‘Thanks,’ I said, and he nodded in reply. ‘I’m sorry about Leon,’ I continued. ‘I knew him too. When he was a kid. He was a friend of my younger brother.’
The grey-haired man nodded. ‘He told us,’ he said, raising his can to his mouth and draining off the contents.
‘Can I have a second?’ I said, unwilling to conduct an interview in front of the silent circle assembled before me.
The man paused a moment, as if to show he wasn’t jumping to accommodate me, then struggled to his feet. We walked away from the group and I offered him one of my cigarettes before lighting one for myself. I introduced myself and the man told me his name was Peter.
‘Who told you it was him?’ I asked, sensing that they were already in mourning.
‘A couple of the lads helped pull him out of the water, before the pigs even arrived here.’ He glanced at me and added, ‘No offence.’
‘None taken. Any ideas what might have happened to him?’ I asked.
‘You’d know that better than us,’ he spat. ‘You’re the cop.’
‘Fair enough. Any idea who might want to kill him, then?’
‘I don’t know, man. Leon was one of the good guys. He didn’t make enemies.’
‘Apart from Cathal Hagan and Eligius, you mean,’ I said.
‘I’d start there, then, if I were you,’ he replied bitterly. ‘The Guards had it in for him over the Hagan thing. He told me your crowd beat him in custody.’
‘What was he doing with Janet Moore?’ I asked.
Peter stopped and squinted at me with suspicion. ‘Why?’
‘Were they involved with each other?’
He raised his chin slightly, which I took to be affirmation. Janet would have to be questioned.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday evening. He was going somewhere.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. He got a message.’
‘What about?’
Peter shrugged. ‘To meet someone, I guess. And I don’t know who, before you ask.’ He pinched out his cigarette between his forefinger and thumb. ‘I’d better get back to the rest of them,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the smoke.’
Fearghal was sitting in the car when I went back. His face was puffy and flushed, his eyes red with crying. When I opened the door he hastily rubbed at his face with the heels of his palms, and stretched his jaw muscles.
‘I’m sorry, Fearghal,’ I said, sitting in the seat beside him and placing my hand on his shoulder.
‘Thanks, Benny,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming out with me, too. Sorry if it was a wasted journey. That Superintendent came and told me anyway.’
‘No bother,’ I said.
‘Did you see him?’ Fearghal asked. ‘Leon? How did he look?’
I struggled to think of an appropriate response, but Fearghal had already moved on. ‘I haven’t seen him yet. I have to go to the hospital to identify him.’
I nodded.
‘Might they have got it wrong? Mightn’t it be someone else?’ he asked urgently, his face brightening.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’ He sniffed deeply several times, cleared his throat and turned the key in the ignition. ‘I’ll drop you home before I go to the hospital. I’ll need you to give me directions, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’ll come with you, Fearghal,’ I said. ‘If you want.’
He looked across the car at me and smiled, then his expression crumpled in sobs again and he lowered his head against the steering wheel. I sat beside him in silence, my hand on his shoulder, until the shuddering stopped.
For the second time in a fortnight, I found myself standing in the morgue of Letterkenny Hospital.
Fearghal Bradley studied his brother’s face, as if in so doing he might somehow discover a reason for what had happened. The morgue attendant attempted to adjust the green sheet she’d lowered to expose Leon’s face, in order to cover the shotgun marks, but Fearghal had already spotted them.
‘Someone shot him?’ he asked, his voice rising in incredulity. ‘I thought he drowned.’
The morgue assistant fitted the green sheet back over Leon’s head again and made to move the body back to where it would be examined by the State Pathologist.
‘Why would someone shoot him?’ Fearghal asked me, his hand gripping my lower arm.
‘I don’t know, Fearghal,’ I said. ‘But I promise you, I’ll find out.’
Outside the morgue, Fearghal was given a plastic bag containing those of Leon’s possessions not held by Forensics. As we sat in the car outside, he looked through the assortment: a watch; a Zippo lighter; ear studs; a mobile phone; some washed-out five-euro notes, pulped together.
