Brothers & Sisters

by Brothers

  Tim was sure he could taste the bitterness from Kelly’s words. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Can you describe the last time you saw your uncle?’

  ‘I can’t really remember.’ That was Tim’s first lie. ‘I suppose, I must have seen him that day out with the lambs, but I’m not a hundred per cent sure, it was nearly fifty years ago.’ Tim was conscious of the same question being asked of Rose and how she might answer it. He had advised Rose to use the ‘nearly fifty years ago’ reference that his solicitor had told him to use. They had also decided to be truthful about the abuse, but only if there was no other way to explain something.

  ‘You didn’t see him back at his house or back at your house that evening?’

  ‘Like I said, I can’t really remember, it’s fifty years ago,’ Tim said again.

  ‘Forty-six.’ Kelly liked to be precise. ‘Did you see him go out that evening?’

  ‘No,’ Tim answered succinctly; that was the truth.

  ‘What’s your recollection then of what happened that night?’ Detective Kelly had honed his interrogating skills to a fine art. He prided himself on being able to draw the deepest secrets from anyone. He knew Tim would be a difficult nut to crack, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

  ‘All I remember is my father, Liam, going out to the pub, my mother, Maeve, in her room, Rose in her room and me in mine. I presume my uncle went to the pub, but I didn’t see him go there, or after that, for that matter.’ Tim sipped from the white plastic cup of water, squeezing the sides just enough for the plastic to rattle. It was hard to resist the urge to repeat the noise, much like clicking the top of a pen. His tongue had gone a little dry. ‘As far as I knew, he had gone to Liverpool and I never questioned it.’ Tim ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I never had any reason to.’

  ‘How’d you know that, Liverpool?’

  ‘My father said it. I remember him telling people at the time that Patrick had gone to Liverpool, that’s all.’ Tim drew a deep breath.

  ‘Tell me about your father?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Tim paced his answer; his measured reply at odds with the chaos that had formed a knot inside his gut.

  ‘Did Liam and Patrick work well together, did they get on?’ Kelly wanted to push for more but he was finding Tim a little hard to read. He could almost see the cogs turn over behind Tim’s eyes as he considered every word.

  ‘They did, I suppose. I don’t really know.’

  ‘And what about your mother, Maeve?’

  ‘What about her?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Did she get on with Patrick?’

  ‘My mother wasn’t well, she barely left the house for the two years before Patrick went missing so,’ Tim shook his head, ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember, really.’

  ‘And your mother and father passed, in 1986 and 1987,’ Kelly turned the page over in front of him.

  ‘Yes,’ Tim answered. ‘Mother was first, and then my father the year later.’

  ‘So, your uncle was certified missing, presumed dead, while your father was still alive. It was your father’s solicitor who handled the proceedings?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tim held himself from elaborating. His solicitor had advised him to, it was best to only answer what was asked of him.

  ‘Unusual theory don’t you think though, that a man, your uncle, just walks away, from a fortune to take up a life in Liverpool, and convenient for your father too that he didn’t take his fifty per cent share with him.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have seen it that way, he would have seen it as double the work,’ Tim said. He could hear his father’s complaints in his memory.

  ‘Would your father have killed Patrick?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ No, is what Tim really wanted to say but he knew that if he was sure about that fact, Kelly would presume he had known who did.

  ‘Would he have had reason to kill him?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Everybody, had a reason to kill Patrick is how he would have liked to answer.

  ‘And you didn’t question it either when you inherited the whole estate, were you not worried that your uncle could come back and claim what was rightfully his, or maybe if he had children of his own? Or did you know then…’ Kelly paused for the accusation to sink in, ‘that he wouldn’t be coming back?’

  ‘Like I said before, that was all arranged by my father’s solicitor, in my father’s time.’

  ‘Yes, you did say.’ Kelly silenced himself deliberately. It was usually the gaps that gave more information than the questions. He watched as Timothy’s frown grew across his forehead. He was waiting to ask his next question. ‘Do you need more water?’ Kelly watched as Tim drained the last droplet from his cup, clicking the plastic as he squeezed.

  ‘No,’ Tim answered even though he could have drunk a gallon in one gulp.

