He continues. “I went to check the bonfire after work about four, to see how damp it was, ’cos it’d been raining on and off for two days. I remember thinking, ‘I’ll need to help it along a bit to light.’ I also like to check that the kindling is weighted down correctly, so I sometimes move a few of the tires about—that’s so the wind coming in from the sea doesn’t scatter the fire.”
He looks up, guilt creases his brow. “Then I did head for a swift pint at the local, and sure, that took me up to eight.”
Cards tight to chest.
I am nodding, encouraging.
“It was quite dark, you know.” His voice cracks, and for a moment I panic, thinking that he may break down and cry. But he coughs, takes a drink, and goes on. “I checked that everything was all right with the bonfire. It seemed grand. We set out the canteens of hot chocolate and apples, as we’ve done for many a year. Lined up a few fireworks, and when folk started to arrive, I lit the first tire as normal and lifted it as far into the bonfire as my pitchfork could reach.” He looks up at me. “Like I’ve done for well on thirty years, you know.”
The image he paints is the image of my childhood. The moonless October night, the flaming hoop of the tire approaching the kindle. One side of Tom Quinn’s body illuminated against the flickering orange flames, and occasionally I can see a streak of black smoke ripple out over the tongues of fire. The tire is placed down, and it seems that, in no time at all, the entire thing is lit up, giving off waves of heat and showers of glittering sparks that rise into the dark night.
I clear my throat. “Tom, did Amy have any enemies that you know of? Someone who might’ve wanted to hurt her?”
He looks down at his hands. “None. She was a frail sort, Amy. But only really when it came to her own demons. She wasn’t a pushover, to be sure. Respected, like.”
“How about arguments? Disagreements?”
His hands work over each other on the table. He shakes his head.
“Anything. Even if it seems trivial. It might help us understand how this could have happened, Tom. Anything.”
“A couple of weeks ago, I overheard them arguing. On the phone.”
“Who?”
“Eamon and Amy.”
“A fight?”
He runs a hand over his face. “Family stuff, mostly. She hadn’t been home in a few weeks, and Eamon was on her case about owing her mam a visit. But Amy liked to say some provocative things when she was backed into a corner.”
“Provocative things?”
“Suicidal thoughts, harming herself, and sometimes—” He breaks off, looks to the ceiling. Redness floods into his cheeks. He looks briefly up at me. “Sometimes things like who she was with. She knew how to push her dad’s buttons. I don’t think she could help herself.”
“What else was said?”
He blows air out above him, shakes his head. “I don’t know. Eamon, he was pretty upset afterward. Told me about it. She was going on about an affair she was having with some married man and that he loved her but the wife was one of her lecturers. She was off to some concert or other with him, a tribute band of a folk singer she liked, and needed money for it.”
I glance at the window. “He didn’t say who it was she was having the affair with? Did she give a name?”
He shakes his head. “Not that Eamon told me, no.”
“Do you know who she could have been seeing?”
He smiles. “Sure lookit, my life rarely leaves the garage.”
I keep pulling the thread, hungry for something on Peter Costello. “Can you remember anything else about that conversation?”
His eyebrows pull down; he shakes his head. “Only now, that the wife knew about it and didn’t care.”
“You said she was like a daughter to you.” I reward him with a soft smile. “The last few times you saw her, did she seem happy?”
“Happy?”
“Yes. Happy. Content. How did she seem to you?”
His bottom lip juts out. Thinking. “She seemed happy enough, yes. Maybe, a bit distant now.”
“Distant?”
“You know yourself. Home from uni for a weekend, probably eager to get back to her life, like.”
“How about friends? Locally. Or even boyfriends?”
“Well, now you have me, Frankie. I mean, it sounds like she had her hands pretty full in that department with this other fella, to me.”
“No one ever visited, came to the house, picked her up?”
He looks down at his hands for a moment, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Sorry. I’m not much use to you now, Frankie.”
“That’s grand, Tom. You’re doing well.”
The corners of his mouth begin to twitch. His eyes water. He glances round, a flash of panic on his face that he may cry in front of me. He coughs into his fist, blinks a few times, coughs again.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
I reach across the desk; my finger hovers over the record button.
“Interview terminated at 2:25 P.M.” I stop the tape.
He looks up at me. “Sorry.”
I extend my hand. “That’s okay, Tom. You’ve done your best.”
He grips my fingers and squeezes them as if he is trying to bolster me, urge me on, set me to task.
“I hope you catch whoever did this. Eamon Keegan is a broken man, he needs this person caught.”
Trepidation whips about in my stomach. I take a breath. Nod.
“We all do.”
* * *
—
THE DOOR HAS barely closed on Tom Quinn when I turn to Steve.
“Run a check on Amy’s finances. Bank statements, cards, credit check if you can wing it. Where did her money come from? Was she in debt?”
He leans back into the seat. “Is he a suspect?”
I touch my fingers to my lips. “No. It’s not in him. Lying, maybe, but not murder. No. He implied that Amy might have had some money troubles. There could be a motive there. And where there’s a motive—”
“There’s a murderer,” Steve finishes.
