The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six

by Valerie Keogh

  It was a few minutes before the priest’s colour returned to normal. ‘Angina,’ he said, ‘I’ll be okay now.’

  ‘You sure you don’t need to go to hospital?’

  Jeffreys shook his head. ‘No, that won’t be necessary. I’ve lived with it for a long time. It’s the stress of the morning.’

  The stress of the morning? West almost smiled at the understatement. ‘Is there someone we can call to be with you?’

  ‘Father Maher is on his way.’ As if by magic, a car pulled into the car park and an older man got out and hurried over to them.

  ‘He’s had an angina attack,’ West explained. He waited until Father Maher sat into the driver’s seat before bending to speak to the parish priest. ‘We’re going to need to ask some questions to help with our enquiries. Perhaps, if you’re feeling up to it, we could call around later?’

  ‘Whatever you need to get this sorted, Detective Sergeant,’ Jeffreys said, his voice frailer than it had been earlier. ‘There are four of us. You have yet to meet Father McComb. We live together at 225A Westminster Road. If it suits, I can make sure we’re all available to assist, maybe later this afternoon, around four?’

  ‘That would be extremely helpful,’ West said.

  Father Maher started the engine and seconds later the car slowly exited the car park.

  5

  ‘Has Father Jeffreys been parish priest for long?’ West asked as he watched the car join the line of rush-hour traffic.

  ‘For as long as I’ve been here, and that’s fifteen years,’ Andrews said. ‘They don’t tend to leave once they’re appointed. He’s probably a year or two off retirement. Maher and Dillon have been here a few years. McComb is the newest: he only joined about a year or so ago.’

  They’d be looking at them all. There might be a reason why the perpetrator targeted this particular church. Maybe a message for one of the four priests.

  ‘This isn’t going to be an easy one, Pete,’ West said, his eyes scanning the area around the church. It was set near a busy junction and its huge car park separated it from houses on the roads behind.

  ‘I doubt if a canvass of the neighbourhood is going to turn up anything.’ Andrews pointed to the traffic cameras set high above the junction. ‘I’ll have the traffic cameras checked. We might be lucky and they might take in the entrance to the car park.’

  West looked from the junction to the entrance. ‘Unlikely, but worth a go.’ This was the boring part of police work, the checking of every conceivable detail in case it might be the crucial link they were looking for. He was lucky with Andrews who was happy to investigate every lead, no matter how remote, without complaining.

  There was no point in either of them hanging around the church. The uniforms would work through the canvass and report back to the station. The Gardaí assigned to the entrances would keep the curious and the reporters away. For the moment. No doubt the reporters would park on the residential roads behind and make a nuisance of themselves.

  Maddison, he guessed, would shut the church door and ignore them.

  Sergeant Blunt was at the front desk when they arrived back to Foxrock Station. He looked up from his computer screen when they pushed through the creaking front door. ‘I was right to send you,’ Blunt said, reading their grim expressions.

  Since the reception was unusually empty, West leaned on the desk and gave Blunt the details.

  ‘Grim,’ was his only comment. As was his way, he said no more and the two men headed into the detective unit.

  The main office was relatively quiet. Detective Garda Mark Edwards was tapping without much speed or enthusiasm on a keyboard and Detective Garda Mick Allen was staring into space. They and the members of the team who were out of the office would be dealing with the few ongoing investigations: small-time drug peddling outside a local secondary school, a domestic violence case that was proving more complex as more agencies became involved and some dodgy dealings in a local garage. The usual bread and butter of the detective unit.

  Andrews grabbed two mugs of coffee and joined West in his office, handing him one and taking the seat opposite. ‘A nasty one this,’ he said, taking a sip.

  ‘It’s a day for understatements,’ West said, picking up his mug and shaking his head when Andrews threw him a puzzled look. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to talk to everyone who had access to the church, the sacristan when he feels up to it, the various priests, the cleaning staff and… who else?’

  ‘Flower arrangers, organist, altar boys.’

