The Irish Connection

by Norma Hanton

  “Patrick was forty nine when he left the flat, so that made him about forty one when I first saw him. I was sitting in that window seat there watching him move in.”

  “Did he have anyone help him move in?” asked Cotton

  “No one, except the removal men that is, no one at all,” continued Agatha. “He seemed to have few things to move in.” she frowned. “Do you know, now I come to think of it, it looked as if he was setting up home for the first time?” She took a sip of her tea then went on. “There were no large pieces of furniture; they were all delivered, bit by bit, later on. Only bags and boxes were carried in that day. Oh! And a bicycle, I remember that, and the car he drove at the time” she smiled at them. “That was because I did my courting in one. My George loved that car. George died a few years back.” She looked at the photograph and sighed. ”I miss him so much.” She flushed slightly, “Sentimental women, Inspector, they must drive you round the bend at times.”

  “Of course not, just take your time, Mrs Moorhead. You’re doing fine,” Cotton, wished all his witnesses were so giving.

  “The vehicle was light blue Morris Minor. Well, to cut a long story short, we would meet in the local shops or in the street or hallway from time to time. You know how it is. We would invite each other in for a cuppa, when he was home for the day, or just take it out into the garden.” She pointed out the window to the blossom filled plot.

  “Once, when I’d been ill, he sent a lovely bouquet of flowers with a beautiful hand painted note that read, ‘I hope the sun rises again soon’. Around the edges he’d painted flowers of all description. It was such a lovely thought I had it framed and hung it in my bedroom.

  For a while he seemed happy and contented. He worked at the university you know, never seemed to ail anything and I never saw him in the company of women.” She looked sternly at them daring them to comment. “Nor of men,” She shook her head sadly and went on. “Then one day I realised that I’d not seen hide or hair of him for almost a week. I was unsure of intruding but was concerned that he might be ill. I was afraid he might be lying there all alone, too ill to get help.” She took a sip of tea. “So, after persuading myself that I was not being a Nosy Parker just a concerned neighbour, I went up to his flat and rang the bell. He didn’t answer. I bent down and looked through the letterbox and was absolutely stunned at what I saw.” She shook her head at the memory. “I’ll never forget it. There was Patrick crouched in the hall with his hands over his ears.” A tear slid down her face and she pulled a lace edged handkerchief from her apron pocket. “He looked terrible. Haggard, unshaven and very scared.” She looked at the two men and went on. “I pulled myself together and called to him that, ‘it was just me’, and ‘could I be of any help to him’. I will never forget the look on his face as he turned toward me. He was absolutely terrified. Then he sort of whimpered, ‘No one can help me now so just leave me alone’ and scuttled along the hall like a crab and went into a room. He called to me and said he was going back home to Ireland, ‘out of this hellish place’ and would be gone by morning. Well, as you can imagine, it shook me to the core, but I decided to keep my own council and returned here.”

  “And you saw no one visiting him prior to that day, no one at all?” Cotton asked.

  “He had no visitors that I saw, Inspector, as I told you before, neither male nor female, except the postman that is.”

  “What was the name of the university he worked at?”

  “Bishops Mount,” Agatha informed him. “Will I continue, Inspector?”

  “Yes please, Mrs Moorhead. Sorry for the interruption.”

  “The next morning I heard his car engine start up. I got out of bed and looked out of the window. I waved, but he never saw me. I watched him drive away. I then looked at the clock as I got back into bed, it was three thirty four. That was the last time I saw the dear man.” She wiped away another tear and then sat bolt upright in her chair.

  “Could you describe Patrick, Mrs Moorhead?” Cotton asked.

  “Patrick was tall, six two I think, thin, even though he polished off my sandwiches like there was no tomorrow, dark, curly, hair, thick eyebrows with brown eyes, dark skinned and quite handsome, in a gypsy sort of way. Anyway, about four weeks after he left those two women moved in. They shared apartment five for a while, until six became vacant.” She stood up and picked up the tea pot, “and that’s all I can tell you Inspector Cotton. If you do find Patrick give him my love and tell him if he needs a friend he knows where I am.” She smiled at them. “More tea anyone,” she continued.

