* * *
The rain had stopped, but surface water had the traffic moving slowly and it took over an hour to get to the forensic office in Phoenix Park. Fiona Wilson came to reception as soon as she heard he was in the building. ‘You sounded so mysterious on the phone,’ she said with a smile. ‘What’s so hush-hush?’
‘Can we go somewhere?’ he said with a glance toward the reception staff.
Her smile dimmed slightly. ‘Of course,’ she said, placing a reassuring hand on his arm and directing him through the door. ‘We can use Steve’s office, he’s away.’
The office she took him to was small and cluttered. ‘Have a seat,’ she said, pointing to the only chair in the room while she perched on the desk, one elegant leg crossing the other. ‘So, what’s the problem?’
It was easier to show rather than try to explain. He took the envelope from his jacket pocket. She didn’t need to be told and pulled a pair of gloves from a box that sat precariously on a mound of papers to take it from him.
Her eyes widened as she looked at the photographs. ‘I recognise her, of course. She’s being blackmailed?’
‘It’s not her,’ he said sharply, and held up his hands. ‘Sorry, I should have explained. These were sent to me. It’s not Edel; someone has added her face to those…’ He waved his hands toward the photographs.
‘They were sent to you?’ She looked at him, weighing him up. ‘Why?’
‘No idea,’ he said, standing to pace the small room. ‘But someone went to a lot of trouble to do this. They must have a reason; I just don’t know what it is yet.’
She nodded. ‘There’ll be more.’
Everyone was an expert. ‘That was my thinking,’ he said.
She put the photographs back into the envelope and gave him an understanding smile. ‘Asking the fingerprint technicians in Foxrock to check for prints would be a bit awkward, I suppose. Give me a few minutes, I’ll see what there is to find.’ She left, shutting the door behind her.
Relieved he hadn’t had to spell it out, he sat again and crossed his arms. There was a clock on the wall, its tick loud and annoying. After five minutes, he stood, took it off the wall, removed the batteries and put it back. He placed the two batteries in the middle of the desk where Stephen Doyle could find them when he got back. Maybe he found the tick soothing.
Restless, he took a book from the small, untidy bookshelf and spent several minutes reading about tissue degradation before closing it and returning it to its place. He’d just sat back into the chair when the door opened and she came in, a frown on her face.
‘Not good news, then?’
She shook her head and handed him the envelope. ‘Not a single print on any of the photographs. There are several smudged partial prints on the envelope, none good enough for identification. Anyway, whoever took such good care with the photographs was unlikely to be foolish with the envelope.’
‘You checked inside?’ West asked and shook his head in apology when he saw her eyebrow rise. ‘I’m sorry, of course you did.’
Relenting, she put a hand on his arm again. ‘It doesn’t mean he won’t make a mistake next time, Mike. Come back to me if you get anything else.’
Thanking her, he made his farewells and headed back to Foxrock. He couldn’t spend any more time on it. Not until something else turned up.
Back in the station, he’d sat behind his desk when Baxter appeared in the doorway. ‘I got contact details for the two online purchasers,’ he said, brushing ginger hair out of his eyes as he spoke. ‘One lives in Kerry, the other in Westmeath, and both were able to offer alibis for the night in question without hesitation.’ He dropped the pages he was holding and shrugged. ‘Both checked out.’
‘Thanks, Seamus,’ West said. ‘Did you check that the knives are still in their possession?’ He saw by the suddenly arrested look on Baxter’s face that he hadn’t. ‘Just in case they were stolen, have gone missing, were loaned to a friend stroke ex-wife stroke lover.’ West grinned to lessen the implied criticism.
‘I’ll get back onto them,’ Baxter said, turning away.
By the end of the day, the team had managed to contact everyone who’d bought a Wild Ranger from Outdoor Sport. West stood in the main office and listened to their report. Almost all of the purchasers had concrete alibis for the night of Fearon’s murder.
‘Barry Shelton, in Kilkenny, wants to know how he’s supposed to supply an alibi when he lives on his own and didn’t see anyone from leaving work the day before to going to work the next morning?’ Allen said, leaning back in his chair.
Andrews, perched on the side of his desk, asked, ‘Does he have a criminal history?’
Allen shook his head. ‘Not even a parking violation.’
‘Talk to his place of work, see if he was there until the end of the day, and if he was there as usual the next morning, that’s the best we can do,’ West said. ‘Okay. We’ve eliminated the possible so we’re left with the one probable. Our cash buyer. We don’t have much to go on. Estimating his height from the CCTV, he’s about five-ten, is of medium build, and Caucasian. That’s not going to get us far. I’ve sent the disc over to the IT department to see if they can do anything to sharpen up either the image or his voice, or hopefully, both.’
He saw the doubt in the four sets of eyes that stared back at him and smiled. ‘Yes, I know, it’s a long shot…’
‘A very long shot,’ Andrews interrupted.
‘Very, very,’ Edwards added.
West held both hands up in surrender. ‘Okay. A nigh impossibility but it’s all we’ve got.’
20
‘What are you going to do about those photographs?’ Andrews said before he left for home.
