That One May Smile

by Valerie Keogh

‘He has a record there?’ West sounded surprised.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Andrews hurried to explain. ‘Our victim travelled to the States on a number of occasions but he also flew to a number of Middle Eastern and Far Eastern countries and that attracted the FBI’s attention. Nothing obviously suspicious, he worked for a number of engineering companies as a consultant but they were always a suspicious bunch and since 9/11 they suspect everyone.’

  ‘So what’s the name,’ West asked, pen poised to write. There was silence and he looked up expectantly. Andrews stood, a grin on his face. ‘You wanted a complicated case, Mike. I think you got one. His name is Simon Johnson.’

  West sat back in stunned disbelief, pen falling from his hand. ‘The missing husband? You’ve got to be joking. She would have recognised her husband; she was close enough to touch him.’

  Andrews shook his head. ‘Uh, uh, just the same name. There’s the details and photo,’ he said handing over a computer printout.

  A frown gathered on West’s brow as he scanned the page quickly. ‘Coincidences are piling up here, Pete. Kelly Johnson’s husband vanishes, then she finds a dead body whose name happens to be the same as that of her husband. Fishy as a tin of mackerel.’

  Andrews sat. ‘I thought so too, so I took the liberty of contacting Sergeant Clark and asked him to bring his file on the Johnson case here. He said he’d be here in about ten minutes.’

  Five minutes later, the door opened with a bang and a bedraggled body filled the doorway and then slouched into the room. Across the desk, West and Andrews exchanged a look as Declan Clark, without invitation, lowered himself into a chair designed for those with less ample proportions. Loud creaks accompanied his greetings, ‘Hey, Mike, Pete,’ he said with a strong Kerry accent.

  West had never had much time for Sergeant Clark, thinking him a lazy, boorish jerk. His opinion didn’t change as Clark reached forward to hand over a very thin, scruffy file. ‘This is it?’ he questioned in obvious disbelief, holding the file in one hand.

  ‘That’s it,’ Clark agreed with no sign of embarrassment, sitting back in the chair, ignoring the ominous creak. ‘There was never much to it. Simon Johnson and his wife, Kelly, got on a train in Belfast in February. He went to get coffee and never came back. Nobody saw anything out of the way. No bodies were found along the track. CCTV in the stations where the train stopped didn’t show him getting off. Not that they were all working, I must admit. He hasn’t been in contact since. Hasn’t used his credit cards, his passport is at home.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s it,’ he reiterated.

  West opened the file. He took the photo of Simon Johnson from it and laid it side by side with the computer printout of the photo of their victim. They were definitely not the same person. Putting the photos to one side he examined the rest of the information in Clark’s file. There wasn’t much in it as he expected from its size. Credit card statements showed no activity. Interviews with the wife, with train officials said little of worth. CCTV reports were all negative.

  Nothing was in order, West noted with a grunt of irritation. He flicked through the file seeing gaps in the information, formulating questions.

  ‘Where did he work?’ he asked Clark bluntly.

  Clark shrugged again, ‘Some kind of engineer. Worked on a contract basis for a number of companies and also worked, I gather, from home. Hadn’t worked for any of the companies for several months.’

  ‘How about their financial status? Any money worries? Reason for the husband to top himself? Insurance claim or anything?’ West threw the questions out staccato fashion, his irritation rising in face of obvious incompetence.

  Clark wasn’t the kind of man to get upset easily. He lounged in his chair and thought slowly. ‘No,’ he finally answered, just as West was thinking about getting up to strangle him. ‘Finances were in order. No debts. They own the house outright, steady income for both, nice comfortable lifestyle. Didn’t have life insurance at all so there was no kind of scam based on that.’

  ‘They’re only in that house nine months. Where did they come from?’ Andrews queried. ‘That’s an expensive house they live in and they have no mortgage?’

  For the first time, Clark squirmed as much as he was able to, wedged into the small chair as he was, and didn’t answer.

