by Erin Hart
“That’s strange, isn’t it—that she wouldn’t keep more friends’ numbers on her mobile?”
“Not if she didn’t have any friends. Some people don’t, you know. Or it could be that she was just too lazy to program them all in.” Ward thought of the empty directory on his own mobile.
Brennan continued: “Several neighbors interviewed in Dublin yesterday said she kept to herself and was often out late, all night. I also spoke to her boss at the archaeology firm. Ursula had a decent job there, but the boss didn’t seem completely satisfied with her performance. Nothing he was willing to spell out, but he hinted that she’d probably not have been going back to them after the excavation season this year. That seems to have been a pattern in her employment history. She worked at six different contract archaeology firms over the past ten years.”
Ward turned to his own notepad. “All right, what about the timeline? Several witnesses place Ursula Downes leaving the excavation site at half past five. She drove into the village to pick up some take-away and a few other items, including four bottles of wine, according to the shopgirl who came forward yesterday. From there it looks as if she went home and started in on the wine; two of the four bottles were empty, and according to the toxicology, her blood alcohol level at the time of her death was almost double the driving limit.”
Brennan said, “From her mobile, we know that she rang Desmond Quill on his mobile around eight, and they talked for about thirty minutes. He says they were making plans for the weekend, and that they agreed he would arrive on Friday morning.”
“What do we know about Desmond Quill?”
“Owns a shop off Grafton Street—antiques, very posh. Lives in Ballsbridge. He says he was in Dublin the night Ursula was killed, playing his regular Thursday chess game at home with Laurence Fitzhugh, a banker. Fitzhugh confirms the story, says they were together at Quill’s house until nearly half-two in the morning. If he’s telling the truth, that wouldn’t give Quill time to drive all the way out here and commit the murder—Loughnabrone is a good three hours from the south side of Dublin. Quill says he left the city at eight o’clock on Friday morning.”
“And what time did Ursula ring Quill on Thursday evening?”
“Ten past eight—and again at twelve fifty-five.”
“She rang him twice? If they’d made all the arrangements for the weekend in the first conversation, why would she ring him back?”
“Quill says Ursula told him that someone was bothering her. She could have been calling him for help. He says he didn’t receive the second call, that his phone was switched off. And it lasted less than a minute. Maybe she decided not to leave a message.”
“And what time does the phone say she rang Maguire?”
“Twenty past twelve. That matches his story.”
“So she rings up Maguire at twelve-twenty, and Quill again thirty minutes later? Say Maguire was threatening her. If she was truly frightened, why would she call Desmond Quill, who was seventy miles away in Dublin, instead of emergency services? This isn’t lining up quite right.” With the new wireless technology, they could find out from the phone company exactly where Quill had been when he’d received the second call. It probably wasn’t worth pursuing at this point, unless there was something funny about his alibi, and so far, at least, it seemed pretty solid. “What about calls to Ursula’s mobile?”
“The phone’s memory keeps a record of the last ten calls made and received. The last ten received were all from Owen Cadogan’s mobile. They were spaced only a few minutes apart, all on the night of the murder, between a quarter past ten and three o’clock that following morning. All very brief, as though she knew who it was and didn’t answer.”
That was an interesting detail, but there was no way of knowing whether Cadogan had just given up trying to reach Ursula, or stopped phoning because he knew she was already dead.
“Who else did she call?”
“The last ten calls she made included one to Niall Dawson—you remember, that fella we met out at the bog—he’s Keeper of Antiquities at the National Museum. There were four calls to Desmond Quill, the one to Maguire, and four other numbers I’m still checking out.”
“What did you find on the laptop?”
“Let me show you.” She switched on the computer, and Ward brought his chair around so that he could look over her shoulder. “From the browser history we can tell that someone—maybe it was Ursula, or maybe it was someone else—was online the night she was killed. Here’s a list of all the sites browsed that evening: the Irish Times archive, the Examiner archive, the Duchas Sites and Monuments record—”
“Can we tell what was she looking for at any of those sites?”
“All of them. Which one do you want?”
“I don’t know—one of the newspapers.”
Maureen scrolled down the screen to show him: Ursula Downes had dug up a series of brief news articles on the animal mutilations about which Charlie Brazil had been questioned. None mentioned the boy by name, but Ursula may have picked up enough local gossip to make the connection. That could have been what she was holding over Charlie Brazil—though as horrible as the crimes had been, why would anyone care about three slaughtered animals all these years later?
Ward looked up at Brennan. “What were the other sites you mentioned?”
“She went into several excavation databases, searching for information on the Loughnabrone hoard. But she was an archaeologist, so it’s possible that some of those searches might have been work-related. I’d have to spend a bit more time digging to tell exactly what she was looking for—if it was just general information about the hoard, or something more specific.”
Ward looked down the list that glowed on the flat screen. The Loughnabrone hoard was another connection to Charlie Brazil—perhaps not directly, but it had been Charlie’s father and uncle who had discovered the hoard. And Ursula’s crew had just uncovered the uncle’s body three days previously. Perhaps there was a pattern he wasn’t seeing in the way these facts aligned themselves, a combination that would open it up. “Right. Keep at those searches a bit longer, if you would, Maureen. They might turn up something useful.”
