by Paul Charles
‘Especially when he’s a priest,’ she confirmed.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ban Garda Nuala Gibson was still interviewing Gerry Robinson when Starrett and Eimear emerged from the lounge, so he and Romany Browne headed off in the gardaí car to pay a visit to The Three-Quarters Man, Mary Mooney’s husband, Callum. He asked Eimear to tell Gibson to take his car and meet them back at St Ernan’s when she was done.
Starrett arrived outside Callum Mooney’s house to find him polishing away at his boy-racer type-car, a midnight blue Nissan Skyline GTR, as though it was the family jewels.
‘He seems too happy with his new car to me to be much interested in crime,’ Browne said.
‘Looks can be deceptive. People don’t buy a classic car because they’re happy,’ Starrett started, remembering a former avenue of employment, ‘but they most certainly will buy one when they’re sad.’
‘Surely you’re not suggesting his car is a classic?’ Browne offered.
‘Oh, don’t you see, to him it’s much, much more valuable than our interpretation of a classic car.’
Callum Mooney was as clean-cut as his prized possession. He was dressed in dark-blue denim jeans with a very small turn-up, Timberland fawn boots and, even with the approaching Donegal winter, he wore a fresh, white T-shirt, covered only by a red, V-neck woollen jumper. He’d a healthy thick head of brown hair, symmetrically cropped to half an inch all over. He didn’t look confident but he did look content. Starrett figured he must be in his later thirties, which would have surely put him at a ways over the age of the average ‘boy racer’ but still, at that, a bit younger than his wife.
He seemed to engage more with Browne than Starrett, as the two members of the gardaí walked over to him. He was working on his car parked outside his bungalow at the far corner, from the main road, of a fairly new estate, Porter Terraces, only a five-minute drive from Eimear’s house on the other, and more hilly, side of Donegal Town.
Starrett and Browne flashed their warrant cards and introduced themselves.
‘Mary’s not here at the moment,’ he volunteered.
‘It’s yourself we’ve come to visit,’ Starrett said, before smiling.
‘Oh and why’s that?’
Starrett looked around the street and said, ‘Would you not prefer to go indoors before we have our chat?’
‘Am I in trouble or something?’
‘You’d know that a lot better than we would,’ Starrett offered, wondering what, if anything, Callum Mooney was feeling guilty about. ‘Listen Callum, there’s nothing for you to be alarmed about, we’ve just got a few routine questions for you.’
Callum motioned for Starrett and Browne to head to the rear of his bungalow, but instead of taking them inside, he took them to a makeshift shed. It was small and windowless and packed with rows and rows of tools, all neat and clean, aside from the few car bits and tyres scattered around; on the back of the door hung a pair of dark blue, oil-stained overalls.
‘So how can I help you?’ he asked.
Starrett quickly glanced around the shed, searching in vain for somewhere to sit. The smell of oil and petrol was quite overpowering, especially in such a confined space.
‘We’re investigating the death of a friend of Eimear Robinson,’ Starrett said, electing to start off with the indirect approach.
‘Father Matt?’
‘Yes, did you know him?’
‘Well, I didn’t really know him, I mean, he was friendly with Eimear, Julia, Jessica, and my Mary, and I met him a few times up at Eimear’s.’
‘So the only time you’d have seen him would have been up at Eimear’s?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Did you ever chat to him up at Eimear’s?’
‘Not really, just generally,’ he replied, and then seemed troubled. ‘Look, Inspector, can I be very frank with you?’ he continued, as he turned his back on Browne.
‘I wish you would,’ Starrett said, as Browne stepped out of the shed on a nod from Starrett.
‘Mary had a thing with the priest,’ he almost whispered. ‘It’s really hard to understand and even more difficult to explain, but it really doesn’t mean anything to her. She has her needs.’
Starrett was finding it difficult to understand a husband condoning his wife sleeping with another man.
