Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  Jo blinked.

  ‘He got them unofficially. He has them, but he doesn’t, if you know what I mean. I’m arranging transcripts.’

  ‘Toland went on and on about protecting sources,’ Jo said, indignant.

  ‘It’s late, Jo. I need to get home to Sal. I can stay another hour, but that’s it.’

  ‘Of course, sorry.’

  Foxy put his hand across the interview-room door to stop her pressing down on the handle. ‘There’s something else breaking. Alfie had the Carpenters’ house turned over as a result of the fortune-teller’s call. They’ve found an old school uniform and a matching shoe to the one linked to Ellen in Derek’s home office in the garden.’

  Jo winced, then had a thought. ‘Hang on, he wouldn’t keep those if he was guilty. He’d have got rid of them years ago.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that they were planted there by the real killer?’ Foxy asked incredulously.

  Jo sighed deeply with frustration. ‘I don’t know yet.’

  Foxy shook his head like he’d given up and lowered his arm, and she stepped into the interview room.

  ‘Tim Casey, this is Chief Superintendent Jo Birmingham,’ Foxy said.

  Jo was still trying to come to terms with the news as she sat down opposite the black-haired secretary in his early thirties and cautioned him. He bore a passing resemblance to Derek – was much the same height, and broad, but thinner, and he had the overly groomed appearance of a man who moisturized his skin and plucked his eyebrows. But despite the resemblance, dressed in his trendy floral shirt, with slim hands that looked manicured, he was the precise opposite of a tradesman like Derek Carpenter.

  Jo had been surprised to hear that Amanda Wells’s secretary was a male, but not taken aback. Amanda was a professional woman who’d lived alone and had virtual friends. She’d had a last meal that had turned into a row with a younger man, who hadn’t come forward, which may have meant there was a romantic interest between them. A male secretary fitted the profile of a career woman who liked to be in control.

  Jo held out her hand and offered Tim a stick of gum. He shook his head.

  ‘You look like I feel: wound up like a spring,’ she said, folding a piece into her mouth. ‘What’s the matter?’

  He touched his forehead. ‘I’ve never been in a police station before; not like this, anyway.’

  ‘You and Amanda weren’t close, then?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Just that I presume you’ve never had a boss murdered, either,’ Jo said, chewing. ‘I’d have thought your first remark would have been about how tragic it all was, and how you’d do anything you could to help, but maybe I’m just an old romantic.’

  He reached into a pocket for a hankie, and ran it over the back of his neck.

  ‘What was she like?’ Jo asked.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘She was a tough nut … in work.’

  ‘How long did you work for her?’

  ‘A few years. I used to have my own business, but it went to the wall. She offered to give me something to tide me over.’

  ‘Big step down for you, wasn’t it? To go from being the boss of your own company, to a woman’s secretary. What was your business?’

  He kept his head lowered. ‘I’m a plumber by trade.’

  ‘A plumber?’ Jo asked.

  ‘There’s nothing out there. Nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, but here’s what I’m trying to figure,’ Jo said. ‘Why does an alpha female like Amanda, a career woman with her own business, a “tough nut” to use your phrase, hire a plumber to do the job of a legal secretary?’

  A flash of something crossed his face.

  Jo tilted her face.

  ‘Was she a tough cookie outside work?’ Jo knew she was on to something. ‘Socialize together, did you?’

  He shifted position on his chair. ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘What about Friday night?’

  He shook his head vigorously. ‘The night she died, no way.’

  ‘You know more than I do if you know for certain that she died on Friday night. I’m still trying to find out the time of death. Anything you want to tell me?’

  He moved sideways in the chair.

  ‘I see you’re wearing a wedding ring,’ Jo said.

  ‘Um humm.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘One.’

  Jo turned to Foxy, and realized he was thinking what she was. ‘Remember I asked you to bring in the restaurant manager for a line-up?’

  ‘Hours ago? I sent him home …’ Foxy said.

  Jo glared. Foxy knew the question was designed to freak the interviewee out.

  ‘… because he lives in an apartment across the road,’ Foxy said with a wink.