  West looked at him intently, ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It wasn’t relevant to my inquiry,’ Clark hedged and began the slow process of extricating himself from the chair. ‘All the information I needed for my investigation is there. Information you require for your investigation, I’m afraid, you’ll have to collect yourselves.’ And on that note he left the office and closed the door on the annoyance and frustration of the two men behind it.

  West took a deep breath and let it out in a stream of colourful swear words derived, as much from his years in law, as from his years as a police officer. He opened the Johnson file again, spreading the meagre information out on the desk. He held the enclosed photo beside the computer generated photo of their victim again. They were different people, certainly, but there was a marked similarity. ‘And look here,’ West indicated the physical statistics, ‘It could describe the same man. Both six two, both around one ninety, both brown hair.’

  ‘And both work as engineering consultants,’ Andrews pointed out leaning over the desk.

  ‘Two men, same name, same description, same occupation. One married to Kelly Johnson and disappears; the other she finds dead. Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice. Way beyond the bounds of coincidence, Peter, we have a conundrum on our hands.’

  Andrews, used to sergeant’s habit of interspersing his remarks with, to him obscure, quotations, ignored the reference to Alice and nodded. ‘It’s a puzzle, right enough.’

  West stood abruptly.

  ‘Right, we have our work cut out. I think we can agree that the Johnson case and ours are linked. I’ll have a word with Inspector Duffy and get his go-ahead to take that case over. I can’t see Clark making any fuss about it somehow,’ he added, indicating the meagre information still scattered on the desk.

  ‘Get Garda Allen to give you a hand and start filling in the gaps on both men. And get one of the others to check every estate agent in the area, find out who sold that house to the Johnsons and where they got the wherewithal. I’m going to head back to Mrs Johnson and see if I can fill in some blanks there. I’ll call in to the inspector on my way.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s four o’clock; we’ll meet up at five-thirty, see where we stand. ’

  The next couple of hours saw some of the gaps in their information closed. A new recruit to the Foxrock station, Garda Sam Jarvis, hit lucky in the first of seven estate agents’ he planned to visit and came back with an excited look on his handsome face.

  Information on their victim, Simon Johnson, came in dribs and drabs, from varied and various sources. But their search for information on the missing Simon Johnson was proving more difficult.

  West returned to the station, just before five, looking, Andrews decided, exasperated. He headed straight to his office and Andrews, taking two mugs of coffee, followed putting one on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Cheers, Peter,’ West said picking up the mug and taking a tentative sip. Andrews had mixed up their two mugs on numerous occasions and a mouthful of oversweet coffee was something he didn’t need right now. He’d got it right today though and West took a long drink of the strong, bitter coffee.

  ‘I hope you lot had better luck than I had,’ he said, ‘that bloody woman appears to have scarpered.’ He had gone to the house, he explained, only to find her car gone. He’d tried the door anyway and was just coming away when a neighbour, bringing out a recycling bin, nodded a hello. Taking the opportunity, West asked if he had seen Mrs Johnson. The neighbour was very informative, guessed she had gone away for a while. Had a holdall thing with her, he said, adding that she seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, didn’t stop for a chat or even greet him.

  ‘Scarpered,’ West growled, running a hand th
rough his hair in annoyance. ‘Done a runner, vamoosed.’ Sighing loudly he got up. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got anyway.’ He headed back into the general office where a number of gardai were sitting on chairs and desks,

  comparing notes, catching up with department gossip. Sergeant Clark was also there, West noted with annoyance.

  ‘Ok, listen up everyone,’ Andrews quietened the room down. He’d organised a large white board and photos of the victim and the missing man were fastened to it with overlarge lumps of blutac.

  Andrews pointed to the computer generated photo of the victim, Simon Johnson.

  ‘Here’s what we have found out about our victim. He was a forty two year old engineer who worked on a contract basis for a number of companies. He was based in Cork for a number of years and had purchased an apartment there which is presently rented out. For the last year he was based in Dubai, flying regularly between there, other Middle Eastern countries and the USA. He hadn’t been back to Ireland for the last year and only came back last week to attend a family funeral. Garda Allen spoke to his sister.’ He nodded to a small, ginger-haired man who stood awkwardly.