‘Don’t you feel–’
‘I had the measles when I was young,’ Callum continued, ‘and I took a long time to get better. But I got better. Then, after I married Mary I had some vascular problems. My weight was flying up and down. I’m still not exactly sure about the connection but I was assured that it was all to do with my original bout of measles, and the long and short of it is that all of me didn’t get better.’
Starrett nodded sympathetically.
‘Mary and I are very close in other ways. Right?’
‘Okay,’ Starrett said. He wondered if that meant that Callum found it impossible to be jealous. The fumes in the small shed were starting to distract him too much. ‘Do you mind if we step outside?’ and he left the place without waiting for an answer.
Callum Mooney didn’t seem upset, more like settled. In fact, the word that Starrett had first thought of when he and Browne had first come upon Callum out front working on his car came back into his mind, and that word was content; he seemed content, very content. Was it an act? Had Mary really started sleeping with other men only after her husband’s illness?
With most other men in a situation like this, he’d try to rile them, make them mad, see if there was a jealousy lurking deep down, see if the right spark was ignited, could they, would they be capable of murder. From the look in Callum’s Mooney’s eyes Starrett didn’t get any such indication. So why piss him off just for the sake of pissing him off? Sure, the man had more than enough to live with. How much more could God punish a man than to put him with a woman such as Mary Mooney but not give him the wherewithal to do anything about it?
‘Callum,’ he said, after he’d drank in a few large dollops of fresh air, ‘what kind of work do you do?’
‘I set computer systems up in hotels.’
‘Locally?’
‘Across Ireland,’ Callum replied. ‘I get to travel all over. The firm has contracts with most of the hotel chains and whenever a new hotel is opening or an older hotel is installing a new computer system, I move in for three or four days to get their computer system up and running.’
‘And are you busy?’
‘Yes, and I get as much overtime as I want.’
‘So no sign of the recession in your business then.’
‘Actually, it’s been to our advantage in that a lot of the hotels have been using the slowing down of their businesses to install new systems, for when business picks up again.’
‘Great to see that at least someone is expecting things to get better,’ Starrett said, and then added as an apparent afterthought, ‘What were you doing on Wednesday last between the hours of 3:30 and 5:30?’
‘I was on my way back from a hotel in Wexford. I left there around about 3, and I’d normally manage to get back here around 8 ish but I pulled in, in Athlone, for an hour or so for a kip because I felt my eyes get a bit heavy.’
‘Right Callum, that’ll do us for now,’ the inspector said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘That sounded a bit feeble to me, Sir,’ Browne said, as he turned on the ignition.
‘What?’ Starrett said, still distracted.
‘His alibi.’
‘The truth, you’ll find,’ Starrett began, more friendly than reproachful, ‘does tend to always sound just that little bit feeble. It’s important to remember: it’s mostly the lies that need the security of drama.’
* * *
The two gardaí left Callum Mooney to his beloved car and scooted back out in theirs to St Ernan’s, and as they were walking along the corridor and passing Father McKenzie’s room, they saw the door was open.
‘Look at him working,’ Browne whispered
to Starrett, ‘darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.’
They were on their way to the boys’ room for their meeting with Nuala Gibson. When they got there, Starrett pulled the blackboard out from the wall and flipped it over to the side they were really using for their case study.
Ft. Matthew McKaye (deceased)
Ft. McIntyre (gossip, camp, Tubsey, blond, ukulele, Jim Reeves)
Fr. Fergus Mulligan (author of list, old choirboy)
Fr. Robert O’Leary (speaks with fingers, clever, oldest resident)
Fr. Gene McCafferty (thief, Cork & Ennis, elephant-ear elbows, newest res.)
Fr. Edward McKenzie (gardener and Ginger Beatle, farmer)
Fr. Patrick O’Connell (o.weight, ladies’ man, snazzy dresser)
Fr. Peter Casey (researcher for Master Writer, V of silence, absent)
Fr. Michael Clerkin (researcher for Master Writer, V of silence, absent)
Fr. Peregrine Dugan (Master Writer, Methuselah, voice of God, in room)
Bishop Cormac Freeman
Eimear Robinson (St Ernan’s housekeeper)
Gerry Robinson (Eimear’s husband)
Mary Mooney (Eimear’s sister)
Jessica Robinson (Eimear’s 18-year-old daughter)
Julia Robinson (Eimear’s 16-year-old daughter)
Swindle/McCafferty
Rare John Hamilton nibs
Fr. McKaye
Starrett then took the chalk and wrote ‘At work’ after Mary’s line.