‘There’s nothing I can do at the moment,’ West said, throwing down the pen he was using and sitting back. ‘I took them to be tested for fingerprints. They’re clean.’ He saw Andrews frown. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t take them to the fingerprint office; I went across to the Park. Fiona Wilson had a look at them for me.’
The frown cleared. ‘That was a good idea. You two have become pretty pally, haven’t you?’
‘I like her,’ West said simply and left it at that.
Andrews, seeing he wasn’t going to get more, nodded and left.
West watched him go with narrowed eyes. A friendship between him and the attractive forensic scientist was always going to raise eyebrows, no matter how innocent it was. There were still men, Andrews being one of them, who didn’t believe in friendship between a man and a woman. He shook his head.
He’d planned to stay late and do paperwork but being honest with himself, he was just putting off the inevitable. With a sigh, he took the photographs from his pocket and put them in his desk drawer. There was no point in worrying until the next step was taken.
One thing he was sure of, he was going to protect Edel from any fallout.
It was dark when he got home, and he was surprised there were no lights on in the house. Edel’s car was still parked where it had been this morning, so if she’d gone out, she hadn’t gone far. Maybe to the local shops, he thought, putting his key in the lock and pushing the door open.
It was dark in the hallway, but he didn’t switch on the light. Sometimes, he found the darkness soothing after a day under the glare of the neon lights in the office. He hung his raincoat on the newel, dropped his keys into the hall table drawer and headed to the kitchen. Tyler didn’t come rushing over, so she must have fed him before she went out. Relaxing, he opened the fridge, flooding the room with light, and took out a beer. He was momentarily blinded when he closed the door, finally giving in and switching on a light.
He was disappointed to see no evidence of anything cooking. His belly rumbled in sympathy and he had a sudden regret that he hadn’t agreed to stop for lunch with Andrews. He’d had no breakfast either. So apart from numerous mugs of coffee, he’d had nothing to eat all day. He shook his head. No wonder he didn’t feel too great.
The beer wasn�
�t the best idea, but he poured it into a glass anyway and opened the cupboard to search for something to eat. A jar of olives and a packet of crackers. Things were looking up. Opening the fridge again, he found some cheese that had gone a little hard around the edges. Humming, he took out a plate, opened the crackers and olives and minutes later was balancing the plate on top of the glass to open the door into the lounge. He’d watch the news. When Edel came home, they could go out for something to eat or get a takeaway.
‘Hi.’
The plate, awkwardly balanced, fell to the floor with a clatter, cheese and crackers landing on his feet, olives skittering across the floor in every direction. The noise startled Tyler who’d been curled up asleep on the sofa. He barked at West and growled at the olives before being picked up and put out into the hallway.
West shut the door on him, put his pint down and stepped over the mess on the floor to sit beside Edel who was curled up on the end of the sofa. The room was only lit by the streetlights outside, but even in their shadowy light, he could see her face was tear-stained, her eyes swollen and red.
‘What the hell?’ he said, shocked. He pulled her into his arms. She was unresisting, almost limp. He held her for several minutes without saying a word.
It was Edel who pulled away, wiping her face with her sleeve. ‘It’s just one thing after another, Mike,’ she said, her voice breaking.
‘What is it?’
She rubbed her eyes and gulped before pointing to the table. ‘Have a look.’
An envelope. He knew what was inside. Picking it up, he took the photographs out and looked at them. Similar, but different poses. ‘Where did you get them?’
She sat bolt upright. ‘You aren’t surprised?’ Slapping her hand to her forehead, she groaned. ‘You got them too?’ She dropped her hand. ‘Oh God, please don’t tell me they were sent to the station.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘here, this morning.’
‘Here?’ She looked at him suspiciously before taking a deep breath and letting it out in a shuddering gasp. ‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’
‘No, I wasn’t. You’ve been through so much I wanted to–’
‘Protect me? There you go again, treating me like a child… or worse,’ she said, standing and moving away to the window, ‘treating me like a victim.’
He dropped the photographs on the table. ‘Tell me what happened.’
She stayed facing the window, her voice catching as she told him. ‘I had a call from Hugh Todd this morning. My publisher,’ she reminded him. ‘He asked me to call in to see him; he was very mysterious and wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone.
‘When I got there, I knew immediately something was wrong. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and there was no offer of a drink, none of the usual courtesies I’d come to take for granted.’
There was silence for a few minutes. West could hear her cry and wanted to go to her, but there was a chasm between them. Once more, whether she liked it or not, she was a victim.
‘He told me they were ending my contract, not just for the current book, but also for the children’s books I’ve written, and they wouldn’t be looking to do business with me again.’ She turned then and looked at him. ‘I’ve known him for almost five years.’ She moved to the armchair and sat. ‘I was so shocked and stunned I couldn’t speak. When I finally managed to ask him why, he just handed me those.’
‘But he must have known they weren’t photos of you,’ West said.
She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think he really cared if they were, or not. He’d had a phone call first thing from Books Ireland Inc; they’re the biggest wholesale supplier of books in Ireland. They’d also received some photographs, and on the back of each was a list of the children’s books I’ve written. They weren’t too happy, as you can guess, and will be withdrawing all of them from sale.’
