“Let’s hope they’ve kept their eyes peeled and Robert McDonagh hasn’t managed to get out from under them.”
“Right little thug by the looks of it.”
We get out of the car; the wind sweeps rain over my face, stings my eyes. The children squeal cold cries of laughter from the beach, their screeches turn in the rolling air. The plainclothes officers step out of their vehicle and pull on their coats.
“Detective,” one of them says by way of greeting. “Where do you want us?”
“Go out back until we’ve eyes on him. I don’t want him running. We’ve a warrant and a unit with two uniforms on the way; send them straight in for the search on his trainers when they get here. They’re to collect anything that looks like it might fit the description.” I hand them a plastic folder with a printout of the sneakers, the trousers, and the jacket as seen on the CCTV footage.
“Grand,” he says. He nods to his colleague and they disappear up a side lane that leads to the back of the house.
Baz comes to my side, his nose stuck in his phone. He sighs, keeps his voice low. “So, on Healy, it looks like his alibi might check out. The pub he mentioned verified that he was there for a few hours. He reckons from about three but he’s going to look back through the receipts for us.”
“Not enough time for him to get to the church, kill Geraldine, arrange Alan’s body, then leave again.”
He looks up at the McDonagh house. “Our suspect pool is growing small.”
“Small as in Robbie McDonagh is our only one.”
The McDonagh house is tucked at the back of Dollymount Avenue. A row of government houses, similar, predictably dated. Two up, two downs. The garden is a mean, stingy strip of lawn to the right of a wobbling concrete path. Tall ropey weeds reach up where one time someone thought to put in a flowerbed. The door of the house, a dull red, a thin plate of glass on the top half.
I glance at Baz then push the doorbell. It clangs through the house. I can hear a TV grumbling away inside, the drone of a commentator reporting on sport, the rush and rise of a low voice building momentum. A door slams and a shape emerges behind the ridged glass. The door opens.
Rita McDonagh. I know from Helen’s background notes that she’s not more than forty-eight but time has not been good to her. Lower lids sag down into bloated cheeks, white deposits of fatty tissue have settled in lumps around bulbous eyes. Her stomach strains against the band of her jeans and seems to drop downwards into her thighs. She stands with her knees locked and pressed together, her swollen, slipper-clad feet splayed outwards. She settles a fishy eye on me.
“Hallo,” she says, the Dub accent tangling up the greeting. “Ye all right?”
“Mrs. McDonagh, is Robert home?”
“Who’s askin’?”
“I’m Detective Sheehan and this is Detective Harwood. We need to speak with your son.”
“Detectives?” She scowls. “The fucking shit. I’ll lift him off the ground with a bleedin’ clatter.” And I believe her. “Come in, come in, detectives. The little fucker’s still in bed.”
Baz gives me a nervous smile and I step into the house. The carpet points the way to the living room, the center displaying worn track marks, hardened with dirt, mud, and wear. I would doubt it’s ever seen the nozzle of a vacuum.
“Robbie! Get down here,” Rita shouts up the stairs. She turns and gives us a smile. One of her teeth on the bottom row is missing; the rest look fit to topple out on the floor with a gentle sneeze. “Tea?” she asks.
Baz is shaking his head. But I answer for both of us. “Yes, please. One sugar in mine.”
“Make yourselves at home.” She points to the right, where the hall gives way to a grim-looking living room. “Yis can turn that down if it bothers you.”
I remain in the hall. Stand at the bottom of the stairs. Baz moves into the living room. Locates the remote from the deep bowels of the couch then, shaking something quickly from his hand, he turns the TV off.
Upstairs, I can hear movement. A door creaks open and in a few seconds a pair of legs appear. Skinny but muscular with a sparse covering of dark hair.
“What the fuck’s wrong now, Ma?” He ducks beneath the stair ledge. Clocks me standing there.
He moves down, lowers each foot slowly. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Robert McDonagh?”
Naked to the waist, boxers, bare feet but he stands as if he’s wearing full armor. “Yeah.”
