Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I think it’s the reporter,’ Jo said, feeling a rush of adrenalin. ‘I think it’s two reporters …’ she continued aloud as her brain teased things out. ‘Niall Toland’s not being led around by the nose by the killer. Derek Carpenter is.’

  ‘Derek didn’t do it,’ Dan said.

  ‘I know,’ Jo snapped. But if her own husband didn’t trust her enough to tell her what was going on, why should she be bothered to discuss it with him any further? Reaching for her dressing gown, she hurried out to the hall to make some calls as Dan pulled the duvet up to his chin and turned his back on her.

  Sunday

  51

  FOUR THIRTY IN the morning, and Paul Bell sped along the narrow military mountain pass, taking regular over-the-shoulder glances into the back seat while scanning every angle for somewhere to pull in and dump the woman’s body. He smoothed his hair with a set of chewed fingernails as he tried to calm Niall Toland down. Panicking wasn’t going to help the situation. But lying stretched out across Niall’s legs, her torso gripped between his arms, was one of Paul’s neighbours, the solicitor, Amanda Wells. Paul had arranged to meet Niall at Paul’s old home in Nuns Cross, to discuss their plot to kidnap a baby and cash in on the newspaper reward. He hadn’t been back since the eviction, but he’d thought his old house would be perfect for meetings because it was at the end of the cul-de-sac and bordered a culvert to a convent and he needed somewhere to keep the baby. Thanks to an ancient right of way, it was also the only spot where you could get in and out of the gated community without going through the key-pad entrance. But they’d found Amanda’s lifeless body waiting for them, as well as a bag containing medical paraphernalia – a hypodermic syringe, empty vials, a canister of pills he didn’t recognize, in an old Henry Norton’s bag. Her clothes had been soaked in blood.

  Paul cast another quick look back. Black mascara tracks streaked down Amanda’s face; her signature flaxen-gold hair was matted with vomit. And Mr Nine-to-Five Toland was in some kind of crazy state of denial, wailing and refusing to accept that the dead woman was dead.

  Paul’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and he was leaning slightly forwards, with his lights on full, trying to stay clear of the ditches on either side of the winding road. If he went off it, which, given the banshee noise levels emanating from the back, was not beyond the bounds of possibility, they were going to have to carry the body somewhere to dump it and walk the fuck back.

  The mist was so heavy, it was like driving with a set of net curtains over the windscreen. He honked hard whenever he hit a complete blind spot, before hitting enough straight road to take another quick look back.

  ‘She just opened her eyes and looked at me,’ Niall screamed, between howls.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, she’s dead as fuck,’ Paul shouted back.

  Niall swiped at the tears and snot streaming down his face. ‘She’s not dead, she just moved, or had a fit or something. What did you do to her?’

  ‘How many times do you want me to tell you: NOTHING!’

  Niall went into a complete meltdown. ‘You said you wanted to talk about the story of my career. You said it was about finding a missing baby and getting the kind of money that could set me and Monica and our son up for life into the bargain. That’s why I let you come to visit Monica in hospital. You did not say anything about dumping a woman’s body in the mountains. You lured me into this under false pretences. You killed her. You’re on your own.’

  Paul gritted his jaw. He’d got to know a lot of journalists over the years. The only reason he’d selected Niall as a partner on his big idea to scam a newspaper out of a reward was because he’d found out Niall’s girlfriend was heavily pregnant. It had given him access to the Central Maternity Hospital to scope it out. The reason he’d needed a journalist in the first place was (a) to convince an editor that finding the baby was worth a reward, and (b) to write the story about the stooge who’d be entitled to the reward. Paul knew most of the hacks in town from his own time on the scene, but he’d passed up on the dodgiest ones for the chance of getting one with a pregnant girlfriend onside. If he’d known Niall was such a pussy, he’d have opted for someone who appreciated that sometimes, regularly, life did not go as planned, and would have taken his chances going in and cold-delivering the flowers when the time came …

