No Turning Back

by Sam Blake

  Delaney looked surprised. ‘I’m sure I didn’t. I would have noticed him.’

  ‘He could have been lying on the pavement at that point.’ Cathy’s tone was blunt.

  Delaney shook his head, thoughtfully, like he was trying to remember. ‘I’m sorry, I really didn’t see anything. I don’t think I would have missed him if he’d been hit and was lying there. I was tired and it was dark, but you couldn’t miss that, could you?’

  Cathy thought not.

  ‘And the next morning? When you went to work? I believe you came in for an early show?’ O’Rourke looked at him sharply.

  Delaney grimaced. ‘I wish I’d driven that way and I might have seen him, but I turned up into the village. From what Conor said, the accident was further down the road, around the bend?’

  O’Rourke nodded curtly. ‘It was. Now tell me about Lauren O’Reilly. I believe she had a job here over the summer?’

  Delaney ran his hand over his face. ‘Nice girl, bit shy for media. She ended up making the tea most of the time. She was here for about six weeks over the holidays.’

  ‘Did she make friends with anyone?’

  ‘Well, she knew Tom, they were on the same course in college. She met Conor at some event in Trinity, the opening of that new science block, I think. She was one of the student helpers. Conor got chatting to her and organised the internship.’

  ‘Did she want to work in radio?’

  ‘She must have done. Intern jobs are hard to come by in our industry. I’m not sure it was exactly what she thought it would be. Conor was great, though, kept her busy so she wasn’t in the way.’

  O’Rourke took this in, then said, ‘I believe your car is in for repairs? Can you give us the name of the garage, please? We need to examine it.’

  ‘It’s JB Motors, but why?’

  Delaney did a good job of trying to sound innocent, but his body language was telling Cathy something different. The leg thrown across his knee, the crossed arms – all closed signals that showed he was feeling uncomfortable. And he kept glancing to the right, like he was trying to remember what had happened. She’d done a whole module on body language and the behaviour of liars. She didn’t believe him for a minute. She could tell from O’Rourke’s tone that he didn’t either.

  ‘For any damage consistent with a hit-and-run.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Delaney uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his face flushed red. ‘You think I hit Tom? That’s just . . . ridiculous! I didn’t even see him. I had nothing to do with it. And what possible reason would I have for driving into him?’ He ran his hand across his chin, and then, pointing his finger at them, said slowly, ‘You’re just looking to close this case before the media get hold of it. We’re always hearing about the Guards fitting people up for stuff . . .’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘I need to speak to my lawyer.’

  Cathy kept her face impassive. Delaney’s acting skills were good, but they were wasted on her. There was definitely something he wasn’t telling them. His unconscious body language was giving her all the clues that he had something to hide.

  Chapter 33

  Sunday, 9.40 p.m.

  O’Rourke was silent as they left the building. He reached for his phone as they headed back to his car. He dialled, glancing at Cathy to make sure she was still with him as he waited for it to be answered.

  A moment later it was.

  ‘Sorry to disturb your Sunday night, Fanning, but first thing in the morning I want you to get down to JB Motors in Sallynoggin and check out Ronan Delaney’s car. He’s having it repaired. Find out what’s been done and stop them doing any more for the moment. Then come in and we’ll compare notes. Good. Thanks.’

  O’Rourke clicked off his phone. ‘Our friend Delaney wasn’t very helpful, was he?’

  ‘I sort of expected that. I think we need to keep an eye on him now, though. Have forensics come back with anything more on the vehicle involved?’

  ‘Nothing more than the paint being blue metallic – this isn’t the movies unfortunately. Analysis takes time. They need to find the manufacturer now. At least it’s not silver. Every car on the road seems to be silver these days.’

  ‘See what 007 turns up tomorrow. He’s good on cars. One of his areas of expertise.’

  ‘He has one, apart from women? You do surprise me.’