  ‘According to his sister in, who also lives in Cork,’ Garda Allen read hesitantly from his notes, ‘he’d spent a few days visiting friends and family and was due to fly back to Dubai tomorrow. She saw him yesterday morning. His plan, she said, was to do some business in Cork yesterday and this afternoon but she has no idea what this business was. He was then going to catch up with some friends in Dublin today and fly back to Dubai on an early flight in the morning.’

  ‘Ok,’ West nodded, ‘Where did he stay? Who are the friends? Did he meet them?’

  ‘The sister says he had planned to stay in the Shelbourne. He made the reservation for two nights but didn’t show. We’re still trying to contact the friends, the sister gave us a few names but she wasn’t sure who he had planned to meet.’

  ‘What about Foxrock? Does she know of any reason he might have come here?

  ‘She’d never heard him mention Foxrock but doesn’t know where his friends live so perhaps one of them lives here. She did say, however, that, as far as she knew all his friends lived in and around the Ballsbridge area.’ Allen closed his notebook and sat.

  ‘Do we have any idea what business he had intended to do?’

  Andrews spoke up. ‘I contacted his office. Whatever he was doing it wasn’t related to his job. I got his bank’s address from the sister. They won’t talk to us without a court order but that’s in progress and I have an appointment to talk to them tomorrow.’

  ‘He wasn’t doing bank business on a Sunday. So if it wasn’t work or bank it must have been personal.’ West looked over his shoulder at the whiteboard, weighing up the information, analysing it for content and relevance.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked looking around the room. ‘Ok, what about our missing man, then?’ he pointed at the other photo on the board. Silence echoed around the room broken by the gurgle of the coffee machine and the even louder gurgle from some of the men who had skipped lunch and were anticipating a big evening meal. A few glances were directed toward Garda Jarvis who stood self-consciously.

  ‘I spoke to the estate agent, Joyce Manners, who sold the Johnson’s the house,’ he began hesitantly, stopping when all eyes fixed on him.

  ‘Go on then,’ Andrews called encouragingly, ‘tell us what you found out.’

  ‘She remembered them well,’ Jarvis continued with more vigour, ‘They came around to see the house in the morning and he put in a full asking price offer in the afternoon. Ms Manners said they always asked potential purchasers if they were able to proceed immediately or if they had to sell a property. Our missing man told her they were able to proceed immediately because he had won the Lottery a few months before!’

  The room erupted in speculation and conjecture, the noise level increasing as the conversation grew wilder.

  ‘Ok, ok, enough,’ West shouted to be heard above the hullabaloo. ‘Did you check his claim with the Lottery, Jarvis?’ he queried and acknowledged his shake of the head saying, ‘Ok, follow that up tomorrow. We want to know when he won and how much.

  ‘How much did they pay for the house, anyway?’ he asked.

  Jarvis checked his notes. ‘Ms Manners told me the house had been on the market for several months and the price had been substantially reduced to attract a sale. They paid five hundred grand for it but she said it was originally on the market for close to a million.’

  West frowned thoughtfully. ‘That seems cheap for the centre of Foxrock, doesn’t it? Was there a reason?’

  ‘She mentioned something about the graveyard putting people off, Sergeant.’ Jarvis offered.

  ‘Nice quiet neighbours, I’d have thought! Garda Allen put in with a gruff laugh at his own joke.

  West continued, ‘Apart from his claim to have won the lotto what else do we know about our missing man?’

  ‘I got their last address,’ Jarvis said, ‘from the estate agent. They lived in Drumcondra.’

  ‘Good, hit the phones tomorrow. Find out how long they lived there, when it was sold, how much for. Any information you can get. What about tax returns? He worked on a contract basis. He must have filed tax returns. Look into that too.’ Jarvis nodded, anticipating a heavy day on the phone tomorrow.

  Sergeant West turned to his partner, ‘Anything else Peter?’

  Andrews had been perusing the information in the slim file they had received from Sergeant Clark. He took out a number of pages which had been stapled together and held them up. ‘Our missing man’s bank statements are interesting.’

