by Paul Charles
With the doctor’s undivided attention he carefully poured the water from the Waterford glass into the water in the brandy bottle. When he concluded this exercise it was clear to both himself, and the doctor, that the brandy bottle was filled to the brim. The inference being that the doctor’s dead wife had not touched a single drop of whiskey in her so called efforts to commit suicide. The whiskey bottle, which had grated with McCusker’s eyes on his initial examination of the scene, had clearly been a plant, and not a very good one at that. It had been a small thing but enough to ensure McCusker’s brain clinked into his considering other possibilities gear.
Next he leant over the victim, gingerly hit a few of the keys on the keyboard and navigated his way into the control panel of the computer. He discovered that the computer was programmed to revert to 'sleep' mode following ten minutes of inactivity. The doctor had clearly not left his study as he’d found it to await the arrival of the police, as he’d claimed. Clearly, at the appropriate moment – most likely when McCusker had rang the doorbell – the doctor had hit a key on the computer keyboard to ‘awaken’ his computer screen again, so that the incriminating attempt at a suicide note would be clearly visible.
McCusker took the doctor into custody immediately, considering him to be a serious flight risk. The doctor didn’t deny, nor admit, the charge. He just shot McCusker a smug, ‘do you really think you are going to get me on this?’ glare. Sadly for the doctor the autopsy proved that the amount of pills he had managed to ‘encourage’ his wife into swallowing hadn’t been enough to result in her death. However the amount of glyphosate (weed killer) he’d been giving her in drinks over the previous several weeks had directly caused her death.
The detective’s on-going investigation also turned up a long standing mistress who seemed very happy to inform McCusker that the doctor had boasted to her that they’d, “be rid of my wife shortly, for once and all, but certainly in time for us to get to Wimbledon for the semis and finals.” The doctor was so confident he was going to get away with it he hadn’t even bothered to take the trouble to stage a believable suicide.
McCusker took no pleasure from solving the case so quickly. No, instead he dwelled more on the fact of what might have been if only he’d listened to the words of the wife rather than being influenced by the arrogant, sociopathic prat she’d chosen as a husband.
Luckily enough for McCusker his boss Superintendent Larkin was not aware of this case, and neither was he the type of policeman to interfere in his team’s work. According to DI Lily O’Carroll, though, he was a big fan of McCusker’s approach to detective work. Mind you, at the time O’Carroll imparted this information to McCusker, she was trying to blag him into covering for her so that she could nip off early and scoot down to Dublin with her sister to check out the quality of the single men down there. O’Carroll had never discussed the success or failure of the trip and McCusker hadn’t asked, but he supposed the fact that he heard no more about it pointed to an unsatisfactory journey.
They had an unsatisfactory journey of their own that Thursday morning as they travelled to Willowfield Street to the Ross Wallace household. Someone cut them up badly on Great Victoria Street. O’Carroll grew very mad and slightly reckless in an attempt to try and get her own back. She was as upset as McCusker had ever seen her. Feeling at least one of them had to remain cool, McCusker said: “Who’s the worst, the man who cut us up back there, or us if we had retaliated?”
“Sorry?”
“Okay, let’s put it another way: If someone beats the crap out of your brother and then you go over and beat the crap out of him, tell me which of the two of you is the worst?”
“He is of course,” she said. “I only beat the crap out of him because he beat the crap out of my brother.”
“So what you’re suggesting is that you were justified in dishing out your hiding?”
“You bet your life I was justified.”
“But what if he’d been justified?”
“Like how?”
“What if your brother got his attacker’s sixteen-year-old sister pregnant?”
“But did he?”
“Well that’s kind of the point, we don’t know and surely we should first take the trouble to find out before we rush in all guns blazing and beat the crap out of him. Don’t you see? Before we retaliate we need to find out if our actions are justified.”
“So you’re saying that if it’s justified I can beat the crap out of him?”
“Well what I’m saying to you is this: if you’re justified then you just might have a reason to consider beating the crap out of him.”
“But surely even if I am justified and I beat the crap out of him then I’m the same as he is?”
“Well that was kinda my starting point, don’t you see?”
“Yeah, you’re absolutely right,” she conceded, but with a smile of devilment creeping across her face. “So tell me this McCusker: If we ever see that berk in the Merc again, is it okay if I cut him up and then say ‘Sorry!’?”
McCusker didn’t have to answer because just then they pulled up in Willowfield Street, home to Ross and Samantha Wallace.
The former Portrush detective was surprised when the door to the household opened to reveal a well-dressed and groomed Mrs Wallace, since he’d been half expecting a house-and-child-tied wife. Samantha was 5’ 10” (McCusker chastised himself for still not thinking in metric), and a big-boned woman.
“Augh, sure why don’t you come on in,” she gushed from her doorstep. “Ross told me all about the chat you had with him. He told me I should expect you at some point.”
O’Carroll followed Samantha Wallace down the narrow but spotlessly clean hall as McCusker brought up the rear after closing the front door quietly behind him.