  “No thank you, Mrs Moorhead,” Cotton replied, just as Evans held out his cup. “We have to go now. I appreciate all your help, but if you do think of anything else you can contact me on this number at any time.” He handed her his card. ”Goodbye, and thanks again.”

  On their return to the station Cotton put a call through to the Ballymena police and asked them if they had anything on a Patrick Donovan.

  In a room on the ground floor of Ellis Street station, Duty Sergeant Dale Lucas was giving instructions to the officers that would be involved in the external search for clues at Mulberry Court. Lucas had been through this routine often enough. Rowdy young coppers, all wanting to be the first to find the missing link, that would solve the case and, hopefully, bring them fast promotion.

  “We’ll begin the search in the stairwell, then lift, and finally the gardens and all surrounding areas,” he instructed. “Then we’ll begin all over again and do a floor by floor search beginning at the top and working down. Anything out of the ordinary, no matter how insignificant, will be reported to me. Have you all got that?”

  A hand shot up from the centre of the group. Lucas couldn’t see who it was, but recognised the voice immediately.

  “What about used condoms, Sarge’ do you want them bagged as well?” joked PC Lomax.

  A titter came from the others. There was one in every group. He’d heard it all before.

  “Of course I do, Lomax, and, seeing how eager you are, I’ll assign that job to you. Now are there any sensible questions? No? Then let’s get on with it.”

  It was four days later before Cotton found time to speak with Sergeant Lucas about the search. Unfortunately the Sergeant still had nothing new to report.

  “The search of the flats progressed slowly, but thoroughly, sir. All areas near the apartment are so immaculately clean it was useless. Other than the one partial print, found on the tape still in the player there’s nothing else to report I’m afraid.”

  DI Cotton had just re- read the post mortem results. Both women had been given a knock out dose of Morphine then an overdose of Heroin and finally one of them had her face mutilated. The eye that had been removed was still missing. It had been removed so professionally, according to the pathologist, it looked as though it had been sucked out? There had been no rape, or struggle, and as for robbery, who knows, they’d have to wait and see. Although the total lack of letters, bills and the like in the flat was weird maybe they were just ultra-tidy people who threw away receipts as soon as the bills were paid, but surely there was something outstanding, something waiting to be paid, a dental or doctor’s appointments, or maybe a tax return? Where were these kinds of things? Whoever killed the two women had been very, very thorough.

  Chapter Four

  His telephone began ringing as he opened the front door.

  “Hello,” he began, “this is -.”

  Before he could complete the greeting his mother’s voice broke in, choked yet happy.

  “Eddie, Mandy’s in labour.” No preamble with his mother. She went straight for the jugular. “She’s already in the labour ward so I’ll hang up now. No doubt you’ll want to hurry.” Just for once he’d have liked to hear her loose her cool. “Remember now, drive carefully. You’ll be of no use to her dead.”

  On that cheerful note she hung up.

  He sat on the edge of the bed trying to take it all in. He made a decision and began to dress.

&nb
sp; While waiting on the doorstep for the taxi terrible thoughts came into his mind.

  “What if Mandy died in childbirth?” What if they both died? What if her child were deformed?”

  “Now you’re getting bloody morose,” he told his reflection in the glass of the door. “Just get your arse down there and see if there’s anything you can do to help.”

  He began to waver.

  Mother or not, that child was not his, and he would not be forced into an embarrassing visit just because she could blackmail him with tears. No way. Never! She knew how he’d felt when Mandy broke the news. Dammit all, he was the one being wronged here and visiting Mandy, and her offspring, would not make him feel any better. Why open old wounds? This was stupid!

  He had (and probably still did) love Mandy, and he wished her all the luck in the world, but he had closed that particular door very firmly.

  When the taxi arrived he asked the driver to take him to Ellis Street police station instead.

  Chapter Five

  “What we know so far is that these two women fell out of the sky one night and no one saw them, or spoke to them, or suspected them of any wrong doing, except of course, of being ’stuck up’.” Broom snorted, “How can people live in such close proximity and not know all about their neighbours?”