He takes a step closer and I can smell the sleep on him. The stench of sweat and some sickening tang of aftershave. He’s tall enough. Clancy was right, over six foot. He’s using that now, pulling himself into every millimeter of his height. I hear Baz move out behind me and see the brief flash of uncertainty that crosses McDonagh’s cocky face. The momentary slip of his shoulders, the sag of his spine.
“Mr. McDonagh, we need to ask you a few questions.”
His teeth grind at the front. His jaw bunches. Neck muscles, tense bands wired down to the shoulders. “I don’t talk to no pigs without a lawyer.”
I wouldn’t have thought a woman her size could move so fast. But in a couple of bounds, Rita McDonagh is up the hall.
She delivers a belt so swift and sure to the back of her son’s head that both myself and Baz wince. “You stay under my roof, you live by the fucking law. Ye hear me?”
“Yes, Ma.”
Robbie keeps his head down, his hands clasped in submission at his groin, but his eyes, his eyes point out from under his brow. Right through me they go and I feel the detective in me falter.
“Go on in,” Rita says, and nods again toward the living room. “He gives you any guff, come an’ get me. I’ll bring yis your tea in a bit.” She gives Baz her broken smile.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Baz says in return.
Robbie pushes by me, throws himself into an armchair, the arms of which are stained in that particular shade of yellow-brown, a grubby mixture of sweat and dirt. His legs lean outwards, his hands on the sides of the chair like he’s lord of the manor. When we sit, he sniffs, reaches for a pack of fags on the coffee table, and taps one from the packet. He jabs the butt between his teeth, pats his chest as if there might be a lighter housed there, then, sighing, heaves upright. He finds one down the side of the chair, where it seems most of the McDonagh necessities are hidden, leans back, and lights the fag.
He blows the smoke right across the room, an arc of rebellion. It washes over my face.
“Yis mind if I smoke?” he says, a corrupt little smile at the corner of his mouth.
“Mr. McDonagh,” I begin. He rolls his eyes. “Could you tell us your relationship to Geraldine Shine?”
He takes another drag, shoots the smoke upwards. Then he leans forward, his elbows perched on his skinny knees, his hands dropped casually between them. His eyes glide over my face then track down my body.
“If I have to talk to you cunts, I won’t talk to no slit in a suit.”
Baz stiffens beside me; I will him to keep it together.
There’s a shuffling from the hallway, the sound of the uniformed officers shaking out their jackets, wiping their feet.
One of them sticks his head in through the living room door. “What room, Chief?”
Robbie’s head flicks up. It seems to take him a moment to understand what’s going on; then he’s on his feet. “What yis at, hi?” He points a rigid finger at me. “Stay the fuck outta my stuff.”
“We’ve a warrant, Mr. McDonagh.” I turn, look up at the officer. “Rita McDonagh is in the kitchen at the end of the hall. She’ll tell you where to go.”
The officer disappears down the short hall. I hear Rita’s rasping voice reply. In a few moments she passes the door, the guard following, his face twisted in an expression of distaste.
Robbie looks as if he could tear the room up. The muscles on his abdomen flexed,
shoulders turned in, arms braced for war. His eyes follow the officer ascending the stairs, trailing the creaking weight of his mother. I watch him struggle, fight down the urge to throttle something, someone.
“Please, sit down, Mr. McDonagh,” Baz says.
Robbie drags a deep breath in through flared nostrils and seems to gain some control. Finally his shoulders release and he slouches back into his throne. On the table between us, there’s a half-drunk mug of what could have been tea; fat gobs of blue-green mold garnish the surface. He stretches out a thin arm, tips ash into the mug.
“Geraldine Shine. What’s your relationship with her?” I continue.
“Never fucking heard of her.”
“She was found murdered along with her husband two days ago.”
“Nothin’ to do with me.”
“Where were you on Sunday, the nineteenth of August?”
He laughs and then stops suddenly. His right knee bounces up and down. “At a mate’s house.”
I take out my notebook. “Whose?”
