Down on Cyprus Avenue

by Paul Charles

  The detectives entered Superintendent Larkin’s office to fill him in on recent developments. They requested permission to seek three search warrants, the first for the O’Neill brother’s apartment, the second for the Larry’s List offices and the third for the parents’ house in Malone Park.

  “I’m sure we will get them,” Larkin offered, “but I’m not so sure that, with what you’ve got so far, you should.”

  O’Carroll and Barr were left to fill in the necessary paperwork and, forty minutes later, departed together to seek a friendly Justice of the Peace whose signature they’d depend on.

  Upon their return, warrants duly signed, McCusker felt that he’d delayed picking the brothers up for as long as possible. He had Barr take a search team to the O’Neill’s apartment on St Anne’s Square. Top of the search list was a bloody knife, blood-stained clothes, the remainder of the ransom, a false black beard, the holdall and any signs of a ransom note having been created.

  DI O’Carroll was ordered to search Larry’s List HQ, where she would invite Ryan O’Neill and Lawrence O’Neill to return with her to the Custom House to help the PSNI with their investigations into their reported kidnapping and the death of Adam Whitlock. O’Carroll would leave the remainder of her team behind at the office to conduct a similar search to that being undertaken at Saint Anne’s Square.

  McCusker took the remaining warrant – the one reserved for Polly and James O’Neill’s residence – and placed it into his inside jacket pocket.

  Now all McCusker could do was wait – wait, and decide whether to interview the brothers together or separately.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Right lads,” McCusker started, “thanks a million for volunteering to come in…”

  “We didn’t know we’d a choice,” Ryan O’Neill grumbled.

  “I never like to arrest someone unless I really have to,” McCusker offered, trying to keep some degree of civility in the proceedings. “But I just wanted to have a wee chat with you both about this auld kidnapping lark.”

  “It wasn’t the most pleasant weekend we’ve ever had,” Ryan admitted, as Lawrence stared at the interview room table as though it were a computer screen.

  McCusker has once heard that great musicians can hear notes and melodies without needing to play their instruments. He wondered if the same thing was happening here, and Lawrence was imagining himself back at his computer screen. Whatever he was thinking, he clearly was not mentally with the other people in the room: McCusker, O’Carroll, Ryan, and their mild-mannered solicitor Pat Tepper, whom Superintendent Larkin insisted be present.

  “Now before we start lads I have to say I think that as a scam it was just brilliant, pure genius...which one of you dreamed it up?” McCusker said, staring at Lawrence.

  “Dreamed what up?” Ryan said, twitching a bit on his seat. “What are you on about?”

  “Very good Ryan,” McCusker said, taking a large breath before he jumped off the edge, and even as he was, he couldn’t be sure from what exactly he was jumping. “Of course, I’m referring to your kidnapping scam.”

  “Look Inspector…” Ryan started.

  “McCusker will do.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot, of course you’re not a proper detective,” Ryan continued, trying to gather up a head of steam. “What I was about to say is this: the reason we’re here is because Detective Inspector Lily O’Carroll was the one responsible for rescuing us and so I felt we owed it to her to accompany her here – unless you’ve something better to talk to us about, we’re outta here,” Ryan looked at Pat Tepper, McCusker imagined, for support.

  “We might as well hear what he’s got to say, Ryan,” Tepper offered. “Otherwise next time they want to bring you in they’ll arrest you and even though it might all be a wild goose chase, it’ll still hurt your mother.”

  Lawrence’s eyes flickered in awareness for the first time during the proceedings. “And Larry’s List,” he muttered.

  “And Larry’s List,” Tepper confirmed.

  Ryan made a big fuss about slumping back into his black plastic bucket chair.

  “Can you make your point, please?” Tepper said, directing his plea to O’Carroll.

