“Alone?” Clancy repeats.
A sip of wine. “It was fine. Relax.”
“Christ alive, Frankie. Has the last year not taught you anything?”
“I’m a detective chief superintendent, Jack. What can I do if not walk into a crime scene? Besides, there were two Gardaí at the front. It was grand.”
He grunts.
There is a brief silence. Baz leans on the edge of his seat. He wants to ask what it is I’ve discovered, wants me to share today’s progress, but we both have to wait until Clancy has battened down his anger before we can continue.
Finally, he looks up from his drink. “Well, go on then, before we’re all too bleary-eyed to make sense of it.”
“Mr. Doyle is a bona fide creep. The guy is more than a little obsessed with his neighbors.”
“Diary keeper?” Jack asks.
“Not that bad, but he seems to believe that Peter was the victim here.” I give a short laugh. “The man spent most of the interview trying to look down my blouse. Complete dick. Probably believes that any woman who professes to have a life outside of the kitchen sink clearly is a nightmare to live with.”
Jack holds up a hand. “Steady on there, Frankie. Let’s say what we mean, please.”
Baz laughs.
Jack takes a gulp of whiskey. “Be careful not to let prejudices cloud your judgment.”
“Give me a break, Jack,” I reply. “I can say the guy is a creep because he is, and ultimately there was a fair bit of misogynistic flair to his testimony, but”—I hold my hands out toward the fire—“what he said did make me think. We know that Eleanor Costello was able to take care of herself and that Peter Costello is not in rude health. There could be something to what he says. It’s not easy to see or believe that a man of Peter’s build, ill or not, would take a beating from a woman as slight as Eleanor was, but emotional manipulation is a strong weapon.”
Baz frowns. “So what we’re saying here is that Eleanor Costello may have been knocking her husband about?”
“Domestic violence against men does exist, and we can’t deny that it would give Peter Costello a motive,” I say.
“Being bounced around the house by the missus? Definitely not sure a judge would be sympathetic, though,” Baz says.
Jack speaks up. “What exactly did this Neil bloke have to say?”
“I asked him why he thought their marriage was shaky. He said he thought Costello was knocked about by the wife. He claims that, over the years, he’d hear their arguments through the walls, and it was always her voice above his. He said that often the following day he’d spot Peter Costello and he’d have another limp, or if he didn’t see Peter for a few days, he’d emerge with a hand bandaged up. Or one time he noticed a split lip, but the wife would always—and these are his words, not mine—‘spring from the house the following day like a gazelle.’ Not a bother on her.”
“Right so,” Jack says. “So we possibly have motive for Eleanor’s killing. But what about the Keegan murder? And how can we corroborate what Doyle says if we can’t find the husband?”
I wipe a trail of sweat from my forehead and shiver. “Christ. Am I supposed to do all the work?” A choking cough stops me short.
“You need to get home. Go to bed. You’re sick,” Jack orders.
Ignoring him, I take a sip of wine. “The other thing was that the handwriting on the note in the office is different to that in the books.” I look to Baz, whose eyebrows shoot up.
“You’re thinking that the laptop was hers?” he asks.
“I sent the samples to Steve, shouldn’t be too long for the handwriting specialist to get back with the results.”
Clancy takes another grumbling drink of his whiskey. His lips barely twitch as he swallows a large mouthful.
There’s a long pause. Clancy and I wait for Baz to fill us in on his day. Finally, he looks up, surprised to find us both watching him.
“What?” he asks.
“Wow, old age is catching,” I say. “You were working over the last couple of days? Remember? Have you anything to contribute?”
It turns out no. The stinking therapist that he went to see yesterday took one glance at Baz’s badge, leaned back, and claimed he couldn’t possibly admit that Eleanor Costello was his client.
“Patient fucking confidentiality,” Baz finishes, a renewed hatred for the psychotherapy profession growing on his brow. “He even steepled his flaming fingers beneath his chin. The fucker.”
I can see it clearly. An invisible battleground of control. I wonder now whether it would have been wiser to send Baz in under the guise of a patient.
“The prick,” Clancy mutters. “We’ll have to get a warrant.”
In the meantime, the shrink, Dr. Burke, will have twenty-four hours to immerse himself in Eleanor Costello’s file. Even the most honest of doctors wouldn’t be able to help adding a word or two, removing a word or two, to make sure their notes look comprehensive. Evidence enhanced or subtracted. Ruined. I don’t realize that I’m clenching my fists until I feel my nails bite into my palms.
Baz smacks his glass on the table.
“No matter. When the warrant comes in, I’ll make sure I trawl through every part of his office.” He gives us both a victorious grin.
He won’t, though. He won’t trawl through Burke’s office. Warrants are very specific when it comes to medical files and institutions. Privacy and our rights to confidentiality get in the way of police work every day. People want to catch the bad guys, but they won’t share jack shit about their lives in order for us to do it. Especially, it seems, Eleanor Costello.
The scar along my temple begins to throb; the wine dries the back of my mouth. I must look a state because Clancy is telling me again to get home, to get dry.