  ‘Turn back, I want out,’ Niall roared.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Paul shouted over the din. ‘I didn’t kill her, so we’ve got nothing to worry about. The plan we had for tomorrow doesn’t have to change. You’re going to get your baby story, and we’re going to share the reward like we arranged. All you have to do is keep it together. Think about it, how much longer do you think you’ve got in newspapers? The story’s changed by the time newspapers are printed. It’s instant on smartphones, tablets and computer screens. Newspapers can’t compete with that. Advertisers are moving to Google and Facebook because they know everything there is to know about their clients. They reckon by 2043 there’ll be one newspaper reader left out of 312 million people in the States. You and Monica have got to be prepared, to protect yourselves for the future. You’ve got a kid to think about. You don’t want to end up like me. I lost my job, my home and my wife, because I wasn’t prepared. All we have to do is be clever about it and we can still pull it off, and make a few quid while we’re at it. Maybe Jenny will even come back to me, and I’ll be able to afford to get us our pad back.’

  Niall didn’t answer. He was sobbing too much.

  Paul decided now was probably as good a time as any to pitch his idea about how to get them out of this hole.

  ‘I’ve got a plan.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. I want to go back. You said the big story was going to be about a missing baby. You said all I had to do was persuade my editor as soon as the baby was snatched that it would be worth getting in with a reward offer.’

  ‘Right, it is. But first we’ve got to do this missing-woman story. Just think about the difference having that money’s going to make. The minimum your paper will offer is six figures. I know how it works, remember?’

  Paul’s hooded blue eyes narrowed as he went back to monitoring the situation from the rear-view mirror, his right foot pumping the accelerator. He slammed on the brakes as the car went into a skid and juddered to a halt, inches from a boulder. He banged his head off the steering wheel in the process. He took a deep breath and put the car back in gear, starting her up again. He had to focus.

  ‘Listen. One of her neighbours, and mine, was wanted way back in connection with the missing women. You know him too – Derek Carpenter.’

  ‘That bastard?’ Niall asked, drawn in.

  Paul pounced. ‘I’ll bet he’s the one who killed her. So what I’m saying is, if we dump her somewhere linked to him, the cops are going to assume he did it. Right?’

  ‘If Derek killed her it would explain that Henry Norton’s bag being there,’ Niall answered.

  ‘Did you bring it?’

  Niall nodded.

  ‘Then we’ve got a prop,’ Paul said. ‘Do you remember the exact spot where that evil bastard dumped his sister-in-law? I mean the exact spot.’

  ‘Of course,’ Niall said. ‘Take a left at the cross. Oh, sweet Jesus, did you see that? Did you? She just moved again.’

  If he didn’t know better, Paul could have sworn he’d seen a flash of something in the mirror that time. Amanda’s body had jerked or stiffened, like someone having an epileptic fit. But it had to have been some kind of reaction to the motion. He was sure she was gone. A trickle of foam had dried in one corner of her mouth.

  Niall moaned. ‘You have to turn back, she’s not dead.’

  Paul kept talking so Niall would stay with him. ‘If we nail that bastard Derek Carpenter for those women he killed, you’ll end up a hero,’ he said. ‘Trust me, she’s dead as fuck.’

  This time Toland didn’t answer.

  It was seven thirty that evenin
g, and Paul had a problem. Call boxes were a bugger to find these days – it was only a matter of time before they became a thing of the past, too, but coin boxes were not an option, supplying the precise opposite to what Paul needed because he had to use a voice distorter – privacy.

  Paul had had to drive down to the sticks to find one isolated enough to let him talk in peace. The cops would find the number eventually, so it was vital he wasn’t seen.

  People were a lot wiser since the controversy. Personally, Paul didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He’d watched the hounding of his old editor on TV, the way the cameras had jostled her, the smart-arse solutions in the last edition of the newspaper’s crossword encrypted by furious staff, the secret recording of her last address put up on YouTube. It had made him really angry. He’d shouted the real questions at the box when Mr Know-All and himself a member of the press, Jeremy Paxman, had appeared.