  “Well, look lads...I just wanted to say that your kidnapping is perhaps one of the best scams that I’ve ever seen,” McCusker continued, in his friendly quiet voice. “Right from the beginning you didn’t put a foot wrong; it was truly a master plan. You sent two untraceable notes; that was your only communication. You used letters cut out from newspapers and magazines and you were careful to wear gloves as you prepared them. We didn’t find any trace of you on or about the notes. There was no way you could be linked to them. More importantly, most kidnappers are caught out through their dealings with the person paying the ransom, the one part they have no control over – the weakest link, as it were. How will that person react? Perhaps they’d be drawn into a deal with the police, with the promise of a pay-off, to entrap the kidnappers themselves. Whatever the outcome, you cleverly avoided this pitfall by avoiding direct contact with the paymaster by leaving your ransom notes on your mother’s doorstep. And this is where your plan was extremely well thought out because you picked an amount that you knew your target, your stepfather, could comfortably pay off. You knew he wouldn’t have to make a fuss about raising the money.

  “Then the scene of your incarceration; you’d no food or purchases lying about that could be later traced to yourselves.”

  “But if we were so clever,” Ryan impatiently interrupted, “in this make-believe scenario of yours, how come you figured it all out?”

  “Good question Ryan, very good question,” McCusker replied, happy for this turn in events. “The first thing that caught my attention when DI O’Carroll here rescued you out at Ballycultra in the Folk Park was the fact that, although Lawrence was tied up and lying on a bed, his glasses were neatly folded and carefully placed on the little table beside that bed. If he’d truly been bound by kidnappers, he wouldn’t have had a chance to remove his own glasses. If, and this is most unlikely, a kidnapper was kind and considerate enough to remove the glasses for him, he would have yanked them off and thrown them on the table. I personally thought the sight of those neatly folded glasses was strange, in that it didn’t appear natural to that situation. But in the euphoria of finding you both safe and sound, I put the thought to one side…at first.”

  “And that’s it?” Ryan pushed.

  “No,” McCusker eagerly admitted. “Later, due to another investigation myself and O’Carroll were working on, I had reason to re-examine your kidnapping and I discovered quite a few other things that pointed in your direction. But let’s leave the other investigation to one side for now and just deal with the kidnapping, shall we?

  “When you, Lawrence, were untied and released, not once did you ask about the well-being of your brother, despite you being separately detained and your ‘captors’ having threatened certain death if your stepfather didn’t pay up. While, you Lawrence, you only asked about your mother. Of course, the explanation is that you already knew that Ryan was okay, but you wouldn’t have known how your mother was coping.

  “When you, Ryan, were untied in the room you said you were amused that you’d been detained in the Folk Park – but how would you have known that Ryan? You previously said you’d been shoved in a van, a bag placed over your head, and you were taken straight to the house. My point being that you wouldn’t have realised you were in the Folk Park.

  “On the camera you and Lawrence sent to your parents – you know the disposable one you pretended was from your ‘kidnappers?’ There was not a single photo with you both in the same shot, which leads me to believe one of you was behind the camera in each photo.

  “The other thing that gave you away was the fact that only you two would have known about your mother’s early morning routine, the fact that she took the dog out for a walk early every morning. You knew if you left your ransom notes and camera with the milk bottles, your mot
her, and not your father, would find the notes. You also knew that your mother would be the one to ‘persuade’ your father to pay the ransom, but more about that later.

  “Finally, Lawrence, it was you who ultimately confirmed that I was on the right track when you rang in and made that ludicrous claim that you’d recognised one of your kidnappers in the Duke of York. With your eyesight and steamed-up glasses, we both know that would have been totally impossible. But you were so keen to continue the kidnap sham, maybe even get a bit more press for Larry’s List, that you…”

  “I told you that was a stupid idea,” Ryan spat across the table at his brother, silencing McCusker.

  “Shut up you idiot!” Lawrence barked. “The only thing we’re guilty of is playing a trick on our stepfather to get some of our money out of him.”