‘Can you please check in with her place of work to confirm she was actually there at the relevant hours?’ he said, looking at Garda Browne.
Next he added ‘Callum Mooney’ and ‘travelling’ after Julia’s line.
‘Can you please check where he was travelling from in Wexford and see if you can get confirmation on what time he left?’
Browne nodded his agreement to both orders, or requests, as Starrett had a habit of calling them.
Chalk still in hand, the inspector then asked Nuala Gibson how she got on with Gerry Robinson.
‘Very well, actually,’ she said, taking out her notebook. ‘He seemed quite straightforward to me. Eimear clearly wears the trousers in the house; he kept saying “What did Eimear say when you asked her that?”’
Starrett seemed to be growing a little impatient, so she flicked a few pages on and said, ‘I suppose the really important points would be: one, he admitted he knew about Mary and Father Matt and when I asked him did he not think that Mary’s husband would be very upset about that he said,’ and she checked her notes again to get it exact. ‘He said, “No. It’s Callum’s brother, Mark, who’d be more upset about that. He’d be the one getting the sloppy seconds.”’
‘No!’ Starrett said, drawing it out to at least three syllables.
Sergeant Packie Garvey, by no means a prude, looked very sick on Callum’s behalf.
‘If Mary was a lad, we’d all be applauding her,’ Browne offered.
‘I wouldn’t!’ Gibson said, a little put out. ‘I most certainly wouldn’t.’
They all sat in shock for about thirty seconds.
‘Now that I think about it,’ Starrett said, looking like he was miles away, ‘when I was talking to Eimear earlier and we were discussing Mary cheating with Father Matt, she said something along the lines that Mary had her family, Callum and Mark, to protect her in the same way she would protect her daughters, Julia and Jessica.’
Again silence ruled the room.
‘So, what else?’
‘Ah,’ Gibson said, flicking and flicking through her pages again.
‘You see, Ban Garda Gibson, it’s true – you really do have to save your best for last,’ Starrett jested. ‘You’re struggling there to try and find something to top your Mark Mooney revelation.’
‘Well…nothing much really, apart from the fact that Gerry doesn’t really like Mark,’ Gibson said, alternately tapping her notebook with her pen and putting her pen in her mouth. ‘Gerry feels he’s an ugly piece of work and he might even be a little intimidated by him. He also told me that he was working - in company - all Monday afternoon on a big job at Donegal Estuary Holiday Homes. I’ve got Donegal Estuary Holiday Homes details so I can check his alibi.’
‘Okay, good,’ Starrett offered, smiling largely. ‘Beejeepers, Nuala, now that’s a recovery Packie would have been proud to have pulled off on the hurling field.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Starrett knew it would make him late to visit the Major, but equally he just had to drop in on his next witness, and right away.
He’d always cautioned his team to be careful about getting into a fight with a man with scars. Equally, he’d constantly advised them never to tackle a man with more tattoos than teeth. Their next witness certainly had more tattoos than teeth, but that might have been, quite simply, because he had more tattoos about his body than you’d find in a tattooist’s sample book. Their next witness also looked like he might have more scars around his shaven head than would be discovered on the heads of Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s last-standing troops.
Starrett and Gibson’s next witness was also podgy, red-faced, with glaring eyes, which mostly glared skywards. He wore an off-white, armless vest, a very tight-fitting pair of white jeans and a pair of black Camper trainers. There was an emblem of symmetrical thorn branches woven into a complex circle, dead centre of his vest. This theme was also prevalent in the numerous red and black tattoos about his hands, upper and lower arms, neck, and disappearing on his chest beneath the low neckline of his vest. His shaved head was crowned with a pair of Bono-style wrap-around sunglasses.