“I had another thought today while we were out in the fields. Both eyewitness statements we have on Ursula Downes and her confrontations with Owen Cadogan and Charlie Brazil came from Nora Gavin.”
“What are you saying? You think Dr. Gavin is making things up to draw our attention away from Maguire?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Maureen looked down at her notes again.
“Definitely possible. But we also have Desmond Quill’s statement that Cadogan was harassing Ursula, and evidence that Cadogan placed repeated calls to her mobile. I don’t think Dr. Gavin is making up stories, but maybe she’s being somewhat selective in what she tells us. At this point maybe we should concentrate on Owen Cadogan and Charlie Brazil—and those flat denials that they ever had anything to do with Ursula Downes. Anything back from forensics on fingerprints or other evidence from the house?”
“Nothing yet—probably not until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Well, if we don’t have physical evidence, we can start on witnesses. Were you able to find out where Cadogan’s secretary lives?”
Brennan lifted her notebook. “Right here.”
“Let’s talk to her, see what we can find out. We’ve also got the phone calls from his mobile to Ursula’s. We can use that to rattle his cage a bit.”
Ward stood up and stared at the crime-scene photos on the board while Brennan collected what she would need for an off-site interview. For him, this process of painstakingly working through all the evidence—even at such an early stage in the investigation—was a necessary winnowing, a process that helped to separate kernels of relevant fact from the surrounding chaff. He was glad his partner had no objection to the method, because he wasn’t sure he could work any other way. The station was even quieter than usual today; everyone had been sent home after the uns
uccessful search for Rachel Briscoe. Maybe Brennan was right and the girl would turn up eventually, unharmed, wondering what all the fuss had been about. He hoped so. The trouble with this case was that nothing was shaking out. They were already buried in chaff, and it would only get worse the more they found out. All he could do was to keep shaking the frame.
4
“Sorry to be calling around so late,” Ward said, noting the surprise on Aileen Flood’s face at the sight of two detectives on her doorstep. “I’m sure you can appreciate how busy we’ve been.”
“Of course. Won’t you come in?” She led them into an immaculate sitting room, antimacassars set with grim purpose as though aligned and placed with a template. Everything was exactly as it should be—china lined up in the cabinet, dinner dishes all washed and put away, the faint whiff of lemon oil and disinfectant in the air. It was a space that seemed to Ward essentially and inordinately female, as though it had never been contaminated by a man’s presence. Everything reeked of cleanliness and decorum.
“You live here alone, Ms. Flood?”
“For the last couple of years, yes, since my sister married and moved to Banagher. Her husband runs a boat there.” Aileen Flood had a round, earnest face that flushed easily; her trim, tailored clothes spoke of rigid standards that must be maintained, whatever the cost.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” She looked at him expectantly, but he glanced at Maureen, with whom she’d hardly made eye contact.
“I don’t think we’ll trouble you that long. It’s late—”
“I’m dying for a cup of tea, actually, if you wouldn’t mind,” Maureen said, leveling her eyes at Aileen Flood and smiling with her lips only. She wasn’t fond of overly demure women. Didn’t trust them. And Ward knew that she didn’t want tea at all; she only wanted to get Aileen Flood out of the room so she could have a better look around.
When they were alone, Brennan sidled to the kitchen door and cracked it open to peer through. Ward heard the sound of a refrigerator opening and closing; then his partner shut the door and came back to sit beside him. She leaned over and said in a whisper: “Three pint bottles of Guinness in the fridge. Does Aileen strike you as a solitary pint drinker, by any chance?” Maureen’s nose for scandal was unrivaled in his experience, and she often picked up cues their male colleagues were just too thick to see.
When Aileen Flood reentered the sitting room a few minutes later carrying a tray, Brennan asked to use the toilet, knowing that Aileen would be too busy with the tea to bother worrying about her.
“I’m sorry,” Ward said, “we shouldn’t be putting you to so much trouble. We’re only here to ask a few questions as part of the inquiry into the death of Ursula Downes.” He saw Aileen’s tea-pouring hand begin to quake, despite her best efforts to keep it still. Her face looked pinched, and she flushed an unattractive blotchy scarlet. This physiological reaction wasn’t of much use to him; some people started to sweat the moment they saw a policeman, whether they were guilty of anything or not, and Ward suspected Aileen Flood might be one of them.
By the time the tea had been poured around, Brennan had returned from the toilet, and when Aileen Flood’s attention was turned elsewhere she took the opportunity to tell Ward with a subtle shake of the head what she’d found there: nothing.
“Thank you for the tea,” he said. “Now, we have a few questions to ask you about the night of the murder, the twentieth of June. Can you tell us where you were on that night, say from the end of your work day onward?”
“I left the office at five o’clock on Thursday, the usual time, then drove to the shop in Birr for a few things. My sister and her husband were coming over from Banagher for dinner that night. I stopped at the off-license to get some Guinness; that’s what Phil likes to drink. They arrived about seven; we ate our dinner and watched a bit of an old film on television, and they went home about half-ten. Phil does have to be up early in the mornings on the boat.”