  ‘Give him a shout,’ Jo said, turning back to lean across the table. ‘If you’re lying to me … if you’re covering up the fact that you met Amanda on Friday night, now’s your chance to tell me. Because if that restaurant manager picks you out, you’re going to be in a hell of a lot more hot water than if it’s just a simple case of trying to hide your bit on the side from your wife. It’s going to look like you’re covering up because of Amanda’s murder. Do you understand?’

  His eyes filled. ‘It’s not the way it looks.’

  33

  ‘IT LOOKS LIKE he was having an affair with her, they had a fight over the fact that he had a wife, he took the row to heart and killed her, and he tried to frame the suspected serial killer, who he knew was in touch with her – Derek,’ Jo told Foxy on the far side of the interview-room door, keeping her voice hushed. ‘It looks like that’s why he didn’t come forward.’

  ‘Come on,’ Foxy said. ‘He hasn’t got it in him. We’ve got Derek Carpenter by the short and curlies, and you want me to tell Alfie that a bloke who works as a secretary, someone with manicured hands is replacing his prime suspect, Derek Carpenter, someone who worked in an abattoir and who saved as a trophy the last outfit his wife’s dead sister was seen wearing?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, what you or I think. It’s what a jury might think if a barrister can plant the seed of reasonable doubt. Now organize that line-up and with any luck …’ Jo jabbed her thumb at the interview-room door, ‘… Amanda’s mystery man will keep Alfie off my back long enough for me to listen to the tapes he got of Niall Toland’s recent calls.’

  Jo watched nervously as Foxy told James Harkin, the manager of Genesis, where Amanda had eaten on Friday night, what was required of him in ‘the bunker’ – a windowless room in the bowels of the station – where line-ups were held.

  She sat at a desk in front of a long rectangular wall-panel of one-way glass. Controls on the desk allowed her to be heard inside when giving directions through a microphone, and to record proceedings. Even with the advances in electronics, eyewitness testimony would be required for court, another irony of the system …

  ‘If you recognize the man, step up to him and put your hand on his shoulder like this,’ Foxy told Harkin in the line-up room.

  Harkin, who was gripping his overcoat in front of him like a barrier, nodded. Jo sighed. It was one of the few issues on which she agreed with the civil-liberties brigade. Expecting witnesses to come face to face with suspects in this manner and to physically touch them was archaic and confrontational.

  ‘OK, let’s do it,’ she directed, pressing the microphone button.

  A door to the right opened, and eight men filed in. A line-up could consist of anything from six to ten men, but they all had to be of similar build and colouring.

  Amanda’s secretary, Tim Casey, was third from the right. Most of the rest of the motley crew consisted of men who’d been sitting at the bar next door. Jo also recognized the barber from the shop across the road, and one of the bus drivers from Busáras, opposite.

  ‘That the plumber who specializes in client’s pipes?’ Sexton commented, entering the room and standing behind Jo. ‘He looks like a metrosexual.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Jo said. ‘How did you get on
at the hospital?’

  ‘The guy who delivered flowers snatched the baby,’ Sexton said. ‘Here’s my notes.’

  Jo took the stapled sheets and folded them into her jacket pocket, then went back to watching Harkin survey the men’s faces, willing him to pick Casey. All of the men were looking straight ahead. Casey was sweating profusely from his forehead, and wiping the beads dripping down his face with the back of his arm.

  ‘This is taking the piss,’ Alfie said, bursting through the door like a man possessed. ‘We need Derek Carpenter in there, otherwise there’s no point.’

  ‘I disagree,’ Jo said, her jaw tight. ‘Why would Tim Casey say he was with Amanda on Friday night if he was not?’

  Alfie opened his mouth to say something, but Jo shushed him as through the glass Harkin walked up to Tim Casey, extended an arm and placed it on Casey’s shoulder.

  ‘It doesn’t mean a thing … ’ Alfie said. ‘You know what they’ve just found on the CCTV tapes? Liz Carpenter’s car emerging from the car park where Amanda’s car was last seen, that’s what! You need to …’ He stopped short himself when Casey covered his face with his hands and started to blub so hard he bent over.

  Jo leaned forward and pressed the microphone button. ‘Interview room one,’ she told Foxy, who’d walked in to send the others home.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Alfie said. ‘If someone has to rule him out of Amanda Wells’s murder, it’s going to be me.’