Hand over shaved head. He rubs the bristle. “Lynch. In Tallaght. He wasn’t in though. But I chilled there for a while, thought he might come back.”
“Does Lynch have a first name?”
“Jimmy.”
“He doesn’t mind you staying at his house when he’s not in?”
“As long as I bring the cans, Lyncho wouldn’t mind if I took a dump on his couch.” He keeps his eyes to the floor as he speaks.
“So there’s no one who can verify you were there?”
He looks up as if he’s got me. “No.” He takes another drag of the cigarette, spreads his hands. “But that’s where I was. Watched the game, then the races.”
I watch his face for signs of lying. “You bet?”
“Yeah, I’d a couple of bob on a tip,” he says, deep in his story.
“A tip? That’s too good to pass up, right? What horse?”
His mouth tightens. That glare again, knife sharp. “I don’t remember.”
Rita McDonagh comes into the room, tea on a tray, and sets it down on the table. “I’ve no milk,” she says.
Baz scoops his up. “I prefer mine without anyways.”
Another crooked smile. She retrieves a T-shirt and jeans from the back of a radiator and pegs them at her son. “Put some clothes on. Have some respect. There’s ladies present.”
Robbie McDonagh’s fag is knocked from his hand. “There’s no fucking ladies in this room.”
Rita picks up the dropped fag, deposits it in the mug. Sharp hiss and it’s extinguished. She sits down on an easy chair near the window and helps herself to a few of the biscuits she’s laid out.
Robbie sniffs. Stands. Feeds his limbs into the jeans then threads his arms and shoulders into the T-shirt. His arms raised, I see a long graze down the inside of his forearm. Still a savage shade of red. I picture the droplet of blood on the Shine kitchen floor. The open window. The wound is just the perfect place for a latch to bite. I glance at Baz, and I see the same realization on his face.
“You cut your arm,” I say.
“So?”
“When did you do that?”
I can see Rita McDonagh’s head moving from side to side, following the questions and answers like she’s watching a tennis match.
“Answer the detective,” she barks.
“Don’t remember.”
“It looks deep. I’d know if I’d cut myself like that, wouldn’t you, Harwood?”
“It would’ve smarted right enough,” Baz replies.
“I fell. Broken bottle.”
“Nasty. Did it bleed much?”
His face twists. A grin. “Get a kick out of a fella’s pain, do ya? Sick fuck.”
Rita McDonagh’s hand raises.
“Bled a bit, yeah,” he says.
I flick back through the pages of my notebook, leave a long bridge of silence between Robbie and our next move. To some suspects, lying is second nature. Deception and alternate stories flow from their lips with the ease of breathing. And sometimes you have to hit them with more, give them the whole picture, or as much as you can, so that they can’t wave away their connection with a word or two. Robbie waits patiently through the silence.
“Mr. McDonagh,” I say, and he lifts his eyes to mine, sharp arrogance intense in his gaze. “On Sunday morning, you went to Geraldine Shine’s home on Kincora Drive at approximately ten A.M. Just before six P.M. you returned to the house, where you gained access to the premises through a back window that led into the kitchen. You cut your arm in the process. Does this sound familiar to you?”
The knuckles of his hands yellow, his fingers biting into the armrests of the chair; his head lowers. Eyes set and cold on my face. I feel heat building under my skin. But he remains quiet.
“You left a footprint at the scene,” I say. “Fingerprints. Our officers are collecting your trainers as we speak. We can match them with almost one hundred percent accuracy. We have you on CCTV approaching the Shine house that morning.”
Rita McDonagh stops mid-chew, a biscuit halfway to her mouth “Robbie? What ye been at?”
His eyes are still on mine, locked and fierce. “Ma,” he says. Voice low. “Get out.”
The air in the room closes in, hums. Whatever message vibrates in the tone of his voice, Rita McDonagh pales, levers herself out of the chair, and shuffles out of the room.
He fixes me with a stiff glare. “You arresting me for murder, Detective?”
