begun in the relationship with her father and became exaggerated and deeply entrenched after his death. From then on, her desire to acquire and maintain power over others is what motivated her.” He paused to sip from the mug in front of him. “Her mother maintains that Helen’s behaviour was irritating and sometimes shocking, but it never became an issue that caused ripples at school or prompted psychiatric testing. Helen Breen managed perceptions of herself as carefully as she did everything else and succeeded in remaining just beyond categorical disapproval. She was a smart operator even at an early age.” He glanced at his colleagues to confirm they were still on board with his theorising and continued. “Calculating and executing the steps in a power game is evidently where her satisfaction came from. In the context of DePRec, it may have been about avoiding doing aspects of her own work by getting others to stand in for her – if possible without any payment. Or again about irritating an academic competitor, like Wilson, to the extent that the rival’s erratic behaviour meant that she became the more desirable candidate for promotion.”
Paton and McVeigh were making moderate signs of agreement and Burrows persisted in presenting his profile.
“I think we can deduce that she had groomed Liam Doyle to use for her own ends. It’s not quite clear what the full extent of her plan for him was but it definitely included fetching and carrying and cleaning up after her.” Burrows facial expression showed contempt for Breen and a certain sympathy for the young student rep. “He was her ardent advocate amongst the student body and Professor Bell heard that praise as confirmation of his own conviction of her great worth. She had positioned her supporters carefully to reinforce her desired perception of herself.”
He could see from his colleagues’ body language that he was becoming too long-winded and tried to summarise what remained in his notes.
“I know that we will work through all these witnesses systematically but I think it’s worth articulating this personality type at the outset and we can test it against the rest of the evidence. Sandra’s work with the family has been vital in establishing a pattern that I think was also a core feature of her work life.”
Caroline had been absorbing all this input with concentration. “Sociopaths don’t really endear themselves to many people, do they? They are the classic target for murder, if we can say that such a thing exists.”
McVeigh held his had proprietorially on the pile of papers in front of him and said, “My trip to Hillsborough links very closely to what Bill has said, in terms of the victim profile. I don’t know if you want to hear that now or if you want to go through the latest interviews first.”
“Let’s take today’s evidence one step at a time,” said Caroline. “We’ll take the interviews chronologically and then we’ll look at your findings from the victim’s home place, Ian. There will inevitably be some toing and froing but we’ll try to keep it straightforward and crucially we’ll try not to lose any detail.” Her expression sought assent for the plan and the men nodded agreement. They were used to this sifting and analyzing and keen to get on with it.
“OK!” began Burrows, trying to maintain the energy in the room. “Yesterday evening I had a useful meeting with Matt Gillespie, one of the local managers of HiSecurity Services. He had done his homework well and had a file ready for me. You have copies before you and I’ll talk us through the important detail.” He flourished the file to show the section he was referring to. “He had taken all the DI’s requests on board and provided what answers there were. As we deduced the passkey system is far from foolproof. If somebody has a pass card belonging to another member of staff then they can make it appear that someone has swiped out when in fact they were not even present. It is possible therefore that our killer took Helen Breen’s passkey, swiped her out at nine thirty-six on Thursday 19th December, leaving the body in the office to be dealt with later that evening. I will come back to that.” He turned a page and continued. “In terms of security, there is a desk presence in each building and some strategically placed cameras that record movement and store the digital images in a cyber archive for a full year. All that material has been made available to us and I have had someone checking through images from the Thursday evening at six until six on the Friday evening. Gillespie has prepared lists of staff who had checked in and out on those days and they concur with what individual people told us about their movements. So… there is no sign of Bell on the premises after six o’clock on Thursday evening but he is clearly there all day on the Friday. So too, Wilson’s claim to leave at seven thirty and Hartnett’s nine thirty exit are not contradicted. Helen Breen is visible in footage on a number of occasions between six and seven forty-five and then not seen thereafter when we can assume she is in her office. There was nothing remarkable in the passkey detail from Maritime Studies on any of those days. All that suggests that the murder, the clean-up and the relocation of the body to Marine Biology all took place within the expected routines of the college.” He paused for a mouthful of coffee.
“Meaning what exactly, Bill?” Paton queried.
“By that I mean that the actions used by the murderer fitted in with expected college activity. Nothing took place that raised any suspicions or attracted undue attention. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.”
She nodded and signalled for him to proceed.
“Cleaning staff, who are part of a separate contract to security, arrive in and around nine forty-five after the building is cleared of evening classes. They clean first in the library building and then move to the Maritime Studies building. They are mostly part-time, precarious migrant workers who change from day to day and are managed by one person who allocates people to each floor and leaves them to it.”
“OK,” interrupted Paton. “Lots of scope for messing with the system.”