  34

  LIZ HAD GIVEN up trying to work her hands and feet free of the binds. She lay, staring at the ceiling, exhausted. There was no way she could get out of them without help. Her throat was so dry. Where was she? A boxroom? A baby’s nursery? There was a Moses basket and a cot and a nappy-changing table. Everything was dazzlingly pink. But it was too cold here for a baby. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, or who’d taken her here. She couldn’t remember how she’d arrived. She was sore all over.

  Had Derek taken her? Had he been at the circus? Had Conor managed to find him? Dark thoughts raced relentlessly through her head. Was it better that her son was with his father or out there on his own? What should she pray to God for? If Conor had met his father at the circus was that good or bad?

  Who was Derek? Or, more to the point, what was Derek? Did he have some kind of condition? Was he a psychopath, a sociopath, a schizophrenic, bipolar?

  The panic attack came thick and fast, and her breathing became more rapid. It was almost impossible to inhale through the tape covering her mouth. She made a conscious effort to focus on the air travelling in through her nostrils, to try and slow her ribcage down.

  Hearing something move overhead, her gaze shifted back to the ceiling. Where am I? She shivered. The air in her nostrils was musty like it hadn’t been lived in, and goosebumps prickled on her skin with the cold. A shaft of light flooding in through a crack in the curtains from street lamps outside glowed yellow, just the way it did in Nuns Cross.

  Her eyes swept across the ceiling, searching. Then a noise. What was it? Who? Her head shot from side to side. Her heart beat so loud in her ears it almost drowned the sound out. She made out the evenness in the weight, and the space between the sounds. Footsteps. Someone was walking up there in the attic. She strained to listen. Then a different sound, one she recognized. The springy creak her own attic hatch made when it was being opened. Derek had converted theirs and some of the neighbours’. Someone was coming down the ladder. Liz held her breath and calculated. The steps were too heavy to be a woman’s.

  Suddenly the light went on overhead, and she squinted as her eyes stung painfully. A figure in the doorway. A man moving towards her, too small to be Derek. Relief flooded through her veins, and she hurt her face trying to smile through the tape as she realized through the bursts of vision that she knew the man walking towards her. It was her former neighbour, Paul. Was this his house? He and Jenny hadn’t had children, so why was she in a baby’s room? The last time Liz had seen Jenny in the shop, she’d overheard her mention, while talking on her mobile, that she and Paul were going to try IVF. But that had been weeks not months ago. What was Paul doing in the attic? Liz started to squirm and moan through the gag.

  ‘This is going to hurt,’ Paul said, putting his hands on either side of her mouth. ‘Please don’t shout, I’m not supposed to be here. The bailiff would not be happy.’

  Liz smiled as he pulled away the tape. She was next door, then. Thank God. Her smile dropped as another thought occurred to her. Did Paul take me here? He’d lost a lot of weight, and at only five foot five, being skinny made him look as wiry as a jockey. He was wearing a frayed T-shirt and dirty jeans.

  ‘Paul,’ she said hoarsely once he’d stripped off the tape, ‘how did I get here? Who brought me? Did you see him? Was there an old man? Was it Derek? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Jeez, Liz, one question at a time, and not ones you already know the answer to. You were brought here by that arsehole with the clamping truck. I heard him talking to our other neighbour, that wanker, Charles McLoughlin, telling him he was holding you here to lure Derek out in the open. They don’t know I’m here, nobody does. I haven’t seen Derek or an old guy. And last, but not least, what do you think I’m doing here? This is my home, Liz.’

  ‘You have to help me, Paul,’ Liz said. ‘Untie me quickly. Conor’s in danger. He’s out there somewhere. He’s so vulnerable. Even if he’s with Derek, and if he keeps him safe, there are people who want to hurt Derek. They’re desperate. They could do anything, anything! Look what they did to me. I’m not just talking about neighbours. I’m talking about the people he used to work with. They want to kill him. They tried to get to Conor in school. But it’s Derek they really want. My son’s hurt nobody. He’s never had to fend for himself like this. He’s on the autistic spectrum. I’m so scared for him. Please, we have to hurry. I didn’t want to go to the gardaí, but I have to now. There’s a number for one of them in my pocket; we have to ring her.’

