At this stage, there was a photo of Ian Moore – or whoever he was – sitting square in the centre. The only other piece of information was the fingerprint analysis. West had intended on bringing the report up on his computer. Instead, he pulled the hardcopy down and perched on the side on a nearby desk, sipping the bitter coffee and reading the short report.
It was straightforwardly informative. The victim’s fingerprints were in their system. According to it, he was Ian Moore, whose parents, Eve and Ben Moore, lived in Dun Laoghaire. Straightforwardly informative, apart from the fact that it wasn’t true. There was also a home address. West would have it checked out that morning. Maybe they would learn something that would clear up this mess.
Andrews was the first of the team to arrive. He filled his mug with coffee, looked around for the milk, shaking his head to see none, and emptied three packets of sugar in. ‘How did it go last night?’
Instead of replying, West pointed towards The Wall. He’d found a black marker pen, drawn a large question mark on a sheet of paper and stuck it under the picture of their victim.
‘A bit dramatic for this early in the morning,’ Andrews said, stirring his coffee with the end of a pen. ‘You hardly expect us to know who killed him yet, this isn’t–’
‘CSI, wherever,’ West said, interrupting one of Andrews’ favourite expressions. ‘Who killed him isn’t my question. No,’ he said, waving a hand towards the photo, ‘it’s who is he? Because he certainly isn’t Ian Moore.’
Andrews stood silently while West filled him in on the previous evening’s disaster. ‘It was one of the most embarrassing and awkward situations I’ve ever been in. They went from being distressed to apoplectic in the space of a few seconds. And I didn’t blame them.’
‘Embarrassing all right.’ Andrews took the report from The Wall and read it. ‘And very odd, fingerprints don’t normally lie.’
The rest of the team arrived. West left Andrews to fill them in while he went to ring Maddison who, West hoped, would have a rational explanation for the mix-up.
Unfortunately, Maddison didn’t. ‘Everything is as it should be,’ he assured West. ‘Ian Moore, or whoever he was, had his fingerprints taken when he was arrested and charged with the rape of Laetitia Summers. There was DNA evidence. Your victim, Mike, was the man charged with the rape. His name according to everything I have, is Ian Moore.’
‘Okay,’ West said.
‘Sounds like this one is going to be a bit of a headache.’
More understatements. Headache. This one was going to be a nightmare.
Pulling his keyboard towards him, he brought up Ian Moore’s arrest sheet and read through every word twice. Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was all straightforward. Believable. It had fooled everyone.
He read the transcript from the interview with Laetitia Summers. She’d known her attacker, their victim, to see for some time. He worked at a garage near where she worked and she had to pass it on her way home in the evening. They’d gone, she told the interviewer, from a smile to a wave, then one day he’d asked her if she’d like to go for a drink.
They had both drunk too much and were noted by witnesses to be staggering when they left the pub. But she was quite clear, she’d never planned to have sex with him and had told him no when he had tried it on as they made their way home. She was still saying no when he dragged her into a laneway and raped her.
West glossed over the medical report and the impact statement. They never made pleasant reading. Instead, he scrolled through to a character reference given by Ian Moore’s employer. Ronan Tedford. Moore had worked for him for several years, was a diligent worker, honest, a good timekeeper and never got into trouble.
West tapped the desk with his fingers. To work for Tedford, to have paid tax, Moore had to have had a personal public services number. If it had been his first job, he’d have had to apply for one. Either way, the man had to be known by the Revenue. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard to sort out after all.
Getting to his feet, he headed to the main office. Andrews had already handed out assignments and both Seamus Baxter and Mark Edwards were frowning at their computer screens, tapping on the keyboard, Baxter with speed, Edwards with his middle-finger stretching from key to key.
‘They’re getting background information on our current list of characters,’ Andrews said as West perched on the side of his desk.
‘When they’ve finished, get one of them to check with Revenue. He has to have a PPS number to work: find out when it was issued. A child born and registered in Ireland is automatically assigned one at that point. If our victim was using Ian Moore’s, how did he get hold of it?’
‘You said the real Ian Moore went abroad immediately following university. Maybe he’d never had to work in Ireland so never actually used it.’
West, remembering the well-to-do couple, agreed. ‘Yes, they didn’t look to be short of money and he is their only son.’ He checked his watch and swore softly. ‘I need to go and see Morrison and tell him of this complication plus to warn him that those priests will be coming in shortly. I think the inspector may suffer from hierophobia.’ He expected Andrews to latch onto this new word but instead his partner nodded.
‘A fear of priests, yes, that wouldn’t surprise me.’ Andrews smiled. ‘Thought you’d catch me out, didn’t you? Fact is, I had a friend, years ago, who had a bad case of it, used to break out into a sweat if he as much as saw a priest in the distance.’ Andrews checked his watch. ‘Okay, I’d better go and lay claim to the Big One before Sergeant Clark decides he needs it for something or other.’