  ‘Yes.’ West sipped his coffee. ‘And not just for yesterday. The perp needed to know the layout of the church so he’ll have been in it before. Hopefully someone will have noticed a nefarious individual hanging around.’

  Andrews looked dubious. ‘If “nefarious” means “evil bugger”, I doubt it. They never do look as rotten on the outside as they are on the inside.’ He ran a hand over his short brown hair. ‘It would be nice if we had a name for our victim before we visit the priests. They might recognise it.’

  West agreed. ‘Maddison said he’d check the fingerprints as priority. He usually goes back before the team are finished to start processing the data. I’ll give him a couple of hours before I start to nag.’

  ‘Right, since it doesn’t look as though Allen is doing anything useful, I’ll get him to check missing persons. We might get lucky.’

  Luck. There was that word again. If the general public knew how much they depended on it, he guessed they wouldn’t be impressed. Someone else who wouldn’t be impressed was Mother Morrison. Rather than going to his office, West reached for the phone. He had to speak to the inspector. There was no point in putting off the inevitable and doing it by phone would be easier, Morrison wouldn’t be able to see his expression.

  To say that Morrison was unhappy would have been yet another understatement. ‘In the church?’ he almost squeaked when West had finished filling him in. ‘We’ll have the parish priest down on us.’

  ‘The sacristan called him so he arrived shortly after us. He mentioned the bishop,’ West said, trying not to let a smile show in his voice. ‘And the archbishop.’

  ‘The parish priest, bishop and archbishop.’ Morrison’s voice left West in no doubt as to how he felt about the clergy.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll have little to do with us, Inspector.’

  ‘Make sure of it.’ Morrison hung up without another word.

  West put the phone down and shook his head. It sounded as though the inspector had a fear of priests… there was a name for it, he remembered it coming up in a case back when he was a solicitor… hierophobia, that was it. He’d have to tell Andrews: it would be another new word for him. West’s amusement quickly faded as he wondered how he was supposed to stop the parish priest, the bishop, or the archbishop for that matter, from sticking their oar in where it wasn’t wanted. He’d no idea.

  He guessed Morrison didn’t either.

  West’s computer powered up with its usual reluctance. Every month since he’d transferred to Foxrock, he’d requested a new one, and every month he’d been promised it would come. It had become a standing joke between him and the requisition manager, only sometimes, like this morning, it didn’t seem so funny.

  He spent the next hour answering emails, filling in documentation, alerting anyone who needed to be alerted to the morning’s murder. Paperwork, the bane of his existence. Sergeant Clark, who was supposedly in charge of the robbery side of the detective division in Foxrock, ignored it all but that wasn’t in West’s nature. Besides, he’d trained and practised as a solicitor, compared to the paperwork he had there, this was basic. It was also boring but he plodded through.

  When he was done, he checked to see if, by the remotest possibility, another similar murder had occurred anywhere in the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that it appeared to be unique. Unique was harder to solve.

  Finally, he stretched, looked at the clock
and picked up the phone to ring Maddison’s office in the Phoenix Park. It would be days before they finished processing the scene, but he knew Maddison often headed back to the Park to deliver samples to the forensic department which was located nearby and to start the slow process of collating the information they’d already gathered.

  ‘I’d have rung if I’d anything to give you,’ Maddison said when he finally came to the phone.

  ‘We’re going to be under huge pressure with this, David,’ West said easily. He waited a beat and added, ‘If we had his identification to work with it would make a huge difference.’

  There was a noisy exhale of breath before Maddison replied, ‘I’m sure it would.’

  West heard the crackle of paper and held his breath. Maybe they’d got something for him.

  ‘You are in luck: your victim was in the system. Ian Moore, a twenty-seven-year-old from Dublin. He was a guest of the state, released two months ago.’

  That was all Maddison had for him, but it was enough to satisfy West. He pulled his keyboard forward. And within seconds the screen filled with a photograph of the victim.

  Getting to his feet, he headed to the general office to find Andrews who was leaning over Allen’s shoulder as the younger man searched the missing person’s file.

