‘I don’t want to say.’
‘It doesn’t mean you have to say who it was,’ the editor coaxed.
‘Fine. No.’
‘So you trusted an anonymous source without reservation?’ Jo asked incredulously.
The editor did not looked pleased.
‘I checked the information out first, and when it turned out to be true, I passed it over to the gardaí.’
The lawyer’s eyes darted over to Jo.
She’d copped it all right. ‘Does that mean you went up to the mountains and established the murdered woman was there, first, contaminating a crime scene, before ringing it in?’
‘Now I’m a suspect, is that it, chief?’
‘I’m not ruling anything out. You knew where we’d find Amanda’s body. You won’t tell me how. From where I’m sitting you’re acting like someone with something to hide. If you had something to do with what happened to Amanda, you’ve just given the perfect excuse if your DNA’s found up there, haven’t you?’
He laughed and it made Jo see red. The lawyer lifted a hand to indicate that he wanted to get a word in, but Jo got there first. ‘I can have you brought in to the station now, and have your computer and every computer in here seized to find out what information you’re withholding, or you can cooperate and help me find the killer.’
The editor leaned forwards quickly. ‘There won’t be any need for that.’
‘What did your source sound like – accent … age … class?’ Jo pressed.
‘You really expect me to compromise his identity?’
‘Good, we’re getting somewhere.’
Niall rolled his eyes.
‘Did you tape the call?’ Jo asked.
‘Yes,’ Niall said.
‘I want that tape,’ Jo said. ‘I can go to court to get it, or you can cooperate with my inquiry.’
‘It won’t be any use,’ Niall protested, ‘because he always uses a voice distorter.’
‘Always? How many times has he been in touch?’
‘Twice about the body in the mountains.’
‘The first time to tell you where the body was?’
‘Yes.’
‘The second time for what?’
‘To give me a follow-up story on the killer. That story is running in tomorrow’s paper.’
‘He rang you at home or work?’
‘He rang on my mobile.’
‘Both times?’
‘Yes.’
‘How would he have got that number?’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s not top secret.’
‘And the calls you recorded took place when?’
‘Sunday evening and today.’
‘Sunday evening!’ Jo exploded. ‘We didn’t get there until this morning.’
‘For all I knew it could have been a hoax.’
Jo sighed heavily. ‘What did he say at seven thirty on Sunday?’
Niall shrugged. ‘He told me where the body was.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Pretty much. Oh, and he said she was one of the missing women.’
‘And today, what did he say?’
‘He gave me information on the killer.’
‘You can tell her,’ the editor prompted. ‘She’s going to read it tomorrow anyway.’
Niall crossed his arms.
The editor smiled. ‘I can tell you that Niall’s source has told him that the prime suspect for Amanda’s murder has gone on the run.’
Jo blinked. ‘That’s news to me.’ She hoped it would get them off the scent. The last thing she wanted was to have to run a media gauntlet at the moment. ‘Did you corroborate that information with a second source, Niall?’
‘Of course.’
Alfie, Jo decided, sighing.
‘I always knew that Derek Carpenter would strike again,’ Niall said.
‘I thought reporters were supposed to be unbiased?’ Jo pounced.
‘Let’s just say I’ve experienced Derek Carpenter’s temper for myself.’
Jo clicked her fingers, remembering something Sexton had told her about Carpenter attacking a reporter. ‘You’re not the one who was assaulted all those years ago …? ’
He gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘It’s amazing how many people remember that. I still get asked about it.’
‘Does that make you feel important?’ Jo said.
His expression changed.
‘To find yourself right in the middle of the story?’ Jo went on.
He shrugged. ‘You get used to it. It’s an occupational hazard.’
‘You probably feel the missing-women story is personal now, don’t you?’ Jo went on. ‘Like you have a duty to help put that bastard behind bars? Makes a good sound bite, doesn’t it?’