  ‘Can you explain to me though, why you place such little value on the Estate?’ Kelly was leading nicely to where he wanted to be.

  Tim shrugged. ‘The Farm was valued for the market at the time,’ he answered. That was Tim’s second lie.

  ‘You have to admit, it looks peculiar, you selling up for nearly half of what it’s worth and four months later the forty-six-year-old body of your uncle turns up in your ditch?’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ He paused. ‘And it’s not my ditch, by the way,’ Tim confirmed. ‘We didn’t need the money. We decided to sell. That’s the sum total of the reasoning.’ Tim would have finished off his statement with the phrase ‘that’s not a crime’, had his solicitor not briefed him not to. ‘Our agent took into account the remedial works that the McGraths had undertaken; when they first leased the farm, the farmhouse was derelict.’

  ‘Can I ask, what you did with the money?’

  ‘I don’t see what that has to do with the investigation?’ Tim answered, reluctant to give him an answer, not because he had anything to hide but because it was none of Detective Kelly’s business.

  ‘Okay, that’s fine, if you don’t want to answer, there must be a reason, and that’s fine. We’ll find out another way.’ Kelly pushed just enough buttons to rise Tim’s temper another degree more. Tim whipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘I wonder is your sister doing okay, in her interview, without you.’

  Kelly’s insinuations were hard to swallow.

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’ Tim used every restraint, not to react to him.

  ‘Are you sure there is nothing else that has slipped your mind?’ Kelly asked, intimating his disbelieve and wrapping it loosely in a veil of false concern for him. ‘Maybe I’ll give you a moment to have a think on your own.’

  ‘Look, Detective Kelly,’ Tim wished he didn’t feel so constrained with his answers. He would much rather have said, ‘the bastard got was he deserved,’ or something along those lines, but telling Kelly about the fight would only prop up his, already circumstantial, case. He wasn’t about to confess to giving Patrick the hiding that he deserved. He wasn’t to know that his uncle had lain in the ditch all these years. He just presumed that he took off, like he warned him. If he had have known that he was lying in the ditch, he might have celebrated it. ‘I want to see justice done, as much as you do.’ He was trying to say the words that he needed to say to get Kelly off this merry-go-round. ‘I wasn’t close to him, none of us were.’ His eyes flickered in the direction of the next room. ‘But none of us had anything to do with how he ended up in the ditch. And that’s…’ He stopped before he uttered the next phrase, he remembered ‘the truth’ being on the list of things that his solicitor had told him not to say. ‘That’s all I know,’ he said.

  ‘That’ll do for now.’ Kelly jotted down some more thoughts in his notebook and placed it firmly in his back pocket. ‘I’ll organise some tea to be sent in to you.’ Kelly stood, stared at Tim for a moment and spoke again after a short pause. ‘Give you a chance to see if you can remember anything else.’

  Kelly texted Louise as arranged and they met down the hall in another room.<
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  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Kelly said.

  Louise sat agitated on a grey plastic chair that was bolted to the ground feeling worn out from the detail she had just heard.

  ‘That wasn’t pleasant.’ Louise rubbed her eyes and pushed her fringe to the side. Straggles of black hair had escaped from her ponytail and fell in wisps down the sides of her face. Kelly looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to elaborate. ‘It’s no wonder no one missed him or reported him missing all those years ago. He raped her, as a child of fourteen years of age, Kelly.’ Louise, shook her head and glared back at him. ‘Did you send some tea and coffee into them?’ she asked. She was feeling sorry for Rose.

  ‘I did,’ Kelly answered. He paused for a moment. ‘How’d she tell you that?’

  ‘As agreed, I asked her when was the last time she saw him. She said in his cottage around dinner time on the day he disappeared. He had raped her when she brought his dinner down to him.’ Louise knew she was telling the truth.

  ‘Did she say if Timothy knew about it?’

  ‘She says she told him afterwards,’ Louise answered.

  ‘Well then, there’s your motive.’ Kelly was almost celebrating. ‘Big brother to the rescue, finds his pervert uncle and kicks him to death for touching his baby sister. Timothy never mentioned anything.’ He pulled his notebook from his back pocket and wrote some more notes. ‘But he wouldn’t, would he, points the finger directly at him.’

