Down on Cyprus Avenue

by Paul Charles

  “I’m no sooner in the room when Adam, sober as a judge – he’d been play-acting again – creeps up behind me and says something about kidnapping the bride. In the little scenario he’d cooked up he didn’t want to overpower me, but he wanted me to beg for it. Again I will admit I didn’t for one second stop and think, ‘I’m married now, I can’t be fooling around any more with him.’ No, I also slipped into my role and then…well…long story short, we had full intercourse for the first time.”

  McCusker and O’Carroll continued to stare, dumbstruck.

  “What? What’s up? You weren’t expecting me to go into all the gory details, were you? You were, you pair of pervs you!”

  McCusker was happy she hadn’t gone into the details – it would have been way too embarrassing and he’d have to face O’Carroll on the walk back to the Customer House. How much of the gory details would the girls have gone into without him there? On second thoughts, perhaps Angela Robinson thought her only confidante at the interview was BM – as in Bushmills.

  “But you told us you and Adam had never made love?” O’Carroll said, appearing very disappointed that the two of them hadn’t been able to stick to their agreement.

  “And that’s true,” Angela replied, “we never ever made love – we frequently had sex.”

  “So you had full sex from then onwards?” O’Carroll asked, ending the awkward silence.

  “Sometime, not all of the time,” she replied in a sing-song style that referenced Bob Dylan for the third time in the interview. “Look, it’s difficult for me to say this when he’s not around to defend himself, but I began to realise that me getting married was just another part of his play-acting game. It was an elaborate part, but a part nonetheless. I soon got over any wee hang-ups I was feeling over that and pretty soon we were acting like I’d never got married, you know. Hey, and you know what? At no point could I have stopped, even if I’d wanted to.”

  “But you were married...” McCusker said, in sheer disbelief, unable to contain the words.

  “Look Inspector,” she started.

  “He’s not an inspector, he’s freelance,” O’Carroll interrupted, obviously feeling all the juicy bits were over.

  “Well how am I meant to address him?”

  “McCusker will do,” the freelance detective said.

  “Okay McCusker, as I was about to say, I wasn’t the one who was short-changing the other in my marriage. My husband never came to that particular well…shit, mixed metaphors abound – let’s just say I always fulfilled my marital obligations, always. On top of which, I was the bread-winner in the family: I cooked the food as well as paying for it. I paid the mortgage. I never rubbed his nose in it. Adam and I were very discreet, so discreet we used to call ourselves the ‘silent lovers’.”

  “But why stay with Richard?” McCusker continued, showing that he was still trying to come to terms with this.

  “Two reasons mainly, and both of them equally important,” she said, draining the remainder of the Bushmills direct from the bottle. “Firstly, please don’t forget that there was never ever going to be a conventional orthodox relationship between myself and Adam. He did not want me in that way; he didn’t want me ensconced as his wife. He much preferred to spend time dreaming up what he was going to do to me or what I was going to do to him, or what we were going to do to each other. Perhaps he didn’t feel like he could do that kind of thing with a wife. I’ll tell you this: our fire of passion was still burning as brightly and as feverishly as it ever had been; it never waned. I was madly, passionately in lust with him. Secondly, Richard genuinely cares about me. He will look after me when I need looking after. He will never be the one to leave me, never! That’s always been the way and now that Adam is no longer alive do you realise just how comforting that is?”

  McCusker shook his head in disbelief slowly and sadly from side to side.

  “Oh, get over it McCusker, some women are lucky enough to be able to find lust, friendship, excitement, entertainment, knowledge, companionship, and caring all in the one man. Me, I’m resigned to having to recruit seven separate men just so I can tick all of those boxes.”

  “I need you to think very carefully about this Angela; is there any chance at all Richard had a clue as to what was going on between you and Adam?” McCusker asked.

  “Not at all, not a chance.”

  “You know you said that you paid the mortgage and put the bread on the table – did Adam ever help you in this area, you know, with finance?” McCusker suggested, his question prompted by Angela’s admission that the American had paid for her wedding reception.