The lawyer looked pointedly at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to be somewhere …’
‘I’m not the one keeping you,’ Jo said, glancing at her phone, which had just beeped with an incoming text. She hoped it was from Foxy, and was letting her know that Liz or Frieda had showed up at the station. But it was from Rory, asking about dinner.
‘I want to know where this is going, too,’ Toland said. ‘There’s another big breaking story I’ve got a lead on. I’ll miss my deadline if I can’t get a move on.’
‘Is it to do with the missing women?’ Jo asked.
Niall was too busy texting himself to answer.
‘No, nothing to do with it,’ the editor said. ‘A baby was snatched from the Central Maternity Hospital this morning. Niall got the tip-off.’
‘Again?’ Jo commented. ‘You’re on a roll.’
He looked away sheepishly.
‘What about the other conversations?’ Jo asked. ‘What else did the source tell you?’
‘What?’ Niall asked.
‘You said the source had contacted you twice about the body in the mountains. What else did he contact you about?’
‘Nothing,’ he snapped. ‘That was just a figure of speech. Twice, that’s it. Look, I have to go.’
‘One last question: Did you, or will you, pay the source who gave you the information on the body in the mountains?’
He didn’t answer. The editor shot him a look.
‘Course not,’ Toland replied, a little too quickly.
Jo’s phone beeped again. This time the text was from Foxy: ‘No sign of Liz in station and no lights on at her home,’ she read. ‘Amanda’s secretary has arrived, and is waiting for you.’
‘I’ve to make a call. I’ll be back,’ Jo said, leaving the room.
Niall sighed heavily.
Outside she rang Foxy. ‘Well, what about the team watching the house? Did they see Liz go out?’
‘Alfie called off the surveillance, Jo. He didn’t want to put Derek off coming home.’
Jo hung her head back briefly, then wound up the interview.
Phoning Sexton as she walked back to the station, she told him to head to the Central Maternity Hospital to interview the mother whose baby had been snatched. She said she would clear it with the DI over in Pearse Street.
‘What’s it got to do with Amanda Wells’s murder?’ Sexton asked.
‘That’s the point – absolutely nothing,’ Jo said, ‘except that the same reporter got the tip-off on both.’
‘Maybe he’s very good,’ Sexton suggested.
‘Or maybe he’s very well connected with sources in the underworld. I want to find out who he’s mixing with, Sexton. I don’t trust him. If he got the tip-off before we were contacted, the same way he did with Amanda Wells, he’s probably connected with some real low lifes. Can you ask that new mum if he’s been in touch? If she says no find out if she’s had any contact with a man with a northern accent. If she says yes ask her if she’d place the accent in Monaghan. And get a time.’
30
SEXTON HATED CRUELTY. He was inured to every kind of horror a city could dream up, and then some. He hadn’t flinched when it had fallen to him to carry in his arms a two-and-a-half-year-old girl whose fa
ce was in the belly of her granny’s bull mastiff, and deliver her to the back of an ambulance because the paramedic was too traumatized, and the little girl’s granny couldn’t tear herself away from the dog she was trying to console.
When he’d had to wrestle a flick knife from a heavily pregnant woman carving the word ‘Rat’ into the forehead of her boyfriend’s dead drugs rival – laid out in his coffin at the time – he’d done the needful, too.
But when a victim’s suffering was prolonged, it got to him every time – hit him in the throat and made his eyes sting. Like now. He looked away quickly, and took a big gasp of air even though the woman he’d come to see had her eyes closed.
‘She said she’s going to stay put until the baby’s back,’ the nurse whispered. ‘We’ve been trying to get her out so we can give her head a scan. She had a nasty bang when she fell.’
They were standing in the sacristy of a tiny room-turned-chapel in the maternity hospital, peering through a chink in the door at the woman in her dressing gown on her knees.
‘I managed to persuade her own mother – the newborn’s granny – to go home and get her a change of clothes,’ the nurse continued. ‘She’s going to have to sleep on a couch here tonight.’