“We’d like to hear your side of things.”
He laughs. The sound like a blade along my nerves. “My side! Stupid cunt.” He reaches forward, taps another cigarette from the packet, lights it. His face turns cold. “If my prints were there,” he says, “it’s because we screwed a couple of times. I barely knew her, just fancied a bit of hole, and she was putting it about. These older ones will give anyone a go.” He looks at me. “Am I right?”
Baz stiffens again and I put my hand on his arm, a warning. We need to keep control here.
One of the officers puts his head around the door. “Chief?”
I get up, move out into the hall, away from McDonagh’s keen ears. The officer holds up a clear plastic bag containing a pair of trainers.
“Good work. Any of the other clothing?”
“Nothing yet, we’re still looking.”
“Keep at it.”
“Yes, Chief.”
I stand at the doorway, lean against the frame.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Baz asks Robbie.
“I dunno. A month or so ago. I don’t keep track of these things.”
“Lies can’t help you now, Robbie.”
I feel my phone buzz against my thigh and move back into the hallway.
“Sheehan here.”
Steve gets straight to it. “The trainers were in stock in a store in Blanch but they were stolen along with half a delivery two months ago. Got a right ear-bashing from the store owner.”
“Stolen? That wouldn’t surprise me. Good work, Steve. We got a pair here at McDonagh’s house. The same size anyways. Looks like same brand. The team will bring them in shortly.”
I glance in through the living room door to where McDonagh is lounging. His fingerprints are at the scene. Now the sneakers to match. “Thanks, Steve.”
I move back into the room, take a deep breath, savor the moment. I’m going to enjoy this.
“Robert McDonagh, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Geraldine Shine on the nineteenth of August 2012. You’ve a right to a lawyer. You do not have to say anything but anything you do say may be taken in evidence and used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”
“Fucking bitch,” he spits. He throws the cigarette at my chest; it hits my jacket and falls in a dirty shower of sparks and ash t
o the grimy carpet.
I push it out with my foot. Baz hands me the cuffs, stands, and pulls McDonagh into a hold, turns him, pinches his wrists together. I tighten the steel around his wrists, make sure the metal chews down on his skin.
A grunt of pain gutters in his throat. “I want a lawyer. Now.”
* * *
—
ROBBIE MCDONAGH IS STOWED AWAY in the garda car. One of the officers steps out of the house. He holds two black bags, marked EVIDENCE. He carries them toward us, holds them out.
“Where do you want them, Detective?”
I pop the boot of the garda car and he heaves them inside. “Take him to the Bureau. Contact his lawyer or have one assigned.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He dips his head to the radio at his shoulder. “Returning to the Bureau. Suspect secured. Over.”
Baz leans against the garda car, cigarette moving to and from his mouth.
“We hold him until we’ve confirmation on the footprint then we interview,” I say.
He passes me the fag and I take a long drag. “We could charge on the fingerprints?”
I push damp hair from my face. The rain has stopped and the sky has opened up. Sun spills down onto the slick street. “You know yourself that won’t stand up, if he says he was seeing her. But when we’ve a match on the trainer, we can definitely put him at the crime scene.”
“Nothing on the blouse?”
“Only Ger’s blood. Not a fiber nor a droplet of blood to be got from anyone else.”
“Fucking unbelievable.”
“I know. But still, we got him and we’ll get this story out in interview.” I let my gaze slide to McDonagh’s dark silhouette inside the car. His head is pitched back against the headrest. Eyes closed. Not a bother on him. The sight sends a little charge of adrenaline skirting through my blood. “They should have the footprint analysis quickly.” I check the time. “I’ll follow you back in a couple of hours. No one is to so much as smile in his direction until I get there. You can interview; I’ll oversee.”
“You want me to leave the car?”
“No, I’ll get a lift back.” I go to Baz’s car, collect my bag from the trunk, then return to him. “I need to drop in at the folks’. See what Tanya has going on the Hennessy case, as per Hegarty’s orders.”
The Killer in Me Page 10