  She looked shocked at McCusker’s question and the brief time it took her to regroup was answer enough to betray the truth.

  Before she’d even a chance to put her thoughts into words, McCusker pushed on: “Okay, did he give you cheques, cash, make payments on your behalf?” It became clear that Angela Robinson had become more preoccupied with his untouched glass of Bushmills, and he quickly realised the interview was pretty much over.

  He and O’Carroll helped Robinson vacate her office and found her a cab coming up Bedford Street. She offered to drop them off somewhere but McCusker voted for a bit of air. O’Carroll agreed, and so they made arrangements to meet again in the morning. She promised to text Angela the same information “just in case.”

  * * *

  “It seems to me,” McCusker started, as they passed the Ulster Hall again – only this time going in the opposite direction – and proving that his mind was miles away, “that love and sex are two completely different things and the mistake most of us make is thinking they are connected.”

  “Grace once said something like that,” O’Carroll offered, not shooting McCusker down in flames the way he thought she would. “But were you referring to Angela Robinson?”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed, “although I think her problem might not be about the connection, or lack of the same, between love and sex but more that she thinks love doesn’t exist at all, don’t you see?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “How do you feel today?” Superintendent Larkin asked McCusker the following morning, just before the briefing started.

  “If I felt any better I’d be twins,” McCusker replied.

  “More power to your elbow, Mr McCusker,” Larkin said and then, ending the civilities, “Right, where are we on this case?”

  Suddenly a flash of inspiration hit McCusker: that’s where he knew the superintendent from and it was maybe why he smiled at his boss a wee bit too much! The famous statue of the anonymous speaker on the steps of the Custom House: he was the exact same build, same moustache, similar hair, same waistcoat, same height…McCusker questioned where fact ended and fiction began; had Larkin always naturally resembled the statue or had he modelled himself, perhaps even unconsciously, on the figure he passed by every day to work?

  “Okay,” McCusker started, realising everyone was waiting for him to answer the super’s question. “On the suspect list we have…” McCusker wrote with a white marker on a very large Perspex board. He recited the names as he wrote them: “Bing Scott – whose sister Cindy had an accident and died while trying to flirt with Adam Whitlock. Craig Husbands – university friend who couldn’t get Whitlock to invest in his project. Angela Robinson – was having a long-term affair with Whitlock behind her husband’s back. Perhaps Whitlock wanted to break it off. Richard Robinson – Angela claimed her husband didn’t know about her affair with Adam, but if her husband had discovered it, he’d have a pretty good motive. Also either he or his wife’s alibi is suspect, maybe even both. The sister, Julia Whitlock…”

  “Surely not?” Larkin interrupted.

  “Am I grasping at straws? Most definitely,” McCusker admitted, “but at the same time did she and her brother have a strange relationship ...and again, you have to say: most certainly. Did she benefit from her brother’s death? So far as we can gather she’s the one who benefited the most, to the tune of £287,000 in fac
t.”

  “Any others?” Larkin continued.

  McCusker was about to admit that there were not when he caught DS Barr’s eye, who appeared to want to inject but wanted McCusker’s approval before doing so.

  “You have something DS Barr?” McCusker responded.

  “I’ve been trying to find as many of Adam Whitlock’s old Queen’s University mates as possible. Just this morning, in fact, I had an email back from one lead in the USA: a Professor Bob Ceverto from Berkeley University. He was in the same year as Mr Whitlock. He said Adam, Craig Husbands, Ross Wallace, and Angela were thick as thieves; they’d no time for anyone else. He claimed that Samantha, a girl he used to date, dropped him for Ross Wallace. A year or so later Samantha and Ross had a shotgun wedding and a few months later Tom was born. The professor and quite a few of his circle were convinced that Ross wasn’t, in fact, the father but that Adam Whitlock was.”

  “That ties in with what Angela Robinson told us...” O’Carroll said. “She said Adam Whitlock had a girlfriend called Sam.”