‘Not much to show for thirty years on this fucking planet, is it?’
‘They’re just things, Fearghal,’ I said. ‘Your memories of Leon are the important things. The friends he had; the people he knew.’
‘Why would someone kill him? I know he could be an arsehole sometimes, but he wasn’t a bad guy,’ he said with an almost pleading tone, as if he needed to convince me of how unworthy his brother was of death.
He left the bag of items on the floor beside me, then started the car. As we drove, I reflected on what Peter had told me. Leon had gone to meet someone. He had got a message.
‘Do you mind if I take a look at Leon’s phone?’ I asked.
‘Why? Do you think it might be important?’ Fearghal said.
‘I don’t know, Fearghal,’ I said. ‘It might not even work from the water. I just want to check it.’
Initially the phone wouldn’t work. I removed the battery and dried it with my shirt-tail, and after a few attempts it came to life. On the Home screen was an image of Leon and Janet Moore, taken at arm’s length by Leon. Their faces were pressed together, both of them smiling, and I was a little embarrassed to be looking at something so intimate.
I looked first at the messages received. The final message he had received was dated early on the morning previous from JANET, who I assumed to be Janet Moore. It read simply: ‘Meet @ 8. McElroys.’ McElroys was the name of a bar in Lifford. It certainly was something that would need to be followed up with Janet Moore.
I flicked into the Sent folder and scrolled through the messages there to see if he had arranged a meeting with anyone, but there was nothing. I scrolled through the list of calls made. Many were to Janet, including, I noted, one at two o’clock on Friday morning, minutes before a call to Fearghal. Leon had obviously called her from Eligius, to tell her of his role in the break-in.
I glanced at the clock on the dash: 10.30. It would be too late to contact Janet Moore now, though I resolved to do so at the earliest opportunity the following day, to find out about the meeting they had had on Friday night. It may well have been the last time Leon had been seen alive. I was also aware that Harry Patterson would be holding a grudge against Leon Bradley, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be putting too much pressure on those working the case. For my part, I needed to know if Janet Moore had met Leon the night before he died.
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday, 15 October
I went to early Mass alone that morning and headed across into Strabane to see Janet Moore.
The small blue sports car I had seen her in was parked on the driveway. I noticed the motorbike her husband had been working on, lying on its side at the edge of the drive, the helmet on the lawn several feet to its left.
I knocked at the door, but no one answered. I hammered louder, stepping back to view the upper windows, but there was no sign of life. Through the glass door I could see that the lights were on in a room at the back of the house, despite the brightness of the morning.
Stepping across the flowerbeds to my left, I reached the window of a room I took to be the living room. It was then that I saw, half hidden from view by the sofa, what I took to be a body.
Calling the emergency services on my
mobile, I ran back to the front door, but it was locked. I skirted the side of the house to see if I could gain entry from the rear, but a six-foot fence enclosed the back yard. Finally I went back to the front of the house and, after several attempts, managed to kick the door in.
My calls were met with silence as I entered the house. Janet Moore’s body lay just inside the living room. She had been laid on her side, her arms in front of her, crossed over each other. Her hair covered her face and her lipstick was smeared around her mouth, as if someone had covered her mouth with a hand. Her muscles were still flexible, but her skin was cold to the touch, suggesting she had been dead for at least a day. I could guess at the cause: there were livid red and purpling bruises on her neck and I could make out the distinctive pattern of finger marks around her throat.
There was nothing more I could do for her. While I could justify breaking in on the grounds that Janet Moore might still have been alive, I was acutely aware that I had no grounds to search the house. Having ascertained that she was dead, I would have to wait for the PSNI to arrive.
I was, however, also aware that Karl Moore’s bike had been abandoned outside the house, which meant that perhaps he too was injured somewhere in the house.
