His eyes are cast to the floor. His head is shorn, but you can see the stubble of golden hair glint under the camera light. He rubs his hands, one over the other, and the round caps of his shoulders flex, unflex.
Then he looks up, and his gaze reaches out, beyond the lens, settles on me. And I listen. Never able to resist a killer’s story. Never able to resist a glance into a black soul, just to see. To check that they’re different. That their blood runs darker, their heart beats slower.
“When I stepped round the side of that house. My home,” he says, “I thought I was walking into a dream. A nightmare. The sun bleaching everything, a haze of horror. I closed my eyes. Waited. But when I opened them the same scene in front of me. My ma. I knew she was dead. Even though I was a ways away I could see the wide openness of her eyes. Unblinking. My da could’ve tripped over, fell down. I’d seen the same posture on him after a heavy night; I might’ve thought he was sleeping off a binge but for the blood.”
His eyes fall again for a moment. He swallows, then he’s there again, a look of something in his eyes, a soreness, and despite myself I almost wince on his behalf. He continues, his voice down low, rolling over the ground like a stone.
“There were people everywhere, a garda car and those crime folk you see on TV. And she was right there. My sister. Closest to me. There were people around her, in a little huddle. Paramedics, I think. They were shouting things. For help or drugs. And between their legs, I could make out her thin, small body. The paleness of her skin. Feet tucked up. I thought she was dead. But then her foot moved, just a fraction. A twitch of her toes. And I remember the breath rushing out of me. Thank God. Thank God.
“Cara! I called out. And one of the paramedics looked up. He waved a hand and they must have moved me. Brought me away. I can’t remember.”
The title rolls up, Fifteen Years a Murderer, Blackthorn Films. Then the screen goes black.
Silence spreads out between us; I’m half-expecting Seán Hennessy to walk in, pull up a chair, lick his lips as we flap about like chickens.
“Why Fifteen Years a Murderer?” I ask. “His sentence covered seventeen.”
Hegarty throws me an impatient glance; her lips bunch into a tight wrinkled knot before she replies. “Facts don’t bother these people. Soundbites and ratings are all that matter.” She closes the laptop. “It’s due to air toward the end of next week.”
“JMJ will have to disclose the evidence before then, surely?” Clancy says.
“No.” Hegarty doesn’t look at either of us as she speaks. “This is not a trial. They’ll wait for public support, newspapers, then submit their appeal.”
I’m still not sure what she’s asking of the Bureau. “Sorry, maybe I’m not following. But what has this got to do with our work?”
She laughs, throaty and hollow. “This”—she points to the computer—“is going to be lighting up every newspaper for the next year and with it, anything with a waft of familial violence, like the Shine case, will follow. Our reaction to those cases will be linked directly to any failure the public believes has resulted in Seán Hennessy’s arrest.”
“All eyes are on us. What’s new?”
“What’s new is, I was brought in to keep the Bureau focused. To keep our eyes on what we’re about. If I fail”—she shrugs—“I’m out and the Bureau will have lost its last champion.” She presses her meaning down my throat with a hard look. “I’m on your side. And I need you on ours.”
“I’ve never been otherwise.”
She closes the computer with a snap. “He wants to overturn his conviction. For many reasons, that can’t happen.”
She means for one reason: money.
Clancy nods. “What do you want us to do?”
She arranges the paper neatly before her, picks it up, taps it on the table, and sets it down again. “The Shine murders: I know it’s hard to keep a case in a straight line, but do it. Seán Hennessy”—she pulls the edges of her cardigan together and throws another look in my direction—“if you’re not familiar, get familiar. Maybe this relationship you’ve got with JMJ will be a good thing, Detective. If we can get a preview of where it is exactly they think we’ve messed up, we can remain one step ahead.”
I feel a prickle over my scalp. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
Her face hardens. “Are you comfortable in your job, Chief Superintendent?”