  ‘You can call a halt to your search,’ West said. ‘Maddison came through for us.’

  Andrews followed him back to his office, Allen close behind.

  West sat and turned the screen toward them. ‘Ian Moore, twenty-seven years old, released from Mountjoy two months ago after serving eight months for the rape of nineteen-year-old Laetitia Summers.’

  ‘Eight months?’

  ‘Yes, he was sentenced to five years but he’d no priors and no history, so with time served and good behaviour he was given an early release.’ Remembering the grisly scene in the church, he said, ‘He’d have been safer serving a longer sentence.’

  Allen enlarged the photo and stared intently at it before looking back to West. ‘You think maybe Laetitia Summers was involved in some way?’

  ‘He was released two months ago. Now he’s dead. Maybe someone didn’t think he’d been punished enough.’ West turned the screen back around. ‘We’ll keep an open mind but we’ll need to interview Ms Summers and her family, boyfriends et cetera. So far, they’re the only obvious motive.’

  ‘So far,’ Andrews said, standing. ‘We’ll start looking into his background, check out family and friends. You going to inform his next of kin?’

  West sighed. Breaking bad news was a job he’d never learned to be comfortable with. It was tempting to wait for the cause of death before he went, but that ran the risk of them finding out from another source. This kind of news, the worst kind, always leaked out. He checked his watch. ‘They live in Dun Laoghaire. I’ll go to them after the meeting with the priests.’ He shot Andrews a quick look. ‘And don’t think you’re getting out of that, by the way. I’ll need support from a churchgoer to deal with the clergy.’

  Andrews smiled. ‘You might need the services of a priest someday.’

  A bark of laugher from Allen was quickly smothered when West shot him a quelling glance. ‘Start looking into Moore. Find out everything there is to know about him, family, friends, girlfriends.’

  Allen beat a hasty retreat.

  Deciding it was better to ignore Andrews’ less than subtle hint that he should be thinking about getting married, West reached for his jacket and pulled it on. ‘Let’s go see what these priests have to tell us.’

  6

  It wasn’t a long drive from the station to Westminster Road but it was a busy area and it was stop-start most of the journey. West never minded sitting in traffic: it gave him time to think. Priests; the victim, Ian Moore; and his victim, Laetitia Summers. Already, he could feel the stress mounting. He slipped the car into second gear, moved a few yards and came to a halt again. ‘We need to tread very carefully on this one, Peter.’

  ‘Discretion, that’s my middle name.’

  ‘Well, make sure it’s everybody else’s middle name too. This is going to be a messy one.’

  Foxrock was an upmarket area and the houses on Westminster Road tended to be big and detached. Halfway along the road, West’s satnav told them they’d arrived at their destination on the left. A wooden gateway stood open and he pulled the car onto the gravel driveway in front of a rather dilapidated two-storey building. The church may have owned it but it looked as if they weren’t willing to spend money maintaining it.

  ‘A lot of these older houses were knocked down and replaced years ago,’ Andrews said, getting from the car and leaning on the roof of it to look around the extensive gardens. ‘A developer would love this; there’s room for two, maybe three houses here.’

  The house might have shown signs of neglect but the same couldn’t be said for the gardens. Daffodils had popped up in neat rows in the flower beds that edged the driveway and there were no weeds or moss marring the expanse of velvety green grass.

  ‘Nice gardens.’ West made a mental note to get out into his much smaller one to tackle the weeds before they started taking over.

  The doorbell was answered almost immediately by a solemn Father Dillon, who waved them in with a murmured greeting.

  Inside, the house was even more neglected than it appeared on the outside. The narrow hallway was decorated in a loud floral paper that might have been popular in the sixties. The parquet flooring needed sanding and polishing, the paintwork was flaking and chipped and there was a distinct odour that screamed rising damp.

  ‘Father Jeffreys isn’t as strong as he’d like to think he is,’ Father Dillon said. There was an element of warning in the tone.

  ‘I’m aware Father Jeffreys has angina,’ West said, refusing to take umbrage. ‘I assure you we’re not here to cause him distress but this is a murder enquiry: investigations need to proceed.’

