Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘How can you be so sure, Dan? What’s your take on what happened?’

  He sighed. ‘The Ellen you’ve read about in the papers wasn’t the real Ellen. They beatified her after she disappeared. The real Ellen was an angry young woman. She hadn’t been coming home at night, and was refusing to tell her parents where she’d been. She didn’t get on with her sister. The more her father tried to discipline her, the more she rebelled. And there’d been an admission to Tallaght Hospital that the parents didn’t want to talk about, either. She’d tried to overdose.’

  ‘Can you remember what Derek’s alibi was?’ Jo asked. ‘I don’t doubt your judgement, but—’

  ‘It was watertight. He was with Liz, Ellen’s sister. The one he married since. She corroborated it.’

  Jo felt herself tense up. ‘Was she reliable? Wouldn’t she have been conflicted?’

  ‘It was her sister that had gone missing,’ Dan said.

  The sound of the TV started to creep up again in the background. Spotting a curtain twitch on the upper floor where Gavin’s flat was, Jo wound up the call.

  ‘OK, thanks. I’ll see you later.’ After hanging up, and shoving her phone in her pocket, Jo cupped her hands over her mouth and looked up.

  ‘Open up, Gav! I know you’re in there.’

  She put her finger on the bell and kept it there.

  After a pause, and again no response, Jo put on an oriental accent and roared, ‘Sexy massage clock ticking, mister. You want me to start knocking at doors to find new customer?’

  This time she heard the thud of someone taking the stairs two at a time, and seconds later, the door opened on to a stairwell that led to the first floor.

  Sexton was holding a towel around his waist and using one end of another, dangling from his neck, to scrub his dripping wet hair dry. ‘What do you want?’

  Jo clipped up the stairs and headed into the living area, where she started gathering up empty pizza boxes and Coke cans, depositing them in the bin. The place was a mess but not grotty yet, she noted. Pot … kettle … black … Jo thought about the state of her own home. Keeping house always ended up slipping to last on her daily list of priorities.

  Pulling open the fridge, she removed out-of-date eggs, mouldy cheese not wrapped properly and a bowl of – she wasn’t quite sure what. Jo made a face as she moved to the bin and looked around for a disinfectant spray and a roll of kitchen towel.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sexton asked. He headed over to the bedroom door and closed it, then plonked himself in a blokey leather armchair, jerked the footrest up and pointed the remote control at the telly, before reaching for a box of cigarettes and lighting up. Jo bent to retrieve the empty biscuit tin full of filter stubs doubling as an ashtray, and took the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed that out, too.

  ‘Can’t you leave it? I’m in the middle of something.’

  Jo ignored him. Her patience was wearing thin. She knew Sexton had been through the mill with his wife Maura’s suicide, but he wasn’t even trying to move on. If anything, he was getting worse. She spotted at least two cigarette burns on the arms of his chair, where the foam filling was clearly on view. If he was falling asleep pissed with a fag in his hand, he was headed for disaster.

  Sexton seemed to be making a conscious effort not to put up any more resistance. He was settling down for a snooze, leaning back on the headrest and crossing his stretched legs at the ankle.

  Jo crinkled her nose, and moved to the window, which she shunted open. ‘It smells like somebody died in here.’

  ‘Yes, my great-aunt did, last week. She came over to visit, and keeled over.’

  Jo wanted to believe he was joking, but couldn’t be sure. ‘I’m sorry. Why haven’t you been turning up for work?’

  Sexton reached for the small of his back. ‘I’ve put a disc out. The painkillers are playing havoc with my stomach. That’s why the place is in a state. I can’t bend.’

  ‘Ah, back pain, of course,’ Jo answered. ‘No doctor’s cert?’

  ‘I can’t get out and about to get it,’ he said.

  ‘But you managed it for the medication.’

  He held her stare. ‘My great-aunt stockpiled. Her nickname among her friends was “the mule”. She was bringing me a consignment.’

  ‘Is that right? Have you got any Solpadol by any chance? My head’s splitting.’

