If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  By now Sexton had placed her accent in Dublin 1, where women were so at home that they shopped in their pyjamas and slippers and liked to remind people who worked how much free time they had.

  ‘Late night?’ he asked her, offering her a smoke.

  She took it with a nod and another generous flash. This time it was not accidental, he knew.

  He flicked his lighter and held it up for her to light up. She leaned in and took a succession of little puffs then a slow drag, playing with the zipper on her top, up an inch, down two, up again.

  ‘Got any theories as to who’s behind it?’ he asked.

  ‘Take your pick,’ she said, combing the ends of her hair with her fingers.

  ‘Heard he owed the Yardies money,’ Sexton said. ‘After a trip to Holyhead a few months back.’

  She sniggered in an ‘as if’ way and announced, ‘I’m no rat.’

  Startled by a noise behind him, Sexton turned around quickly. A kid aged between two and three years had appeared at the door in a pair of dirty pyjamas and bare feet. His nostrils were caked in snot. ‘Mammy, I’m hungry,’ he whined.

  ‘Not now,’ she answered. ‘Now get back in there and close the door until I’m fucking ready.’

  It took every cell in Sexton’s body not to grab her by the hair and force her into the kitchen to give something to the kid. Instead he pulled out a photograph of a woman with long fair hair from his inside blazer pocket. It was a snatch photo he’d taken himself – the woman hadn’t even been aware of the lens pointing at her as she climbed into her car. ‘How well did Anto know her?’ he asked.

  Glenda barely glanced at it. ‘Not his type,’ she said.

  Sexton moved closer to her and put the photo on her lap.

  ‘Why don’t you look again? Only I’ve just had a call from someone who’s been busy unscrambling the make of this lady’s car, which was caught on CCTV camera. In that particular film, Anto seems to know her very well.’ Two-beat pause. ‘Did I mention we’ve got someone who’s confessed to killing him?’

  Glenda looked at him in astonishment.

  He tapped his nose, pointing to the pic.

  ‘It was strictly business between them,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t look that way in the film,’ Sexton said.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong. Anto was making sure no harm came to her or her family, and in return she was making sure no harm came to his. Now who’s confessed to killing Anto?’

  Sexton stood up, and flicked his fag at her gas fireplace. ‘Afraid I’m not at liberty to say.’

  She swore and picked up the glass paperweight on a nearby coffee table.

  ‘I’ll let myself out, shall I?’ he said, ducking just in time. It smashed on the wall inches above his head.

  The kid came flying out into the hall to see what had happened. Sexton thought about slipping him some money, but knew his ma would have smelt it from the other room and it would only cause the kid problems. Feeling even sicker than when he’d arrived, he went back out to his car, inspecting it for damage before getting in.

  As he gunned the engine, Sexton knew he couldn’t keep protecting Ryan Freeman. He was in enough trouble with Jo Birmingham already. If she found out what he’d been keeping from her, it wouldn’t just be the investigation he’d lose out on: his job could be on the line. And that was all he had left since Maura had died. But having seen for himself the warehouse where Katie had been held, he was going to talk to one last person first. The woman in the picture.

  28

  Dan took Jo by the elbow, turned her around and walked her straight back out of his office. In the corridor outside, he planted himself straight in front of her. ‘Where the hell have you been? Have you any idea how long I’ve been calling?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Rory’s been mitching?’ Jo snapped.

  Dan looked like he’d misheard. He’d nicked himself shaving, Jo noticed, but forgotten to remove the paper blotting the blood. She put her hands behind her back and held them there.

  ‘We don’t have time for this now. Don’t you realize . . .’

  ‘I’m his bloody mother!’

  He raised his arms and headed inside, glancing behind her after a couple of seconds to make sure she didn’t disappear again.

  On the other side of the door, Jeanie was touching up her make-up with a compact.

  ‘You missed a bit,’ Jo told her, following Dan inside.