West tried to think of something positive to say. But he wasn’t a fool; in today’s world image was everything.
‘If I wrote erotica,’ she said, with a smile, ‘they’d use it to promote my books. But a children’s author must be above all that sleazy stuff. My new novel is a family saga, it wouldn’t do much for that either.’
West’s stomach growled. He needed food. ‘I missed lunch,’ he said apologetically, deciding that saying he’d also missed breakfast might be a bit of an overkill. ‘I’ll order a takeaway and we can sit down with a bottle of wine and see what we’re going to do about this.’
He didn’t wait for a reply. The takeaway menus were in a drawer in the kitchen; he pulled the local Indian one out, rang them and ordered an assortment of food. It was probably too much, but his growling stomach egged him on.
An open bottle of red wine in one hand and two glasses in the other, he headed back to the lounge, pleased to see she had switched on some lights and looked a little calmer.
He opened the wine, poured a glass and handed it to her, waiting until she’d taken a sip before moving away to pick up the food he’d dropped on the floor earlier. He piled it on the plate and brought it into the kitchen where he dumped the lot into the bin. Tyler lifted his head expectantly, but one look from West made him reconsider moving from the comfort of his bed.
Returning to the lounge, he picked up his pint of beer and sat beside her. The silence was awkward, filled with things they both wanted and didn’t want to say.
‘I–’ Edel started, turning to him, shaking her head and smiling when the doorbell interrupted her. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, nodding toward the door.
West put his beer down and left the room, returning minutes later with a bag of food hanging from each hand. He placed them carefully on the table and left again to fetch plates and cutlery.
Edel unpacked the bags, spreading the containers out on the coffee table and taking off the lids. ‘There’s way too much,’ she murmured, taking the plate he handed her and spooning a little of each dish onto her plate.
‘It’s always a bad idea to order a takeaway when you’re starving,’ he said, opening a bag holding two naan breads and handing her one. He broke a piece from his and dipped it into the sauce on his plate, watching her from the corner of his eye. She was playing with her food, trying to appear brave; his heart twisted.
He wasn’t sure how to say what needed to be said. Before his hunger was satisfied, he’d had enough and pushed his plate away. ‘You need to report this, Edel,’ he said firmly, ‘make it official.’
She looked at him with wide eyes. ‘You have to be joking.’ Her laugh verged on hysteria. ‘Report it, and have people, maybe some of your colleagues, drooling over photographs they think are of me? Maybe copying them, putting them online. Are you out of your bloody mind?’
‘It won’t be like that,’ he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. Secrets had a tendency to escape, no matter how hard you tried. ‘I’ll keep it between Andrews and me.’
‘I should have guessed you’d show him.’ She dropped her plate on the table with a clatter. ‘Who else has been gawping at them? Who else?’ she demanded when he didn’t answer.
‘I needed to get them checked for fingerprints. I took them to one of my colleagues at the forensic office in the Park.’
‘And did he drool over them?’ she said, sneering.
‘She,’ he said, trying to stay calm. ‘Fiona Wilson, you’ve met her.’
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When she spoke, her voice was less ragged. ‘Did she find anything?’
He shook his head. ‘They were clean. Whoever’s doing this, they’re not completely stupid. We might have more luck with the ones that were sent to the bookshop. If he took the time to write on them, he might have left some trace. I’ll get someone to pick them up tomorrow.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want that. I’ll take care of this myself.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped, frustrated. ‘This is a police matter. You, more than anyone, should know how dangerous it is to get involved wi
th criminals.’
Standing, she wrapped her arms around herself and moved across the room to stare out the window. ‘This is personal,’ she said softly, ‘and I think I might know who it is.’
He had to strain to hear what she said. ‘You think you know who it is?’ he repeated, unsure if he’d heard her correctly.
‘Aidan,’ she said, turning around. ‘Aidan Power, the editor. He was so helpful when we communicated online, but when I met him… there was something not right. He made my skin crawl.’
She pushed her hands through her hair and stood there a moment, eyes wide, looking wild. ‘It’s not something I can explain. He just gave me a bad feeling.’ Dropping her hands, she smiled slightly. ‘Female intuition, or as you and Peter might say, a gut feeling. However you describe it, he just made me feel uneasy.’
He held up his hands. ‘I’m not going to knock that feeling, Edel. But what motivation could he have for trying to destroy you, personally and professionally.’
She shrugged. ‘There isn’t always a motive, is there?’
West frowned. She was right. There wasn’t always a motive. Sometimes it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this didn’t fit here. Someone had gone to a considerable amount of trouble to make those composite photographs. And the recipients were carefully chosen to cause the most harm.
The photographs were addressed to him. ‘Does Aidan know about me?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know. What difference would that make?’
West told her.
‘I suppose I might have mentioned you,’ she said. ‘But if I had, it would have been your first name. I wouldn’t have used your full name, there was no reason to.’
‘But he knew you were living here in Greystones, not in Blackrock?’
Edel frowned. Did he? She’d filled in forms, what address had she used? Embarrassingly, she couldn’t remember. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted. ‘They may have my address here, but they definitely wouldn’t have had your surname.’
The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six Page 13
