“Child support?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on it.”
“Oh, and Steve, maybe keep this on the QT, you know, Clancy doesn’t need to know.”
There’s a small silence then. “Okay.”
“Phone me with any problems.”
“Helen wants a word,” he replies.
“Helen?”
Helen’s voice comes down the line. “Hi, Chief. I’ve got a list of churches for you but thought perhaps it would be best to start with Eleanor’s hometown. There are two Catholic churches but only one with a bell tower. St. Dymphna’s. I’ll send through the address.”
“Great. Thanks, Helen.” I hang up.
Baz finishes his coffee. “So Nicole’s not answering her phone?”
“No.”
I shake my head. I’m waist deep, mired in a shit storm of lies. Sighing, I tuck the phone away. “I’ve a bad feeling about this. I need to talk to her.”
“We could go to the university? Speak to her there?”
“It’s the weekend, she won’t be in. Fuck.”
I push out of the seat, throw the rest of my coffee down my neck, and leave the cup on the table. “Come on, we’re going to Kilcullen.”
“Kilcullen?”
“Eleanor’s aunt’s house.”
“You think the blue room might be there? It’s hardly a quick spin in the car during Murphy’s lunch break, is it?”
I move to the door. “As you say, it’s looking likely that Murphy’s not our man, but we need to find that room and this is all we’ve got for the moment. The aunt’s house is close to where the phone was found. Maybe checking out Eleanor’s past will help us get to know her a bit better. She’s hiding something from us.”
“Was hiding.”
“Sorry?”
His face is lined in concern. “She’s dead.”
“Let’s get on the road before Clancy decides we can’t afford to drive and sends us on horseback.”
* * *
—
BAZ IS STRETCHED out in the passenger seat. His head is tipped back against the headrest, mouth open. With every turn and bump of the road, his body rolls closer to the window, until eventually he is cradled up against the door like a child.
I glance down at the map I’ve brought up on my phone. The screen has seized, a gray message box telling me that my GPS can’t find my location.
“Christ,” I mutter. Slowing down, I take in my surroundings and try to remember the last turn I took, the last time my phone gave me an instruction. Eleanor grew up in Kilcullen. We should only be a couple of miles away, but the road is giving away nothing. It’s narrow, crowded with trees that obscure the landscape beyond.
I pull over, tight into the ditch, to sort my phone out, but now the signal is lost and I’m unable to bring up the map.
Baz jolts awake, stretches. “We’re here?”
I stab the phone a few times with my finger. “No. Lost.”
“Lost, how? Surely not possible in this country, sure you could nearly walk to each end of it?”
He gives me a sleepy smile but I’m not in the mood for humor and scowl at him.
“My GPS has stopped and now I’ve lost reception.” I punch the screen a few more times, refresh the maps, but the signal is fucked.
“Here. Keep driving.” He stretches out his hand, flicks his fingers in on his palm.
I pass the phone to him, start up the engine, and pull jerkily away from the ditch.
From the corner of my eye, I see him frowning down at the screen. “Jesus, your phone is outdated.”
He slides his finger across the screen, then points ahead through the windscreen. “There’s a roundabout up ahead. First exit.”
In the distance, among the browns and greens of the countryside, the shape of the town is stretched out in rooftops and power lines. Nestled in the center is an impressive bell tower.
Baz leans forward in his seat, gazes out at the tall stone tower that reaches upward from a short, squat church. His eyes swing round to mine.
“You think that’s it?”
“Anything’s possible,” I mutter under my breath.
“Let’s hope it’s anything then,” he breathes.
My foot leans down on the pedal. The car cuts through the roads and the town grows before us.
Eleanor’s aunt’s home is on a tidy little estate right on the outskirts of the town, but more importantly, we have a warrant to search it.
A frisson of adrenaline skitters through my veins. I set my eyes on the church ahead.
“Call in the crime-scene investigators. We’ll deal with Clancy once we find this room,” I demand.
For once, Baz doesn’t argue.
* * *
—
ELEANOR’S TEEN HOME in Kilcullen, the house she shared with her late aunt, is among a row of terraced houses, mimicked by another row on the opposite side of the street. I glance down at the address in my hand: 45 Howth Row. The number is mounted on a plaque and framed by thick ivy. The garden is small; giant swells of hard-wearing plants reach up the low wall that separates the property from its neighbor. The gate scratches across the drive when I push it open. I let my hand linger on the bolt, feeling the cracking black paint scratch beneath my palm.
I imagine Eleanor Costello’s hand where mine is, try to picture her movements up the short drive to her home. Would she have moved slowly, confidently, sure in her actions? Unashamed. Or did she keep her head down? Furtive. Shrinking at the grate of the gate across the gravel. Would there be someone with her? Or was that someone already waiting for her inside?
Baz passes me an envelope. “The key.”
I empty it into my hand. “Come on.” I stride up the drive. The neighbors’ cars are absent, although two doors down I see a rounded hatchback in a drive. The curtains twitch, and a woman’s face appears in the front window, then disappears almost as quickly. I smile.