  None of the backs of the three heads facing Dan’s desk turned as Jo came into the office. There was no greeting, and none of the officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation outranked her either, but the way they had joined their chairs in flank told her they all thought they did. A fourth, free chair sat at the end of their row, but Jo walked to the far side of Dan’s desk so that she was facing them, and remained standing.

  The way they were continuing to make small talk amongst themselves was more than just condescending: it showed a level of contempt. Jo knew that the same superior attitude could be found in every specialist group in every police force in every part of the world – from the Feds in the States to MI5 in the UK. There was out-and-out hostility between customs officers and the gardaí working in the airports, for example. But right now, what she was finding hardest to deal with was the complete waste of her bloody time. If a showdown was imminent, it was going to mean blood on the walls, because Dan may have had the time to sip tea and nibble sandwiches, but if anyone thought they were going to take this investigation from her without a fight, they were deluded. As long as she believed she had the best chance of cracking the case, she would battle for it tooth and nail, especially now Foxy had told her that tomorrow was Doubting Thomas’s feast day. Jo had no doubt in her mind that if she didn’t find their killer before then, she’d have another body on her hands.

  Beside her, Dan was trying to control his own agitation by clicking the top of a pen up and down; two seconds exactly between each press.

  Jo took the sum of her opposition. She had worked with only one of the NBCI officers before – Jenny Friar – but she knew the other two by reputation. Frank Black was the most recognizable face on the force – fifty-odd, overweight, with a moustache trimmed neatly above a purple top lip. He wore a dapper paisley silk scarf above his gold-buttoned navy blazer and had an ability to wax lyrical about his own crucial involvement in cracking the country’s worst crimes when a camera and mic were being thrust in his face, though colleagues who’d worked on the same cases remembered things differently.

  Alongside him sat Dave Waters, twenty years younger, ambitious, studious, expensive rimless glasses displaying a vanity to which his looks gave no purchase. With a doctorate in psychology, he was a novelty in a job where the only accomplishment that counted was hours on the streets. In recent years, he had increasingly assumed the role of the force’s unofficial psychological profiler. To Jo’s mind, he was neither instinctive nor intuitive, and the string of letters after his name had made him fluent only in jargon.

  Of the delegation, Jenny Friar was the most formidable. Aged in her late forties, she had a Princess Diana haircut, an expensive wool pashmina and a set of heavy semiprecious gems strung around her neck. At one time, Jo had looked up to her, but that had been before she sold out to management.

  Dan asked Jo to take a seat. The old days, when he’d have walked across the room to carry it back to her, were gone. Jo felt the back of her neck and shoulders tighten. ‘I’d rather stand,’ she said.

  He gestured with a hand as he did the introductions. Jo noticed that not one of them had the balls to look her in the eye.

  ‘You may or may not be aware,’ Dan began, ‘that the family of Father Reginald Walsh switched off his life support today.’

  It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. Jo felt her stomach constrict. Now she understood why the atmosphere in the room felt so feral. The body count had just risen to four. But she was also bloody livid. As head of the investigation, she should have been informed fi
rst. Why had nobody told her?

  ‘The commissioner contacted me today,’ Dan continued, ‘and he informed me of his intention to add to our resources by assigning these three new members to our team.’

  Jo sneaked a quick glance at Dan. It was a relief to know that he hadn’t been instrumental in this ambush.

  ‘We’re very glad to have you all here today,’ Dan said. ‘I understand you’ve each been studying the case notes. Why don’t you each give us your assessment?’

  Jo folded her arms tightly.

  Dan leaned forward. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ He turned to the profiler. ‘Dave, why don’t you go first? Who do you think we’re dealing with?’

  Dave Waters stood up and hooked his thumbs in the waist of his pleated jeans. College stripes hung in a scarf around his neck. ‘We’re dealing with a narcissist,’ he stated.

  Jo began to pick the leaves off Dan’s geranium.

  ‘He’s an egotist who is probably known to the force for crimes in the past.’

