“Well, who’s to say,” Granny Coyle said after a few minutes’ pause. Her expression was as inscrutable as ever.
“Oh come on,” Power scoffed. “Stiffing the church collection? Compared to some of the crimes that were on there? It’s nothing.”
“It is not nothing,” Margaret cried suddenly, standing and hurrying to the window.
“Not for her.”
Power rolled his eyes. “It’s ridiculous.”
“I’d advise you not to say such things about my daughter in my presence,” Granny Coyle said. “Or have you forgotten who has all the bargaining power here?”
Power pursed his lips together so tightly they started to turn pale. It was as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.
“Well?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t hear you, Power.”
Fiona smiled to herself. She would have felt sorry for the guy if he didn’t seem like a complete pain. Her granny’s interrogation techniques had always been intimidating whenever she’d suspected them of doing anything wrong as children. It was a relief to be on the other side of the table now.
“I’m well aware,” he muttered.
“Great,” Granny Coyle said airily. “We’ll agree to differ on the seriousness or otherwise of leaving the collection envelope short. I don’t think we’ll ever come to an agreement; not even within the family.” She shot him a smile. It was almost possible to believe there was real warmth behind it. “Anyway. It’s clear you had a good look before you destroyed the drive.”
He clicked his tongue. “Well of course. After I managed to get in there I had to see what dirt she had on others, didn’t I?”
“You destroyed evidence.”
“I don’t know why you’re getting so high and mighty. The only reason you’re here is because you saw what she had on me.”
Granny shook her head. “What did you see on there?”
“I hardly think… it’s not…” he blustered.
“Well, speak up. There’s not long until your conference call and I’d hate for you to miss it. What did you see? And how did you destroy it?”
“Not that it’ll mean anything to you, but I held a strong magnet to it, soaked it in bleach and then salt water before burning the whole thing.”
That reminded Fi of something. “Where’d you burn it?”
He smirked. “Where do you think? I went to the Garda station and did it there. I put it in the range cooker, of course. And an awful stink it made too.”
Fiona frowned. Of course, she realised, the timing was all off. She had walked into that plume of smoke outside the Mahony's before Alan Power had even broken into Mrs Stanley’s. It hadn’t struck her as odd at the time so much as irritating, but now it stuck in her mind.
Trish Mahony was one of the people on Mrs Stanley’s list. What had she been burning on the day of the murder?
Frustratingly, now wasn’t the time to reflect on such things.
“So it’s destroyed beyond repair,” Fiona summarised.
“Yes,” Power said, looking at her as if she was an idiot.
“So much for mounting the drive and retrieving the data,” Marty muttered.
Power glared at him. “Ah, so we’ve a computer expert in our midst, do we? Ah sure that’s great. Maybe you can sit in on my call, teach us all a thing or two.”
Fi rolled her eyes. “I have to say, you’re not making this any easier for yourself. Did no one tell you sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?”
“Will you just get on with it!” he shouted suddenly, face becoming a worrying reddish-purple. “I’ve had about all I can take of you people and your incessant talking. It’s enough to drive a man mad.”
“Answer my questions and we’ll leave you be.”
“Your questions? I thought you just wanted the computer.”
“I did,” Granny Coyle said, shaking her head and smiling sadly. “But you just told me you destroyed it. So this is the alternative.”
“Fine,” Powers said, sighing and sinking back into his chair as if doing so allowed him to pretend they weren’t there.
“First things first. Why did the Gardaí let you go?”
“What? Why?” he started to bluster but something about her expression must have made him think twice about doing so. “Because I didn’t do anything wrong. I was in Dublin at the time she was poisoned. My company forwarded the Gardaí the CCTV footage to prove it.”
“Aha. But you left in the afternoon and never went back.”
He flushed. “I had a meeting offsite.”
“There was the break-in too. Why didn’t they arrest you for that?”
He shrugged. “They never asked me about that. Come to think of it, nobody knows about it except for you.” He leant forward, staring into her face. “How exactly do you know about that?”
Rose shook her head. “I’m not here to answer questions. Now, clarify that like a good lad. They didn’t mention the break-in to you at all?”
“No. That’s what I said. Is that it?”
“Oh no, son,” Granny Coyle said, shaking her head and chuckling. “Not at all. We’ll be here a while yet. But you’re doing great.” She leaned over and patted his hand before he abruptly pulled it away as if she’d injured him. “Now. When did you first meet Mrs Stanley? And when did you first visit her house?”
He coloured. “I’ve never been in her house. At least, I’d never been there since… since the other day.” He looked unsure of himself for the first time.
“We know that’s not true.”
“It’s the truth. It’s… I… Oh, fine. If you must know, I paid her a visit some time back. She’d emailed me, you see. Using a fake name on Facebook. At first I thought it was a joke, but I kept on getting messages and they started to threaten my job.” His expression hardened. “I won’t tolerate a threat to my livelihood.”