I twist the key in the lock and the door groans, then shudders open, the wood swollen from the wet Irish winters. Inside, we both take a moment to put on some gloves; then I reach for a light switch. It’s a bright day outside, but the house is north-facing and the hallway gloomy and chill.
I reach out, rest my hand on the wall. It’s papered, deep blue floral patterns with a plain blue border.
“Maybe it’s a running theme,” Baz murmurs, hope rising softly on his face.
A draft reaches in from behind the front door, runs around the collar of my coat like a cold finger. I turn, make my way slowly down the hallway. I am aware of a purposeful softness in the roll of my feet on the tiles, as if by limiting noise I can creep up on the past, catch our killer before he has time to kill Amy Keegan. The first room is a living room, a dull peach. I glance back at Baz, who has pushed open another door on the opposite side of the hall.
He shakes his head. “The bathroom.”
The kitchen and dining room are visible at the end of the house, open plan with gray-white light spanning through the doorway.
I brace myself. Then reach out to touch the final door in the hallway. Amy Keegan’s cries muffled through the oak veneer, a desperate scuffle of footsteps and the rattle of plastic. I shake my head, clear the ghosts of the case from my mind, and push down the handle. The door swings inwards. My eyes blink, squint against the light. This side of the house is almost full south, and the setting sun blasts orange through the net curtain and across the bed before gathering in the dresser mirror in a burning glory. My body sags against the door frame. Baz groans behind me.
There is a clatter of noise coming up the drive and a rap on the front door.
“CSI!” a man calls.
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
I turn away from the room. Pale pink.
“Gav Streeting. Lead crime-scene offic
er, Naas Gardaí. Where should we set up, Chief?”
I glance at Baz, whose face is suddenly full of doubt.
“Clancy would never have signed off on this.”
I smile at Gav Streeting. “Give us a moment.”
He frowns but nods, then turns to his team, makes a twirling motion with his index finger, and obediently they turn and filter out of the hallway.
Baz follows me into the kitchen.
Sliding in behind the kitchen table, I drop my head in my hands for a few seconds.
When I look up, Baz is leaning up against the sink, the corners of his mouth pointed and tight.
“So?” he asks.
Back against the hard wooden rungs of the kitchen chair, I glance around the small kitchen, which still looks as if it is kept by an aged aunt. The two houses are at such odds with each other, from the clinical, fresh order of the Costello house to this dark, lived-in town house. It is hard to imagine Eleanor creasing her tailored trousers on the seat I am sitting in.
I get up, go to the doorway.
“Streeting?” I call down the hallway. Immediately, the investigator appears in the doorway.
I wave him inside. “Carry on. Full sweep, please.”
He nods and turns on his heel to collect his team.
I push down the hallway, out of the house, where the Kildare skies are now gray and a soft drizzle swirls in the cold air.
“Sheehan!” Baz calls out from behind, but I’m already clambering into the car.
Slamming the door, I plunge the key into the ignition. He throws himself into the passenger seat, but before he can say anything, I speed away from Kilcullen.
“Clancy will have our heads.”
“He won’t say anything.”
He snorts.
I throw him a sideways glance. “Why do you think he worked so hard to get me back on board, Harwood?” I laugh. “I’m no better than many of my subordinates.” My hands tighten on the steering wheel.
When he doesn’t say anything, I give another short laugh. “Don’t rush to contradict me.”
“No doubt your giant ego can take it.”
“He pulled me back in because he knows I’ll make the tough choices. The choices that he wants to make but can’t because he’s the one who has to report to the commissioner. The fact is, the Kilcullen house”—I jerk my thumb toward the rearview window—“may give us the final clue. We don’t have the money to search it, but we can’t risk not finding it. The phone was dumped in the Liffey not ten miles from here,” I remind him again.
He sighs, looks out the window. “You’re right. Just could do without a tongue-lashing from Clancy this afternoon, ’tis all.”
I laugh again, but inside my guts are twisting. There’s a good chance that Clancy will send me packing, return me to sick leave, despite my assurances to Baz, even though he’ll know I did the only thing I could do.
* * *
—
THE LIFT SINKS and the doors slide open. The tops of my arms ache from driving the narrow country roads, Baz whinging in my ear all the way, wanting me to go for a drink, anything to take the sting out of our failure. But I’ve shored up enough exhaustion to keep my adrenaline in check and I’m longing to crash out.
I push my bag, the case folders, victims’ lives and deaths, into my free arm and go to unlock the flat, but it’s already open. The door moves, creaks as if sucked inwards by a stray breeze. I freeze, lay the bags, the folders, down carefully and stare in through the crack in the door. I try to remember when I left this morning. The hours, days, nights, all meld together in a haze of interviews and crime scenes.
I was rushing, couldn’t be late. Did I lock the door? I can’t remember.
I step to the side, push the door wide. Wait. Then reach in. Turn the light on. Dishes in the sink, clothes over the back of the chair, my coffee mug sitting on the windowsill. It looks like home. I step inside, scan the room. Nothing seems out of place. I move to the bedroom, flick the switch. Nothing. Bedcovers thrown back, wardrobe open, hanger on the door. Each drawer, each window, I check lifts more tension from my shoulders.