  Liz paused only to draw a breath, but long enough to realize Paul was not reacting. He moved to the pocket she gestured to with her head, and reached in to remove the card.

  ‘Jo Birmingham,’ he read, and then blew out a spurt of air like he’d just run a race. ‘Who helped my family in our hour of need, Liz?’ he asked.

  Liz swallowed.

  He gave her a strange smile that made her skin crawl.

  ‘Jeez, just kidding. At least you brought us some hot drinks round on the day of the nightmare. I’ll tell you this, you find out real quick in a situation like that who your friends are, you know? But I don’t think you can ever really know your neighbours.’

  Tears welled up in Liz’s eyes. ‘If you could just untie me, Paul? I know I should have done more for you, and Jenny, Paul. I should have offered to put you up, or something. Where have you been staying?’

  He didn’t so much as turn around. ‘The health board put us up in a hotel. What do you think of that, Liz? It’s cost more than our month’s mortgage to keep us there already. The country’s being run by a bunch of con artists. The pressure was too much on Jenny. IVF causes the hormones to go mental. Then, between me losing my job and us losing our home, we split up.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul. If you untie me, I’ll call the gardaí myself. I should have called them already but I thought I could sort things out. This has gone too far.’

  ‘You know what I miss most about not having a home, Liz? It’s the little things like being able to stick on a kettle and have a cuppa, or have the space for somewhere to keep the crap, you know what I mean?’

  Liz started to cry. ‘I feel so bad that I wasn’t there for you. Please, untie me, Paul.’

  ‘No need to feel guilty. I’m on the up,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve got a new business, and I’m going to get my house back, this house.’

  ‘What kind of business?’ Liz sobbed.

  He sat down on the end of the bed, tapping a temple. ‘All kinds of stuff. Using my loaf mostly, on projects I was alread
y working on. I’m trying to look at things laterally, with one aim in mind: how to make money, real money. No more shit PAYE-be-robbed-blind by the government every budget, and have your pension plundered because it’s considered fair game, too. No more prehistoric newspaper man deciding your job’s gone because he’s got a bad bout of constipation one morning. The other kind of money. The kind that made developers rich during the Celtic tiger days. Free money. That’s what I’m talking about.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘I really need to use the bathroom, Paul. If you could just—’

  He kept going. ‘You take a newspaper, for instance, Liz. Say a reporter writes something that libels someone: you know, gets something wrong, impugns a person’s reputation. Well, that person can get hundreds of thousands of pounds from the newspaper to settle the case. That’s the kind of money that could turn a reporter’s head, make it in their interest to get it wrong, if you see where I’m coming from?’

  ‘You used to work in a newspaper, didn’t you Paul?’ Liz said quietly.

  ‘That’s where I cut my teeth for this new world, learned how to look at things as if everyone’s lying, so to speak.’

  ‘Please, Paul?’

  ‘Everyone in this country is on the take. But they expect the rest of us to work till we drop so they can line their pockets. Well, not me, not any more. From now on it’s strictly get-rich-quick schemes only for me.

  ‘I have to give some credit to Amanda, of course. She gave me the idea after she hired me to find out what skeletons existed in the closets of that prat Charles McLoughlin. She didn’t plan to profiteer in a traditional way from the information. She just intended to keep it to use when she was ready.

  ‘I never realized just how skilled I was. You know what the big lesson I learned when I was a journalist was? The truth doesn’t exist. You take the travel writer who gets a free holiday from the holiday company to write a piece about a resort. You think they’re going to criticize the company that’s picking up the tab? Or the political reporters having lunch with politicians, or the crime writer who has to get to know the cops to keep them sweet to get the inside track, or even the soccer correspondent who has to get the interviews with the big stars who’ll remember the bad stuff if he writes it. Only one newspaper ever wrote the truth, and they shut it down. The News of the World exposed the real truth. And because it pissed off all the celebrities who demanded publicity when they were trying to make it, and wanted to turn it off when it suited them, they all came crying to Lord Justice Leveson.