by Paul Charles
“So we were all messing around on the internet, trying to develop a Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, anything – our own Google really. Susanna and I fell by the wayside, but Larry and Ryan kept going. At the same time, Larry was building up a database of his own information – contacts, places he’d go to, stores he’d order from – and then one day Ryan said ‘It’s here, we’ve had it all the time. We should just try and find a way to charge people to use your list.’ You know what we’re talking about – restaurants, shops, chemists, cinemas, best antique stores, best holidays, best place to meet girls…” Tim said.
“And boys,” Susanna added seamlessly. “And they spent all their spare time building Larry’s database into a website.”
“They had taken it as far as they possibly could, without calling on development money,” Tim added.
“Why not go to their dad?” O’Carroll asked.
“He’d made it clear to them that he’d pay them only if they worked for him, and he promised them the opportunity to work their way up through the company, but outside of that he wouldn’t give them a single penny.”
“They became desperate and borrowed £20,000 a few months ago from a loan shark. They were due to pay it back and Ryan had told me the £20,000 had now escalated to £50,000.”
“But I thought you said they had no worries?” O’Carroll said.
“Well, Ryan didn’t seem worried about it,” Susanna said. “He felt they were a matter of days away from a major breakthrough with the site. He was confident that when they launched it properly on the internet, the cash would just roll in, then they could sell the site to Google or Amazon, or someone similar, for multi-millions and retire.”
“But Larry had no real interest in money. He’d no interest in retiring,” Tim added.
“Did Ryan or Lawrence mention anything about this at the gym?” O’Carroll asked.
“Nah. They were both excited by Ryan’s latest idea of trying to get golfer Rory McIlroy on board as an ambassador for Larry’s List, which would bring worldwide publicity.”
“We asked their mother about their friends. She mentioned only you two and Pat, their solicitor,” O’Carroll said. “But surely two young guys would have more friends than that?”
“Not really. They’d always been enough for each other. They were really completely happy in each other’s company.”
“Tell me this,” McCusker started, his mind obviously elsewhere. “Surely they could just have gone to their mother for the development money?”
Susanna and Tim looked at each other and shook their heads in synchronised sympathy.
“She didn’t have a penny of her own money,” Tim said.
“Ryan told me that his mam went to their dad and asked for the development money and he just laughed at her, saying he wasn’t going to waste his hard-earned money on a silly internet company.”
Chapter Six
McCusker and O’Carroll left Café Conor just before 8 p.m. McCusker volunteered to interview Pat Tepper alone, but O’Carroll wanted to be there as well. However, she’d arranged to pick up her sister, Grace, from her apartment in the Titanic Quarter at eight. She decided to ring Tepper, who was on standby for their interview, and have him meet them in the bar of the Fitzwilliam Hotel at quarter past instead. That way they could pick up Grace en route, have her wait at the Europa Hotel Bar, and collect her after the Tepper interview, whereupon the sisters could go to their dinner, leaving McCusker to walk home.
But Grace wasn’t ready when O’Carroll ran up to collect her. She’d have to make her way to the Europa herself, leaving O’Carroll and McCusker to head off for their rendezvous with Pat Tepper.
O’Carroll had just finished tut-tutting about families and the effort they required even just to mark time, when a casually dressed young man walked up to them and introduced himself as Pat Tepper.
“How did you know it was us?” O’Carroll asked.
“Well. Neither of you are interested in each other, you know in a romantic manner, so I concluded you were either work colleagues or you’ve been married for a few years. Since neither of you are wearing wedding rings, although one of you used to wear one,” the well-spoken Tepper addressed McCusker directly, “I knew you must be McCusker and O’Carroll.”
“Very good,” O’Carroll replied, “maybe you should be working for us.”
“Well it was a lot easier than that actually,” Tepper confessed. “Look around…there are no other mixed couples in the bar.”
McCusker went off to get three pints of Guinness while O’Carroll confessed, “You know that really was very good – I’ve known McCusker - mind you, only a few months - but I never realised he’d been married.”
McCusker found himself wondering about O’Carroll as he returned with two of the three pints. What was her story? Why had she and he no interest in each other? She and the younger Pat Tepper seemed to be getting on great in his absence though. Yes, there was a bit of an age gap, but the solicitor seemed mature and…and…they looked like they were connecting.
“So,” O’Carroll offered semi-officially when McCusker returned with his drink, “when did you last see Ryan and Lawrence O’Neill?”
Pat Tepper sighed with pleasure, enjoying his first taste of the dark brew before he answered, “That would have been Monday afternoon; we had a meeting in my office.”
“And you haven’t heard from them since?”
“I spoke to Ryan on the phone on Tuesday morning. I should explain the dynamics of the brothers. Larry was the ideas man; he was preoccupied about getting Larry’s List up and running and dealing with all the logistical and technical problems that entailed. Ryan was the business head. He’d seen how all these other internet success stories seemed to end up with the principals fighting in the courts.”
“Like Facebook?” O’Carroll suggested.
“Like Facebook,” Tepper agreed. “And even Apple ended up in the courts for years over borrowing the name of The Beatles’ company. Anyway, Ryan was totally convinced that their idea was going to work and he wanted their paper trail to be 100 per cent watertight and legitimate.”