I return to the door, gather up my bag, the notes from the hallway, then go back inside and lock the door. Take the time to slide the bolt at the bottom. I pour a glass of wine, sit down on the sofa, try to relax. After a while, I move to the window. From this vantage point I can watch the angles and corners of the flat, all the nooks and crannies where fear wants to hide.
CHAPTER 25
RACHEL CUMMINS WAS found in her bathtub this evening. Wrists open to the elbow, the water still warm even though she’d been dead for almost an hour. The wound on the right arm was jagged, repeated efforts from where the already injured left hand had been disabled.
The rain is beating against my building. Spatters shoot through the narrow slit of my flat window. Cigarette smoke clouds up in front of me, then filters out into the angry night. The wind lifts the hair from my forehead, sends a shiver shaking through my body. I fold my arms. My reflection grimaces before me in the window, and the insides of my flat project out into the darkness. An unopened bottle of wine sits on the coffee table. I lift my mug to my mouth, taste sour coffee, and swallow.
I pull on the cigarette, watch the smoke pour out against the glass, billow, then shunt upward to the open window. The coroner was quick to confirm it as suicide. A note had been found describing how Rachel couldn’t live with her guilt and fear. Is this what I should have done? Let my guilt drive a blade down my arms? I might not have put Ivan Neary away, but I led Rachel to believe that he was the one. I push the stub of the cigarette into the soil of the bonsai pot.
I remember her nerves, her anxious, skittish movements. Her eyes never stilled on mine once but slid from floor to me, then floor again. Her hands moved rhythmically over each other in a constant dance of worry. She would have said anything to get away from that case.
Was that what it was worth? A life for six months of Ivan Neary’s innocence? I push another cigarette between my lips, squint as I light it, and blow out the smoke in a straight line toward the ceiling.
The phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. I jump; then, rolling my shoulders, reach for it and return to the window.
“Sheehan.”
“Hey, Frankie, it’s Helen.”
I pull up at the use of my name.
“Sorry to phone you, I know you’re probably trying to wrap your head around what’s happened to Rachel Cummins.”
I take another drag of the cigarette. “What is it?”
“I thought you might want to talk.” I can hear her picking her words. “Rachel Cummins did what she did. People have to take responsibility for their own actions.”
I gaze at my reflection on the dark window. “Sure. Was there something else?”
Silence breathes down the line. “Moira Keegan. She called again.”
“I told you, unless she’s new information for us, the next time I speak to her will be to tell her we’ve got the fuck who murdered her daughter.”
“She says she only wants to check in with you. I thought in light of Rachel—”
“Christ, Helen, who are you? My fucking conscience? Fine, I’ll phone her. Happy?”
“She’s actually on the other line. Waiting.”
Of course she is. Helen, nothing if not efficient. I look beyond myself, out the window. Black, black night. A white moon buried somewhere behind dark cloud. The violent rush of rain has passed and is now a soothing patter over the city.
“Put her through.”
“Frankie. It’s Moira Keegan here.”
Moira’s voice is tied up with so much unspoken grief that I can’t bear it.
“Moira. Sorry I’ve not had a chance to get back to you, especially after Tom—”
“I wondered if you’d had any leads?” Straight to it, no small talk
. The business of murder makes strangers of us all.
I hold back the sigh building in my throat. “I’m afraid I can’t reveal too much, Moira. How’s Eamon doing?” I frown at the inanity of the question.
“Sure, you know yourself. Thrown himself into work again. Tom’s only climbing the walls to get shot of him.” A pause; then: “I think he feels a bit guilty, you know.”
And just like that, the detective in me sits up. “Guilty? Tom?”
“No. Eamon. They argued sometimes, you know.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “That time she told him about the affair. Sure, what could he have known?”
I nod. Relax. “Yes.”
“The funeral was last week,” she states.
Shame sweeps up my neck. “Sorry I couldn’t make it.”
“We kept it small. Family. A few friends, but it was nice. Amy would’ve liked it; we had her sandwiches out, the chocolate she liked, one of the local bands set up in the house, played music from her favorite singer. You know, nice.”
I remember Tom Quinn’s interview, Amy’s plans to go to a concert with Peter Costello.
“Her favorite singer?”
“Oh, yes. Joni Mitchell.”
“Parking lots and paradises?”
“That’s the one, yes.”
I like that song. I say so. And that seems to be enough for Moira.
“You’ll let us know, won’t you, when you’ve any news?”
“As soon as I can, Moira.”
When I hang up, I pour a glass of wine, pull the window closed. Seal myself away from the city, cut a siren off midscream. I drop the phone onto the sofa, then notice that there is a voicemail message waiting. Baz is likely drowning his sorrows somewhere and wanting me to join him. I click through to check his number against the list of missed calls, but the message was left in the minutes I was talking to Moira Keegan.
There is no number. I press the phone to my ear and wait for it to talk me through to the messages. Finally, there is a loud beep and the message plays. Raw silence comes down the line. I press the phone harder against the side of my head. It’s as if the caller is leaning up against me, listening, waiting for me to speak. Unease. A shiver. I strain to hear a rasp of breath, the scratch of a finger fumbling over the phone, but there is nothing but a strange, hollow quiet.
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