He had a black-blue, ground-scraping mutt with matching glaring eyes to those of his owner. Starrett checked the ugly dog for tattoos; he couldn’t see any, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had.
This next witness was, at least on first appearances, an ugly piece of work. This next witness was Mark Mooney.
Starrett had been sure that Mary’s cheating with Father Matt was going to produce jealousy somewhere along the lines, but he never could have guessed that it wouldn’t be from the husband, but the brother-in-law. And now they were about to confront that jealousy head-on.
But for all of the above, he was frightfully well-spoken and he’d the decency to put the mutt on a lead as the three members of the gardaí approached him in his immaculate front garden. The lead only served to annoy the mongrel who barked, growled, and dribbled as if they were all sports in a Canine Olympics.
‘Shut it, Judas!’ Mooney barked, and Judas whined to a dribbling silence.
Starrett introduced himself and his team and they each produced their warrant cards.
‘Yeah, Callum rang me earlier to say you’d been around to have a chat with him,’ Mooney claimed. ‘I figured it wouldn’t be too long until you arrived at my door.’
He removed an iPhone from his pocket, checked it, rubbed the screen around his vest a few circles, and checked he’d cleaned the screen enough before returning the phone to his pocket.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Starrett suggested.
‘Certainly not,’ Mooney laughed. ‘This show of force on my doorstep will keep the local tea-leafs away from my house for ages, maybe even years. It’s all good!’
Starrett looked around the site, with its forty shades of white-washed, pebble-dashed, mismatched houses; Gore Gardens was definitely a lot older an estate than Mark’s brother Callum’s estate. The detective clocked from the condition of Mooney’s windows, doors, paintwork, blinds, and garden, that his house was, by far, the best on show in this particular estate.
‘Okay,’ Starrett said, realising how spot-on Mooney was with his assessment. If you’re a wise thief, you never ever steal from another. ‘We’re here to talk about Father Matthew McKaye.’
‘Yes, Eimear’s friend who was bonking my brother’s wife.’
Mooney dropped his eyes from the skies to Ban Garda Gibson for this reply. She acknowledged him only by
writing something in her notebook.
‘Right,’ Starrett said, ‘now at least we know you know who we’re talking about.’
‘So the fact you’re here means you’ve already talked to Gerry Robinson,’ Mooney said.
‘How so?’
‘It figures,’ he said. ‘It’s all good; he’s never forgiven me for bonking Eimear all those years ago. I did tell him it was just the once, but I don’t think he believed me. They say that not every woman cheats,’ Mooney paused for effect, ‘but the woman who cheats will, more than likely, cheat more than once.’
‘You’re claiming you had an affair, not just with your brother’s wife, but also with your brother’s wife’s sister?’ Gibson asked, looking skywards herself, as though she was trying to concentrate on pinning down the ever-growing list of illicit partners.
‘I was basically balancing up the cosmic ball of energy,’ Mooney claimed, pointing to the emblem printed on the centre of his off-white vest. He pulled his iPhone from his pocket once again and completed the exact same routine he’d not long since finished.
Now he was up close, Starrett realised that Mooney’s T-shirt wasn’t a dirty shade of white, as he’d first suspected, but the actual colour of the vest, and it looked as though he was wearing it for the first time.
‘Sorry?’ Starrett said, feeling he needed to be enlightened, for the record, on that one.
‘In this ball there is no beginning and no end. It’s made up of lots of thorn branches and they just weave in and out of each other, the way lives do. Where one branch or life finishes, another starts, and on and on it goes until it gets to the end, or to the beginning again.’
‘And this is relevant how?’
‘Okay. When Mary and Callum first started to have their problems – well, Callum’s problems really – Mary turned to Gerry–’
‘No!’ Gibson said in disbelief.
Jeez, Starrett thought, you’d never read this in a book, people just wouldn’t believe it. ‘So Mary and Gerry slept together?’