  ‘I’m all out, sorry.’ He paused. ‘I thought you’d have taken a holiday before you started in the new gig.’

  ‘I wish. We found a woman’s body in the mountains.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about it on the news.’ Sexton looked around for the packet of fags, pulled out another, then, after shaking the empty matchbox, loped over to the kitchen, where he leaned over an oven ring with the cigarette perched between his lips, puffing to get it going and turning the plate off once he’d managed it.

  Jo filled him in on the incidentals. ‘I think the killer wants us to start looking into the case of Ellen Lamb, back in the nineties. She was—’

  ‘I remember,’ Sexton said, reaching for the kettle. ‘Only a teenager, that one. Walking back from the shop, wasn’t she? Bastard. I always reckoned it was someone she knew. Derek Carpenter probably. She would have trusted him and taken a lift off him. How else could she just have vanished into thin air? Cuppa?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jo said, moving a pile of old newspapers aside and clearing some room on the couch. ‘The thing is, as it turns out, the prime suspect for murdering the woman we found this morning in the mountains is Derek Carpenter. He’s married to Ellen’s sister now. They live on the same estate as the dead woman.’

  Sexton’s eyes widened. ‘He was a nasty piece of work, that one,’ he said, spooning some coffee into the cafetière, and reaching for the boiling kettle.

  Jo leaned forwards. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He attacked a reporter. Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Black, thanks. Maybe the reporter provoked him.’

  ‘Nah, Carpenter had a lot of previous. They just couldn’t pin it on him.’

  ‘He was just a kid. I checked, and all he ever did was steal cars. It happens.’

  ‘Why are you defending him?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Jo said. She paused. ‘Dan interviewed him years ago when he was first nominated, and ruled him out. He confirmed Carpenter’s alibi stood up.’

  Sexton stopped what he was doing and turned, giving her a look as if he didn’t believe she was serious. ‘Dan’s fucked,’ he said out of the side of his mouth, the fag dangling from under his top lip. He carried the mugs over, and passed one to Jo, taking a slurp from his own, and then headed over to the window to tap his cigarette ash out, leaning over to check nobody was standing directly underneath in the car park below.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Jo argued. ‘Dan would never make a mistake like that. For all we know—’

  Sexton cut her off with a glance.

  ‘See, that’s exactly what I’m scared of … everyone jumping to the easy option and it clouding everything.’

  ‘So you’ve abandoned the obvious solution and gone for an obscure one, that the killer is framing Derek?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Sexton nodded in little increments. ‘The shoe will tell a lot,’ he said. ‘Science has moved on since that was found. They can test for mitochondrial DNA now from the tiniest sample. If Carpenter’s is on it …’

  ‘Did I ever tell you you’re brilliant?’ Jo said. She aimed her phone and pressed a button. It made the noise of a camera shutter.

  ‘Have you just photographed me?’

  Jo curled her lip as she admired the shot. ‘I need your help on this case. I’ve got Alfie Taylor yapping at my heels. Besides, nobody’s going to believe your back is still out in this position.’

  Something banged behind the closed door. Jo stared in its direction. ‘Old, was she, your aunt?’

  Sexton stood up and positioned himself between Jo and the door. ‘I’m not well enough to come back to work
yet. How’s Dan holding up?’

  ‘He’ll be a lot better when he comes to terms with what’s happened. He needs to get on with his life.’

  ‘I don’t need a lecture, Jo.’

  ‘Come back to work, then, and I’ll spare you one.’

  ‘I’m not fit to work.’

  ‘What are you going to do if you’re fired?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. This great-aunt who died never married and had no kids. She left me a nice house. It means I won’t have to worry about cash for a while. Jo, this job may be a vocation for you, but it’s not for me. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone should do it for life. I’ve seen too many sick things nobody should have to – movies of men and women interfering with little kids. You see enough of what people can do to each other, you start seeing only the worst in them. I need to get away for a while.’

  ‘Don’t you want to help put those kinds of people away?’