“It was a shame about Adam, wasn’t it?” the lady of the house said as she invited them to sit at the child-free breakfast table. “I’ve just got the house tidied up again after the daily morning hurricane of getting the kids off to school. I was about to put my feet up and have a wee cup of coffee and an elevenses or three; will you both join me?”
She seemed totally intent on ignoring their answer – not to mention, good intentions – as she busied herself about her kitchen brewing up a strong-smelling coffee and removing eight freshly baked scones from her Aga. If the smell now wafting its way around the kitchen was anything to go by, McCusker knew his resolve would melt away just as quickly as the butter would melt into the delicious hot scones.
“Were you at Queen’s at the same time as Adam and Ross?” McCusker asked, as Samantha poured three cups of coffee.
“Oh my goodness, no – I never went anywhere near as grand a place of education as QUB proper. I attended Stranmillis University College – for teacher training – and my best friend’s brother knew Ross. That’s how we hooked up.”
“Right,” McCusker replied, enjoying the scone but not the coffee. “How long had you known Ross before you met Adam?” he asked, heading off in the easiest, if not the shortest, direction on his line of questioning.
“Possibly as much as a month, not very much more,” she began, verbally chastising herself for opting for a chocolate Penguin rather than the scone. “Mine and Ross’ relationship took quite a time to get into gear. For my part I admitted to liking him – liking him a lot in fact – but I kept thinking that it was much, much too early a point on my life path…actually, it wasn’t just that...yes, I remember now...Before I came down to Belfast an adorable boy had just broken up with me and I’d been hurt. We all very quickly forget exactly just how big a gunk it is to be told by someone you love – and whom you thought loved you – that they feel it’s just not going to work out. The vastness of the emptiness you feel is totally devastating,” she paused to shudder. “Just to think that once he was the most important person in my life and now I can’t even remember his face. So when I met Ross and we started to get on well I thought ‘Here I am starting the circle all over again.’ But augh, sure anyway, I i
gnored all my natural instincts and over one particular weekend I fell completely and utterly in love with Ross and he with me, to the degree we started to make plans.”
“Wow!” O’Carroll said. “What age would you have been at that point?”
“Oh, let me think...I’d have been 24 and Ross is two years older than me.”
“And you knew by then?”
“Yes we knew then,” she replied smiling largely. “I’d always figured that I’d have a great teaching job by the time I was twenty-eight, then I’d meet someone, get married and start a family before I passed the big three-oh barrier.”
O’Carroll was about to say something when McCusker said: “But you didn’t get married first did you?”
Mrs Wallace looked a little shocked, but only slightly shaken. “Yes, actually you’re correct it didn’t happen the traditional way with us. First I fell pregnant with Tom, our firstborn. Strange term that isn’t it? ‘I fell pregnant ’– sounds like I caught a disease, doesn’t it? As it happened, he’s turned out to be a wee dote. Mind you he wouldn’t want me referring to him in that way now; he’s twelve years of age, taller than me and has reached the point where all parents are uncool.”
Again she’d gone off track, the McCusker track, and why wouldn’t she? Why would she admit her secret to two complete strangers?
“Would you and Ross and Adam have spent a lot of time in each other’s company?” McCusker asked, heading back towards his goal.
“Well I may be wrong, although something deep in my heart tells me I’m right, but I would have known Adam quite well, yes I would, if that’s what you’re asking?”
McCusker couldn’t be sure, but he thought he noticed the first signs of concern appear in her brown eyes.
“We’re very anxious to get some kind of idea of Adam as a man,” McCusker started, trying to get her to loosen up a bit about the deceased. “I’m just trying to get a sense of him; anything at all, any background would be extremely helpful to us.”
“He…I suppose the best way I could describe Adam is that he was always very funny in company, very friendly but…beyond a certain point he never really allowed himself to be engaged. Now that of course could have been for lots of reasons: perhaps, deep down, he was just too shy, perhaps he was really a sad person, but he seemed to enjoy his sadness, if you know what I mean?” She stopped talking and her eyes glazed over as though she was returning to an incident in her past. “I do remember a few occasions when Adam was around at ours for dinner and ah…as usual I’d more than a few wines, well more than Ross was happy with, and I remember trying to take it to the next level with Adam, conversation-wise, you know? I wanted to peel some of the layers of his boyish protection away to see what made him tick.”
“And?” O’Carroll asked, following a few seconds of embarrassing silence.
“Well, he’d always resort to his favourite trick of turning everything around and into a joke.”
“Did you ever get anything out of him?” O’Carroll asked.
“You know, maybe I did, maybe it was me and not him who was at fault. Maybe I was just a wee bit too drunk to understand what he might have been trying to tell me. Strangely, the only thing I remember him telling me that stopped me in my tracks, and don’t be getting your hopes up because I really don’t think it shows a great insight, but I just found for the first time that maybe there was something else going on there – that he did have a heart.”
“And what was it he said?” McCusker prompted, when it looked and sounded like she’d reached the end of her line of thought.