Sexton rubbed his jaw as he glanced at the woman, who was in front of a statue of Our Lady, and muttering constantly.
‘Is there a husband, or a partner?’
‘He said he’d lose it if he didn’t get out there and start looking. He went to the station to find out what he could do.’
‘We’re doing everything we can.’
‘But the poor little mite was only five pounds. I presume that’s why she was picked.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We tag them on the ankle. They slip off the smaller ones all the time because their joints are so malleable. The hospital’s divided into zones. At any point we can see on the computer what zone an electronic tag is in. We don’t allow the mothers to carry the babies if they leave the room. That way if we see anyone carrying a baby in the corridor we know something’s up. Babies can only ever be moved in the cots. That’s how we keep track of them. We found the tag under the mattress in the cot.’
‘I need to talk to her,’ Sexton said.
The nurse nodded, and opened the door for him, explaining in a hushed tone, ‘The baby’s name was Hope,’ as they approached.
‘Is,’ Sexton answered determinedly.
The woman looked up as they neared. Her eyes opened wide at the first sight of them, but dimmed when the nurse shook her head. She looked down at the ground again.
‘Maureen, this is Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton. He wants to talk to you.’
Sexton slid on to the bench alongside. He suspected he was in for several months of waking up in cold sweats. His own wife, Maura, had been pregnant with a little girl when she’d lost her life. Jobs like this brought it all back.
‘I didn’t even get a photo,’ Maureen said. ‘The signs all say no mobile phones, so I didn’t turn it on. All the girls do, but I was afraid it might interfere with the equipment.’
Sexton put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m not going to ask you to go through it all again. I’ve read your statement, and there’s only one thing I need to clarify.’
‘The harder I try, the harder it is to remember Hope’s face.’
‘There was nothing you could have done. This was done to you. You said the man who brought the flowers told you they’d need water. I want you to try and remember exactly what he said.’
She closed her eyes. ‘He came in as I was nursing her. He said she was a beauty and that I needed to put them in water. I said I’d do it later, but he insisted. I wanted to get him out of the room. After that a nurse woke me up. I was on the floor.’
‘Did you hear any kind of an accent?’
She shook her head fretfully.
‘Any tattoos or distinguishing features?’
‘Not that I saw … I wasn’t looking.’
‘What age would you say he was?’
‘Thirty-something, it was hard to tell.’ She put her hand up to her mouth. ‘I just can’t be sure. I mean, I saw him, but I wasn’t looking at him. I didn’t realize how important it would be. Oh God—’
‘You said you put the baby in the cot, right?’
She nodded. ‘He handed me the vase, and asked me to fill it. He said if I left them to sit they’d wilt, that making sure they got water was part of the service. I said it wasn’t a good time. He said it would only take a sec. That was it. It only took three minutes in all, because the nurse came with my painkillers on the hour.’
‘That’s all I wanted to know.’
She gripped Sexton’s wrist as he stood. ‘I was adopted,’ she explained, making eye contact for the first time. ‘I had the best parents any kid could want, a better start than if my real mum had kept me. But I still grew up believing that if I’d been loved, my real mother wouldn’t have let me go. Hope is the only blood relative I have in the world that I know of, and I just want the chance to show her she’s loved.’
Sexton nodded. He knew. He didn’t believe Jo would have sent him here unless she strongly suspected some link with what had happened to Amanda Wells, and even though Jo didn’t believe Derek Carpenter had murdered Amanda, just suspecting there might be a connection between the cases made Sexton want to bring Carpenter to book every bit as much as Alfie did.
31
FRANTIC, LIZ SPRINTED into the crowd, spinning as she tried to squint through the darkness of the big top for any sign of her son. She couldn’t see a thing or make her calling of Conor’s name heard over the drone of four daredevil motorcyclists whizzing around a wrought-iron ball at breakneck speed – inches from collision with each other.
‘Conor!’ she screamed. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it was going to burst through her ribcage.