  What about all the paedophiles caught trying to rendezvous with kids they’d duped online? What about the match-fixing exposés that saved punters losing their money to the bookies? What about the sex-offenders’ register – how do they think that had come about? What about Fergie charging for access to Andrew? The footballers in romps with hookers?

  Everyone was so high and mighty now about privacy and not wanting to peep under the covers. But they were the ones who’d bought the papers to read the stories. Half the country was listening in on their other half’s messages, finding out what they were up to. They didn’t call it hacking, they called it homework.

  Paul hoped people were happy now they’d castrated their right to know what was really going on. The days of exposing double standards were over. The irony was that most still hadn’t even changed the default security code on their mobiles.

  Personally, he didn’t see the problem with accessing Milly’s phone in the first place. What if they’d found her? Saved her? That was the point, wasn’t it? So what if they’d run a few stories on the back of what they’d heard? Newspapers were in the business of making money. The cops didn’t have the million-pound offers of rewards, that’s where the newspapers came in. The hacks were helping them. That’s why the relationship had become so symbiotic.

  What if the News of the Screws had found Milly? Would anyone have remembered then that the press had hacked her phone in the process? Nobody would have cared about police corruption or press tactics; the end would have justified the means.

  He dialled Niall’s number.

  ‘You a hack?’ Paul asked when the call connected, just like they’d eventually agreed.

  The next morning, Paul met Niall in a laneway near the maternity hospital. Paul was getting the same buzz in his florist’s overalls as he had back in the days when he’d been a wine waiter in the Dorchester. But Niall’s lip was practically quivering as he handed over the bouquet he’d bought. He was bobbing on the balls of his feet, looking anxiously this way, and then that, wiping the beads of perspiration breaking out on his forehead. Paul wanted to slap him one. He was the one with two layers of clothes on, and taking all the risks!

  ‘We shouldn’t have met so close to the building. It’s asking for trouble,’ Niall said.

  Paul rubbed his hands together. ‘You need to get out more, mate. This is the fun part.’

  Niall stared at him like he’d lost it. Paul remembered how that look made him feel when he was a kid. Nothing and nobody was going to turn back the clock. He was somebody now.

  He reached out for Niall’s shirt to swipe away some pollen stains but the smudge made them worse. He squeezed the top of Niall’s arm tight.

  ‘Cheer up. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

  Tuesday

  52

  DR JAMES GRIFFEN’S face was about an inch from Jo’s. Squinting with one eye, he stared through a lens into Jo’s left eye, stepping sideways to do the same to the other. He was as bald as an egg, with rangy limbs and an abrupt manner. His office contained only qualifications on the wall and clinical equipment. There were no photographs of family, no golf trophies on his shelves, no signs of any life outside work.

  Jo had had a frustrating morning, as her team tried to track down Niall Toland and Paul Bell, but there were still no leads, and still no sign of any of the Carpenters. Given all of the blood found in Paul Bell’s house, Jo prayed that Liz and her son were still alive somewhere out there. As well as the McLoughlins they now had George Byrne in custody, charged with kidnapping, but none of them seemed to have any idea where Liz was now.

  The lack of developments had, however made it easier for her to slip out to see Dr Griffen, who had agreed to squeeze Jo in, between scheduled appointments at his consultancy rooms in the Eye and Ear Hospital.

  ‘Thanks for fitting me in,’ Jo said.

  ‘I’m not going to mince words,’ said the doctor, stepping back and flicking the light on again.

  Jo’s throat closed to about the size of a straw. She wished there was someone with her to pat her hand so she could take the news in better, and to tell her everything would be all right, so she could tell them not to say that, and get that rush of anger from sensing someone else’s pity. It would have stopped her feeling sorry for herself. She hadn’t told Dan about this visit.

  She sat up in the exam chair, and transferred her feet to the ground. ‘When have you ever?’ She wished he would look at her; instead he was sitting behind his desk making copious notes with a flash gold fountain pen, and speaking to her like she was an afterthought.

