Down on Cyprus Avenue

by Paul Charles

  “Ross hadn’t stopped there with his research; he didn’t want us to take pot luck with our sperm donor, no – he wanted us to find someone, someone of good stock.”

  “Someone like Adam Whitlock?” O’Carroll responded.

  “Exactly,” Samantha replied, appearing somewhat relieved. “We went to Adam with our idea and he was receptive. So we set up the procedure by the book – it was all very clinical in fact. Adam was equally receptive two years later when we had a conversation about our wish to complete our family and we repeated the process which produced my daughter, Macy. His only condition was that nobody should know about our arrangement. He claimed it would be much better for the children that way.”

  “How did anyone find out about it?” McCusker asked, realising that of course she had known but she maybe hadn’t intended to let slip how the information had gotten out.

  “We just don’t know – if anyone did the information certainly did not come from Ross or myself. Our clinic is above reproach so Adam must have let it slip. Then an ex of mine picked up the gossip and ran with it. We – Ross, Adam, and myself – all agreed to just laugh about it. Then my ex moved to California and the storm in the teacup settled.”

  “Did you ever get the sense that Adam had any emotional attachment to the children?” McCusker asked.

  “Well, all I can tell you is that he was a piss poor example of a godfather to Tom.”

  “Do you think there is any chance that Adam and Ross grew apart over this?” McCusker asked.

  “Being the godfather or being the sperm donor?”

  “The sperm donor...?”

  “The continual presence of the elephant in the room you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Ross and I eventually figured out that Adam had forgotten all about the procedures, either that or he had intentionally wiped the entire episode from his memory.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Samantha Wallace furnished the detectives with the details of the clinic she’d attended. In light of this openness and willingness to co-operate they decided that they would not bother contacting her husband for another chat, at least not for the time being. But McCusker was still reluctant to remove them entirely from his slim suspect list.

  “Next stop the BBC please!” he announced as they climbed into O’Carroll’s distinctive yellow Mégane.

  “Mrs Robinson, here we…” O’Carroll declared, and then her voice tailed off by some distraction or other. Most likely she was considering her next date, McCusker guessed.

  Instead of being annoyed at seeing them again so soon after her last, rather liquid, interview, Angela Robinson, senior BBC Radio producer, grew animated at their arrival: “Perfect, perfect timing in fact. I need a hit of nicotine badly!” and she led them through to the smoker’s shelter out in the Broadcasting House’s courtyard.

  Angela lit her ciggie quickly, very quickly, a wee bit of desperation noticeable. She took a long slow drag, creating fierce lines around the bridge of her nose. She furiously waved away the exhaled smoke from her face. The resultant movement created a new cloud in the wake of the first. “You probably weren’t getting much sense out of me at the end of our last chat.”

  “Well, we had taken up a lot of your time,” McCusker offered graciously.

  “I can tell you I’d a splitten’ head this morning,” she continued, as another fifth of her death stick disappeared straight into her lungs. “How can I help you today?”

  “At the end of our last chat I was trying to find out from you if, when Adam Whitlock gave you some money, whether or not there would be a paper trail, you know, did he pay you with a cheque, make payments on your behalf or give you cash to make the payments with?”

  “Yes, yes I might have been tipsy but I realised you were trying to find out if there was any way at all that Richard had discovered my special relationship with Adam.”

  “Yes,” McCusker affirmed. “And do you remember how Adam would have covered some of your bills, like for instance, you’d told us that he paid for the hotel where you held your wedding, the Culloden I believe?”

  “Yes, yes of course,” she said. “Well in that instance Adam paid them direct and I believe Richard thought my family took care of it, as would be the norm.”

  “And other payments?”

  “Do you really think that Richard is the kind of man who would spend all day going through my things looking for stuff and then find out something to link me to Adam? Something which would make him so jealous as to go and murder Adam? Is that not too big a stretch of the imagination?” But before McCusker had a chance to even think of a response she added: “Well, I suppose he does sit around the house all day doing nothing.”

  “Also, you said that you and he were together at the time Richard claims he went by himself to the Errigle Inn,” McCusker admitted.

  “Richard...out in public...by himself,” she repeated the words and stage-laughed. “Don’t you realise one of the reasons Richard will never ever leave me is that he is socially dependant on me? When I first met him he’d tell me tales of his horrors of being in public by himself. Richard’s biggest nightmare is to be at a wedding and be stuck beside a stranger and have to make conversation with them over the duration of an entire meal. He left his last three places of employment because he just couldn’t stand to be with other people. I’m not making fun of him here because it’s really a very serious phobia. He is petrified about having to make social contact and conversation with people; he’ll literally be thinking to himself ‘okay, now it’s my turn to say something and I can’t think of anything to say.’ Then he’ll break out in a cold sweat and mentally fight with himself over what he should say and what he’ll be capable of saying.”

  “He seemed fine with us?” McCusker said.

  “He’s fine in situations where he doesn’t have to make conversation. You ask him a direct question, it relaxes him and he can answer. He just can’t do small talk, but it’s more than that – he’s actually petrified about having to try.”