“Oh yes, sorry. Well, on one famous occasion, just out of the blue, he said, ‘Do horses not really feel pain when the blacksmith hammers nails into their hooves?’ I mean, now when I repeat it to you here in the cold light of day it made me think we might all have been stoned or something.”
“Did he ever open up to Ross?” McCusker asked, thinking “stoned” sounded like a very apt word under the circumstances.
“I don’t believe so,” she admitted. "But Ross reckons that Adam was at his happiest when he was hanging out with his sister, Julia. Ross’ theory is that Julia might have been the only person in Adam’s circle who accepted him for who he was. Ross was clearly fascinated by their relationship and he told me he once asked Julia why she and her brother got on so well together. She replied that she was the only one who fitted in with all of his moods. She said they were both totally content just to be in each other’s company. She said they spent entire days together without saying a single word.”
“Someone told us that Ross and Adam were best friends?” McCusker said.
“I think at one time early in the Queen’s days they probably were. Although I never felt it was that intense. I think when Adam first came to Belfast he was a stranger, in a strange city, in a strange land. He’d probably never, ever been so exposed in his life before. So my guess is that he was very vulnerable and having someone – not just anybody, for instance Ross – fulfilling the role of best friend probably brought him the comfort he mistook for friendship.”
“What was their relationship like more recently?” McCusker asked, glad of Samantha’s third small insight into Adam Whitlock.
“Sorry, look – can we just backtrack a wee bit here?”
“Sure, of course,” O’Carroll said quickly.
“You know, I’d just hate to be coming across as someone sitting here spouting off and claiming to be the oracle on a poor man that had just died. And to insinuate that he and I had a deep and meaningful relationship when that was certainly not the case. Adam, like the rest of us, worked on whatever level succeeded best for him at the time. For myself I love to get down to it and try to see what makes people tick. I’ll admit to you that this has, on a few occasions, destroyed potential relationships. Ross, on the other hand, is very happy with leaving everything at face value; and of course I’m not suggesting that’s bad. Adam, now Adam came from a totally different culture to ours. He was far away from home and the older my Tom grows, the more I realise how much I feel for Adam and all he went through when he left all of his family behind to come to a foreign land. But then that’s another thing about him; Adam would never discuss his feelings for his mother with me.”
“That’s interesting,” O’Carroll said, making yet another note.
“And…” McCusker promoted.
“Oh yes, sorry,” Samantha said, looking genuinely apologetic. “You asked me about Ross and Adam’s relationship of late?”
“Yeah,” McCusker nodded.
“Well, you know, we’ve two children together and one of the things I love about Ross is that he’s a hands-on father. I respect him so much as a father of my children. He’s such a good dad; I really couldn’t have chosen a better father for my children. Now I suppose from Adam’s point of view the downside of that was that Ross had less time to be running down to the student’s union bar every night to get pissed. The bottom line is that they grew up and I suppose to some degree you’d have to say they also grew apart. I always think of how all of us have changed since our formative years when I hear that Crosby, Stills & Nash lyric: ‘Don’t let the past remind us of what we are not now.’”
“Did you and Adam ever spend any time together?” McCusker asked so awkwardly, O’Carroll looked like she wanted to poke his eyes out with her pen.
“Sorry?” Samantha replied, appearing less upset than she might have done, maybe because of disbelief or a delayed reaction, McCusker thought.
“I just wondered there…when you said that you wanted to peel away his layers and see what made him tick, you know, if you and Adam had ever…?” McCusker asked, hoping the natural momentum of his words would finish his question for him.
“Good God man! I mean, I am talking symbolically, not physically,” she protested. “I can’t believe you just suggested that! No McCusker. Never ever like that.”
“Look Mrs Wallace, there is really no easy way for us to talk about this...” O’Carroll began, ta
king up the baton McCusker knew he had just dropped rather clumsily. “It has been suggested to us that Adam was Tom’s father.”
Now it was McCusker’s turn to grimace, but no matter how much butt-clenching he did, he still wasn’t prepared for Mrs Wallace’s answer.
“And my daughter’s as well.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
When the dust settled, as it inevitably did, a very composed Samantha Wallace continued: “Ross and I discussed this shortly after Adam was found dead and we agreed if this came up, we would be very candid with you in the hope that you’d be equally discreet about it.”
Not surprisingly both O’Carroll and McCusker nodded, differently, but both in a non-committal manner.
“I’ll take that as you’ll do the best you can,” she said sweetly. “I always wanted children, so did Ross, and we both agreed that we wouldn’t be one of those career couples who would only breed when their career paths decreed they could. Even before we thought of marriage we thought of children. Sadly we discovered that Ross suffered from an immune disorder called hypothyroidism which resulted in him being infertile. We discussed adopting and spent quite a bit of time looking into that – again, this was way before we discussed marriage. Ross eventually came up with one of his classic lines: ‘Look, if we’re going to become parents, we’re going to have to be adult about it.’ He’d obviously thought a lot about it and figured it all out in advance and then he came and presented me with his solution: to find a sperm donor. This way, he argued, it would be less painful, physically and emotionally, and the most successful way, although compromised given the circumstances, for us to continue our line.