  ‘What about Jo’s theory of a Roman Catholic motif?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t think much of it,’ Waters replied. ‘Sharia law says the same thing about an eye for an eye, so perhaps we should be visiting members of the Muslim community?’

  ‘We don’t have time for this now,’ Jo interrupted sharply. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve already established a link between the killings, and who the killer thinks he is . . .’

  ‘Are we to understand that the status of the investigation has changed and you now have a suspect?’ Jenny asked, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt.

  Designer, the kind of clothes only a woman with a salary to spend on herself can afford, Jo thought. ‘The killer thinks he’s some kind of avenging angel. All these people have wronged him, and once we find out how, we’ll have him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.’

  Jenny Friar stood up, walked to the side of Dan’s desk and sat on it, crossing her legs at the ankles, blocking Jo’s exit.

  ‘Do you or do you not have a suspect?’ she asked authoritatively.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve only had twenty-four hours on the case.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only had twenty minutes, and I have a suspect,’ Friar replied. ‘He made a confession right here in this station to DI Gavin Sexton. His name is Andy Morris, but I believe his nickname is Skinny.’

  29

  Jo phoned Sexton as she drove towards the Pearse Street flats where Skinny lived. She kept it curt, telling Sexton to meet her there and refusing to explain why. Sexton had been on his way to see Stuart Ball’s mother and didn’t sound too happy at having to entertain a change of plan. That made two of them.

  Jo’s anger was sharpening by the minute. For the second time today, he’d kept her in the dark about a solo run – on her investigation! How could he not have told her he’d interviewed someone who’d confessed to Anto Crawley’s murder? She’d get over Jenny Friar rubbing her nose in it, but what she found hardest of all was the look she’d spotted in Dan’s eye. He actually felt sorry for her. What the hell had Sexton been thinking?

  Jo knocked at the suspect’s door, then at his window with the ball of her fist. There was no bell, let alone a knocker on the door. Skinny was either not at home or playing silly buggers. Jo stepped over to the neighbour’s door to find out which, but hadn’t so much as touched it before an old man in a string vest, glasses with bottle-thick lenses and high-waisted trousers appeared and told her to try St Andrew’s Resource Centre, where a Concerned Parents Against Drugs meeting was taking place. In the eighties and nineties, the CPAD had mobilized the anger of frightened parents who’d lost or were losing children to addiction by organizing evictions of drug dealers. If CPAD were back in action, it was a real sign of how bad the drugs problem was again in this part of town.

  Sexton pulled into the complex, just as Jo was driving out. He lowered the window of his year-old, 5-series BMW. ‘I did tell you about his statement, I know I did.’

  Jo glared at him, then shut her eyes tightly as a pain stabbed through them, causing her to lose her vision momentarily. Then she put her foot down full throttle and tore down Hanover Street towards St Andrews, her exhaust belching black fumes behind her.

  Sexton stayed on her tail, a set look on his face every time she glanced in her rear-view mirror. When she crossed to the wrong side of the road to grab a parking spot, he was still there like glue, taking a big chance with the oncoming traffic.

  He jumped out before her and leaned in her window, both hands on the car door. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

  Jo reached over to the passenger seat for Skinny’s statement and picked it up by a corner like she was handling a turd. She held it up in front of him. ‘Only it looks like you took a statement from someone confessing to Anto Crawley’s bloody murder.’

  ‘It was a try-on!’ Sexton said. ‘The statement isn’t even bloody well signed. So he knew about Crawley’s teeth. Big deal! But he got the incidentals wrong – he told me they were smashed in. And how could they think him mentioning the knife was corroboration of his knowledge of the crime scene? It was all over the bloody News and hardly inside information.’

  ‘So why did you file his statement?’ Jo asked, getting out of the car and forcing him back on the pavement.

  ‘What are you saying, Jo? That I filed a confession that’s not worth a shit to make you look incompetent? I filed it because it’s procedure. That’s my job. I wasn’t going to waste your time or mine on a wild-goose chase.’