This was real fear, not like when Ellen vanished. Much as she had loved her sister, this was different. This was her, Liz’s fault. This was stomach-rising-to-her-mouth panic. All his life, she’d dreaded losing Conor – every temperature he’d had as a child she’d been paranoid had meant meningitis; every blind cord was knotted and tied up out of reach; she’d never kept bleach under the sink or left the garden gates open. Why hadn’t she walked away from Dolores and gone straight home when he’d started to get upset?
Dance music pumped from speakers, and the throttle and roar of the motorbikes disorientated her to the point of dizziness. The crowd’s faces were just a sea of black. She tried scaling the rows of seats layered on scaffolding, roaring, ‘Conor!’ over and over as she moved.
A woman in a shiny pink leotard carrying a tray of candyfloss and popcorn tried to grab her sleeve and usher her outside.
Liz pulled free and pushed her way past the legs and shoulders towards the sawdust centre, vaulting the barrier and shouting her son’s name. She bobbed on her feet at different angles to try and be heard. Two burly men in bomber jackets appeared from nowhere, and she ran towards one of them, slapping him on the chest to get his full attention.
‘My son … help me … find him … Conor.’
He answered in a language she didn’t understand, pushing her back by the shoulders. He meant ‘Calm down’, or ‘Stop’, or ‘I don’t speak English’; something that only made her freak out more, because she had to make him understand how bad things were.
‘My son’s disappeared,’ Liz said, slapping him harder. ‘He could have been kidnapped. You look that way, I’ll go here. Turn the lights on.’
The other one moved behind her and joined his arms around her waist to reef her off his mate. Liz turned her head sideways and bit hard into his arm.
He shrieked.
The ringmaster shouted something at them in the same language, gesticulating at the bikes. A clown appeared behind the flap the bikes had driven out of and shouted in English to get her out before there was an accident, and then she was being dragged backwards into the changing area
.
Liz screamed Conor’s name, and then, ‘Police,’ but everyone – the brightly dressed dancers, the acrobats in tights – moved away like her brand of crazy was contagious. She felt like she was in a scene from a horror movie.
With a thump, Liz landed on her back as she was shoved roughly into the car park. She tried to talk through her sobs, to beg them to let her back in because she needed to find her son, but even the woman who’d taken the tickets and had seen her with Conor pulled the shutter of her hatch down at the sight of Liz running up.
Zigzagging through the parked cars, Liz scanned inside each for any sign of Conor or Derek, and had just sprinted back towards the entrance to make another attempt to get in when an arm jerked her neck back and a sweaty hand covered her nose and mouth. A smell of salt and vinegar crisps was making her gag, and because she couldn’t breathe she thought she was going to choke. All the self-defence classes amounted to nothing. Her handbag, containing the can of Mace, fell to the ground. Then everything went black.
32
‘AMANDA’S SECRETARY IS in interview room one,’ Foxy told Jo as she entered the lobby of Store Street Station. Jo checked the clock on the wall against her watch, thinking it couldn’t be 8 p.m. already. According to her watch it was five past.
‘Alfie’s on the warpath,’ Foxy said. ‘That’s why I’ve set you up down here. But it’s only a matter of time before he finds out you’re back.’
Jo clicked her fingers. ‘Liz’s son said they were going to the circus,’ she said, remembering. ‘Find out if there’s a circus …’
‘She was there all right,’ Foxy said. ‘A fortune-teller called Dolores, who also works with Liz in Supersavers, has just rung in claiming Liz all but admitted Derek murdered her sister, and that the kid saw his father. We’re searching the tent and setting up roadblocks around it.’
‘We’re going to need to organize that tap on Toland’s phone,’ Jo said. ‘He told me he had a conversation with his source today. If the killer’s keeping in touch, we need to know what he says.’
Foxy scratched his jaw. ‘Alfie’s already got tapes of two conversations with the source. He’s on good terms with Niall Toland.’
Too Close For Comfort Page 15