  ‘You need new cornea transplants. You’ve been luckier than most, up to now. I have some clients who’ve required three surgeries in the same number of years.’

  Jo took the seat in front of his desk.

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Straight away. They’ve deteriorated dangerously. The left one’s at the end of the road. The right’s showing worrying signs. I’m putting you on the donor list.’

  ‘Jesus. Can I put it off till things calm down a bit in work?’

  Griffen put his pen down. ‘Do you want me to ask the donor families to hold off making a decision until your downtime? Have you any idea of what they go through? Eyes and hearts are the hardest for them to part with.’

  ‘It just seems very sudden. What do I do now?’

  ‘You go home and pack a hospital bag. Give this to your employer.’ He handed over the sheet he’d been writing on.

  Jo took it and stared.

  ‘When the call comes, you need to be ready.’

  ‘Give me a guestimate? I’ve got a three-year-old. His father can barely get out of bed in the morning without help. My teenage son is doing his Leaving Certificate this year. I’ll need to make arrangements.’

  ‘Tomorrow, the next day … it’s impossible to tell. Listen to the news. And count your blessings that there’s a bank holiday weekend coming. From where you’re sitting right now, the more casualties on the roads the better.’

  53

  SITTING ON THE edge of Chief Superintendent Jo Birmingham’s bed, Paul pushed off his trainers at the heel with his toes, peeled off his sopping towelling socks and dropped them on the floor. He flopped back on the pastel-coloured eiderdown, arms splayed, bare feet planted firmly on the ground. Every part of him hurt, but at least he’d finished the job now.

  As clean-ups went, this one had been hell. Every lunge had reverberated through his aching ribcage as he’d gone down on all fours to scrape and swipe up the endless gunge and grease. He’d lost count of the number of old newspapers and towels required for the mop up. It was close to 12.30 p.m. now, and he was absolutely exhausted, weak as a bloody kitten. Still, it was worth it.

  He’d blagged his way into her house, past her disabled husband, telling him he’d been booked to clean the oven. The husband had put up a bit of resistance, claiming to know nothing about it. But Paul had assured him it was all prearranged, had even cracked a joke about not knowing what his own wife was doing half the time. Hubby dearest had headed out a few minutes ago, tel
ling Paul he’d a physio appointment and asking for his details, wanting to know how long the job would take, and only leaving when he couldn’t get his wife on the phone (because Paul had used a jammer to block the phone signal).

  The key to a good blag was finding out the subject’s weakness, and then playing to it. Paul had been here last night, pretending to read the electricity meter, had cased the place over to establish his bearings, seen how untidy it was through the lit windows as he’d prowled around virtually invisibly in the dark, and had come up with a ruse that would enable him to blag his way in the door. He’d put himself in the shoes of a working woman who was time poor.

  ‘If I am finished before you get back, I’ll just wait outside until you come back and pay me,’ Paul had said.

  The hubby made sure to let Paul know they were both coppers who lived here before finally getting into the taxi waiting at the bottom of the drive, taking a little boy with him.

  Paul could not believe his luck. If he’d known hubby was heading out, he’d have waited until he was gone, and then broken in. He needed to establish where exactly the cops were in their investigation so he could find out who had nearly smashed his loaf in last night, and try and track down Liz.

  There was only one way around what he’d told her. He’d been careless last night, letting his tongue run away with itself. Jo Birmingham’s name was on the card that Liz had had in her pocket. Paul had got the address from a contact in the mobile-phone service provider after citing the number on her card. An hour in front of Jo’s computer was all he’d need to establish where the investigation was at. Blagging his way into a station would have been a hell of a lot more difficult, though stranger things had happened. It wouldn’t have been impossible – contract-cleaning firms were always looking for staff.

  Her laptop was on her bedside locker, and since her hubby was gone, the only thing missing was a gift wrap and a bow. It would give Paul exactly the kind of heads up on the investigation he needed, and now that the baby had been found in his house, the shit could potentially hit the fan.