The other downstairs rooms were empty. Taking the stairs two at a time I checked the first-floor rooms next, starting in the bedroom to the front. The double bed was unmade but cold. The next room was a small study, where Janet must have worked. Newspapers stacked a foot high were piled around the floor. Her desk was strewn with files and Dictaphone tapes. The third room looked like a guest bedroom, everything neat, a small teddy bear perched on one of the pillows.
It was in the bathroom that I finally found Karl Moore, lying in front of an opened medicine cabinet. Various bottles of pills lay spilt on the floor around him, alongside an empty bottle of vodka. In the pool of vomit around his head, I could see the remains of several tablets.
Just as I bent to check him for vital signs, I heard someone enter through the front door below. ‘Police!’ he shouted.
‘I’m up in the bathroom,’ I called out in reply.
Just as I turned, Karl Moore sighed so lightly I thought I might have imagined it. I shivered involuntarily.
‘There’s one alive up here!’ I roared, dropping to my knees to check for a pulse. I struggled to find one and in the end grabbed the shaving mirror from the windowsill and held it in front of Moore’s face. Sure enough, light condensation misted its surface.
I shouted for the man making his way upstairs to check for the ambulance I’d called, but even as I did so I could hear the urgent wail of the siren in the distance, getting closer.
Karl Moore was on his way to Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry within ten minutes, an oxygen mask strapped to his face. Janet Moore, however, still lay where I had found her while a PSNI Scene of Crime officer edged around her, taking photographs of the body. Jim Hendry had arrived by now. He wore jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. He tugged at his moustache while I explained to him why I had been at Moore’s house at 10.30 on a Sunday morning.
‘Leon Bradley was contacted by Janet Moore to meet the night before he died. She might have been the last person to see him alive. I wanted to find out if she knew what he had been doing, or where he had gone that night,’ I said.
‘Are you not still suspended?’ Jim asked.
‘Leon was the brother of a friend. I’m doing him a favour.’
Jim grunted something unintelligible. ‘Anything you particularly want us to look out for?’
‘Her phone would be useful. I need to verify that it was definitely her who sent him the message,’ I explained.
Hendry nodded and called to one of the SOCOs, asking him to look for a mobile phone. A few minutes later, the man came out to us in the kitchen and handed us a pink phone.
Hendry snapped on a pair of gloves and began working with it as I stood at his shoulder. He searched the Sent Messages folder and asked me when the message to Bradley had been received.
‘After eight in the morning on Friday,’ I said.
‘It wasn’t sent from this phone,’ he said.
‘Let me see,’ I said, reaching out for the phone, but Hendry held it slightly away from me.
‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you there’s no message here like that.’
‘Maybe she deleted it,’ I suggested.
‘No reason why she would,’ Hendry said. ‘There are plenty of other messages here she hasn’t deleted.’
‘Maybe she wiped the ones to Bradley in case her husband saw them,’ I said, even as Hendry shook his head.
‘No, there are older messages to “Leon” here going back weeks. If she was going to wipe one, she’d wipe them all, surely. Unless it wasn’t her who texted him.’
‘There is one way to find out,’ I said, heading outside for a cigarette and to make a call. I apologized to Fearghal for calling so early in the day, and asked if he could check the number of the phone from which the message was sent to Leon arranging the meeting last Friday. He called me back a few moments later with the number, which I scribbled on the back of my cigarette packet. When I’d finished my smoke, I headed back in and gave Hendry the number to check. He nodded; the message had come from Janet’s phone.
‘Why then did she delete it? It’s innocuous enough in comparison with some of the other messages she’d sent him. Or the ones he’d sent her,’ Hendry said. He had clearly been making his way through the messages while I’d been outside.
‘It proves nothing, either way,’ I said. ‘Though worth keeping in mind. What about voice messages? Anything saved there?’
Hendry played with the phone’s controls, angling the screen and squinting to read it. Having pressed the necessary buttons, he placed the phone to his ear and listened. For several minutes he said nothing. Then he pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. He pressed a button and held the phone out for me to hear.
