The Scholar

by Dervla McTiernan

  ‘Did you see her? This morning I mean?’ asked Gangly from the kitchen. Carrie heard only concern in his voice, but it might as well have been ghoulish interest, for the look that Valentina turned on him.

  ‘Of course she didn’t,’ Mark said. ‘I went in to wake Carline. When I saw her … I knew straight away she was dead. The way she … Christ. I’ll never forget it for as long as I live. I wasn’t going to let Vee in there to see it too.’

  ‘It was you who reported her death as a suicide?’ Carrie asked.

  Valentina turned on him. ‘You are so wrong, Mark. If you think for a second she would have done that … you must never have known her at all.’

  Mark shook his head, said with a paternalistic weariness that made Valentina bridle, ‘People have their reasons, Vee. Maybe she had her reasons.’

  Gangly-boy started to speak but Carrie cut across him. ‘I need to bring you both to the station. We’ll need to take your statements, and the sooner we do that the better, all right? Before you start to forget the details.’ And before they had the opportunity to settle their nerves or marry their stories, if that was what was going on here.

  Mark looked like he might argue, but Valentina nodded, looking almost relieved. She was aching for something to do. Gangly-boy looked at Valentina in her little pyjamas, then out at the rain that pulsed against the windows. He hurried forward, grabbed a jumper that looked like it had seen better days from the back of a chair.

  ‘Here, you can borrow this.’

  ‘Christ,’ Valentina gave the jumper a look that should have shrivelled the thing in his hands. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead.’ She blanched, closed her eyes. A moment passed before she scrubbed away tears with the back of each hand, she lifted her chin and walked past Carrie out of the door and into the corridor beyond, Mark hurrying after her.

  Carrie had a uniform drive the roommates to the station. She commandeered a squad car and drove herself, taking a detour to the house beside the canal. It was noon when she knocked on Cormac Reilly’s door. He opened it a moment later and didn’t seem entirely surprised to see her.

  ‘Carrie,’ he said. He stood back and held the door open for her. ‘Come in.’

  He was barefoot, which felt weird, was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt. She was distracted by the thought that Cormac Reilly was a very attractive man, when he wasn’t shouting at you in a small car.

  ‘Is Emma here?’ Carrie asked.

  ‘She’s gone to the lab,’ Cormac said. ‘Did you want to speak to her?’ He led the way into a messy living room. There was a half-empty coffee cup on the coffee table, along with a stack of old newspapers. There were more stacks of paper on a desk at the other end of the room. Cormac leaned down and picked up the cup. ‘I’m trying to sort this place out, but it’s a waste of bloody time. If I stack it together it only goes and breeds.’ He gestured with his cup in her direction. ‘Coffee?’

  Carrie nodded. ‘I will, yeah.’

  He asked her how she liked it, and disappeared into the kitchen. Carrie sat on the couch. She looked around the room while she waited, comparing it to the house she had left a couple of hours before. There was no kids’ stuff here. No Saturday morning cartoons, no Lego half under the couch, no scooters in the hall. It was nearly as messy as her place, though, in its own way, and she felt a little better.

  He came back with the coffee, placed it in front of her, and sat. He’d taken the time to put some shoes on.

  ‘Right, Carrie,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’d like to discuss the case. I want to start by saying I’m sorry that it’s fallen on your shoulders. I should have seen there was a strong chance things would end up as they have, and I should have taken steps to make sure there was someone else who could take it on.’ His brown eyes were serious, but he didn’t seem quite his usual coolly confident self.

  ‘Cormac,’ she said. ‘Carline Darcy is dead.’

  He looked at her so blankly that for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he swallowed and put down his coffee cup.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘It was reported as a suicide,’ she said. ‘But it definitely wasn’t. There might be mixed messages for a while. I came here myself to tell you that Carline did not kill herself.’

  Cormac rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘Christ, Carrie. I interviewed her yesterday afternoon. I didn’t go easy.’