The two interview rooms were identical and joined by a single observation room. Officially, they were designated Interview Room One and Two, but for a reason that West was never able to discover, they were always known as the Big One and the Other One. When he’d arrived in Foxrock almost two years before, he’d called them by their official names but within a few months, he’d given in. Despite it being identical to the other, the Big One was seen as the more important of the two rooms. As such, it was the room his robbery counterpart, Detective Garda Sergeant Clark, liked to use. West didn’t care, but he knew Andrews did so left him to lay claim to it while he went off to update Mother Morrison.
When West found himself wondering, yet again, how the very unmotherly Morrison had ended up with such a nickname, he knew he was trying to put off the inevitable. Rather than phoning, he decided to head up to his office on the first floor.
He was in luck and Morrison was alone, his door slightly open to show him hunched over his desk, a deep furrow between his hairy eyebrows.
West sucked in a deep breath and rapped his knuckles smartly against the wood.
‘Come in,’ Morrison said immediately, looking up from the papers in his hand.
West shut the door behind him. ‘Morning, Inspector, I wanted to update you on our progress in the murder investigation.’ There was no chair this side of Morrison’s desk. West refused to stand before him like a penitent child so had taken to leaning one shoulder against the wall. Sometimes, like this morning, with Morrison’s rather small eyes pinning him to the wall, it was an effort to appear relaxed. He resisted the temptation to shuffle nervously. ‘We ran into an unexpected problem,’ he said, trying to sound casual.
‘Yes?’
‘We identified the victim by fingerprints. According to the information we were given, his parents lived in Dun Laoghaire so I went yesterday evening to break the bad news.’ He did shuffle a little when he remembered the Moores’ reaction. ‘Unfortunately, our information was incorrect.’
‘Incorrect?’ Morrison’s hairy eyebrows met. ‘Fingerprints don’t lie.’
‘Our victim was in Mountjoy. His fingerprints are in the system. And Ben and Eve Moore, who live at the address he gave, do have a son called Ian. But he is very much alive.’ West shook his head, remembering their reaction. ‘Their son lives in Dubai. They’d been speaking to him on Skype a few hours before I called.’
>
‘A bit of a mess.’ Morrison drummed his fingers on the desk but his voice was even, he wasn’t assigning fault.
West, although he knew he wasn’t to blame, relaxed. ‘Our victim worked in a garage in Marino. We’re following his employment record. We should be able to unscramble it soon.’
‘How long has he been working there?’
‘Several years. He’s obviously been using the fake identification all these years and it was good enough to fool the courts when he was arrested. We’re looking into how he got hold of Ian Moore’s PPS number.’
‘Sounds like we have another case of identity theft on our hands.’ The inspector sat back and folded his arms. ‘Is that why he was killed?’
‘We’ve a long way to go before we decide that, Inspector. It might be something to do with it, but it might also be totally unrelated.’
‘A red herring.’
‘Exactly. It’s one of any number of avenues we’ll be exploring over the next few days.’ It was time to break the other bad news. ‘The priests from St Monica’s are coming in to give statements this morning.’
Morrison went rigid. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘The positioning and staging of the body… that was done to make a point, almost to make a mockery of the church. It may have been directed at one of the priests.’ West shrugged. ‘Or maybe all of them.’
‘It might simply be someone who hates the clergy.’ Morrison’s voice was decidedly tetchy.
‘Or the Catholic Church.’ West pushed away from the wall and held his hands up. ‘The best way forward, as I see it, is to speak to anyone even remotely involved with St Monica’s and go from there.’
‘Yes, reluctantly, I agree.’ Morrison’s shoulders slumped in resigned acceptance. ‘It doesn’t sound like this is going to be a quick solve.’
‘We’ve had difficult cases before, Inspector.’ West hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
It was always the same at the start of a case, he decided, making his way slowly down the quiet, strikingly-cold stairwell. The central crime with its tentacles of possibilities, suspects, red herrings, dead-ends and tantalising unknowns. A smile hovered at the corner of his mouth. It was exactly why he’d wanted to become a detective.
10
Over the course of the morning, one at a time, the priests from St Monica’s came into the station. They seemed perfectly relaxed in the interview room while West and Andrews sat opposite and tried to tease information from them. It was a frustrating exercise. The priests saw the world through God-tinged, rose-coloured glasses. That and their adherence to the sanctity of the confessional meant they’d little to share that might have given the detectives a road to travel along.
The parish priest, Father Jeffreys, was the last to come in, looking healthier than he had done the day before.
‘We appreciate you coming in,’ West said, trying to keep the note of frustration from his voice. The morning was almost gone and, so far, they’d learned nothing they didn’t already know.
‘We want to do all we can to help.’ The words were correct but there was a light in the old priest’s eye that said, as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud, it would be on his terms only.
West understood, but it was time the parish priest did too. ‘We appreciate the constraints you’re under, Father Jeffreys, but you must understand we will do everything necessary to bring the perpetrator of this murder to justice.’ Having made his position clear, he spent the next several minutes leading the priest through the same questions he’d asked the others, but as he’d expected Father Jeffreys’ answers were all in the negative. He’d seen nothing suspicious and couldn’t think of anyone who would have a grievance against the church or him.
The next question was more difficult, but it was one West knew he had to ask. ‘I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask if you, or any of the priests in your parish, were involved in any way… directly or indirectly… with any case of child abuse.’