  They reached his car and O’Rourke pipped the central locking, pausing for a moment before he started the engine. The windscreen was covered in raindrops which caught the orange glow from the street lamps. With the movement of them closing the doors, several scudded down the glass, gathering others as they travelled. Cathy watched them, her thoughts with Ronan Delaney and how things connected – how one thing, an action or a statement, could have an effect on so many others. It was like the butterfly effect or ripples on a pond. O’Rourke’s voice brought her back.

  ‘France is only an hour ahead of us, isn’t it? Professor Lockharte’s friend in New York will be in his office around lunchtime our time, so if we schedule a meeting then, it’ll give us time to get the details from the French and get over to the Quinns’ for another chat. The one person who could possibly be linking all these events at the moment is Tom Quinn. He’s obviously got the money to get to the States, was there a few weeks ago—’

  Cathy interrupted him. ‘And he speaks excellent French – both Anna and his mum told me that.’

  ‘And you said the parents have a summer house in France?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cathy clicked her seat belt into place. ‘In the south somewhere, I think she said. He’d be fairly computer savvy too, especially if he was a sound engineer in his spare time. Could he be behind all this?’

  O’Rourke switched on the engine and put on his headlights. The rain had started falling in solid lines now, like rods cutting through the headlights’ beam.

  ‘I really don’t know. My God, what a lovely night. Roll on June, I need some sun.’

  O’Rourke checked his mirrors. Cathy didn’t answer. Instead she tapped her phone on her teeth; there was still something puzzling her.

  ‘So tell me how Anna Lockharte has access to someone so senior in the US security services that she can get an investigation moving this fast. What’s her story?’

  ‘Why do you think she has a story?’

  His voice was deliberately neutral, making her about a hundred times more curious. He was trying to hide something from her, she was sure of it. She knew him too well. He pulled the car into a three-point turn.

  ‘Because of the way you reacted the first time I mentioned her name.’

  He glanced at her and pulled over on the other side of the road, letting the engine idle, obviously thinking.

  Then he said, ‘This is need to know only.’

  Cathy rolled her eyes. ‘I think you can trust me.’

  He turned the engine off and swung around to face her, his face amused.

  ‘I think so.’ He hesitated. ‘So briefly, Anna Lockharte’s brother-in-law is the current US Ambassador to Moscow. He’s on a high risk list with the US agencies for many reasons.’ O’Rourke summarised the situation, pausing before he said, ‘Anna Lockharte’s computer being hacked would have the highest priority.’

  Cathy took it in. ‘That’s a fair amount to have to deal with. She seems so together.’

  ‘From what I can gather she’s quite a remarkable lady. Obviously she’s very intelligent, you don’t get to be a professor at her age without being fairly sharp. But in the aftermath of the ISIS attack she saved several people’s lives at the scene.’ He paused. ‘And despite everything that was happening around her, she remembered some crucial details about the terrorists that helped hugely in identifying them. There was a pan-European alert and they were tracked to Amsterdam. It was her info that made that happen. They were all killed in the ensuing gun battle but there was irrefutable evidence in the apartment they had rented that they had a very specific brief.’

  As he spoke Cathy remembered the news st
ories. There had been international outrage over the attack; civilians from seven different countries had been killed. And then the chase had ended in two Dutch police officers being shot. It had been all over the press for ages, days of national mourning called all over the world.

  ‘I remember,’ Cathy said, half to herself. ‘The question is, how do Tom and Lauren – and Ronan Delaney – fit into all of this?’

  He turned the engine back on. ‘That’s the million-dollar question. We better get moving – we’re going to have a busy day tomorrow and you need your beauty sleep.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Any time.’ He grinned. ‘Just as well you can get away without too much, isn’t it?’

  It took a moment for Cathy to work out that it was some sort of backhanded compliment. She blushed, didn’t quite know what to say in response.

  ‘So will you come and visit me in Limerick?’