  Despite Louise’s hard outer shell, she was a compassionate girl, and Rose’s story had wrenched on her.

  ‘Makes sense.’ Kelly paced the room over to the window and back. ‘What doesn’t make sense though, is why bury him on the land, right under your own nose?’

  ‘Or, you have to ask, if you knew there was a body buried on your land, why sell it, why take the risk that it would be discovered by someone else?’ Louise said matter-of-factly. That was the part she couldn’t understand. ‘If Timothy Fitzpatrick, or Rose for that matter, knew that the body was buried on their land, the last thing they would do is sell it, surely.’

  ‘True, it doesn’t make sense that you’d take that risk.’ Kelly flicked through the tattered pages. He was getting further away from what he wanted to hear.

  ‘Rose mentioned the father, Liam.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well he was a bit of a bully himself, prone to take out the belt when it suited him. But as far as her father was concerned, Patrick had most likely left for Liverpool, he had been mouthing off all night about it.’

  ‘Timothy said something similar’

  ‘Apparently, Patrick was prone to disappearing, wasn’t unusual for him to end up in a nearby town on a drinking binge and not come back for a few days. She used to hate it, she said, because it meant that Tim had to work more on the farm, and she was left on her own.’

  ‘Mmm, it does feed into the “nobody batting an eyelid” when he disappeared theory,’ Kelly conceded. ‘Do you think they’ve stewed enough.’

  ‘I do,’ Louise answered.

  ‘Actually, before we go back in, did you ask Rose why they sold Fitzpatrick Estate so cheaply?’

  ‘I did, she just said she had no interest in anything to do with it. She said, once she left Kilkenny, she never looked back. She didn’t even keep the money for herself. Put it in a trust for her daughter,’ Louise checked her note. ‘Lizzie is the daughter. She works away most of the time, mainly based in London, around the same age as myself.’

  ‘Before, we go back in,’ Kelly scratched his head. It was a move she saw him do on the rare occasion when he was nervous. ‘Did your sister get off okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Louise was waiting for something more than a polite reference to her family. As he said himself, he didn’t do small talk.

  ‘Well, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry for being a bit of…’ He paused and Louise interjected.

  ‘A bit of a prick.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Or arsehole,’ she offered. ‘For standing me up.’

  ‘Yeah, I deserved that.’ He smiled at her brashness. ‘But I was going to say a bit “off” earlier, but yours work just as well.’ He was delighted to see that she smiled. ‘And I’ll make it up to you later, I’m bringing you for dinner, right. I want to explain to you what happened.’ He raised his eyebrows slightly, narrowly escaping another onslaught.

  ‘I can’t.’ Louise was glad he had made an effort to make amends and was interested in hearing what he had to say but couldn’t break her plans. ‘I’ve told my sister, I’ll meet up with her later, around eight,’ she added.

  ‘Good, perfect,’ Kelly answered. ‘I’ll take you out for something at six and then your sister can meet you at eight, that way we are all happy.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Louise said. ‘We may go back in.’

  ‘Enjoy your tea?’ Kelly asked Tim when he re-entered the room.

  ‘Thank you.’ Tim nodded and placed the cup back on the tray.

  ‘Just a few more questions and then I think we have everything we need for now. The money from the sale…’ He opened his notebook on a blank page, as though he was reading from notes that he had already taken.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tim answered.

  ‘Lizzie O’Reilly, your niece, she did very well out of it.’ Kelly was working on a hunch that if Rose wanted nothing to do with the fortune, Tim might have felt the same.

  ‘And?’ Tim answered, one of his eyebrows cocked higher than the other.

  ‘And you gave yours to Lizzie as well,’ Kelly took a guess. His statements were far more effective at times than actual questions could be and this was one of those times.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Just trying to get a picture, that’s all.’ Kelly took some notes. He didn’t know yet if it was of any relevance, he’d decide that later. ‘Did you kill your uncle?’ Kelly asked in an attempt to shock him.

  ‘Of course not,’ Tim answered.