I fish for my cigs in my pocket, then start for the coffee machine.
Steve follows me. “The dad, Eamon, admitted speaking to her on the eighteenth.”
I feel a lurch in my chest. It hits the back of my throat. Mentally, I cross my fingers. Hope that it corroborates what Tom Quinn has just told me.
“And?”
“They had an argument. About her not coming home enough that escalated into her telling him that she was having an affair with a married man.”
I let the air out of my lungs. I nod. “Tom said as much. Helen?”
She looks up from her station. “I’m just working through the CCTV on Peter’s whereabouts,” she says quickly.
“Can you take over on the Black Widow site? Username TeeganRed. I’ve made a start, but I think we’re going to need more engagement with the other users on the site.”
“Engagement?” She grasps her notebook.
“Have a look. You’ll get the idea. Any bites, let me know immediately. Steve will get you the passwords; any problems go to him.”
* * *
—
AS A CASE gains momentum, the concept of working nine to five becomes just that: a concept. With the appearance of Amy Keegan’s body and the horror of that video, the pressure to uncover all evidence, investigate each footprint of crime as soon as possible, mounts. Each day that passes causes valuable clues to be lost to the mouth of time: DNA samples disintegrate; bodies decompose; statements vary, are revisited; events are reimagined.
But somehow it’s quiet and dark again. Somehow another day has dragged to a close and my body is beginning to break under the demand of sleep. I decide to decompress, take some notes back to the flat, catch an hour or two of rest and wash the residue
of the Ward case from my face, my eyes.
Baz has offered to drive me home and is waiting in the street, engine running, white clouds of choking vapor smoking out from the exhaust.
I slide into the passenger seat as I finish a call. Baz meets my eyes.
“Priscilla Fagan again?”
I nod. “She’s set up a website and a Facebook page. She’s doing a better job looking for him than we are, it seems.”
He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Strange.”
I clip my seat belt across my chest. “Not very. She feels guilty. Or rather her brother’s guilt.”
“You think?”
I shrug. “She must know it doesn’t look good.”
Baz leans forward, starts the car. “Jesus. Poor woman.”
I gaze out the window at the wet concrete walls lining the Liffey. “I know.”
Since giving her statement, Mrs. Fagan has phoned almost daily as to the whereabouts of her brother. She believes we should be mounting a missing-person investigation. “Where’s the media coverage for my brother?” she demands. “Why isn’t anyone concerned for him?” She has threatened to contact the local radio station. I’m not sure how she thinks this may get us on her side, but strangely it does, only not for the reasons she imagines.
I want her to make a press statement. If she was as close to her brother as she claims, it may encourage him to come forward. Conscience may be missing in some of us, but shame is always there. Newspaper coverage on the Costello killing has been barely more than a blip in the national press. Eleanor’s profile was clinical and impersonal and has slipped the public consciousness completely.
Amy Keegan’s face, however, smiles out from front pages. The Hollywood horror of the discovery of her remains is too delicious for the press not to swoop down on, then pick over every print-selling detail.
Mrs. Fagan’s concern seems urgent. Genuine. It’s now up on two months since she last saw him. She hadn’t worried so much up until his wife was discovered dead, but now she insists it’s unlike him. Something in the way she hounds us prompts me to think she knows what we’re about and is waiting for us to tell her he’s a prime suspect. No doubt she has her defense of her brother already worked out in her head.
Letting my head fall back against the headrest, I sigh. “What a day.”
“You wanna grab a drink?” he asks.
There is more than a little hope in his voice, and I realize he doesn’t want to drink alone. Amy Keegan’s public death has got to him after all.
CHAPTER 10
THE SHEETS ARE bundled between my knees, knotted around my feet. There is an ache glowing around my shoulder blade that tells me I’ve not moved in the night. I’ve slept, and not just slept but really zonked out. “Clear conscience” was what my mother used to say. It turns out that alcohol is a good replacement when your conscience is a little murkier than clear.
Sweat is cooling across the back of my neck, alcohol seeping from my pores. It was late at the pub last night. We solved the world’s problems, Baz and I, then stumbled back and passed out. I can hear his snores coming through the wall. He collapsed onto the sofa, his eyes half closed, and within moments he was asleep. His last groggy words barely intelligible: “We’ll catch this sick fucker.”
I picture the case board at work. It’s filling up, building around one name. All leads come back to her. It’s too bad she can’t speak, but I’m not sure Eleanor Costello would spill her secrets even if she could.
The image of their pristine house draws itself into my head. Clean, fresh skirting boards. The absolute lack of clutter, no shoes lying under the coffee table. The sofa didn’t hold any shape of the backsides that must have sunk into it on a daily basis, despite the fact that they were feather and down. I think of my own sofa, how it looks when I unfurl my stiff body from its insides in the morning, how the cushions are crushed into the corners.