“Exactly,” agreed Burrows. “And given this was the last night of term there was even greater laxity than usual in the oversight of what was happening on each floor.”
Paton and McVeigh were nodding in understanding now as it became clear what had potentially taken place.
“One of the guards was away from his desk dealing with some students outside the building. They had been celebrating the end of term a little boisterously and it is possible he missed the arrival of some additional personnel but nothing out of the ordinary shows up on the video footage. By ten forty-five when the cleaners move to the second building all was as normal.” Here Burrows smiled sardonically and nodded to emphasise his point. “This is how easy it was. As it was the end of term there was some movement of large containers of materials for shredding. This process takes place in the basement of Maritime Studies and unfortunately there are no security cameras there aside from the foyer where nothing untoward showed up. It is entirely likely that Helen Breen’s body was wrapped and placed in a shredding bin or maybe even a cleaning cart for movement to Maritime Studies.” Again he indicated the report from Gillespie. “Based on the video footage, her office was cleaned by two men wearing baseball caps and standard cleaner outfits, who attracted no attention from their peers. They are all used to paying no heed to anything outside their own tasks. There are no facial shots of these two mystery men.” He closed the file he was holding, indicating that he was almost finished. “What we can say is that a great deal of planning and organisation wen
t into the office-cleaning operation and movement of the body. Although the actual murder appears to have been somewhat risky in terms of taking place while work in DePRec was ongoing, the subsequent operation to cover up the crime, or at least delay discovery, was calculated and meticulously carried out.”
Paton and McVeigh both wore puzzled expressions as they contemplated what Burrows said.
“So we may not be looking at a single perpetrator here,” Paton mused. “Or at least a killer equipped with their own cleaners and removal persons. How very organised! A murderer with staff indeed! We’ll have to think through the relationships between staff members for signs of a potential double act – or even a group effort.”
They all gave this new information some silent consideration and then set it aside until they were up to date with the rest of the data.
“Good work, Bill,” said Paton. “Do you want to fill us in on the final revelation from the security manager?”
“Well, as you both now know, Gillespie had located some interesting footage for us on the Friday morning. This showed Liam Doyle collecting a message from the post room, going to the underground car park and driving Helen Breen’s car from the building directly to her home in Hillsborough. Needless to say, DI Paton and I followed up on this matter with Mr Doyle in our subsequent interviews with him this morning and this afternoon.”
“Let’s get Walsh, Bell and Hartnett out of the way now, Bill,” said Paton, “and then we can home in on the more detailed second interviews and Ian’s findings from the leafy retreat of Hillsborough. I am not suggesting for one moment that we relax our gaze on these three just yet but I know we have more concentrated findings from Wilson and Doyle and from the search of Breen’s and Doyle’s home.”
“Well …” Burrows smiled kindly, “Mrs Walsh is a formidable woman but I’d not stake any money on her being a killer. I’d say she is made of finer stuff than that. She is however a shrewd observer of all that happens in DePRec. She has audio and paper records of all meetings and she operates a form of confessional in her office where all members of teaching staff collect paper registers, laptops for lecture presentations and other such things. She hears a lot of day-to-day departmental chatter and her perspective is invaluable in relation to operational routines and interpersonal staff relations.” He shuffled his papers and unearthed notes of Mairéad’s interview. “Mrs Walsh did not like Helen Breen. She found her devoid of emotion, self-interested and manipulative. She thought Breen had an unjustified high opinion of herself and cared about no-one. In short, her views concurred with those of Breen’s family and other colleagues.” He reached for a chocolate biscuit and unwrapped it as he spoke. “Walsh was of the opinion that Breen spent a lot of energy ensuring that Jackson Bell held her in high regard and Mairéad was shocked that she had duped Bell so effectively. Breen had a similar strategy in relation to Janet Hartnett apparently and Mairéad Walsh had witnessed some of her overtures to the new professor.” He ate some of the chocolate off the biscuit in his hand. “Mrs Walsh didn’t hold back on her negative view of Helen Breen. She admitted that she, Mrs Walsh, was a close friend of Ralph Wilson and that she was obviously biased against Breen because of that. She felt that in her experience of working with academics, Breen’s murder was unlikely to be a work matter. She had witnessed numerous academic disputes but they almost never progressed beyond verbal sparring. I wondered if she was trying to deflect attention from Wilson in that regard.”
“Good point, Bill. What about Bell and Hartnett?” Paton was keen to keep the meeting moving forward but was nonetheless attentive to the details.
“Bell and Hartnett are both interesting. Bell because he was such a devotee of Breen despite others being convinced that she was a charlatan. Breen obviously devoted a lot of attention to keeping Bell believing in her worth. He said she showed more interest in departmental matters than all the other staff put together. He was unfaltering in his certainty of her loyalty to him personally and to DePRec as well. When I said others didn’t share that view he swiftly put that down to jealousy because of her outstanding academic prowess making others feel inadequate. His confidence in Breen seemed utterly unshakeable. He was sure she would have become the next professor and indeed spoke of her as his obvious successor.”
