by J M Gregson
It was an important part of the work of Brendan Murphy and Lucy Peach to study this woman and her reactions at this moment of revelation. The only unusual element in her reaction which they would report is that she did not seem unduly surprised by the news. Even that did not necessarily mean much, because shock affects people in so many different ways.
Ros O’Connor was in jeans and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. The smear of sand across the front of this seemed suddenly poignant as she lurched from noisy play with her niece and nephew to the news of death. She was slightly built; she was also very pretty, in the small-featured way which Lucy Peach, whose charms were more opulent and less subtle, always envied. This woman had a clear skin and good features; her face had the attraction and innocence of a kitten. A strand of fair hair escaped from the order around it and trembled a little over her left temple. Her air had an odd combination of control and vulnerability. She said with a strange calmness, ‘Where did this happen?’
Lucy said reluctantly, ‘He was found at your own house.’ That always made things worse. It might seem out of proportion, but it was always worse for people when abnormal death, whether it be suicide or murder or manslaughter, took place in the family home. For most people, it tarnished the place where it had happened for the rest of their lives. Lucy knew that and tried to make this death as peripheral as possible. ‘He was found right at the back of the building, in the rearmost room on the ground floor.’
‘That’s his office. That’s where he worked. How was he killed?’
She was accepting immediately that he had been murdered, they noticed. They had come with the news of his death and she had assumed that someone had killed him. Lucy said, ‘We are not able to disclose the details yet.’
‘But someone came to our house and killed him.’ Ros O’Connor settled back a little into the armchair and nodded twice. ‘I told him he needed to be more careful.’
Brendan Murphy made a note, then said gently, ‘Why was that, Mrs O’Connor?’
She shook her head gently from side to side, seemingly more in response to her own thoughts than to the DC’s question. ‘Dominic moved in dangerous circles, you know. He needed to be careful. When was he killed?’
‘We’re not certain of that yet. There will need to be a post-mortem examination.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course there will. And I’ll find out how he died, eventually.’
Lucy wanted to ask her about these dangerous circles in which she said her husband had moved. But this wasn’t the time. Percy and his team would follow that up in due course. And in due course they would determine just how innocent this calm but bewildered-looking woman was. ‘When did you come to your sister’s house, Mrs O’Connor?’
The widow did not at first appreciate the significance of the question. ‘Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon. Dominic was working late yesterday. It seemed a good chance for me to see Jane and the children.’ She stopped abruptly, looking at DS Peach in consternation. ‘You want to know whether I could have killed Dominic, don’t you? When did he die?’
‘As I said, we don’t know that yet. And this is merely routine, Mrs O’Connor. We check the movements of all the people who were close to any death which is not straightforward.’
‘Not straightforward. You mean murder, don’t you? So why not use the word?’
Lucy risked a smile, trying even in these circumstances to lower the tension. ‘We usually have to waffle on about “suspicious circumstances”. We haven’t established for certain yet that this is murder and I haven’t visited the scene myself. But from what I’ve heard there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that someone killed him. I’m sorry.’
The small, kittenish, curiously innocent face shook from side to side. ‘It’s not your fault, is it? I told Dominic he should be careful.’
Lucy stood up and Brendan Foster followed her lead. ‘Someone will need to speak to you again, when we know more about this. In the meantime, I must ask you whether you have any idea who might have done this awful thing.’
‘No. I have no idea at all.’ She spoke as if she were repeating a formula.
‘Are you sure of that? You say that he should have been more careful. Do you know where the danger was coming from?’
‘No. I didn’t like some of the people he had to meet. But I didn’t want to know anything about them.’
‘Well, as I say, someone will need to ask you more questions about this, when we have established some details. In the meantime, I think you should stay here with your sister and her family. I’m afraid your home will have become a crime scene, for the moment.’
Ros O’Connor nodded several times, as if trying to tap that fact into her consciousness. ‘Will Dominic need to be identified? That’s what happens, isn’t it?’
‘That is part of the legal process, yes. And you are the most obvious person to make the identification. But if you think it would be too harrowing for you, I’m sure we can find someone else to complete the formal identification.’
‘No. I think I should do that.’
‘Very well, I’ll make the arrangements and we’ll be in touch with you here. Thank you for your help and for your calmness today. If you think of anything which might have a bearing on your husband’s death, please ring this number immediately.’
They left her staring hard at the card, as if Brunton CID might have more to offer her than the simple printed details.
Jack Chadwick was a persuasive man. As SOCO officer, he managed to get a team out on Saturday afternoon to comb the office at the back of the high house where Dominic O’Connor had died.
Peach also convinced the pathologist that this crime was of sufficient importance to warrant his absence from the crowd at the Lancashire League cricket fixture at Alexandra Meadows. He inspected the newly discovered corpse and lamented Peach’s absence from the East Lancs team. ‘They miss you, Percy,’ he said sadly as he opened his case. ‘They were fifty-one for four when I left. And none of ’em scores at the speed you used to do.’