Everything about Eleanor Costello is suggesting control, on an obsessive level. The art books, which we now know are Peter’s, if they had been hers, if they had been read, would have been slotted away in alphabetical order on some shining shelf somewhere. Visitors would not have been invited to open them; they wouldn’t see the excessive note taking in the margins, the yellow-rimmed stain where the open pages were branded with a morning cup of tea.
I can’t shake the feeling that Eleanor, although a victim, is pulling strings behind the theater of her death.
I move to the window of my flat. My head pounds with the aftereffects of alcohol. It’s latish. Eight. My fingers are warming around a mug of hot tea. Grafton Street is a milling crowd of commuters, chunky sweaters, orange-tipped scarves and bobble hats in all shades of deep green, navy, and maroon. The sun is cracking open a bright day, and from how people are ducking their heads I can guess there’s a nip in the air.
Baz wakes suddenly, his feet withdrawing quickly from the sofa, his body propelling itself into a sitting position. Immediately, he drops his head between his knees and grips his temples.
“What the fuck were we drinking last night? Cyanide?”
I laugh. “That would be the third bottle of Merlot.”
He doesn’t look up, but jabs an index finger into the air. “Ah. That would be the one.” He grabs his head. “Jesus.”
I carry the tea to him, place it on the coffee table. “Here.”
He glances up to thank me, then frowns, noticing that I’m dressed for work already. “What time is it?”
I pick up my briefcase. “Just gone eight. I didn’t want to wake you. We’re both better off with clear heads, and we needed to sleep off the hangover. I’m going in to work on the Black Widow site.”
He groans. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right there.”
I pause, hesitate. He won’t like what I’m about to ask him. “Actually . . .”
He looks up again. Another frown. “What is it?”
I pass him the name of Eleanor’s therapist. “Would you talk to him? See if he can tell us anything. Maybe give us her notes?”
His eyes are pleading. “Ah, no. Are you serious? I’m in a delicate condition here.”
Baz hates shrinks; his mother sent him to one all the way through his puberty for no reason other than her belief that it was good for her boys to be in touch with their feelings. Baz said he came out with more problems than he went in with, and he’s pretty sure he gave the shrink some.
“You can deal,” I say. I walk to the door.
“I can’t. I really can’t. Why do they have to talk the way they do? The pauses?” He throws his hands up. “What are they doing? Everyone knows not to fill the silence with your own airtime. Hate it.”
“Come on. Think of it as some sort of weird retribution. In that this time it’ll be you asking the awkward questions and you leaving the protracted silences.”
He sighs. “Fuck. Sometimes I hate this job.”
“Great! He’s expecting you by midday, so take your time. Have lots of coffee.”
I give him a smile and step outside the flat, blinking into the morning light.
* * *
—
STEVE HAS UNLOCKED an e-mail account in one of the hidden files on Amy Keegan’s computer. I stare down at the back of his head.
“Have you ever used the sites on the Dark Web, Steve?”
He throws me a confused look. “Of course. I work in law enforcement, Chief. I’m not having anyone nose through my search history.”
I laugh. “It’s that bad, eh?”
“Unashamedly boring but no one’s business but mine. The Dark Web’s the only true platform of free speech left in the world, in my opinion.” He reaches out, takes a glug of something fizzy and orange. A waft of warm fruit rises over his shoulder.
I nod at the screen. “And this kind of thing? You ever visit these kinds of sites?”
He returns his attent
ion to the laptop, his head shaking. “Nope. But each to their own.”
We are in Amy’s e-mail account. In a folder titled “Wishlist.” There are about thirty e-mails from her, saved in the folder, dating back through almost a whole year.
“What’s the date of the first one?”
He clicks it open. “Twenty-seventh of December 2010.” Something grabs his attention in the contents. “Whoa!”
The e-mail is addressed to a TrustMe57, which immediately raises the hairs on my neck. Amy sent the e-mail around seven p.m. It reads:
Thanks for sending me your e-mail address. I have no one else to talk to and you seem to get it. Death is all I can think about. I fantasize about it. What it might feel like. It excites me but I’m too scared. I’m such a fucking coward. Lol. You could help me. I can tell you want to. If I’ve read you all wrong just say. It would be like me to get things backward. But you seem nice and understanding. I think I could do this with you.
No hard feelings if you can’t.
A
There is no reply, but at some point TrustMe57 must have answered, as the next e-mail, sent only a day later, reads:
Wow. It’s no problem at all. I can do that. God, I feel so low today, haven’t managed to leave the flat and I don’t think my meds work anymore. Please help me. This fantasy won’t leave me. Your e-mail has been the best thing that’s happened to me in months. It’s like I’m already halfway there. Nirvana.
A
Every e-mail we go through. Each one building in detail Amy’s desire for a taste of death without actually dying. There is a break in their frequency after 4 January, but then by the beginning of May they are going again and heavier than before.
Steve is shaking his head. “Is this stuff for real? I mean, are there really chat rooms, places on the web, for people like this to connect? Whoever this guy is, he’s fucked up beyond belief.”
“Let’s look at the deleted folder,” I say. “See if we can find who she’s replying to.”
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