I grab my coat, not that I’m listening to him. I can feel the case stretching about inside my brain, unfolding its many branches, showing me flashes of the finished product, but I can’t think. My eyes are scratchy and hot. My throat itches; my skin feels sore, sensitive.
“You need to stop babying me, Jack. You know there’s nothing surer to piss me off.”
“Go way to fuck. Babying you. I can see a fucking cold watering away in your eyes, and your sniffling is putting me off me whiskey. Just don’t want whatever disgusting bug you’re about to go sneezing over the pair of us. That’d be a grand thing, wouldn’t it? All three of us leading this bloody case at home in bed.”
I laugh. Clancy has never taken a day off sick in his life.
“Whatever bug I’m spreading is sure to be annihilated midair with that whiskey breath you’re exhaling.” I shrug into my coat, hug the damp wool tight to my chest, and wrap my scarf over my head. “See yis tomorrow.”
* * *
—
ONE OF THE tiny branches has begun to brown. Its leaves are turning a curling gold around the edges, and dark brown spots are spreading at their center. It’s such a stark contrast to the rest of the tree. I have to fight the urge to pick it off, to clip it away. I loosen the copper binding a little and hope that a good dowsing of water will revive it, that it will encourage new growth: a burst of smaller branches, smaller leaves.
CHAPTER 12
CLANCY, TO MY annoyance, was right. My head is spinning; the skin over my temple feels like it’s been burned, branded in the middle of the night by a hot poker. I lift the thin strands of my hair away from my skull, just above my ear. The hair has only just started to regrow in between patches of angry pink skin. They said that it would calm down—the color—but they couldn’t make promises about the pain. Some people find that stab wounds continue to throb for years after they’re inflicted. What was unsaid was that they believed the pain was psychosomatic. If it’s in my head, I’m impressed with the power of my own thoughts.
Checking the back of the paracetamol box, I allow myself a couple over the s
tated dose. And another coffee. There is a message on my phone. I can tell by the time it was left and the fact that it’s an unknown number that it’s my lawyer. Prosecution. Phoning to tell me when the Tracy Ward trial will continue.
The missed-call history shows that it’s swiftly followed by four calls from my mother. Confirmation, if I needed it, about who has left the message. The family liaison officer keeps my family abreast of proceedings with the Ward case too. I am a victim. Lest I try to forget it.
Every few hours I get a text from my voicemail, telling me to listen to the message. Pushing. Each time my phone pings, I can feel my heart picking up, leaping. I should phone my mailbox. But some irrational part of me believes that if I delay listening to it, the content of the message may have time to change. History may have time to change, and I’ll wake up one day to discover that actually this whole nightmare was imposed on someone else and that yes, I’m not mortal; I’m not easily struck down by the swipe of a knife or shackled by fear.
I should get in touch with my parents. I hold the coffee mug up to my mouth, enjoy the heat of the ceramic against my chin. My parents are used to my silences. My dad said that, as a toddler, I might have been supersensitive but that I wanted—no, needed—to walk by myself. No hand-holding. I came at right angles to life, slicing across whatever path my family tried to guide me toward. It’s not that I was a rebel, more that I was aggressive in the values I believed I had. Zeal. That’s what my dad used to say. Still says. As if it were some unusual, exotic quality.
I think of what I know of Eleanor’s childhood home. The short letter that some concerned, well-meaning social worker sent to their superiors highlights how bad her home life must have been.
There is no record of any social welfare investigation into her past, and when I requested any reports pertaining to what happened to her parents, I was greeted with a big fat zero. It would seem that, as soon as Eleanor was old enough, she elected to go and stay with her aunt in Kilcullen. Any information around her parents she would have destroyed. She was a successful professional, and in her mind this was what she wanted to project to the world. For someone like Eleanor, anything less than perfect could be expunged.
Walking to the coffee table, I clear away used tissues and empty water bottles and open my work laptop. I flick through a few of the photographs I took of Eleanor’s office—the contents of her drawers, filing cabinets—and her lab. Neatness. I’ve worked with scientists in the past; as exacting as their work is, they’re some of the messiest people I know. They may argue over how one petri dish is half a millimeter too thick, but they will be happy to work from a desk that they share with last week’s takeaway.
I can feel the frown aching across my forehead. Eleanor Costello purged anything undesirable from her life. As bulimics do. Maybe her need for control of this nature went outside the brutalizing of her own body.
Pulling my briefcase onto my knee, I remove Lorcan Murphy’s card from it. I don’t like asking these kinds of questions down the phone. You only get half an answer if you’re not looking someone in the eye. But he may well be able to give me this one piece of Eleanor’s personality. Could someone have cleared her office after her death? If that was the case, then who would have had access to it? Her husband? A colleague? Or maybe she treated her work space as she did every other aspect of her life—pinned down and under control.
I dial the number on the card, and as it rings, I glance up at the wall clock. Half past eight, well before nine. His lectures will not have begun yet, and sure enough he answers.
His voice is hesitant. “Hello. Lorcan Murphy speaking.”
“Mr. Murphy! Hi. Detective Chief Superintendent Sheehan here.”