  McCusker was confident about his conclusion, 100 per cent confident, but he was still shocked by Ryan’s remark in particular – he obviously believed the flaw in the scam to be Lawrence’s fault. For his part, Lawrence had already come up with a new spin: they’d simply played a trick on their stepfather; clearly he felt they hadn’t broken any law.

  “Okay,” McCusker announced for the benefit of the recorder, “I’d like to leave it there for now. We’ll charge you both with wasting police time and blackmail. We’ll process you both and I imagine, with Mr Tepper making the right noises, we’ll be releasing Lawrence under his own recognisance. However, Ryan, I should advise you and your solicitor that I will want to question you shortly with regards to your involvement in the murder of Adam Whitlock."

  This time it was Lawrence’s turn to explode; he shot out of his chair and, effing and blinding, his lawyer had to hold him back as he flailed towards the detective.

  It was Ryan who immediately took charge. He calmly told his brother to shut up and leave immediately with their solicitor. Reluctantly, Lawrence did as he was bid. The most telling part of the exchange was to confirm McCusker’s suspicions: that Ryan, and not the older brother, was the boss in this relationship.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  McCusker took a break to check in with his team of Crime Scene Investigators. He wanted to know if they’d found anything incriminating at either the Saint Anne’s Square apartment or Larry’s List HQ. Both locations reported there’d been nothing so far.

  The detective watched as Lawrence said goodbye to his solicitor on the steps of the Custom House and walked across the square as a free man. He tipped DI Jarvis Cage, who was still in position outside Polly and James O’Neill’s residence in Malone Park, that there was a chance Larry might come calling. McCusker ordered him, under no circumstances, to allow Lawrence onto any part of his parents’ property.

  Twenty minutes later, McCusker, O’Carroll, Ryan O’Neill, and Pat Tepper returned to the interview room.

  Ryan, no doubt encouraged along by the sheer weight of McCusker’s evidence – albeit mostly circumstantial – had fairly readily admitted responsibility for the ransom subterfuge. McCusker thought a similar approach with the murder case might bring about the same result.

  “So Ryan...part of the thing DI O’Carroll and myself have to do when we’re working on a murder investigation is to discover three things: who committed the crime, why they committed the crime and how they committed the crime. Admittedly we don’t always discover the answers in that particular order. In fact, if anything it usually works out in reverse.

  “So...how the crime was committed...” McCusker said, pausing for a brief swig of tea. “That’s usually relatively easy. Someone discovers the body, they report it to us, we visit the scene of crime with our team of experts and begin trying to figure out what happened.

  “Once we’ve identified the deceased and how they were murdered, we’re off to investigate their lives. Who were they? What did they do for a living? Who were their friends and family? Who were their loved ones? Did they have any enemies? And so on and so forth. And eventually somewhere in the heap of information we amass we discover a motive and the motive hopefully leads us directly to the murderer.

  “Two Saturday evenings ago an American gentleman by the name of Adam Whitlock lost his life and DI O’Carroll, myself, and the team here at the Custom House went off to find out everything we could possibly find out about the deceased. Now, the problem is that everyone, all of us, have some things we like or need to hide, something we would never own up to or want anyone to know about. Usually these things are not even illegal, but by virtue of the fact that we want them to remain hidden, these things do tend to confuse and prolong any investigation.

  “Take this particular investigation into Adam Whitlock’s life. As is usual, we had lots of leads, which lead us to lots of theories, which lead us to lots of suspects. Eventually, one by one, these suspects all fell by the wayside...until, that is, we started to focus in on Adam Whitlock’s father, Wesley Whitlock III,” and here McCusker paused again and stared deep into Ryan O’Neill’s eyes, but the youngest brother was giving nothing away. If anything, he seemed somewhat intrigued by McCusker’s narrative.

  “Initially we treated Whitlock III as the grieving father, but as we lost our suspects one by one, we started to look a bit deeper. Perhaps Wesley Whitlock III was guilty of having done something to someone that could have resulted in them seeking revenge in the most painful way.