  Dillon’s mouth tightened and it looked as if he were going to argue. Maybe he would have done but Father Jeffreys came through a doorway at the end of the hall claiming their attention, and when West looked back at Dillon, he’d resumed his solemn mask.

  Mask. West filed away the word that had automatically popped into his head for consideration later. Everyone, at this stage, was under suspicion – especially someone who could hide his feelings as easily as Dillon appeared to be able to do.

  Father Jeffreys waved them into a large airy room at the back of the house where some effort had been made at redecorating. The walls were a pale cream and the floor a sea of beige carpet. A typical three-piece suite of furniture was arranged in front of a fireplace, the three-seater sofa directly in front of it, a single seater to each side. A fire was set in the grate but not lit.

  ‘Come in, Detective Sergeant West, Detective Garda Andrews. You’ve met us all apart from Father McComb.’ Jeffreys indicated the slight man who hovered in front of an armchair. ‘We’re all eager to be of assistance in the hope you can get this terrible business sorted as quickly as possible.’ Jeffreys sank onto the central seat of the three-seater sofa and patted the space beside him. ‘Sit, ask whatever you need to ask.’

  West had no choice but to take the seat offered. Dillon stayed standing, an elbow propped on the mantlepiece, and insisted that a reluctant Andrews took the seat on the other side.

  ‘May we offer you tea or coffee?’ Father Jeffreys asked, turning awkwardly to West.

  ‘No, thank you,’ West said quickly. He wasn’t going to stay in this uncomfortably cramped situation longer than he could help.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Maddison informed me that it could be at least a week before they’ll be finished their investigation.’

  ‘It’s a slow, painstaking process,’ West said, resorting to cliché.

  ‘And your investigation?’

  West glanced around the room, at the intent faces looking at him, at Andrews who was staring at his clasped hands waiting for West to tell these clergymen that he hadn’t a clue how long it woul
d take. He resisted the temptation to resort to cliché again, to say it would take as long as it took, and with more difficulty resisted the temptation to say he’d not yet had divine inspiration. ‘It’s only begun.’ The truth was often the easiest way to go. ‘We have identified the victim which is the first step.’

  There was a rustle, as each of the seated priests sat forward expectantly.

  ‘His name is Ian Moore,’ West said. ‘Does the name ring a bell?’

  Every head shook in the negative. He felt in his jacket pocket for his mobile, brought up a screenshot he’d taken of the man’s photo and handed his mobile around. ‘Anyone recognise him?’

  It was a slim chance. There was one other question he had to ask. ‘If he’d come to you for confession, would you have recognised him through the mesh in the confession box?’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Jeffreys said. ‘There isn’t a light in the penitent’s box and the mesh blurs the features of the people on the other side.’

  ‘This man, Ian Moore, he’d been in prison. In fact, he was only out a few months. He might have been attempting to start again by going to confession. Would you remember someone who came to confess to a brutal crime?’

  He wasn’t surprised at their quickly shuttered expressions. The sanctity of the confessional was absolute. If Ian Moore had gone to seek forgiveness for raping Laetitia Summers, they wouldn’t be able to tell him.

  It was Father Jeffreys who eventually answered in a reproving tone. ‘I know something of your history, Detective Garda Sergeant West. You were a practising solicitor before you joined the Gardaí, you should know better.’

  ‘As a solicitor, I was taught to ask even the most difficult questions,’ West said unapologetically. ‘I owe it to the victim.’

  Jeffreys laid a hand gently on his knee. ‘We both have challenging roles at times. Now,’ he said, shuffling to his feet, ‘if there is nothing else.’

  There was a lot more to ask but sitting there hemmed in on all sides, this wasn’t the place to ask awkward questions. Anyway, West decided, getting to his feet, the other priests might feel freer to speak without the beady eye of the parish priest staring at them. ‘I will need to speak to each of you individually,’ he said, looking from one to the other. ‘Perhaps it would be easier if you came to the station in the morning.’