She paused, her fingers twisting the fringe of a plump, perfect pillow that lay beside her on the chair, and suddenly her soft face looked as if it were about to crumple in on itself. “I know what Owen said when you came to him in the office, that he was on his own on Thursday night, but it isn’t true. He was here with me. He said he didn’t want to involve me in this mess, but I told him it’s no use; I’m already involved.”
“You’re telling us that you’ve been sleeping with your boss?” Maureen asked, her voice as flat as she could make it. “How long has that been going on?”
Tears streaked down Aileen Flood’s face as she answered. “Since last March. He had a bit too much to drink at a farewell party for one of the other regional managers. His wife never comes along to any official functions anymore, and he really was in no state to be driving himself, so I gave him a lift, and it just happened.”
Brennan said, “I suppose he comes here to see you, here to the house?”
“Yes, of course. He doesn’t generally stay over, but he did on Thursday—the night you’re talking about, the twentieth. He arrived after my sister left—about half-eleven it was—and left again about seven in the morning. He was with me all night, I’ll swear it. His marriage was a sham, and everyone knew it, including his wife, so it didn’t seem wrong. A person deserves a little happiness.” Ward couldn’t decide if she was speaking about Owen Cadogan or herself.
“So everything had been going fine since March. Your neighbors must have seen Cadogan’s car here a few times, then?” Brennan asked.
“I’m sure they must have.”
“Does he keep any of his things here—spare clothes, a razor, a toothbrush?”
“I said he doesn’t usually stay the night.” Ward thought he heard Aileen’s voice catch in her throat. He knew where Brennan was going, and knew it was his turn to take up the questioning.
“You must have been quite surprised when Ursula Downes came back to Loughnabrone this summer.”
Aileen Flood’s voice and expression hardened in a single heartbeat. “Why should that be of any concern to me?”
“Because you know what happened last summer, when all Ursula Downes had to do was crook her little finger…”
The fierce battle Aileen was waging with herself was visible on her face. “Owen was through with her. He’d no interest in Ursula; he said he hated her.”
“Hated her enough to kill her?”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” Aileen was evidently having trouble keeping a lid on her own pent-up emotions about Ursula Downes. Ward realized they’d never considered the possibility that the crime had been committed by another woman—or by two people working as a team.
“Did you help Owen murder Ursula?”
“No! I told you—”
“You both hated her, did you not?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I hated her too, and I’m not sorry she’s dead.” Ward had been around canals and locks enough to know how to stick in a wedge and keep the floodgate open once it was cracked. His job right now was to lever it further open, keep the flow going.
“We have it on good authority that Cadogan’s affair with Ursula Downes was not over.”
“Who told you that?”
“We have an eyewitness who saw them engaged in—what would you call it?—a rather intimate conversation.” Ward watched as this information did its corrosive work on Aileen Flood’s pride.
“She was a right scheming bitch, that Ursula—thought she could just come back and start ordering Owen about. She never cared about him. You should have seen her, coming into his office and asking had he worked up the courage to ask me for a ride, in that horrible, mocking tone. She laughed at him, then expected him to fall down on his two knees and adore her—”
Ward said as gently as he could, “But he did adore her, didn’t he? He was still obsessed with her. Couldn’t stop thinking about her. And there was nothing you could do.” He watched as Aileen Flood’s eyes filled with tears once more. “You’ve never actually slept with Owen Cado
gan, have you, Aileen?”
Her voice came out in a choked whisper. “No.”
There it was, Ward thought, the strange and shameful truth—and it was not that Aileen Flood was carrying on with someone else’s husband, but that she was in love with a man who had so little regard for her.
“It hardly seems fair that if Owen Cadogan killed Ursula and only came to you afterward, you can still be charged as an accessory to murder, just as if you had helped him.”
Her eyes grew large. “It’s not true. You’re just saying that.”
“It is true, Aileen. But you didn’t stop to think about it, did you, when he came to you for help that night? You’ve gotten much better at lying since all this began, haven’t you? But one thing I can promise you is that Owen Cadogan has gotten much better than you. It’s become so easy for him that he does it all the time now. No bother on him at all. He lies to his wife, he lies to his friends. He lied to you about Ursula once, Aileen, when he said he was finished with her. Why wouldn’t he do it again?”
Brennan said, “Do you know what he did to her, Aileen? Shall I tell you—”
“No, please, please, I don’t want to know. And I’m telling you, whatever was done, Owen didn’t do it. He arrived at my house at a quarter past two and said he’d been at Ursula’s and that she was dead, someone had murdered her, and he needed my help. I couldn’t say no. He said she was dead when he arrived, and I believed him. I had to believe him, didn’t I?”
“Do you want to go and talk to Cadogan now?” Brennan asked, once they were in the car and headed back toward the station. “We might not have any reason to hold him, but we can let him know what we’ve got—his own admission that he was at Ursula’s house on the night of the murder. We can at least make him sweat. I’d like that.”
“Let’s go, then. You know where he lives?”