“Are you aware that he took out a loan?” O’Carroll continued, revealing that she had been pondering Susannah and Tim’s earlier revelation.
“You see,” Tepper started and then stopped, perhaps considering how much he should disclose. “Well, just in case anything has happened to the boys, I should tell you all I know. Ryan could easily have raised the money he needed if he’d been prepared to give a percentage of the company in return. Heck, even I could have found him a couple of substantial investors, but he really wasn’t interested in giving away a share of their idea. He was happy when Susanna and Tim fell by the wayside, because, although they had put a lot of energy in, Ryan said he never really felt they were part of it.”
“Who put in the £20,000?” McCusker asked.
“The honest to goodness answer is: I don’t know. Ryan swore to me it was just a loan shark, nothing political, you know, just an ODC.”
“How long had he the loan?” O’Carroll asked.
“A couple of months.”
“Well, £15,000 a month interest for a £20,000 loan doesn’t sound like the work of an ordinary decent criminal, aka ODC, to me?” McCusker offered, as he took his inaugural sip of his favourite brew.
“What can I tell you? Times are tough out there in all walks of life.”
“And his parents really wouldn’t give them any money?” O’Carroll asked.
“Well, his mum siphoned off as much of the house-keeping money as she could, but her husband just wasn’t interested in helping.”
“So when you spoke to Ryan on Tuesday, which was the day before he disappeared, had you any idea where he was?” O’Carroll asked.
“No, sorry,” Tepper said. “But surely you guys can trace his movements by doing a triangulation on his mobile?”
“Yep, we’re already onto that,” O’Carroll said. “So we know of yourself, Susanna Holmes,
and Tim Black, but no one else. Was there anyone else who the boys were in regular contact with?”
“They weren’t really friends with anyone else.”
“There must be some girlfriends?” McCusker said.
“Not since Ryan and Susanna split up.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh a good few years – they’ve remained good friends though,” Tepper said, appearing deep in thought. “I’ve never been able to work out if Susanna would have taken Ryan back or he her, but I can tell you they really get on great together. Tim Black, in one of his more uncharitable and drunken moments, had suggested that Susanna was just idling time with him as she waited for Ryan to come into his father’s money.”
“Really?” McCusker asked. When he thought back on the pair that seemed to make sense – there hadn’t really been enough of a natural fire between Susanna and Tim, even with their party-trick of completing each other’s sentences, to suggest they’d end up together.
“I tell you that, not because I wish to gossip, but because there just might be a wee grain of truth to it.”
“And Lawrence?” O’Carroll continued.
“He’s obsessed with this project. I mean he was always going to be obsessed with something; better Larry’s List than drugs, drink, or a woman.”
“What do you think has happened to them?” McCusker asked, throwing out the only curve ball he had up his sleeve.
“Well, obviously I’ve been thinking about this and they’ve either disappeared until they can get some money and get the loan shark off their backs or they’ve just nipped away for a few days. Ryan was always saying that Larry worked too hard, but he kept himself pretty busy too.”
“They wouldn’t have done anything silly like…”
“Commit suicide?” Tepper asked and answered his own question. “No way. They were too happy in each other’s company and much too ambitious by far.”
“Kidnapped?” McCusker asked.
“Well, James O’Neill would seem like an ideal target.”
“If the family were so rich why are the boys so ambitious?” McCusker asked.
“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Tepper said, pausing briefly for another sip, “they wanted to make enough money so their mother didn’t have to depend on their father.”
* * *
“He’d be a nice man for some girl,” O’Carroll said, as she and McCusker took the Great Victoria Street exit of the Fitzwilliam Hotel en route to the Europa, and in the process walked past the ugliest extension to one of the city’s most beautiful buildings, the Grand Opera House.
“Yeah, I could tell youse were getting on well. Did you exchange numbers?”
“No, not for me you oaf, I’m already spoken for – for my sister, Grace.”
* * *
Luckily for McCusker he didn’t get to see Grace O’Carroll that evening. He declined her sister’s invitation to join them for a drink in the Europa, choosing instead to cross the street and enjoy another Guinness in the Crown Bar, the renowned destination. In fact, he happened to bump into someone he knew from his last station house up in Portrush. McCusker stretched his pint out to his former colleague’s three and left him as he was about to tackle a fourth. Given the choice, he’d have much preferred to sip on his Guinness alone, enjoy the vibey, unique pub, and consider the missing O’Neill brothers.
Two brothers from an extremely wealthy family disappear without a trace but no sign of a demand for a ransom. The mother is worried, the father is not. Could the father possibly be dealing with kidnappers himself? Does he really not care about their well-being? Could the brothers simply be keeping out of the way of a loan shark, as their solicitor would have it? Could they be off doing some secretive research for the website? Might they just be being extremely discreet, having shot off somewhere for a dirty weekend? Where would they go? Dublin? Paris? London? Bangor? Or maybe even Portrush or somewhere up in the wilds of Donegal. They’d be very hard to track down up there, McCusker thought. Portrush would also seem to be the best-suited location due to their lack of funds.