‘Only one of interest. Sent at two a.m. on Friday,’ he explained, nodding towards the handset.
I heard a tinny voice speak excitedly and realized it was Leon Bradley. I had to listen several times to get the whole message, for in the background I could hear people chanting slogans to do with burning Bush.
‘We got in, Jan. I think I got something – something big. I’m not sure what it is, though. I’ll need you to look at it. I’ll not be able to bring it out, but I’ve stuck copies in the post. I’ll speak to you later, love.’
‘What do you think he’s talking about?’ Hendry asked when I’d finished listening.
‘No idea. If he posted something out to her it might be worth searching the house.’
Hendry and the team worked the house for several hours, though they found nothing that looked to have come from Eligius, nor could they find any signs of forced entry, other than my own, nor anything that would suggest that anyone other than Karl and Janet Moore had been in the house at the time of Janet’s death. Which meant, Hendry concluded, that Karl had probably killed his wife, then taken an overdose himself.
I used the opportunity to check Janet’s study, which was in reality a small bedroom with a desk and several well-stocked bookcases. Her diary lay on the desk beside her laptop.
I read through her appointments for the week previous and noticed that she’d had a meeting arranged with someone called Nuala at 6 on Friday night, two hours before she arranged to meet Leon. She’d written a number in pencil beside the name. Using my own mobile, I tried calling the number, which had a Belfast prefix. An answering machine cut in:
‘Hi, this is Nuala. Leave a message and I’ll call you back when I get a chance.’
I left my name and number and said I wanted to speak to her about a case. Jim Hendry must have heard me speaking for he appeared at the doorway.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘I found her diary. She was to meet someone called Nuala at six on Friday. The contact is a Belfast number, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they were goin
g to meet there. I’ve left a message for her to contact me.’
I realized what I had said just as Hendry’s expression changed.
‘Contact you?’ he said, a little angrily. ‘You’re not even meant to be here, Ben. This is our case.’
‘Sorry, Jim. Force of habit.’
‘We’ll contact her, if we need to,’ Hendry said, taking the diary from me. Fortunately, her number would be saved on my own phone anyway, if I wanted to contact her again.
Jim continued to stand in front of me, diary in hand, looking at me expectantly.
‘What?’ I asked, smiling uncertainly.
‘You need to leave, Ben. Some of the fellas down there are wondering why a suspended Garda officer is working their crime scene.’
‘I . . . I’m sorry, Jim,’ I said, finally. ‘You’re right, of course.’
Jim smiled apologetically and stood back to let me leave the room. He walked down the stairs behind me.
‘Anything further on the missing immigrants?’ I asked.
‘No sign,’ Hendry replied. ‘That’s a dead end, I think.’
A dead end of my creating, I thought.
‘So, do you reckon the hubby did Bradley too?’ Hendry asked.
‘Maybe he followed her, saw them meet, saw them doing whatever. He catches up with Bradley afterwards, kills him, then confronts the wife, kills her, tries to do himself in.’
‘Depressingly likely,’ Hendry said. He looked back at the house. ‘I am sorry about asking you to . . . you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. Then I held out my hand and we shook.
That evening I phoned my brother, Tom, to organize meeting for Leon’s funeral the following morning. We had not seen one another for a month or so and I was looking forward to catching up with him. As children we had fought continually, over toys, over grades in school and, once, over a girl. Tom was three years my junior and, when he turned sixteen, my parents insisted that I take him out with me one Saturday night, ‘to keep him out of trouble’, they’d suggested. We’d gone clubbing and both hit on the same girl, whose name now I can’t even remember. The night ended with the two of us tussling with one another near the dance floor, before the bouncers threw us out. Tom had stomped off in disgust and had not come home till after four in the morning, by which stage my parents had already called the police to look for him. It was several more years before we spent another evening out together.
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 10