  “Well done DS Barr,” McCusker said, as he wrote the names Ross Wallace and Samantha Wallace on the suspect list. “Great initiative.”

  They all stared at the list for a few moments. McCusker read the names out aloud again:

  Bing Scott

  Craig Husbands

  Angela Robinson

  Richard Robinson

  Julia Whitlock

  Ross Wallace

  Samantha Wallace

  POPU

  “Who’s POPU?” DI Cage asked.

  “Person or persons unknown,” Larkin replied, deadpan. “It’s really unbelievable,” he continued still looking in shock. “I always knew that if you scratched the surface of anyone’s life it’s incredible what you find underneath, but these students really do take the biscuit. I mean un-be-liev-able.”

  “Of course, we can’t rule out a CWM,” Cage offered, still a bit red-cheeked from the POPU exchange and still badly bruised from his RTA. When no one bit his bait he continued, “Yes, CWM – it’s a relatively new phenomenon but it’s becoming more and more common these days, where people commit crime without having any motives to do so. Crime without motive – CWM. I was on a conference recently about this very topic and the conclusions are quite disturbing.”

  “Jeez, sure, that’s a great one for you Detective Inspector Cage,” O’Carroll said. “You’re now going to be able to report a 100 per cent success rate with the rest of your cases: crimes without motive equals CWT.”

  “CWT?” Cage inquired, biting her bait.

  “Chastisement without trial,” O’Carroll replied quickly, hitting her imaginary cymbal.

  “All joking aside,” Larkin said, ending the scattered laughter, “it is a very significant development when people, sometimes not even criminals, are literally beating up victims and damaging private and public property for no other reason than they think they can get away with it – either that or they get a major buzz from doing so. The next step down this particular path is unthinkable.”

  “Anything turn up on the house to house enquiries on Cyprus Avenue?” McCusker asked hopefully.

  “Not a lot,” DS Barr replied. “I left all the reports on DI O’Carroll’s desk.”

  O’Carroll flashed Barr what McCusker imagined was a ‘thanks a fecking million’ glare.

  “Okay, time is passing,” McCusker said, noting that Superintendent Larkin was starting to look a little bored, either that or he had his personal barber awaiting him, hungry scissors eagerly snapping away furiously mid-air in anticipation. “DS Barr, you continue with your initiative with Whitlock’s fellow students please. DI Cage, could you carry out a full check on Richard Robinson’s background please? I bet there’ll be quite a few treasures there. He wasn’t beyond compromising his wife’s position at the BBC; he’s idle, so he’s had a lot of time to sit around with nothing whatsoever to do but stew over what Whitlock was doing with his wife, with an equal amount of time to plot his revenge. The state Adam Whitlock was found in testifies to the fact that someone positively hated the victim. This would have to put Richard Robinson and Ross Wallace top of our list. DI O’Carroll and I will do a similar check on Mr Wallace and have a chat with his wife and with Angela Robinson.”

  “And if someone would like to give me a floor brush I’m sure…” O’Carroll started, interrupting McCusker, only to be interrupted in turn by the super.

  “O’Carroll! We’ve heard the end of that line before and we don’t need to hear it again.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  So that was Thursday off and started. Just a week ago Adam Whitlock was still alive, enjoying his life to the full, but, McCusker thought, doing something – or having done something – that had pissed someone off big time.

  This morning’s briefing hadn’t gone bad really, with his and O’Carroll’s info on Angela Robinson, courtesy of Jaime Whitlock, and DS WJ Barr’s info on Ross Wallace, thanks to Professor Bob Ceverto. He hadn’t made as much progress as he’d have liked to at this point, but at the same time he’d learnt that investigations are best not rushed, mainly because jumping to conclusions might not only result in the wrong person being punished, but equally allow a guilty person to go free, thereby possibly jeopardising another life.