  ‘Do you know who did?’ Kelly cleared his throat.

  ‘No,’ Tim said. One thing was for sure, Patrick got what he deserved and if Tim did know what had happened to his uncle, he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Detective Kelly about it.

  Chapter 20

  Thursday Evening – 2016

  Lucas’s research and investigation in to the case had grown massively since he had last spoken to Marie and in other circumstances, he would have jumped at the chance to cover the story but something about this case felt a little too close to home. As much as he wanted to redeem himself with Marie, he was more interested in showing Lizzie that he was prepared to walk away from a story for her. It was to do with her family after all, and once stones are uncovered, it would be very hard to cover them over again. He dialled Marie’s mobile, now that he had saved her number.

  Marie checked she was alone and pressed to answer.

  ‘Marie, hi,’ Lucas started. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to help, I really don’t think you need me digging around on a story like this, I think it’ll go away by itself.’ He wasn’t about to tell Marie that the more he considered how his involvement might have impacted on Lizzie, the more he was reluctant to help.

  ‘Oh, please Lucas, I really do need you to cover this.’ Marie grew anxious. She had hoped that he would jump at the chance on the merit of the case alone, she didn’t want to have to tell him the rest of the secret and the real reason behind why she had contacted him.

  ‘Look, you know as well as I do, that with the story as it stands, it’ll be dead in a day or two,’ he said.

  ‘Lucas, there is more, and I really wanted to talk to you face to face about it.’

  He could hear the panic in her voice. ‘Marie, if there is more to the story, or if you are afraid of something getting out, you can tell me.’

  ‘Oh, Lucas, I don’t know, I’d just feel better looking you in the eye, it’s very sensitive stuff, please you have to come.’

  ‘You need to tell me what it is.’ Lucas exhal
ed, his intention to tell her no was rapidly fading and the desperation in her voice left him no choice.

  ‘Is this line secure?’ she asked him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he laughed nervously, ‘conversations that start like that either end up in Scotland Yard or the graveyard. What type of trouble are you in, or should I say, is Michael in?’ He sat back at his desk and clicked on his pen. He kept an eye on the time, he was conscious of Lizzie finishing work soon and he wanted to meet her, he didn’t like the idea of her being unhappy with him. ‘No, no one is monitoring my calls, not that I know of anyhow.’

  ‘Will you come over then, if I tell you?’ Marie pleaded.

  Lucas agreed. It was a halfhearted promise that he hoped he wouldn’t have to follow through, not if he wanted to show Lizzie how much she meant to him.

  Marie drew a deep breath and proceeded to tell him all that she knew; the details of the letter, the instructions from her mother in-law and the reason, the real reason, why she didn’t want the press to dig too deeply.

  If her story hadn’t been compelling before, with the gaps well and truly filled in, Lucas knew now he had no choice but to help.

  ‘Jesus,’ Lucas said. ‘And he has no idea?’ He was incredulous that Marie was the only one who had known.

  ‘No, and the last thing we want is for some rogue reporter finding out and telling Michael.’

  ‘The thing is,’ he rubbed his head, ‘I’m going to pay the price for this personally and I only hope that she will understand when it’s all over.’

  ‘Who?’ Marie said.

  ‘My girlfriend, Lizzie, who just happens to be the daughter of Rose Fitzpatrick.’

  *

  Sheets of rain plummeted from the sky and bounced from the footpaths like a scene from Singing in the Rain, but it was far from dancing that Lizzie felt like doing. She stood outside her offices on Jermyn Street and waved frantically at the passing cabs, ignoring the ringing from her bag. Every single cab was full.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said, dodging the muddy spray as she jumped backwards. Her fitted Diane von Furstenberg dress would be ruined if it got any wetter, she sighed. The blazer she wore over it barely covered her, so she retreated back inside the doorway and waited for the rain to ease. Tumultuous dark clouds blustered across the sky, making London seem even greyer and angrier than it normally was. She reached into her bag and rooted for her phone. As she suspected, the missed calls were from Lucas. She cleared the backlog and zipped it back inside. He could wait, she was nothing if not strong-willed, like her mother, her father would have said.