  “Turns out that Wesley Whitlock knew your real father, Ray O’Sullivan, and he was also very familiar with your stepfather, James O’Neill. Then we discovered that Wesley Whitlock and your stepfather were guilty of defrauding your father out of his business and his revolutionary invention, some kind of a sound filter if I’m not mistaken. If one wanted to, one could also argue that perhaps your stepfather was indirectly responsible for your father committing suicide. In any case, he certainly had an affair with your mother while your father was still alive and eventually, as we know, after your father died, your mother married James O’Neill.”

  The previous indifference in Ryan’s eyes had been replaced by pain. McCusker wondered if perhaps he might have been guilty of being a bit too direct, but he was dealing with a murderer here, and if he was to have the success of gaining a full confession, he needed to reopen all the old wounds, no matter how painful.

  “The first problem, well actually I’m being a little flippant – the major and only problem – I had with you as a suspect was the obvious one. At the time Adam Whitlock was losing his life you were incarcerated by your kidnappers. So my theory was quickly flushed down the toilet. That is to say that you clearly couldn’t have been murdering someone when you yourself were being detained against your wishes.

  “Then, as I mentioned earlier, I suddenly remembered the scene of Lawrence’s glasses neatly folded by the side of his bed in the Ballycultra village in the Folk Park and, inspired by that one minuscule nugget of doubt, I was able to prove the entire kidnap was a sham.

  “Of course, I neglected to mention in our earlier interview with your brother a second connection – the one that led me straight to you, Ryan. That day at the station, up in the King’s Hall area, the day your mother brought the ransom money to that platform: you were the man who picked up the rucksack and scarpered off down the road. That was very clever. We were convinced you were going to hop on the train to make your escape and had prepared for such an event. But your obvious knowledge of the area – your parent’s house being close to the station – stood you in good stead. We chased you down the Lisburn Road and lost you at the gate to Malone Lane. You’d conveniently parked your trusted red Vespa 125 scooter on the other side of the bollards, where you hopped on it and scootered off into the distance.

  “We have a witness who has testified that he saw that exact same scooter being wheeled away from Adam Whitlock’s home and down Cyprus Avenue on the night of the murder. You clearly didn’t want to draw attention to yourself by starting the scooter up outside Adam’s house.”

  Ryan O’Neill looked like this last point had made some connection with him. But he made no s
uch acknowledgement of his responsibility, as he had during the earlier interview regarding the kidnapping cover-up. In fact, he refused to say anything.

  When McCusker felt he’d gone as far as he could go he announced the end of the session and switched off the tape recorder. He’d obviously taken the wrong approach. He was still convinced he’d got his man, but maybe he’d made a tactical error. He would now need more hard evidence to take the case further. Larkin could authorise for Ryan O’Neill to be detained for another 48 hours. He had only two days to prove his theory correct.

  Just as he was getting up to leave Ryan O’Neill, as if reading McCusker’s thoughts, muttered “It wasn’t me.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  O’Carroll and McCusker immediately sped around to the O’Neill residence at Malone Park. Jarvis Cage reported no sighting of either of the brothers.

  Polly O’Neill was surprised to see them back again so soon. Nonetheless, she was very hospitable and they small chatted for a while, McCusker retaining the search warrant in his pocket. “Tell me this,” he said, “I suppose since the boys got their swish apartment in Saint Anne’s Square they’ve had to park up the scooter around here...?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied, “they have one of the garages out the back where they left a pile of their stuff – computers and what have you – and the scooter is also parked up in there.”

  “I suppose Ryan would also keep his crash helmet out there as well?” McCusker asked, crossing his fingers deep in the trousers pockets of his pinstripe suit.

  She glared at him with a look of confusion. McCusker thought she was annoyed at him because she’d twigged what he’d been up to. He waited for her to explode.