“You’re very intimidating,” Granny Coyle said cheerfully. “Carry on there. The clock is ticking and I’d hate for you to miss your call.”
He turned puce again, but this time he said nothing.
“You were telling us about your first visit over there.”
“Yes,” he said, the ’s’ sound coming out as a hiss. It seemed appropriate: there was something inherently snake-like about him. “It was easy. She’d done nothing to hide her IP address. I was able to trace it back to her once I grew concerned that this Pete Smith wasn’t going to let it go.”
“I see. So you went to threaten her.”
He rolled his eyes. “I went to tell her I knew what was going on. I didn’t even know who I was visiting until I knocked on the door and this seemingly-sweet old lady opened it. That’s until a few seconds passed and I saw the fear in her eyes when she saw it was me.”
“So you intimidated her.”
“No,” he groaned. “She made it clear to me that she had something on me and she wasn’t going to keep quiet about it unless I paid up.”
“So what did you do?”
He shook his head. “If this gets out, I could get in serious trouble over it.”
“More serious than the trouble you’re already in?”
“Fine!” Power shouted. “I left, making out like I was some chastened little schoolboy who she’d outsmarted. I went home and set about finding a Trojan horse that I could use to get in and wipe her hard drive. I stayed up all night doing it too.”
“Quite the boy scout.”
“She tried to blackmail me!”
“Fair enough,” Fiona said, getting the feeling there were too many bad cops in the room and not enough good cops. “I’d do the same if someone tried to blackmail me.”
“Oh, I feel so consoled by that,” Power sneered.
Okay, Fiona thought. Back to bad cop if that’s what you’re going to be like. She sat back in her chair and stared at him, wishing they didn’t need him. But they did.
“So you sent her a virus. What then? Why kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her.�
�
“So you said. Why steal her computer?”
He slammed both hands on the table, startling them. He’d been sitting relatively still until that point. “Because she didn’t open them! Two emails a day I sent her. I devised all sorts of clever emails to induce her to open them. I advertised cleaning products and bingo holidays. No matter what I did, they went unopened.”
“They obviously weren’t as clever as you thought,” Granny Coyle snapped.
“No,” he said sullenly.
“So you killed her,” Ben prompted, a big grin on his face.
“No, you moron,” Power snapped. “Did you not hear what I just said? I went back over there to talk some sense into her.”
“To take her computer, you mean.”
He scowled. “Whatever it took.”
“And when was this? I take it the emails from her had stopped by then.”
“They had, but the threat remained. Every time I saw her in town she’d look at me with those beady little eyes and I’d know she was just biding her time before she went to my boss and told him everything.”
“So you killed her,” Fiona prompted, suspecting he was very close to being tipped over the edge.
“I didn’t kill her!” he screamed, leaping to his feet. “What is wrong with you people? I couldn’t stand it anymore so I went over there with the intention of taking her computer when she was out, but when I got round to the back of the house the plan changed.”
“What was that?” Granny asked, her face twisted into a look of disbelief.
“Because,” he spat. “I could see her through the net curtain on the back door.”
“So you didn’t knock on the door and try to twist her arm.”
“No. I didn’t. Because I could see she was lying face down in her breakfast plate.”
Fiona’s heart started to pound. “When was this, Alan?”
“Just before they found her,” he said as if it was obvious.
“But I don’t get it,” Francis said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you go in? You could have broken the lock and took the computer, then told the guards you were going in to help her.”
Power shot him a look of pure disdain. “Do you think I’m an absolute fool? Of course I’d have done that. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
“Because,” Power snapped, looking fit to murder the whole lot of them. “Because there was somebody else there and I knew better than to storm in when it was clear they had something to do with it.”
29
THE SILENCE in the room was deafening.
Fiona’s throat had suddenly become dryer than she’d ever experienced. She looked around at the others, working hard to get her thoughts in order enough to form words, never mind meaningful sentences.
Granny Coyle seemed to recover fastest. “There was someone there you say? So what did you do?”
“I ran. Obviously.”
“Did you call the guards?”
He pursed his lips. “I did not. I planned to wait an hour and then go back, but by then word had gotten out. Someone must have heard something.”
“Wait,” Fiona whispered, holding up her hand. “Who was there?”
She went through the list of suspects in her head. There were far too many to even think of narrowing them down without the help of the guards. She had never imagined they would find out the killer’s identity from Power —it seemed so unlikely that there had been a witness to the crime who hadn’t come forward.
“I’ll let you guess,” he said sniffily. “I’m sure you can do it based on the list of people she was blackmailing.”
Fiona raced through those names in her head, but none jumped out at her. What if he called their bluff? Frantically, she tried to narrow down the suspects, but the only lead they had was that poison was a female weapon of choice—and where had they even heard that anyway? For all she knew, it was just some urban legend.
The only thing they knew for sure was that Power had been frightened enough by whatever—or whoever—he saw to run away and risk leaving that computer, with its incriminating information. Who could have scared him to such an extent?