  ‘If I’m invited. I’d guess the ERU are needed down there quite a bit with these gangland feuds, so you might be seeing me sooner than you think. If I get in, that is.’

  Her tone had been half-joking but his reply wasn’t. ‘I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.’

  She looked at him sideways. His eyes were on the road but he was smiling.

  Before Cathy could think of anything to say, her phone pipped with a text. She looked at the screen blindly, unable to quite focus. Had he just said he wanted to see her in a not so professional voice?

  She took a steadying breath, trying to slow her heart. Why did he have this effect on her? That was a stupid question – she knew why. But she also knew how ambitious he was, and getting involved with someone in his unit – quite apart from their age difference – the fact that he was her brother’s friend only made things more complicated.

  ‘Who’s that?’ He indicated to pull around the roundabout and on to the East-Link Bridge.

  ‘Anna Lockharte again. She’s texted me her friend’s contact details and says she’s given him mine.’

  ‘Excellent, we’ll organise that meeting for tomorrow. She’s very well favoured with the CIA, she’s done all sorts of training courses with them – covert counter-surveillance type stuff. The original briefing was ages ago now, but I’m pretty sure she’s firearms trained and has done their hand-to-hand combat courses.’

  ‘Really?’ Cathy couldn’t hide the surprise in her tone – there she’d been thinking Anna Lockharte was just a very nice, albeit super-intelligent woman, and now it turned out that she had a whole hidden side that was utterly fascinating.

  As if he read her mind he said, ‘But you don’t know any of that, remember. She’s just a teacher at Trinity as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘A professor.’

  ‘Well, yes, but you know what I mean. I did wonder if the CIA had recruited her but she’d hardly be here if they had. Ireland isn’t exactly a hotbed of international political intrigue. But with her family connections she’s certainly within the fold, ticks all the boxes from a security point of view.’

  ‘Maybe she’s a sleeper. How old is the niece?’

  ‘Sixteen, maybe seventeen. She must be heading for Leaving Cert.’

  ‘And when she goes to university she won’t need her aunt to mind her.’

  ‘That’s true. But I don’t get the impression she’s a sleeper. I think her connections would be too hard to hide.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier to hide in plain sight. But I bet if we google her we’ll hit a brick wall. Actually . . .’ She pulled out her phone and opened Google.

  ‘There she is on the Trinity website. But . . .’ Cathy scrolled down the page with her thumb, ‘nothing else. I think she’s a covert CIA operative.’

  O’Rourke chuckled. ‘You should write books, you know. You’ve an overactive imagination. Why would the CIA tell us she was here if she was one of their own? Our alert is for a civilian. Very different story.’

  Overactive imagination. He had that right. In every story in her imagination he had the lead role.

  Chapter 34

  Monday, 8 a.m.

  The next morning Cathy walked into O’Rourke’s office, her body aching from thirty minutes of weights, followed by a very hard swim.

  O’Rourke had dropped her back to the station the night before so she could collect her car. As she’d pulled out of her space in the car park, she’d seen the light go on in his office.

  Did he ever go home? The station was operational twenty-four hours a day but no one else worked the hours he did. Perhaps that was the only way he could keep on top of all the various investigations he had running at any one time?

  She knew he had an apartment somewhere in the south of the city, had moved from the city centre when he’d got the Dun Laoghaire posting. She didn’t even know if he owned it or rented, like she did. She knew from things he’d said that it wasn’t shared; he liked his own space. But she got the distinct impression that he didn’t like going home all that much. He certainly spent a lot of time here. And he never talked about his apartment, never talked about the drains, or needing to redecorate, or the sort of stuff you chatted about when you had your own place. She knew he had no pets, so perhaps it was going home to an empty space that was the problem. Cathy realised she’d never thought about it much before, but in all the time she’d known him he’d always almost lived at the station. And he never mentioned his family – he was from Monaghan, from a farming family somewhere along the border. She knew that from McIntyre, knew the Troubles had affected his childhood, but she didn’t know much else.