  West took them raising an eyebrow. ‘What have you picked up?’

  Andrews pointed out the date of the statement. Clark had waited till late March to request banking details, six weeks after Simon Johnson had vanished.

  ‘There were no withdrawals made on the account.’ Andrews said. ‘No activity at all in fact, apart from a monthly deposit of 2000 euro which you would assume is his salary since it comes on a regular monthly basis. No direct debits leave the account, which is unusual in itself, but it’s the 2000euro deposit that is really odd,’ he offered. ‘He works, we’ve been told, on a contract basis, sometimes from home, so surely his income would differ from month to month.

  And,’ he pointed at a series of letters beside each deposit amount, ‘look here. These letters here, they indicate that they are all internal transfers from another account.’

  ‘So he has another account?’

  ‘He must have. If the 2000euro were coming from an external source they wouldn’t have these letters next to it.’

  ‘Why didn’t we get the details of all his accounts when we requisitioned his bank?’ West turned to Clark who leaned against his desk frowning.

  ‘Because we were looking for credit card use or debit card withdrawals,’ he answered indignantly, ‘His debit card is linked to that account. They weren’t obliged to give us data on any other account. His direct debit transactions weren’t of any interest to my investigation.’

  West glanced at Andrews who nodded in response to the silent request. He would requisition full banking details tomorrow.

  ‘This is getting more and more complicated,’ West groaned, running his hand over his face. He looked at the clock. Almost six thirty. ‘Let’s leave it at that. Ok, you all know what to do tomorrow,’ he said dismissing them. ‘Get some rest. See you all at eight.’

  Then, remembering his luck earlier he decided to ask one last question, halting the mass exodus in its tracks. ‘One last thing, do the words come to good mean anything to anyone?’

  He got the expected head shakes and shook his own in acknowledgement of defeat. A creak of a chair indicated movement from Sergeant Clark and West looked over dismissively.

  ‘Come-to-Good,’ Clark pronounced in an overloud voice, ‘It’s a village in Cornwall.’

  SIX

  Mike West swore softly as he rounded a sharp bend in Cornwall almost six hour
s later. It was dark, he was tired and fractious. The inspector hadn’t been impressed with the logic of his argument, probably because, West admitted to himself with a grin, there really wasn’t any. He wished, not for the first time, that he had one of those, rare to be sure, bosses who respected intuition. It was hard to put forward a good case when your sole argument was ‘it’s just a hunch’! Inspector Duffy thought the come-to-good angle was a red herring and he’d be better focusing on other areas.

  ‘But it’s your case, Sergeant West,’ he conceded reluctantly, ‘if you think hightailing it to Cornwall is in the best interest of your investigation you obviously know what you are doing.’ The inspector was an expert in damning with faint praise and more confident men than Sergeant West had left his office feeling an inch tall and useless with it. Inspector Duffy had planned to retire the previous year but had been persuaded to head the detective unit in Foxrock when Inspector Morrison had gone on extended sick-leave. It was supposed to have been for three months, then six. Now here he was a year older and still there. He resented every minute and every subordinate who came in thinking he knew better.

  ‘Cornwall!’ he muttered as the door closed behind Sergeant West. ‘Ridiculous! He lifted the phone, all the same, and made contact with his counterpart in the Devon and Cornwall police. He may dismiss West’s idea as preposterous but he would do the political back-up to support his idea, all the same. A cordial conversation ensued, with the British superintendant extending every courtesy.

  ‘It’s a fishing expedition, Superintendant,’ Inspector Duffy said smoothly, ‘I doubt it will lead anywhere but we do appreciate your cooperation.’

  West meanwhile was busy googling Come-to-Good and finding out the nearest airport. To his surprise Ryanair couldn’t bring him further south than Bristol. That would be a hell of a drive, he thought. A few minutes work found him a flight to Plymouth with Air Southwest, not an airline he had ever heard of. He checked the timetable and then his watch. There was a flight at ten if he rushed he’d make it. He always kept a packed holdall in the trunk of his car. He could go straight to the airport.