  Carrie nodded. ‘I don’t expect you did,’ she said. ‘And I’m telling you that nothing you said killed her – she didn’t kill herself. Dr Connolly hasn’t made it official yet, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Carline Darcy was murdered.’

  Cormac stood up, agitated, and walked to the other side of the room. He looked out through the window in the direction of the city, as if he could see through the buildings, right across town to the apartment on the water.

  ‘Cormac, I’m new to this case as of a couple of hours ago. What can you tell me? Do you have any idea who might have done this?’

  He turned back to her, his face pale. ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I believed … I thought that Carline Darcy was responsible for the death of Della Lambert. My theory was that Carline had been paying Della for help with her academic work, and something went wrong. I thought that Carline had killed her, or arranged to have her killed to keep her quiet. But I’ve missed something. If Carline Darcy has been murdered, then I’ve missed something.’

  Carrie stood slowly. She couldn’t discuss the case with him, that wouldn’t help anyone. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I need to get to the case room. It’s going to take a little time to familiarise myself with everything, start the ball rolling again.’

  He nodded and she moved towards the door.

  ‘Look after yourself, Cormac,’ she said. ‘You’ll be back on the job soon enough.’

  ‘When did she die?’ Cormac asked. ‘Was it last night or this morning?’

  ‘It’s not official. We don’t have anything from the pathologist but my best guess would be sometime last night. What time did you leave her?’

  ‘Just after six,’ Cormac said. ‘No one saw her this morning?’

  Carrie shook her head. ‘Her roommates haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon. From what I know so far, other than the killer, you may be the last person to have seen her alive.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  After Carrie left, Cormac sat on the stairs of the small house on Canal Road, head in his hands, for a long time. He thought about Carline Darcy, that beautiful, frightened girl whose life had had now been taken from her. He had missed something. Somewhere along the way he had missed the thing on which the whole case turned. This was a death that could have been prevented. All he could think about were those pleading eyes that had held his as she’d closed the door on him. If only he’d brought her in, she would surely be alive today. Cormac took a breath and reminded himself that he wouldn’t have gotten as far as the car with her, not with Internal Affairs waiting downstairs. He took the emotion, the guilt, and set it very deliberately to one side. He had no time to waste berating himself for his failure. Cormac sank his head onto his hands so he could close out the world, close himself off from all distraction, and work through the case from beginning to end.

  He found nothing. He had no answers, just a loose end he hadn’t yet followed up. He stood, grabbed his jacket and car keys, and left the house.

  It took him half an hour to reach Athenry, another couple of minutes to wind through the narrow medieval streets and out the other side to where the Lambert house was located. There was no car parked in the driveway, but Cormac got out anyway and went to the front door. He rang the bell, waited for a couple of minutes, and rang it again. A moment passed and he heard footsteps on the stairs. Paul opened the door. They regarded each other for a long moment.

  ‘My mother’s not here,’ Paul said. ‘She’s gone shopping.’

  Cormac nodded. ‘All right if I come in for a few minutes?’

  They sat opposite each other at the kitch
en table. The room smelled unpleasantly of damp laundry left to moulder. There were old crumbs and a sticky patch that might have been jam on the table. Paul sat with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. His hands were thin, knuckles too big for his fingers.

  ‘I want to speak with you, Paul, because I think you knew Della better than anyone else. You told Detective O’Halloran that you and Della were very close, that you were best friends.’

  Paul nodded.

  ‘I’m not sure we paid enough attention to that, Paul. You see, that’s quite unusual, at your age and Della’s, to be so close to a sibling, and particularly if you’re the opposite sex. It’s more common for siblings to be rivals. Or for distance to creep in as you grow older, and one of you leaves home. But it wasn’t like that for you and Della, was it?’

  ‘No.’ Paul shook his head.