I blink at the threatening tone in her voice, draw in a long breath, and try to control my reaction. “With all due respect, I’m up to my neck in a double murder investigation. I don’t have the time.”
She sets both hands on the table, calm, soft movements; the glint of pearlescent pink over her nails. “I have every faith you’ll find the time,” she says, and it’s not a vote of confidence she’s giving me, a supportive slap on the back. It’s an order.
I leave the office, my shoulders like strips of lead. Clancy walks ahead, his hands in his pockets, his posture hunched against the light drizzle. He hurries to his car and I follow after him. I wait until he’s settled himself into the driver’s seat, then get in beside him.
“Don’t,” he says. He runs a hand over his forehead and through his hair. “Just don’t fucking start.” He turns the key and the Mondeo gives a chesty rumble; then he fiddles angrily with the heater, directing warm air to the windshield.
“What do you know of this old case?”
He pauses, sighs, then: “Feck all. It’s done and dusted. Just go through the motions, that’s all she wants. Fucking paper pushing.”
“Well, what’s up with you then? Thought you were going to piss down your fucking leg up there.”
“Go way to fuck, I was. I’m tired, tired of that shite. A bloody nobody telling us how to do things. We’ve a fucking double murder to be working on. This isn’t a bleedin’ TV show. This is real life.”
He’s a lying shitbag sometimes, Clancy, and a pretty bad one at that. At least to me, anyway. He barely met my eyes in Hegarty’s office.
“You’re not sure Hennessy did it?”
“He fucking did it, all right.”
I dig about in my memories. “You worked it?”
“No. It breezed by my desk in the first hours, I passed it on to Murder. Never saw the shitbag and never want to. That’s it.”
“As far as you know then, everything’s clean our side?”
His face turns sour. “As I said, I didn’t work it. I wish to fuck I had now, there’d be no questioning his guilt at all. He would have clamped the fucking manacles round his ankles himself.”
“So you know nothing?” I ask, to make sure.
He shuffles in the driver’s seat, turns toward me. “Why am I in the hot seat here? You’re the one with all the inside info. Why don’t you ask your sister-in-law?”
“I will. And eventually, I’ll get to the truth. But I don’t want to put my finger on a trigger only to find out later my boss is at the wrong end of the gun.”
His hand goes to the ignition, a signal for me to get out. “I didn’t have the cushy number you have now, Frankie. Assigned to a specific team, with only the juicy crimes coming my way. The area I was over had anything from some snot-nosed kid committing arson to the fucking IRA dumping bodies in the Wicklow Mountains. What was one more bleedin’ murder?” He huffs. “Get on that Shine case. That’s our priority. Not some whistle-blowing documentary.”
I get out of the car. It takes two goes to slam the door closed. Then Clancy settles himself into the seat and drives away. I sit in my own car for some time, staring up at the HQ building and thinking about Donna Hegarty’s not-so-veiled warning. Seán Hennessy’s voice echoes in my ear. When I stepped round the side of that house . . . I thought I was walking into a dream. I take up my phone, search for the Hennessy murders on the internet and the screen fills with photos. I recognize one that was used with some frequency by the
press at the time. John and Bríd Hennessy standing outside the front door of their home. John’s arms out, one hand on Seán’s shoulder, the other round his wife’s waist, Cara, a slip of smiles, sandwiched between them.
For weeks after, I remember looking at this photo for signs, for hesitancy or nerves in Bríd’s smiling eyes or a petulant gleam in their children’s faces. But there was nothing that hinted at the family’s fate. I remember tracing Bríd’s jaw, as if I could waken her from the image. I remember the feeling of guilt that we’d crossed paths. A transient brush of shoulders as we passed each other outside my parents’ home. Bríd hot, heavy, and flustered, and me too preoccupied with a fresh homicide on the other side of the city to notice. A young detective in my twenties, my head too full of witness statements, blood, and murder to ask my mam who the woman in the blue floral dress was. And then, after, once Bríd Hennessy looked out from every newspaper, it didn’t seem important to ask why she’d been there. Another woman my mam tried to help but where help came too late.