There is silence on the other end of the line, then a mumble: “Go on in, I’ll be there shortly.
“Sorry, Detective,” he says down the phone. “I’m just about to go into my nine o’clock lecture.” He is uncomfortable. His card was a gesture. He was not expecting me to phone, to get dragged in. I don’t want to put him on his guard.
“It’s only a quick question, if you don’t mind.” I sneeze into my hand. “Sorry. You did mention you were eager to help in any way you can.”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” He rushes the words, desperate to reassure that he will help.
“It’s a bit of a random question, but I like to try and build a profile of victims. It helps us determine what type of person would want to harm them.”
“That makes sense.” More noise in the background. The sound of voices echoing down corridors. “What can I do for you?”
“I think we established that Eleanor was a particularly organized person.”
He laughs. “Understatement.”
I join in his laughter. “Yes. She seemed to like her life very much ‘paint inside the lines.’”
I can hear him drawing air through his teeth. “Eh. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t get me wrong, she was very organized, but she could be unpredictable. It was one of the reasons she was such a good lecturer. She’d have a class plan all laid out and then suddenly she’d have headed off down some rabbit hole of an obsession and dragged us all with her. The students loved it. No lecture the same.”
“And outside of work?”
The tone of his voice lowers, shutters. “I can’t really speak for when she was at home, but at functions and the like she could also be very unpredictable. There was more than one occasion when I had to help her into a taxi at the end of a night.” He laughs, clearly recalling one such night.
“Her work desk, though. It’s remarkably clear of junk, in light of how often and how long she worked there.”
“Oh, yes.” I picture him nodding. “Yes. I thought you might ask me about that. That you might wonder where the potted plant was on her desk and the like. She hated clutter. Had a huge thing about it. Always saying that she didn’t want junk, objects, ornaments, plants, following her around, carting them through life as if they were important. She never wanted anything around her for long enough that she became used to it. So she would . . . What was the phrase she used for it?” His tongue clicks, then: “Yes, ‘life edit.’ She’d announce a life edit. Clean everything that had nothing to do directly with her current work away from her desk. I was always amazed by it.”
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Murphy.”
He’s pleased. Relieved. “No trouble at all.”
I hang up.
* * *
—
BAZ IS WAITING in the office when I get in. I feel like week-old roadkill. A cool sweat has broken out over my body, making me tremble. I clap my gloved hands together and stomp my feet in an effort to warm myself after being outside. The actions are more effective than I’d like, and in the heat of the room I feel a swooping kind of flush creep swiftly from my feet through my body, where it makes my head feel swimmy. Baz has his hand beneath my elbow.
“Don’t you hate it when Clancy’s right?”
I manage a brief dry laugh before coughing erupts in my chest. I hold a finger up. “If you mention to him that I’ve a cold, you’ll be the next death we’ll be investigating.”
He laughs. “Agree. But seriously, do you think you should be here?” He looks round at the rest of the team.
I straighten, battle with my body to get its sweating, listless self to fucking function. “We don’t work in a nursery, Baz.”
He holds his hands up. “Only trying to help.”
“Well, for God’s sake, keep your bloody voice down, or the next time one of the staff here decides they’re a little freaking upset or stressed we’ll have sick notes up to our ears and no staff to work with.”
He salutes me. “Sure thing.”
I drag myself to my office, where I sit in misery for a moment. The cliché, the bottle of whiskey in the middle drawer of my desk, is achin
gly tempting, but when I reach for it, I notice that Baz has followed me inside.
“What is it?”
“Interrupting your agony, am I? Go home.”
“What is it?”
He slides a faxed report across the table to me.
“The handwriting is Eleanor’s,” he says. His finger is resting on the sample, the name “Chagall,” from the Post-it. The round, fat letter a.
Baz runs through my thoughts, picking up strands, tying them together. “So the computer is likely hers.”
I pull the laptop to me. With a firm tug the display comes away from the keyboard and becomes a tablet, the screen touch-sensitive, as Steve informed us weeks ago. A tablet would be easy for Eleanor to carry to and from work.
Each day facts slither away into darkness.
I look up. Sigh.
“What?”
“The laptop may be hers. But can she really have known what that program did? Maybe he put the Tor bundle on the computer so that he could access his fantasies. His own sister assumed as much. Eleanor wouldn’t have use of the Dark Web.”
“Why? Because she’s a woman? I thought we talked about this last night.” He pulls a face, eyebrows raised, challenging me.
“Well, yes. But I just can’t see it.”
He throws himself into the seat across from me. “You are aware of how sexist you sound right now? Toward your own sex, I might add.”
“It doesn’t fit.”
“Her profile? You’re putting yourself in her shoes, Frankie. Get out of her size sixes.”
I’m too numb, too sick to reply. Could I have been steered wrong so early?
Baz is rubbing his left ear, a sign of stress. “Is it her profile? Let’s go over it again, shall we?”
I glare at him. “Are you aware of how sexist you sound right now?” I sigh. “Baz,” I go on, steadying my thoughts. “We found her hanging. In a way that implies she couldn’t have been alone. She’s the victim here. Don’t forget that.”
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