  Jo frowned, scanning the building opposite. ‘And I’m saying that here is yet another example of you keeping things from me. What else haven’t you told me?’

  Sexton looked away. He was hiding something, Jo was sure of it, but it would have to wait till they were back in the station.

  She crossed the road and headed into the building towards the room at the back where the CPAD meeting was taking place.

  Inside, it was cramped and there was standing room only. Sexton stood beside her, nudging her shoulder with his own to indicate the man holding court at the top of the gym. He was dressed in a shiny black bomber jacket.

  ‘That’s him,’ Sexton said out of the side of his mouth.

  Jo noted the green, looped ribbon pinned to Skinny’s breast telling her he was a Shinner. The hypocrisy of Sinn Fein’s members chilled her to the bone. It may not have been PC, given the sensitive nature of the post-peace process, but it was the fact that they were exploiting parents’ misery by using the threat of force to move other drug dealers along so they could take over the market for drug distribution for themselves that upset her most.

  She concentrated on Skinny. Part of him was constantly on the move, but not in a synchronized way. His hands would dart in one direction, his head another. He was arguing with an old woman seated up front, a thyroid-related bald patch on the top of her scalp, thick ankles under heavy tights. In between blowing her nose, she was insisting that her son had nothing to do with drugs and she could not evict him from her home.

  ‘I know you from the time you were a nipper, Andy,’ the old lady said to Skinny, holding her hand so high off the ground. ‘How many times did I take you in after school and give you a hot dinner if your ma wasn’t home?’

  Skinny stood over her, radiating aggression. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. The people have spoken.’

  Jo glanced at Sexton. She could tell he was having doubts too about his initial reading on Skinny’s innocence too.

  Meanwhile, the crowd had burst into applause, and then started up the old familiar chant: ‘Pusher-pusher-pusher out-out-out.’

  The old lady cracked. ‘How can I get him off drugs if he’s on the streets?’ she begged, tears running down her cheeks.

  The chanting grew more ferocious.

  Every age is here, Jo thought, casting an eye over the crowd. The men in bomber jackets standing at strategic points around the kangaroo court were watching the crowd, not Skinny.
One of the heavies had LOVE HATE knuckles folded over his crotch and was looking over at Jo and Sexton. They stood out a mile, she knew this only too well.

  The old lady was trying to sidle her way out of the row of chairs past extended legs. No neighbours stood to pat her back or shifted their legs an inch to aid her progress.

  Sexton touched Jo’s arm. She could see what he was thinking. If these people realized who they were, the mob mentality could turn nasty.

  ‘If he’s not gone in twelve hours, every stick of furniture in your home goes over the balcony,’ Skinny called after the woman.

  Jo reached out as the woman approached and took her by the wrist, turning her around. The room went silent. Jo led the old lady back to the top of the room, pulled her ID out, held it aloft. Sexton pulled out his mobile, kept it at waist level and started dialling for back-up.

  ‘Proud of yourself?’ Jo called as a round of boos struck up. ‘Look at her.’ The volume of the noise decreased, but not much.

  Skinny was throwing furious looks at everyone in a bomber jacket around the room, making hand gestures that all involved removing Jo. Sexton had the phone to his ear.

  ‘What age are you?’ she asked the woman.

  ‘You have no business here, copper,’ Skinny shouted. ‘If your lot could handle the drugs problem, we wouldn’t have to deal with it ourselves. Even the prisons are riddled with heroin.’

  Applause. Cat calls. ‘Out-out-out.’

  The bomber jackets started moving towards Sexton, who put his phone away, and gave Jo a nod that said help was on the way.

  ‘I’ll only leave if one of you can tell me why you’re taking orders from the likes of him’ – Jo glanced at Skinny – ‘a pervert who has sex with dead women!’

  Now she had their attention.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, copper?’ Skinny asked, his face contorted.

  ‘Did you or did you not confess to the murder of Anto Crawley in Store Street yesterday?’ Jo asked him, holding his statement up for all to see.