Colour drained from the parish priest’s face and the hands that had been resting relaxed on the table between them clutched one another. West expected an angry outburst; instead, tears filled the priest’s eyes. ‘Such sadness that you have to ask, Detective Garda Sergeant West. Such sadness that this abhorrent behaviour has become so associated with the clergy.’ Jeffreys reached one trembling hand into his pocket, retrieved the bottle of tablets that West had opened for him the previous day, opened it, knocked one tablet into his hand and tossed it into his mouth.
He held a hand up as both West and Andrews rose to their feet. ‘Sit, sit,’ he said testily. ‘Angina is more dramatic than serious.’ As colour returned to his cheeks, he reached for a glass of water and took a sip. ‘Let me make it very, very clear,’ he said. ‘Each of the priests who works with me has been thoroughly vetted and there is nothing in their past to indicate any problems in that regard.’ His shoulders slumped as his hands continued to twist. ‘The church has a lot to answer for, but I can assure you, not this time.’
‘It had to be asked,’ West said later. He and Andrews were in his office drinking coffee and working their way through a packet of fig rolls.
‘As Father Jeffreys said, sad that it needed to be,’ Andrews said with a shake of his head. ‘I feel sorry for the man. When I was a child, priests automatically got respect from everyone; nowadays things are different and there are many people who look at them askance.’ He drained his mug, threw the empty biscuit packet into the bin and got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and see if the lads have come up with anything.’
West, left alone, sat back with his hands clasped behind his head. Jeffreys, he guessed, believed what he’d said, that each of the priests was innocent of any form of abuse. That didn’t, however, mean it was true. The church had been guilty of cover-ups over the years. Who’s to say it wasn’t continuing? They’d need to look deeper into each man, dig into previous parishes, see if there was any gossip.
Gossip. Digging through it was an unsavoury part of detective work. It was an evil necessity, especially if they had nowhere else to go because sometimes there was a kernel of truth in even the most ridiculous gossip and rumours.
When Andrews didn’t return, West decided to go out to the main office to see what was happening. The day was half over and so far, they had diddly-squat.
Andrews was leaning over Baxter’s shoulder, peering at his computer screen. Seeing a level of intense interest, West joined them and leaned over Baxter’s other shoulder. ‘What’ve you found?’
‘Ian Moore’s Revenue paperwork,’ Baxter said, tapping on the keyboard, then stopping to point at the screen. ‘According to them, he is Ian Moore whose parents live in Dun Laoghaire. His PPS number is correct. He’s been working and paying tax for the last nine years.’
West peered at the screen. ‘It all looks official and correct except we know he isn’t Ian Moore.’
Andrews straightened and stretched. ‘Somehow, he got hold of the right paperwork and PPS number.’
West took a final glance at Baxter’s screen. ‘It looks like I’m going to have to speak to the Moores again.’
‘I’m waiting to hear from our vic’s landlord regarding getting access to his flat.’ Andrews glanced at his watch. ‘I’d expect to hear from him soon. I can take Baxter or Edwards if you’d prefer.’
West considered what needed to be done. He liked to have a hand in every part of the investigation but he knew it wasn’t possible and was unfair to his experienced team. Still, he shook his head. ‘No, I’d like to put some flesh on our victim’s bones by seeing where he lived, I’ll come with you.’ He turned for his office, turning back on another thought. ‘Who’s talking to Laetitia Summers?’
Andrews smiled. ‘I saw Garda Foley with nothing to do so sent him off with Jarvis to talk to her.’
West raised his eyes to the ceiling. Garda Foley was officially assigned to Sergeant Clark in robbery who wouldn’t be happy to lose him even if they were quiet. ‘Did you ask Clark?’ he s
aid, knowing the answer would be no.
‘I put a requisition slip in his in-tray.’ Andrews could do innocent like nobody else West knew. Clark ignored his in-tray, everyone knew it. Andrews proceeded to justify his actions. ‘Foley was a good choice to go. Jarvis is too inexperienced.’
West had to admit he was right. Foley was the solid, dependable type who instantly made people feel at ease. He and Jarvis would make a good team to speak to the rape victim.
‘Right, if Clark comes looking for him, tell him to take it up with Morrison.’ Clark, he knew, avoided Morrison almost as much as he did everything else.
Sat back at his desk, he considered phoning the Moores. It would have been faster and easier but after yesterday’s fiasco he decided he owed them the courtesy of a visit. Anyway, in his experience, people were more inclined to talk more in a one-on-one setting.
He dealt with a few emails before grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and heading back to the main office. Andrews was on the phone; he hung up and scribbled something on the notepad in front of him as West approached. ‘That was the landlord’s secretary. She says he’ll meet us at four at the apartment block.’
West glanced at his watch. It was twelve thirty. He had enough time. ‘Okay, I’ll meet you there. I want to visit the Moores, see if they can throw some light on how someone had access to their son’s data.’
‘I’ve an appointment to see the administrator in Mountjoy in an hour.’ Andrews stood and took his jacket. ‘I’d better get going. Hopefully, I’ll learn something there.’
The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six Page 29