  As she’d headed home last night, she’d wondered if he was lonely. You didn’t get to the top in any job by making friends, but now she thought about it, she was the only person he really talked to, relaxed with. They had shared a lot of crap over the years, had a history. Not entirely the sort of history she wanted but it was still a history, and it didn’t matter about the moments when she despaired about her feelings towards him. The laughter they shared, even out on the job, the special moments, made it all worth it. He’d always be more than a friend – a very special friend – and for that she was grateful.

  Now Cathy hovered in the doorway to his office, watching him for a moment before he glanced up. She let his door close behind her. He must have been home at some stage unless he kept all his clothes in his locker – he was wearing a crisp pale blue shirt in a soft heavy cotton, a pink and baby blue striped tie. He’d stuck his navy jacket on the back of his chair, was looking at his laptop screen, checking his email she guessed.

  He smiled, his look warm and welcoming, was about to speak when his mobile began to ring. He indicated he wouldn’t be a minute. A moment later his eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Well done, Fanning, I didn’t know you functioned this well at this time in the morning. Good job. Call Traffic, will you, and get them to send in a technical team. Keep me posted by phone? I’ll be very interested in their take on that.’ He paused. ‘JB bloody Motors better have a damn good reason for not reporting it.’

  He hung up, looked at the phone for a moment. ‘That was 007.’ He said it with emphasis.

  ‘You sound impressed . . .’

  Cathy couldn’t hide the amusement in her voice as she headed over to her perch on the windowsill. The radiator ran under the window and she was feeling chilly, the early morning mist not agreeing with her damp hair on the walk up to the station.

  ‘I am – he must have been down at that garage waiting for them to open up.’

  ‘He has his moments.’

  ‘He certainly does, and this is most definitely one of them.’

  She settled herself on the windowsill, her hands in her pockets; she could feel the heat of the radiator through the fabric of her khaki combats.

  ‘Did he find Delaney’s car?’

  ‘He certainly did. And he found something else too.’

  She stared at him meaningfully. ‘Well, tell me . . .’

  ‘You were right about him knowing about car
s. Delaney’s jeep was there. Being serviced – it had some problem with the electrics, a light coming on, on the dash or something.’

  ‘He could have saved us a lot of bother if he’d shared that with us last night.’

  O’Rourke rolled his eyes. ‘I think his whole world would be looking better if he shared a bit more than his bad temper. But guess who else’s car is in for repair?’

  Cathy jumped off the windowsill. ‘Who? Tell me.’

  He looked at her cheekily. ‘Guess.’

  ‘How the heck am I supposed to do that?’ He was teasing her but she liked it, played up to him. ‘Someone who knows Delaney, who uses the same garage, maybe recommended it to him or vice versa, so probably someone who lives in the area. Someone who is connected to the case?’

  The answer was obvious before she even finished the sentence, but he interrupted her.

  ‘Someone who has, according to Fanning, a very distinctive collection of classic cars.’

  ‘See, told you he knows his cars. And he knows all the celebs. He must have dated half of TV3 at this stage.’

  O’Rourke held up his hands like he was stopping traffic. ‘Spare me the details. So who do you think?’

  ‘Conor Quinn.’ She said it with absolute certainty. He looked disappointed that she’d guessed so fast.

  ‘You’re right . . .’ He stopped, like he was waiting for a drum roll. ‘According to Fanning’s findings at JB Motors this morning, he has a collection of BMWs, all different models and different years, but all a very distinctive metallic blue. It’s some sort of special colour that’s top of the range, not too many of them in this state.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Conor Quinn hit Tom? How could that be?’

  ‘We can’t draw any conclusions yet but there’s a blue BMW jeep with Life Talk FM stickers in the back window that’s in to get the brakes, among other things, repaired. There are some scratches and a dent below the bumper on the passenger side. But we’ll only know if they are consistent with an impact when the Traffic team takes a look.’