  “So you don’t think he was at the Errigle Inn on Saturday night then?” McCusker asked.

  “No, he just wouldn’t have been able to,” Angela offered, sounding genuinely sorry for her husband’s plight.

  “But he wasn’t with you as you informed us during our last chat?” McCusker said quietly.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because when I asked you about Richard being at the Errigle Inn on Saturday you didn’t say that he was with you, you said ‘No, he wouldn’t have been able to’.”

  As Angela was left pondering that thought, McCusker instructed O’Carroll to go and pick up his “person of interest” and bring him into the Custom House for questioning.

  “Holy shit, I’ve just felt a shiver go the whole way up my spine,” Angela said, her entire body still shuddering as O’Carroll quickly walked back into Broadcasting House. “This is serious, isn’t it?”

  McCusker could only grimace.

  After a moment’s consideration she continued “Is this a good or bad thing for me? Look, should I be tipping our news team off on this or not?”

  “I’d ask you to please keep it under your hat,” McCusker said. He stayed in the courtyard with her while they waited for DS Barr to ring. When he did, he confirmed that Angela’s husband was in custody.

  “I’d recommend a strong cup of tea with an extra sugar or two to help you get over your shock,” McCusker offered, as he left her lighting her third ciggie with the butt of the second.

  “I think a Bushmills will do the same trick, but much quicker,” she added.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Okay, Willie John,” McCusker began, “you nip in there and try and start up a conversation with our grey man – don’t worry about asking him questions, just talk to him and leave gaps in the conversation.”

  The grey man, aka Mr Richard Robinson, was visible to all of them – McCusker, O’Carroll, Cage, and DS WJ Barr – through the
one-way window adjoining the interview room in the permanently cold and damp basement of the Custom House. As well as four sets of eyes, three video cameras monitored Robinson’s every move as per regulations. Inside the room Robinson sat at the table, his eyes focused on a point on the opposite side of it. He didn’t look nervous, fidgety or guilty. He merely resembled a still life caught forever in one of Roland Davidson’s fine studies.

  Barr eventually joined the still life and introduced himself, adding he was there to keep him company until the solicitor arrived. Robinson’s eyes followed the detective sergeant until he took a seat on the same side of the table. It looked to McCusker like Robinson was wearing the exact same clothes as he’d been wearing the day before; either that or he had an identical change of clothing.

  “What are you in here for?” Barr asked and then before Robinson had a chance to reply he continued, “I find it weird sitting here with a stranger, don’t you?”

  Robinson muttered something completely inaudible and then made a quick scribble in his ever-present notebook.

  “Do you have a team you support?” Barr asked.

  Okay, McCusker thought, a direct question, which should be an easy one for Robinson.

  “McLaren,” Robinson replied after a painful thirty seconds.

  “Oh, so you support Formula 1?”

  “Well, I don’t visit the races, but I do watch it on TV.”

  “Why McLaren?” Barr asked. “Isn’t Red Bull the best?”

  “Actually that was last year; Mercedes is by far the quickest this year. Red Bull do have the best car designer in the history of the sport though, but they're having engine problems this year. In Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo is a fellow Australian. Flying the flag well for us by outpacing Sebastian Vettel most weekends."

  Barr appeared to be considering this point when, in fact, he was doing exactly what McCusker had directed: he was leaving a space in the conversation.

  “I think Button is one of the best drivers on the circuit,” Robinson, growing ever so twitchy, eventually said. “Give him a Newey-designed car and he’d win every race.”

  Another gap, this time Barr ended it: “Actually, I meant football.”

  “Can’t stand all those spoilt over-paid brats,” was Robinson’s immediate response, delivered in a pure Australian drawl.

  “I hear what you’re saying, but when you think about it, it’s the talent of the players that draws the fans to the grounds and I think I’d rather the ones with the talent took home the large pay cheques than the owners.”

  Robinson had no response to this so after a long pause of silence Barr eventually continued: “My team is Manchester United and as we're proving at the minute, it really is the manager who counts.”

  “Do you know how long I’m going to have to wait here before someone comes and talks to me?” Robinson countered, confirming his lack of interest in football.

  McCusker conceded that his idea wasn’t working – Robinson wasn’t growing unsettled the way his wife said he would. Maybe Barr was just too nice a man.

  “I believe the minute your solicitor arrives we’ll start the questioning.”

  As the conversation with Richard Robinson was taking place in one of McCusker’s ears, with the other he was listening to DI Jarvis Cage, still badly bruised from his run-in with the bollards, imparting his newly gathered information on the suspect.

  “He seems to be a loner. He walks around his neighbourhood a lot. There’ve been a few reports of him around playgrounds or sports fields over the years but none of them ever came to anything. It would appear that they were from overprotective mothers who’d been watching too much TV. He’s never been in trouble, not even as much as receiving a traffic ticket in his time in Belfast. It looks like he is truly a grey man in danger of slipping off the page altogether.”

  “So what would make him so mad that he would do that to Adam Whitlock?” McCusker asked, addressing the question to himself as much as Cage and O’Carroll.