‘Nice of you to say so,’ said Percy. ‘But distance lends enchantment, you know. I could be pretty stodgy myself, on early season wickets. Ball moves around a lot until the ground gets firm.’ He glanced up at the blue sky and high white clouds. A glorious day for cricket. Nostalgia for his lost youth and the sumptuous feel of leather on willow hit him hard for a couple of seconds. He was only thirty-nine; perhaps his mother-in-law was right and he had retired a year or two too early.
He said firmly, ‘I presume he died here?’
‘Certainly. And in this chair. No one’s moved him,’ said the pathologist.
‘Did he struggle?’
‘No. Not to any effect, anyway. My guess is that he lifted his hands to the cable on his neck, but didn’t get his hands on his assailant. I’ll check his nails carefully when I get him on the slab, but there’s nothing obvious beneath them to the naked eye.’
‘And the murder weapon is obvious.’ They were both assuming already that this was murder.
‘Obvious and distressingly ordinary, from your point of view.’ The pathologist looked at the cable which was still embedded in Dominic O’Connor’s neck and would remain so until he was disrobed and anatomised in the pathologist’s laboratory. ‘This is standard electrical cable, the kind you get on a dozen appliances in every home. It was probably brought here specially for the job, but it would have been readily available around the place if this was a spur-of-the-moment killing. With a sharp knife or heavy-duty scissors, you could simply cut it off an electric radiator or a vacuum cleaner. Or even a computer.’
They looked automatically at the PC on the desk, but its cable connected it still to the socket in the wall. It was left to DS Northcott to ask the question to which everyone in the room felt they knew the answer. ‘Could this have been done by a woman?’
‘It could have been done by a child, I’m afraid. No great strength is required if you take a sitting man by surprise from the rear, and I think that is what happened h
ere. You throw the cable round his neck, twist it tight, and then keep twisting. This didn’t take long and it didn’t demand any great strength. My guess is that it was swift and ruthless. Not that I’m paid to guess, of course.’
He gave a sour smile and looked at the two members of the SOCO team who were on hands and knees in opposite corners of the room, using tweezers to lift hairs and threads which would almost certainly prove to have nothing to do with this crime. The photographer’s camera flashed briefly as he took a careful picture of a faint print in the carpet. There was a brief pause as the CID men and the pathologist watched him and wondered if this was the footprint of the man who had been swift and ruthless in his despatch of Dominic O’Connor.
Then Peach said, ‘We know how he died and where he died. Can you help us with when?’
‘Not with any accuracy, at present. I shan’t even disrobe him and take a renal temperature until these boys have finished examining his clothes. I’ll have a better idea when I get him on the table. If you can find when he last ate, I’ll give you a reasonably accurate time of death from the stomach contents.’
‘But he hasn’t died today?’
‘Almost certainly not, I think. You’ll have to wait for the official PM to give you anything you could quote in court, and rigor mortis isn’t going to tell us a great deal, because the temperature in this room has varied so widely over the last twenty-four hours — not too far above freezing last night and up into the eighties with the sun blazing through that window today.’
‘Give us a guess. We won’t hold you to it.’
The pathologist smiled wryly. ‘This man has clearly been dead for many hours. I’d say last night, but it could have been earlier.’
Five hours later, the street lights were on in Belfast.
The day in Northern Ireland had not been as sunny as in Lancashire. Now the clouds seemed to be dropping even lower over the city as darkness took over. There was a little light yet in the west, in the fields outside the city, but here a thin drizzle fell over river and streets and night had dropped in early.
This narrow street wasn’t far from the Falls Road. It was little more than a hundred yards long, but there had been six killings here twenty years earlier, and a sectarian bitterness still ran deep in the veins of both sides. The houses seemed to carry the shadow of those killings still, so that the atmosphere on a night like this was as gloomy and hopeless as the black and starless sky above.
The man looked automatically over his shoulder at the corner of the street. He had no reason to think that he was being followed — indeed, he was certain that he wasn’t. But old habits, as this furtive figure told anyone who cared to listen, died hard. And this was a man who was proud of what he had done during the Troubles, not ashamed of it. He carried the list of his killings in his mind like his own roll of honour. He still moved almost exclusively among those who had supported him then and who continued to feel as he did now.
There were few people abroad here at this hour. Fanaticism and bloody history had left their legacy. The non-violent and the uncommitted had left these streets as soon as they could. Twenty years ago, your very life had been at stake if you walked here at this hour. There was less violence now, though the occasional kneecapping settled old scores and reminded residents of how deep the playwright Sean O’Casey’s ‘murdering hate’ still ran in this part of Belfast.
This section of the city was now largely occupied by an underclass who lived on the edge of the law and frequently beyond it. Petty thieves predominated, often with the added violence which accompanied muggings. There was also a growing amount of freelance prostitution, practised by women of various ages who were bold enough or desperate enough to ply their trade without the protection of a pimp.