I reach for my phone, the Hennessy trailer and my meeting with Tanya lingering in my mind, and I reckon Baz is right—it might be a good thing to draw a line through Hennessy’s name when it comes to these murders. I call the office, tell Ryan to get Seán Hennessy’s alibi for the hours leading up to Geraldine Shine’s death.
CHAPTER 5
THE FIRST FAT DROPS of heavy rain hit the windshield as I pull up along the pavement. The Shine house sits on a corner. The building is two stories and perched high on a short, steep garden. Curved bay windows capture the gray-blue light from the sea. The premises is closed off by a redbrick wall, which extends low on the road side, leveling as the street inclines. CSI have erected a cordon around the house. But rubberneckers have gathered. Neighbors in their gardens, mugs of tea in hands, arms folded, necks craned. A couple of teens have stopped on their bikes on the far side of the street, iPhones trained like weapons on the scene.
I get out, walk toward the house, duck under the garda tape. I step into the tent, greet the first officer, and sign the logbook.
“How we doing?”
“Nothing startling as yet. Pretty tidy scene by the looks of it.”
I look back out to the street. A sharp breeze rises up and I can feel the atmosphere coiling back, ready to strike. The rain patters against the roof of the tent. It might drive the neighbors indoors, but the kids have that stance, narrow-lipped and thick-skinned. They won’t be shoved indoors by a flash of poor weather.
I nod toward the gawkers. “Any of them get too close, get a uniform on it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I pull on a suit, foot covers. Prepare to peel back the secrets of the Shines’ life. My mobile rings and I fish it out of my pocket.
Helen’s voice comes down the line. “Chief, I’ve followed up on Geraldine Shine and possible domestic violence callouts.”
I step to the side, let a SOCO pass, his arms full with a plastic box of envelopes, marked and tagged.
“Go on.”
“She made three calls to the local station over the last year. There were two callouts. The first call was made to the station in February of this year. A domestic dispute. Gardaí were sent to the house but Alan Shine had left. They took a statement. In the end, she didn’t press charges. The second call came two months ago, at 3:23 A.M. on June 14. She reported her husband smashing through the back door. He was threatening to kill her. She was too frightened to let him in. Her call was patched through to the garda on beat but was not followed up.”
“No one checked on her?”
“No.”
“A statement?”
“No.” Voice tight as guitar wire. She takes a breath. “On Wednesday, August 8, at 6:17 P.M. there was another call. This time she phoned emergency services. She was sure someone had broken into her home. There’s a recording.”
The eighth of August, eleven days before her murder. Another SOCO passes. Hands another box labeled EVIDENCE to his colleague, turns, and goes back into the house.
“You have it there?”
“Yes. Hold on.” I hear a slight scuffle on the other end of the line then, “Okay, playing it now.”
The voice is as clear as a bell, as if the operator is speaking to me. What’s your emergency?
Geraldine Shine’s voice is remarkably steady. There’s no singsong warble of terror, no tremble. But she keeps it low, as if she’s hiding. Not moving. “I think someone’s been in my home.”
I see Geraldine Shine sitting on the floor, next to the bed. Knees drawn up, one arm around her legs, the phone against the small curl of her ear. Dark hair swept back from her face into a ponytail. The lines that over the last few years have only begun to deepen on her forehead are stitched tight between her brows.
Could we have your name and address, please, ma’am?
“Geraldine Shine. One Kincora Drive, Clontarf.”
What makes you think someone has been in your home?
“In my bedroom. It looks like someone has laid down on the bed. There’s a dent in the pillows.”
Are there any signs of breaking and entering? Are there any windows broken? Was your door locked?
“No and yes, the door was locked but”—her voice lowers further—“my husband, we split up recently. I asked him to leave. I’ve not seen him in a few days. He can be violent. He’s threatened me before.”
Does your husband still have a key?
“Yes.”