Thankfully, Rose wasn’t about to start guessing. “You’re running out of time. Why don’t you tell us?”
Power sighed. “How do I even know you’ve got anything on me? For all I know, you’re just bluffing. After all, I know she was trying to blackmail you too. You could have just put two and two together. One of you went for a drive past her house that night and happened to see me on the road. So what?”
“That’s rubbish,” Granny Coyle said, clicking her tongue. “Now tell us, before I run out of patience and call your manager.”
But Power seemed to be standing firm now. There was a glint in his eye that Fiona didn’t like one bit. They’d dragged it out too long, she knew. And now he was calling their bluff.
Before she knew what she was doing, inspiration struck. “Oh, please Mrs Stanley,” she whimpered in a put-on voice she hoped sounded like Power’s own. “You must reconsider. I’m working on a very important project for my company. You can imagine what my dismissal would do to that progress and the effect it would have on the wider economy.”
Power blanched.
“Would you like me to go on? As I recall, you begged for at least four long paragraphs. It was pretty pathetic really.”
“Fine,” he whispered. “Fine. It was a woman.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all I saw. She was rooting around in the presses like she was possessed.”
Fiona looked at her grandmother and saw her own frustration mirrored back in Rose’s eyes. “What do you mean, that’s all you saw. You said you saw the murderer.”
“I did,” he whispered. His hands were trembling again. “Well, I saw a woman. I don’t know who she was.”
“An awful lot of help that is. Was she tall? Small? What colour hair did she have? How was she dressed?”
There were three women on the list aside from Margaret. Sure, that narrowed things down but it wasn’t as specific as Fiona had hoped. She sighed.
“You were afraid of her. Why?” She could understand why someone might have been intimidated by Louise Graham or Trish Mahony; Mrs Roche less so. She was a sweet woman with a permanent smile on her face.
“Because Mrs Stanley was bent over with her head in a plate,” he snapped. “And there was something about her—the killer. A strange sort of ruthlessness in her movements. She was pulling the place apart.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirties. Forties. Fifties. I don’t know.”
“You can’t narrow it down any more? I suppose it eliminates Mrs Roche. She’s in her seventies.”
“I have no idea. I just caught a fleeting glance. She kept shrugging her shoulder. Sort of like this.” He made an exaggerated gesture, shrugging one shoulder while relaxing the other. “And it seemed like she was only using one hand. I don’t know. Maybe she was carrying a weapon.”
Fiona frowned. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“It was weird. A strange movement.”
“You noticed that before noticed her hair? Really?”
“I saw all this through a net curtain. There was a dead woman in the room. You’ll excuse me if I didn’t commit a carbon copy of the scene to my memory.”
“That’s all you remember?”
“Isn’t that what I told you? Now, are we done? Have you got your pound of flesh from me yet?”
Granny sighed. “More like a pound of pure tripe.”
“Hey,” Power protested. “I’ve told you everything I saw.”
“Alan,” Fiona said, squeezing her temples. “Just one more question. What do you remember from the files on Mrs Stanley’s computer; about the other blackmail victims?”
“What?” he sneered. “You want to make sure you didn’t miss out on anyone?”
The thought sickened Fiona, but she knew better than to o
bject. After all, wasn’t that what they were pretending they were up to in order to get information out of him?
“Maybe we do. What’s it to you? Do you want to sacrifice yourself for the sake of a few random people you don’t know?”
He seemed to consider this for a moment before he turned his head away and stared out the window beyond them. “No, I suppose I don’t. Why should I fall on my sword? I do it often enough at work. Let’s see, I didn’t memorise them.”
“You should have.”
“Well I didn’t know you were going to barge your way in here, did I? I’m not sure I can remember all the names. There was a red haired woman I’ve seen around the town. Her file had no information in it, just pictures. Her and a gentleman in a suit. It looked like they were on a city street. Georgian buildings. Dublin maybe. Arm-in-arm.”
Fiona shook her head. She might have doubted his word if she hadn’t witnessed Trish Mahony’s little bonfire on the day of the murder. She wondered if she should go round there and see if there was anything left, but she doubted it. What had Trish been burning?
“What else?”
“Another woman. Roche I think her name was. Hers was more a list of crimes, if you could call it that. Sending poison pen letters. That sort of thing. There was no evidence in there that I could see, only dates and recipients.”
Rose gasped.
“I’m only telling you what I saw.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Then you,” Power went on, looking straight at Margaret. “Though I didn’t know who you were at the time when I saw the list, only for there was a picture in there. Not very flattering if I do say so.”
“Nobody asked for your opinion,” Margaret said testily.
“Calm down, Ma,” Ben said. “It was a sneaky photo of you at the bar in Phelan's. Of course it wasn’t flattering.”
“Oh it was far more flattering than the pictures of Louise Graham,” Power said, smiling for the first time since they had arrived. “Whatever possessed her to take her clothes off and get in front of the camera I’ll never know.”
Full Irish Murder Page 15