  ‘I told you it wasn’t Maura’s name at the end of that suicide note. Do you even remember?’

  Jo looked at the ground. How could she forget? It had taken Sexton two years to open Maura’s suicide note, but instead of finding closure, he’d fixated on the fact that Maura had signed it with her middle name. The reason Jo hadn’t brought this up again was because she thought he was seeing only what he wanted to see – that Maura might have been murdered, and her suicide staged by the killer.

  ‘You never once offered to help me get to the bottom of it. Do you know how much it would have meant to me if you had? You’re the best I ever worked with. Don’t you get it? If someone else did this to her, I get my life back. Maura didn’t choose death over life with me if someone killed her.’

  Jo put her hands together like she was praying and raised them to her mouth. She wanted to choose her words carefully. ‘Gav, I don’t believe anyone else was involved. I’m sorry. I don’t want to pour salt on an open wound, but I wouldn’t be serving your interests if I only told you what you wanted to hear.’

  ‘Go back to work, Jo. I’m not coming with you. If I was heading up that case, I’d be arresting Derek.’

  Jo rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably. ‘You and Maura used to live in my new district, right? What if I promised that I’d set up a cold-case incident room to look into the circumstances surrounding her case? Would you help me then?’

  Sexton smiled. He stretched both arms up to the ceiling, and then leaned over and tried to touch his toes, stopping midway when his belly got in the way.

  ‘Fuck, I think I really might have done my back in now,’ he said. ‘When do we start, chief?’

  ‘Now. We’re going to the meat plant where Derek works. I need to talk to him. Don’t look at me like that; I said “talk to him”, not “arrest him”. If I’m right, he’s got nothing to hide and will cooperate fully.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’ Sexton asked.

  Jo pretended she hadn’t heard, so she wouldn’t have to answer. It would only have led to a row.

  9

  AFTER FILLING UP her car in the forecourt just a mile from Nuns Cross, Liz selected the credit card least likely to be declined from her bag, telling the cashier to put a car wash on the bill while he was at it. She tapped her foot, waiting the nerve-racking couple of minutes for it to go through. There was a shopping centre in Nutgrove nearby that did valeting. She planned to take it there next. She wouldn’t be able to relax until she’d had the car cleaned to within an inch of its life, even if it was midday and she was running late for work.

  Breathing a sigh of relief as the teller handed over her receipt, card and car-wash chit, she went back to worrying about her son as she headed out to the pumps. Liz had given up work when Conor was first diagnosed, packing in her job as a secretary so she’d have the time to source and prepare the right kind of mood food, drop and collect him from occupational and speech therapy, and bring him for one evaluation after another. He hadn’t been able to string a coherent sentence together until he was eight, but he was making incredible progress now, and if he got a place in that school it would all have been worth it.

  A school like that could set him up for life, and not just with an education. He’d have contacts in all the right places when it came to getting a good job, the kind of qualifications that meant the difference between being an eccentric and an oddball. Dyspraxia went hand in hand with his condition, making him unable to organize his thoughts and really bad at simple things like cleaning up. He was going to need a good income to be able to afford a cleaner and the kind of help that would make him independent of his parents. She and Derek wouldn’t be around for ever, and with no siblings Conor would always have to fend for himself. Liz was determined to give him the best start in life, and right now that meant keeping the finger of suspicion away from Derek.

  Pulling the handle of the driver’s door, she got back into the car, glancing at herself in the mirror. Liz put her hands on either side of her face and pulled away the worry lines and the bags under her brown eyes. She tried to frizz a bit of life into her red hair. It looked so lank and lifeless these days. Not like Ellen’s. Hers had been strawberry blonde, and so full. Liz closed her eyes and made a conscious effort to stop her emotions from going downhill. This was not about Ellen any more, it was about Conor. It felt like she was worrying all the time, and she knew if she carried on like this she was headed for an early grave. But after twenty years, she had a good idea how people’s minds worked. If Derek was pulled in for questioning over Amanda’s murder, they’d say the chance of Liz having a sister and a neighbour murdered in a lifetime was one in a million, unless she was married to someone like Fred West. Conor would go from being a special-needs kid to a murderer’s son. ‘Like father like son,’ they’d say. He’d be treated like a weirdo.