  “McCusker if someone is serially bonking your wife, eventually it must get to you,” O’Carroll offered. “Don’t forget we’re talking here about a period that ran over several years. On the other hand, maybe he was okay about it because when she was going out with Adam it spared him from any social duties.”

  “I wish his solicitor would get here so that we can find out why he lied to us about where he was on Saturday night,” McCusker said, barely blinking for fear he would miss something in Robinson’s demeanour. He was concerned that Barr had struck too sympathetic a chord with Robinson with his line about finding it weird sitting in there with a stranger. At which point Station Duty Sergeant Matt Devine was seen entering the interview room with a local solicitor O’Carroll identified as “David Lewis, from Lewis & Co. Lewis & Co is a one-man organisation,” she explained, “namely the aforementioned David Lewis – his ‘& Co’ consists entirely of a telephone answering machine. But he’s honest and fair.”

  On the other side of the one-way mirror Lewis was introduced to his client. McCusker closed the shutter and switched off the audio link, giving solicitor and client their privacy. Cage raised his eyebrows in surprise, but didn’t say anything. McCusker figured if he wasn’t going to avail Lewis and his client of one of the Custom House’s solicitor/client rooms then the very least he could do was to give them complete privacy.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later McCusker entered the interview room, switched on the tape recorder and announced: “Thursday, 17.03, interview with Richard Robinson. Those present DI O’Carroll, Mr McCusker, solicitor David Lewis and his client Richard Robinson.” By the time McCusker had finished his announcement, his, ‘you do not have to say anything but anything you do say will be…’ caution and sat down, DS WJ Barr had left the room.

  “Okay Richard, thank you for coming in,” McCusker said, despite Robinson having no say in the matter although, technically speaking, O’Carroll had invited him to accompany her to the Custom House.

  “Does that mean I can leave if I wish to?” Robinson asked innocently, writing another few words in his book – his social blanket.

  “Let’s just see the nature of the questions they want to ask you first, hey Richard?” the soberly dressed Lewis offered.

  “We wanted to discuss with you your whereabouts on Saturday evening last,” McCusker said, crossing his fingers in hope that the solicitor’s co-operation would continue.

  “Yes – asked and answered,” Robinson replied, using a prompt he’d obviously picked up from a TV cop show – shows which were becoming the bane of McCusker and public prosecutor’s lives.

  “Just for the record, Richard, humour us and tell us again,” McCusker said, looking at Lewis.

  “I told you that I went down to the Errigle Inn to see 57 Joe, a musical entertainment group I write lyrics for.”

  “Right,” McCusker said forcing a smile, “you see, I’ve a wee problem with that.”

  “How so?” Robinson said.

  “Well, I went down to the Errigle Inn myself and spoke to both the drummer and the manager and they said as far as they were concerned you weren’t down at the concert on Saturday Night…”

  “Gig, it was a gig on Saturday night,” Robinson interrupted, knowingly.

  “Sorry?” McCusker said.

  “If the performance is in a seated hall it’s called a concert but if it’s in a stand-up club it’s called a gig.”

  “Right,” McCusker said. “Okay...the manager and the drummer of 57 Joe said that you were not at the gig on Saturday night.”

  “No,” Robinson cut in again, “I’d bet what they said was that they didn’t see me at the gig on Saturday. The venue was crowded and, yes, I didn’t bump into any of the group.”

  “But surely if you work with them,” O’Carroll said, “you’d have gone backstage at some point to chat with them and wish them well?”

  “Oh, I can’t abide dressing-room scenes,” Robinson replied. “Never have...it’s all so false. You’re forc
ed to say nice things about the gig because it gets heavy if you tell them the truth about the show.”

  “Did you ever used to go backstage Richard?” McCusker asked.

  “Yes of course.”

  “But you didn’t like not being able to tell the truth, so you stopped?”

  “Correct.”

  “But I bet that when you did go backstage, you would have played the game, you know, telling them it was a great show, when in fact you didn’t believe it was a great show?”

  “Correct.”

  “So,” McCusker shrugged his shoulders, “in fact you would have been lying to them about their show?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Like lying to them to spare their feelings?”

  “Of course.”

  “So sometimes it’s necessary to lie, you know, to spare people’s feelings?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, Richard, were you lying to us when you told us you were down at the Errigle Inn on Saturday night in order to spare someone’s feelings?”

  “You patronising smug bastard!” Robinson spat back, his Australian drawl causing a mini explosion in the process. He then turned full on to Lewis with a get-me-out-of-here glare.

  “Richard, you’re still claiming that you were down at the Errigle Inn on Saturday night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” McCusker said, deciding to change tack. He removed a folded A4 sheet of paper from his inside pocket. “I have here 57 Joe’s actual set list from the conce…sorry, from the gig on Saturday night. Can you tell me the title of their first song?”

  “I didn’t get there in time for that.”

  “Okay, they did two Van Morrison songs on Saturday evening – can you give me the titles?”

  “Sorry. I can’t remember.”

  “Okay, someone joined the band onstage for one song...can you give me their name?”

  “Shit, not Van the Man,” Robinson replied. “I must have been in the bog when that happened.”