“And on the actual night of Breen’s death?” Paton prompted.
“He said that he phoned her after eight thirty to make sure that nothing untoward had arisen while she was covering his evening duty. She assured him that all was well. He used his mobile phone so we can check his side of the story anyway. Short of his having discovered some great betrayal, it’s difficult to see any motive he might have for wanting Breen out of the way. We all saw his dismay the night the remains were found. He would have to be quite the performer to have faked all that and his demeanour is in fact quite devoid of any dramatic content. He comes from a very strict religious background and I can’t see him convincingly behaving in such a duplicitous way.”
“And Janet Hartnett? Anything of interest there?” Paton pressed forward.
Bill thought before answering. “She is a relative newcomer and slightly removed from the day-to-day DePRec business by having a responsibility that extends across all the social sciences. She and Breen were at the same school but she is several years older and didn’t make much of any previous friendship. She did find that Breen was being friendly towards her since she had arrived in the college but didn’t attach much weight to that either. I wasn’t sure that she was all that relevant to the inquiry but I also wasn’t convinced that I had got to the bottom of her – so to speak.” His expression assumed an element of aversion to the topic. “Her area of academic interest is the caring professions so she makes great eye contact.” He laughed at his own dubious opinion of counsellors and the like. “She says all the right things but there’s a hollow ring to it. And she was on the premises at the time we think the murder took place but was home in Crawfordsburn just over an hour later so that doesn’t add up really. I think we keep her in our sights until she merits being crossed off.”
“Thanks, Bill, for all that,” said Paton. “We are still only on the second full day of inquiry and we have made good progress. We know where and when and how Helen Breen was murdered. We know how the body was moved and we have had second conversations with some people who emerged as potentially of interest. OK. Let’s look at Ralph Wilson now. Maybe I can give some views on that one and as we have all interviewed him at least once we can compare impressions. Dr Wilson struck me this afternoon as a man who has made a supreme effort to bring his thoughts and feelings about his deceased colleague under control. As we know, the inside of a police station has that effect of introducing a good dose of reality into even the most unreasonable characters.”
Her colleagues responded with knowing nods and murmurs of affirmation.
“I interviewed a much more docile character today than you both met yesterday. I’m sure you noticed that when you set him free later in the afternoon, Bill.”
Burrows nodded in agreement.
“The bluster was extinguished,” she said, “and I think he has moved from the habit of stating his views with undiluted passion to a more diplomatic version of himself. I left him to stew for quite some time and that too may have activated his more rational side.” She looked around at Burrows and McVeigh to see how they were buying this new reading of Ralph Wilson and continued with some supporting evidence. “I accept that Wilson had an extremely acrimonious relationship with Breen but that has been the case for a considerable period of time and he has never attacked her, other than verbally and always in an effort to justify his ideological standpoint.” She paused for possible dissent and when none came continued. “Might the approach of the professorial competition have pushed him over the line into violence? I saw nothing this afternoon to suggest that was the case. I don’t think he really cares about promotion. His wife has recently left him and he is desolate about that and the prospect of being alone. He has
a friendship – perhaps a little more than that – with Mairéad Walsh, but that is not going to ease his lonely nights in any permanent kind of way. He is passionate rather than violent, I think. He wasn’t in college late on the Thursday evening, having left and gone home where he remembers making something to eat and having a lengthy conversation by Skype with his ex – Angela. That can be easily verified.” She passed a phone number to McVeigh who added it to his ‘to do’ list for later that evening. “We might argue that he had means and motive but opportunity appears to be missing.”
Burrows was nodding thoughtfully. “I did think that he was a little too obvious in expressing his hatred of Breen but it was worth pushing a bit harder to see where it took us. He is an old school, trade-union type who is used to making fiery proclamations about things but more of a serial demonstrator than a violent killer. Mairéad Walsh was talking this morning about how academics like to talk about things and enjoy grandstanding when they can get an audience. Wilson fits that bill well but could he be as well organised and proactive as our killer? Perhaps not. What do you think, Ian?”
McVeigh was ever practical. “I will check out the timing of the Skype call. It will be in his records and, if the ex saw him in his house at that time, then he’s in the clear … unless he employed someone to do it for him.” He smiled wryly and Burrows threw a tightly folded chocolate wrapper at him.
“So … let’s see what we have on Mr Liam Doyle,” said Paton. “Bill, do you want to take this one as you have interviewed him twice and visited his home?” She sat back in full-on listening mode.
Murder In The Academy : A chilling murder mystery set in Belfast (Alice Fox Murder Mysteries Book 1) Page 18