  ‘It occurs to me, Paul, that you might know quite a bit more about what was going on in Della’s life than you told us.’ Cormac kept his tone gentle, matter of fact. ‘I think you may even know what it was that got her killed. And if that’s the case then I’m sorry you didn’t feel able to tell us earlier. I’m here because things have gotten worse, Paul. Things have become even more serious, and it isn’t an option anymore, for you to tell us less than the complete truth.’

  Paul’s brow furrowed. ‘I didn’t leave anything out or tell any lies if that’s what you really mean. What are you talking about?’

  ‘You went to see Carline Darcy yesterday, Paul, didn’t you? Carline told me you thought she might know something about Della’s death. What made you think that, Paul? And why didn’t you mention it to Garda Fisher, or DS O’Halloran when you spoke to them?’

  Paul’s mouth fell open. He mouthed silently for a second and then the words burst out of his mouth in a torrent of emotion. ‘I didn’t know!’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything.’

  There was hectic, feverish colour in the boy’s cheeks.

  ‘But you did go to talk to Carline Darcy?’ Cormac asked, very gently.

  ‘I read about her in the paper and I thought she might know something about Della, about all the secrets she was keeping. But she wouldn’t even talk to me. She just looked at me like I was crazy, and then she said something about being late, and then she just unlocked the door and went inside. She pushed it closed behind her like I was going to follow her in or something. Which I wasn’t.’

  ‘How did you know where she lived?’ Cormac asked.

  Another flush. ‘I just Googled her,’ Paul said. ‘The newspaper article said she lived in a penthouse apartment on the Dock Road. There was only one apartment building on the street so I just waited outside until she came home.’

  Cormac’s hope of finding an answer was fading fast. ‘And that was it?’ Cormac asked. ‘Nothing else was said between you?’

  Paul shook his head but there was a spark of something in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ Cormac said. ‘What is it, Paul?’

  ‘No, it’s just … there was something weird.’ He hesitated, then stood and picked up a backpack that had been left in the corner of the room. ‘I think Carline had Della’s laptop in her bag.’

  ‘She … sorry?’

  ‘It was poking up out of her bag. Her shoulder bag. She saw me noticing it, and she got weird about it and tried to hide it.’

  ‘How do you know it was Della’s computer?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ Paul said. ‘And if she hadn’t acted all odd about it maybe I wouldn’t have thought too much about it.’ Paul unzipped his backpack and pulled out a slim grey laptop computer, pointed to the top right corner of the lid. ‘See that?’ There was a discoloured patch on the gunmetal grey lid, in the form of a female silhouette. ‘This is Della’s old computer. The one she had before she upgraded. There used to be a sticker there. It was a sticker of Jean Grey, from X-Men. I gave it to Della because Jean was her favourite, and Jean’s a scientist too, see?’

  Cormac wasn’t following but he nodded anyway.

  ‘When Del got a new computer she gave me this one, but she took the sticker off first and stuck it to her new computer. The sticker left this mark behind.’ Paul tapped the patch on his computer – it was still very slightly sticky. ‘The laptop Carline was carrying was the exact same model as Della’s new one, and it had the exact same mark as mine in the corner.’

  ‘I see,’ Cormac said. ‘You don’t think it’s possible that Carline simply had a similar sticker at some stage?’

  Paul made a face. ‘Yeah, maybe. But it’s a bit of a coincidence. And she was weird about it. Why did she not want me looking at it?’

  It was a fair point. Paul could have been reading too much into what might have been a coincidence. He might have misinterpreted Carline’s body language in a moment that had to have been awkward and difficult. But Cormac didn’t think so. Paul’s thin body was rigid with tension, his dark eyes were very serious as he held the computer out for Cormac’s inspection, but there was nothing of the hysteric about him. And if Paul was right, if Carline had had Della’s laptop in her possession on the night she died … well that opened up some very interesting questions.

  ‘Tell me about Della’s new computer,’ Cormac said. ‘You said you know the model?’

  Paul described it for him as best he could, but before he was finished Cormac heard the sound of the front door opening. Eileen Lambert came into the room like an avenging angel, full of bombast and accusations. In the face of her aggression, Paul retreated into himself. There was nothing left to learn in the house and nothing to be gained by staying. Cormac left a few moments later, feeling grateful to the boy he left behind, and desperately sorry for him.