The man who moved swiftly and close to the walls knew these streets and was not afraid. Courage was a quality he had always possessed. It had been taken for granted as he had shaped his violent career and risen through the ranks. His spell in the Maze prison had been a badge of honour when he issued orders to the younger men who had followed him into the Provisionals. And then, abruptly, he and his friends had been sold out, when Blair and the Irish traitors had reached their settlement.
Well, there were still a few good men left. And there was still work to be done. There were still Irish men and the odd Irish woman who needed punishing. They knew who they were. And when you got to them and dealt with them, you issued a lesson to others too. The cause was still alive. People who didn’t recognise that needed regular reminders. You hadn’t got the English army men here as your obvious quarry, as you’d had in the glory days. Today’s targets were fewer and it took longer to get to them. But you had all the time in the world. When you’d fought for hundreds of years and now were almost there, you could afford to wait patiently for your opportunities.
This man enjoyed secrecy. He’d lived by it for many years now — since he was fifteen, in fact. It had become a way of life for him and he would have been loath to discard it now. He pulled the baseball cap more firmly over his forehead and thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his shabby blue anorak. His right hand gripped the butt of the pistol he always kept there; he found the feel of it reassuring, even when it was not loaded. Not many of the old terraced houses he was passing had lights visible. Most of them were occupied, but people for the most part chose to live at the back of them, as if they knew that it was politic to mind their own business and maintain an ignorance of whatever else went on around them.
The door opened almost as he knocked, so suddenly that he almost lost his balance and fell forwards. The shaft of light from within the house flashed unnaturally bright across the wet flags, and then he was in and the door was shutting behind him. The man who led him through to the shabby room at the rear of the house was old. The grey stubble on his chin was a result of a failure to shave rather than an attempt at a beard. He had been driven for years by hate, which operated like a life force within him, far more important to his being than food or drink. He was diminished since the Good Friday agreement. His life was petering out, but he kept it going by the news he gathered from his old juniors, from the evidence they brought to him that violence could still be effective. The settling of old scores renewed his faith. Death or damage to those who had frustrated the cause operated like blood transfusions on his failing body.
The man who had come here understood all of this. He had operated under this man’s command in the battles of the last century; he clung to the camaraderie of the glory days even in these less stirring times. There was a whisky poured ready for him on the table. He clinked glasses with the old man and they downed the Jameson’s to one of the old toasts. Neither of them was really a drinker; they had seen too often in the dangerous years how drink had made others vulnerable.
The man slipped off his baseball cap. Despite the drink, it was his first real evidence of relaxation. He grinned at his old commander. He wanted to prolong the giving of his good news, but that wouldn’t be fair. So he said simply, ‘Dominic O’Connor’s been seen off.’
Then he clasped the gnarled old fingers in his. The two men raised their linked hands skywards, in a hideous parody of the consecration in the Catholic Mass.
TEN
She’d been crying. That much was obvious. She had done her best to disguise it, but she was puffy around the eyes and unnaturally pale. These things are difficult to disguise, as she’d realised twenty minutes ago when she stood in front of the mirror in the cloakroom and studied her face.
But there was surely nothing wrong with a PA being upset by her employer’s death. Dominic O’Connor had been a good employer to Jean Parker. They’d worked together for over four years. These were the first things she told the detectives when they came into the office to speak to her. She was a slim, attractive woman. Her soft brown hair was cut short and her dark grey eyes were very alert. She wore a lightweight grey suit over a white blouse.
Peach watched DS Northcott note the facts Mrs Parker h
ad given him, then said, ‘Your employer was killed methodically and very deliberately by someone. This doesn’t look to us like a spur-of-the-moment murder or an argument which spilled over into violence. We think whoever went to the house went there with homicide in mind. Have you any idea who that might have been?’
‘No. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I heard the awful news. I’m not naive — I know you make enemies when you’re successful in business, so I’ve been thinking of possibilities since I heard he was dead. But I haven’t thought of anyone who might have hated Dominic enough to kill him.’
Both Peach and Clyde Northcott noticed the use of the first name and wondered what degree of intimacy it implied. But relationships between employers and PAs were not as formal as they had once been and nor were the titles used. ‘Mr O’Connor’s brother was shot only a few days ago. Do you think there is a connection between these two deaths?’
She allowed herself a small, bitter smile, the first one they had seen from her. ‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that? You’re the ones with the experience of murder and the sort of people who perpetrate it.’
‘Indeed we are. But you’re the one who knows the victim and his associates. We are dependent upon you and people like you for information. Apart from his wife, you probably know more about this victim’s life and the dangers it carried than anyone.’
Both of them noticed a twitch of her face when the widow was mentioned, but it came and went so quickly that it was difficult even to guess at what it might mean. Peach said quietly, ‘It is your duty to be as frank as possible with us, Ms Parker. The crime we’re investigating is murder.’
‘I’m Mrs Parker, please. Normally I wouldn’t speculate about my employer’s marriage, but in these exceptional circumstances I will tell you that I think there were problems.’
These were phrases which she had obviously prepared beforehand. Peach said, ‘You are doing the right thing. You should be aware that we are normally very discreet. Anything you tell us which proves to have nothing to do with this death will not be made public.’