Mrs. Shine, is it possible your husband could be on the premises?
“No. I checked.”
Mrs. Shine, we are sending someone over. Please stay on the line until you see the garda car.
“Okay.”
There is a click. Helen is back on the line and Geraldine Shine dissolves into the past. “That’s it. Or nearly it; gardaí arrive, and the call ends.”
“Any report on what they found when they got there?”
“Yes, there’d been no evidence of a break-in. Nothing had been taken from the house. In her statement she mentioned she’d a sense someone had been at the back of the house a few times in that week. The back gate, which she usually kept closed, she’d found it open on occasion. And that’s it. No follow-up and no further calls.”
My hand is tight on the phone. There is no worse feeling than knowing your victim sensed their murder, reached out, and no one listened. “Thanks, Helen. At least we’re clear on the state of their marriage. This could be either-or, the killer stalking or the husband. Could you ask for reports of a similar nature around the neighborhood? Could be it’s a prowler caught in the midst of all this.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I step through the front door in search of our lead SOCO, Keith. He’s laid down squares of cardboard over the hallway but beneath them lies a worn black-and-white cork tile that at one time probably looked the part but along the baseboard, the edges are swollen and chunks have broken away. The house has a stale, damp smell; the cloud outside has turned the hallway to shadow. Behind the radiator, a bloom of mildew has loosened wallpaper from the wall. Beyond the dampness is the faint, sweet smell of garlic and the tang of rosemary. I keep to the cardboard and follow the scent to the kitchen at the end of the hall.
Keith’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, a small man with small-man habits, never quite able to get his heels on the ground, chin overly high to stretch out his height, chest raised up around his short neck.
Currently his arms are extended, holding back two SOCOs. “Get the luminol, Gerry, Christ’s sake.”
I stop in the doorway. Gerry, the recipient of Keith’s order, keeps his head down and ducks out of the room in search of the luminol. Another scene of crime officer stands in the corner, pointing a camera toward the floor. Keith hasn’t noticed me. His arm’s are still out, protecting whatever fragment of evidence he’s discovered.
“Nick,” he says, calling the other SOCO forward. “Tape this off.” For a moment Nick appears stricken but he corrects himself quickly, takes a roll of tape from his arm, and steps toward the patch of floor Keith is standing over.
Then Keith changes his mind. “No. No, wait. Wait until we see what we’re dealing with. Just wait!”
Studying the area, I look for what’s got him so agitated. On the floor. A tiny speck, easily missed, easily mistaken for a fleck in the grain, a dent in the wood, or a piece of dirt.
“Is that blood?” I ask.
Keith lifts his head. His black hair falls into his eyes, his forehead red from looking downwards, a glow of sweat across his cheeks. He swallows. “I think so.”
The rain is coming down outside, the thrum of it hitting the pavement that runs around the house. A low growl of thunder trembles off in the distance. Both of us look up to the window. It’s open. Not wide, the long metal latch lies flat on the sill. The breeze lifts and the window swings outward then back against its frame.
I look back to Keith. “Did you open it?”
“No. No. Sorry, I checked, thought it was closed.”
There’s a tiny brown leaf curled on the draining board, where, now it dawns on us, hours before a foot found purchase.
I move quickly. “You.” I point to Nick. “We need to cover the area outside the kitchen window.” Even as I say the words, I know we’re too late.
I hurry outside but by the time we have the window sealed off, the scene extended, there are rivulets running down the pathway. The sill has been washed clean of debris. I stare at the ledge, rain beating down against the hood of my suit. Nick hovers behind me, waiting for further instruction.
When nothing comes, he clears his throat. “What should we do, ma’am?”
I sigh. “See what you can get from it.”
He nods, his expression doubtful.
I change into fresh overalls and return to the kitchen. Keith is spraying the floor with luminol. He takes out the black light, switches it on, and the speck lights up. A star of blue. Blood. And next to it, the edge of a footprint.
The Killer in Me Page 6