  Carrie went back to the station. She’d called ahead, and Peter Fisher was waiting for her outside the interview rooms.

  ‘Where’ve you got them?’ Carrie asked.

  ‘The girl’s in number four,’ Fisher said, indicating the door behind him. ‘Mark Wardle’s in number five. He’s building himself up to start complaining. Wants his lunch.’

  ‘It’s not that time already, is it?’ Carrie looked at her watch – it was almost 1 p.m. ‘Has the Super come looking for me?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘All right.’ Carrie gave Fisher the nod, and he opened the closest door for her. Valentina sat, bare feet crossed at the ankles, on a plastic chair that was bolted to the ground. She was wearing a garda windbreaker and tracksuit bottoms over her pyjamas. Her arms were crossed and her shoulders hunched. A Styrofoam cup of tea sat on the table in front of her, a skin forming on the top of it. She looked up as they came in.

  ‘How long am I going to be here?’ she asked. Her face was pale, eyes red-rimmed. One eye was smeared with mascara. This morning’s make up, smudged from crying? Or last night’s, never removed?

  ‘Are you cold?’ Carrie glanced in the direction of her feet. ‘We can have someone get you a pair of socks, some runners.’

  ‘I’m fine. But I do want my own things. When can I go home?’

  ‘You might be able to collect some basic items later this evening or tomorrow, when scene of crime is finished processing the apartment. But you’re not likely to be able to stay there for some time, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She pushed her hands under her thighs so that she was sitting on them. ‘I’m never going near the place again, once I’ve picked up my stuff. I slept there all night, you know? And she was dead next door all that time. I walked over her blood for fuck’s sake.’ She wiped a hand across her mouth.

  Carrie took Valentina’s full name, her basic biographical details, then gave a nod to Fisher, who started the interview tape. ‘Valentina, can you tell us where you were from say, six o’clock yesterday evening?’ They had no time of death to work with, but Reilly had left her at six and it seemed as good a place as any to start. ‘When did you last see Carline?’

  ‘I didn’t see her at all yesterday. I left early because I had a morning exam. I had lunch at college, then I had another exam
at two o’clock. It was my last exam so after that I went straight to the bar. I was out all night, didn’t get in until after midnight, and then I went straight to bed.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t see Carline at all yesterday?’

  She shook her head. ‘Mark saw her in the morning. She said she was sick, she skipped her exam.’ She looked from Carrie to Fisher and back again.

  ‘You thought she was lying?’ Carrie asked.

  Valentina’s lips were slightly parted. Her green eyes narrowed, then she shook her head. ‘She might have been sick. It wasn’t like she absolutely needed to sit her exams. She had enough credits to graduate without them.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I thought something else was going on. She had been friendly with that girl Della at one point, you know, the girl who died. I mean, not friendly enough that she should be destroyed by her death or anything. But I thought it had rocked her a bit.’ Valentina hesitated. ‘Look, I thought she was more upset about something her grandfather said to her. He visited during the week and Carline has been weird ever since. So when she said she was sick and suddenly showed no interest in her exams, I figured it had something to do with that.’

  ‘How long have you known Carline?’ Carrie asked.

  Tears welled in Valentina’s eyes. ‘Since school,’ she said. ‘We went to the same arsey private school in Dublin. My father’s a diplomat, my parents travel all the time, so I was boarding.’

  ‘And Carline?’

  ‘Carline was boarding because her mother was an alcoholic, and she didn’t want to live with her anymore.’

  Carrie paused. ‘Tell me more about that.’

  A snort from Valentina. ‘Carline’s mother has a problem with drugs and alcohol, okay? She also has terrible taste in men. Carline had a pretty shitty childhood, but who doesn’t, right? As least Carls had money.’

  ‘Tell me about Della,’ Carrie said.