  When McCusker had been stationed in Portrush, there had been a case where the wife of a local doctor had told anyone who’d listen, including McCusker, that that her husband was abusing her and was going to kill her. Basically she had two main problems getting people to consider her accusations. One, there were no marks or bruises about her person. Two, her husband was a local mover and shaker, very well connected to both politicians and senior RUC personnel - including some of McCusker’s superiors. The doctor in question was also a prominent member of the local tennis club and what he lacked in skill on the courts he more than made up for with his wheeling and dealings in the club house afterwards.

  A few months after the initial allegations the doctor discovered his wife in his study at his desk, lifelessly slumped by the keyboard of his computer. The doctor claimed he searched his wife’s body for vital signs. On discovering no such signs of life he rang 999 for the RUC, as they were then known, and an ambulance. He further claimed he immediately left the study as he’d found it to await the police.

  Detective Inspector, as he then was, McCusker was the first on the scene. He arrived at the doctor’s house fourteen minutes after the doctor made the 999 call. He discovered the computer screen above her head was gently pulsing away, displaying what appeared to be her unfinished suicide note. The detective noted an overturned, half-emptied, box of sleeping pills just to the right of her head and three inches to the right of that was a Waterford Crystal tumbler, full of whiskey. At least he guessed that the smokey brown liquid was whiskey, helped in his guess work by the opened, but still quite full, bottle of Bushmills standing guard just to the rear of the glass.

  As he was examining the scene the computer went into, ‘sleep' mode with the Windows logo acting as screen saver, indiscriminately floating all about the monitor.

  McCusker found himself being unable to move his eyes away from the pills, the glass, and the bottle of whiskey. He really wanted to continue his initial examination of the scene, but his eyes just wouldn’t heed his wish. He knew there was a reason and he knew to heed the call of his natural instincts. He was glad he did. Following a few moments of collecting his thoughts, he realised that anyone desperate enough to want to hasten their exit from this planet would, most likely, want to ensure success by taking each and every one of the pills available. If the whiskey was as untouched as it appeared to be, then he wondered how she had been able to physically swallow the number of pills the evidence was leading him to believe she had. Surely she’d have needed a lot more than a few drops of whiskey to get them down. Yet her glass looked barely touched. And while he thought on about it, again assuming anyone was intent on such an exit route, then McCusk
er was convinced the victim in question would want, maybe even need, the remains of the glass, if not most of the entire bottle of Bushmills, to ensure the transition to the other side, as it were, was, at the very least, a blurred one.

  The Portrush detective also noted, with interest, that the doctor’s tipple of choice was in fact a gin and tonic, two of which he helped himself to in McCusker’s company, just to, ‘steady my nerves.’

  “You said you haven’t touched anything in here since you discovered your wife?” McCusker inquired, as he went about his work.

  “No, not a single thing,” the doctor confirmed, “Sure that’s what all the cops on the TV shows advise you to do.”

  “Right,” McCusker replied, thinking it just didn’t add up.

  Well actually, as he later admitted to his senior, it all did add up, added up in fact to what looked like a staged suicide to McCusker’s eyes.

  He put on a pair of blue opaque evidence gloves and went over to the well-stocked drinks cupboard, drawing a knowing, “Yes indeed, needs must, help yourself to a stiff one” from the doctor.

  McCusker hoaked around in the mahogany drinks cupboard for a few seconds until he found what he was looking for. There were clearly no other bottles of Bushmills Whiskey in the cupboard, but he did find a similar sized, and shaped, brandy bottle. He poured the remains of the brandy into another of the Waterford glasses. The liquid nearly reached the brim of the glass. This drew a look of respect, coupled with a certain degree of admiration from the doctor. Next McCusker filled the empty brandy bottle - up to not quite the top - with water from a tap in the silver sink in the drinks cupboard. He also filled yet another Waterford glass with water and brought both over to the death-desk with the already cold corpse. He measured the glass of water to the glass of whiskey and took a few sips from the glass of water, until, to the naked eye at least, they both appeared to contain the same amount of liquid. He then repeated this comparison process, only this time between the Bushmills bottle and the brandy bottle containing water. Again he helped himself to a few swigs of water from the brandy bottle to ensure they were, as near as dammit, equal. Okay, he thought, now for the important bit.