He hadn’t really had a chance to discuss the next step with O’Carroll – should they place photos in the press or send them to the local news? Or would that endanger the boys? The photos they had sourced (surprisingly enough on the internet) were already on the radar as an official alert, along with the boys’ names. It still wasn’t really a case – and it wasn’t even his case – but there wasn’t a lot of action around the Custom House at the moment, so he was happy with anything that distracted him from his thoughts about Portrush. By the time he reached his first-floor flat on University Square Mews, he was happy to be further distracted by the bliss that is sleep.
Chapter Seven
It seemed but a matter of minutes later when he was offended by a third distraction; this time the sound of the Big Ben chimes of his doorbell. As he stumbled out of bed he was shocked to discover sun-tinted daylight streaming into his living room. He checked his watch – barely 7.30 a.m. Where had the night gone? He wasn’t allowed to dwell on this thought too long because on and on Big Ben chimed. The mini (make that micro) screen on his door buzzer clearly showed DI Lily O’Carroll standing in the porch outside the front door of the three-storey house. She was hopping from foot to foot while holding two cups of something. He prayed it was a wake-me-up coffee as he buzzed her in.
He used the time it took her to walk up the stairs to pull on a pair of trousers and yesterday’s shirt, which he was still buttoning up when she knocked on his door.
“Rise and shine country boy!” she sang, as she breezed past him into the tiny hallway of his flat. She came to a quick halt at the door to his living room. “McCusker, colour me impressed! I was expecting a student hovel. Never in a million years would I have pegged you as house proud.”
McCusker enjoyed the sin of pride for but a moment. He had spent an earlier weekend cleaning, decorating, and furnishing the two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and living room of his flat. He couldn’t stand dives, dirty or untidy houses or flats, and even in his student days he had avoided domestic chaos like the bubonic plague. At £485 a month to rent it was a bit more than he’d planned to spend, but, in his line of work, he felt it necessary to have a sanctuary to return to at the end of each day. On top of which, thanks to his early retirement money courtesy of the Lord Patten scheme, he could afford to throw a few extra cushions around his living space.
Actually the Patten windfall allowed McCusker to be able to stretch way beyond the few extra cushions.
As a bi-product of the 1994 Peace Process and by way of the Good Friday Agreement of 10th April 1998, Chris Patten (as he was then known) was invited in 1999 to lead a commission to make recommendations to Westminster on policing in Northern Ireland. His basic brief was pretty much along the lines of: if the police force were to serve the community then its members had to be from the community. Included in the 175 recommendations the Lord (as he became) Patten Commission made, was one where the RUC (the Royal Ulster Constabulary as it was originally known) should change its name to The Northern Ireland Police Service. Shortly thereafter this was revised to The Police Service of Northern Ireland, (PSNI) no doubt in order to avoid the NIPS acronym.
Along with the name change it was decided that the police force should be completely reorganised with the emphasis on human rights. Patten’s commission recommended that the new police force should be, ‘broadly reflective of the population of Northern Ireland.’ The PSNI were instructed that, ‘an equal pool of Catholics and Protestants should be drawn from the pool of qualified candidates.’
In order to achieve this fair balance of staff the PSNI had to lose a lot of members from their ranks over the following decade, and so the Patten Commission offered - in recommendation number 106 - handsome packages of pensions and payments to those willing to accept voluntary retirement. McCusker pondered the option for years and eventually decided to bite their hand off with a plan to retire to the good life, mostly focused a
round, but rarely on, the golf course.
It wasn’t exactly that he was tired, or even tired of police work, no, far from it in fact. He still loved, with a passion, the mystery of the puzzle of the crimes. It was more that, just before accepting the voluntary retirement , McCusker had started to accept he’d reached the stage, with his seniority, where he’d become a desk-bound pen-pusher, rather than a case solver. So perhaps it was not so much a case of him not knowing what he wanted to do, but more a case of him knowing what he really didn’t want to do.
McCusker realised that at Custom House he had fallen on his feet in that he was no longer an official member of the PSNI. He was but a hired hand; a hand hired to do what he absolutely lived to do, solve crimes. Not only that, but he was set apart from all the PSNI career politics and, as O’Carroll frequently reminded him, ‘you’re only here because Patten paid you handsomely to retire, but you got bored, so now you’re back and even better paid than you were when you were a member of the RUC.’
And of course also in the new mix of his life there was Detective Inspector Lily O’Carroll. The jury was still out on whether she was on the plus or minus side of his new life, although he accepted he already had a fair idea how he’d vote.
“On the other hand,” he heard her say, handing him his coffee and drawing him out of his daily moment of gratitude to Lord Patten, “maybe you should take a look in the mirror before you greet anyone at the front door again.”
McCusker strode, early-morning speed, into his bathroom and did in fact look in the mirror. Not a pretty sight he would agree; his dishevelled straw-like copper-coloured hair refused to bid the orchestration of his fingers, even when dampened. He was solid rather than overweight (which he felt was always just around the corner), not tall, not small, awkward and shy, but he wasn’t quite the fool – even with his shirt buttons done up out of sync – he sometimes liked people to think he was.