  Checking the code on the chit she’d just purchased, she stretched her right arm out the window to enter the numbers on the car-wash keypad. The green car-shaped light started flashing. Liz pressed the clutch, put the car in first, and guided it in over the grid draining the excess water, which faced a set of multicoloured rollers. They started to whirr, the noise building.

  What all the people who’d felt sorry for her over the years didn’t realize was that she’d become a fighter. What had happened to Ellen had made her as tough as nails. She carried a can of Mace permanently in her bag, and she’d signed up to enough self-defence courses to learn exactly how to jab her elbow into an attacker’s balls, whack her fist into his chin, and stamp on his instep while screaming ‘No’, should he grab her from behind. She’d read all of Stephen King’s books, and still watched every crime drama going on telly, wanting to bring it on, to prove to herself nothing could ever hurt her that much again. She was acutely aware that there was one exception. If anything happened to Conor, it would kill her.

  The red came on and she lowered her right foot on the brake, put the gearstick into neutral and pulled up the handbrake. She reached into her handbag on the passenger seat for her tube of foundation. Then, with a start, she realized that she hadn’t screwed off the bloody aerial. She’d lost one before; they cost a fortune to replace. She glanced at the rollers; they were spinning faster now, but still not moving towards the car, meaning there was still time. Dropping the make-up back in her bag, she pulled the door handle and hopped out. The driver of a beat-up Honda Civic queuing up behind her started to flash its headlights on and off and hoot the horn to warn her that what she was doing was lunacy. Liz didn’t have time to get into it with him.

  Standing at the back of the car, she turned the aerial anticlockwise as fast as she could, managing to jump back into the car before the rollers hit. She leaned forwards to the dash to try and root out a CD she liked. A bit of music might help relax her a bit. Something upbeat. Selecting Kylie’s Greatest Hits, she turned the volume up to high just as the sprinklers swept great sheets of water and suds over the windows. She shook droplets from her hair and watched the windscreen turn white like someone had draped a sheet over it. The noi
se outside and in was deafening. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic, she thought, as a solid horizontal bar came straight for the windscreen, blowing away the soapy water and climbing up towards the roof.

  The rollers began to spin so fast the multicolours blurred into one as they swept towards the car. Something in the rear view caught her eye and Liz turned, horrified to see a great hulk of a man sitting in the back. Her breath caught in the bottom of her throat. Her hand moved to the handle, but the rollers were on either side of the door now, there was no going anywhere …

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, putting an arm forward through the gap between the seats and resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘We haven’t met, but I live in Nuns Cross. My name’s George …’

  Liz gasped, put her hand on her chest and took a big gulp of air. Her heart felt actual physical pain. Her eyes blinked rapidly and when her hand stopped shaking she stuttered, ‘How did you get there …? ’

  He took his hand back.

  ‘I was parked right behind you. I tried to get your attention because I need to have a word. I called to your house earlier, but you weren’t home. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw you getting out of the car. I had to hop in quickly or I’d have been drowned.’

  Liz was still frozen in shock. She needed to use a loo badly, had almost wet herself in the horror of the moment. Slowly, she twisted around to study him properly. She recognized him all right. He had a round, ruddy face and a goatee. He normally didn’t drive that car. She’d often passed him in a clamper’s van. She’d never heard him speak before. His accent was inner-city Dublin. It reminded her that Derek had mentioned having a run-in with him a couple of years back.

  ‘That guy is either brain-dead or seriously fucked up,’ Derek had said, after he’d had to fork out eighty euro for parking illegally outside a hospital to get Conor in as quickly as possible after some scrape he’d long since recovered from.

  ‘You scared the life out of me,’ Liz said.

  ‘Yep, if you wanted to do away with someone, I guess this would be the perfect way, right?’ The man moved his hands either side of her neck, and pretended to choke her.