  “All we know are their names, Caroline Johnston and Dawn Peters, so what are we doing wrong, or not doing, as the case may be?” Cotton banged a hand down on his desk. “We haven’t even found the weapon used to mutilate her face yet, so let’s get our brains in gear and find out what we’ve missed, people.”

  “The pathologist’s pretty sure it was some sort of boning knife which had been used. He suggested it might be the work of a professional butcher.” Broom looked at Cotton, “He said, and I quote, ‘I had a friend who was a butcher and often watched him at work. I really admired his dexterity with a knife. It was poetry in motion. He could cut up any piece of meat in seconds‘, unquote.”

  “The assailant had to have been strong and muscular. It would have been hard to lift those bodies from the bathroom to the bed,” said Lucas. “He presumed that’s where the mutilation had taken place. But how did the killer handle two people at once? Surely they would have fought him off?”

  “I know what you mean, Dale, but the pathologist thinks the women were doped by whatever was put in their coffee. They must have drunk it willingly because there was no sign of bruising around the mouth of either of them.” Cotton threw the file onto a desk. “The killer was strong, there’s no doubt about that, but who the hell was it, that’s what I want to know. And, more importantly, who the hell are these two people. Surely they have one friend or relation in this world that’s missing them.”

  “No relative or friend has come forward since news of the deaths has appeared in the tabloids,” added Kent, “and none have been found.”

  “No doctor has claimed them as patients, nor, for that matter, dentists, and there has been no employer wanting to know where they were.” Broom stood up as if to leave, but was only stretching his legs. “The taxi drivers in the area have no recollection of ever being called to or from either of the two flats. The Ministry of Transport say no vehicles were ever registered to the two women, and yet they hardly seemed the type to use public transport.”

  “And the refuse collection bins were shiny, new and unused.” Smith finished

  “We’ve had all the usual cranks calling in,“ Lucas said, “and the station has, of course, received hundreds of letters from the, ‘I saw them’, ‘I had an affair with one, other, or both of them’, ‘I murdered them with a chopping axe, gun, knife, even, in one call, ‘gas’, brigade.”

  Cotton grimaced. Half of these people rang in habitually when there was a murder in the area and the other half; they just seemed to be sad and lonely or were they just sick in the head?

  “One woman,” continued Lucas, “actually accused her husband of the murders simply because he’d refused to divorce her. We had her arrested for wasting police time.” He laughed, “Her enraged husband promptly left her for his, unknown, younger lover, buying the latter a four carat diamond ring into the bargain. What a waste of manpower.”

  “Each one of the remaining three tenants has been interviewed but, unlike Mrs Moorhead, they had nothing new to add.”

  WPC Alison Watson stood up,

  “I interviewed Mrs Margaret Wilson, in apartment two, when I finally caught up with her. I had to make four visits first. She turned out to be an energetic blonde who, I was informed, was ‘a very busy woman’, and not always available. But I persevered.

  I called at the Wilson’s home only to be told she was at her office, where she raised funds for charity. I went to her place of work, but missed her there.

  A member of staff told me, ‘Mrs Wilson was rarely in the office as her work took her all over the country to do the rather difficult task of raising funds and awareness of the needs of the hospice’. So I took the hint and donated a couple of pounds.

  I returned to the Wilson’s apartment the following day, only to find I’d missed her again, and when I did catch up with her she had nothing to add.”

  She sighed at the memory, giving her amused colleagues a blow by blow account of au pairs attitude.

  ‘Mrs Wilson she is not here, I tell you this yesterday,’ she said, swaying her thick black hair in my face, ‘she is at work.’

  Maria Hernandez was very insistent, ‘You must make the appointment first.’

  I gritted my teeth and asked her, ‘Couldn’t you just give me a number to contact her by?’ but she was adamant. I could contact Mrs Wilson personally and make an appointment with her. Do you know she actually pouted her lips? As if she could impress me with her red lipstick. Then she refused point blank.

  ‘This is impossible. Mrs Wilson she instructed me, I must not give her telephone number to anyone, whatever the circumstances, or she fires me’, she snapped her fingers, ‘just like that.’ She’d looked at me as if I were the enemy. ‘I cannot go to university if I have no work. I have to earn to study, is the only way. If I am sent home Papa will be very angry.’ She sighed deeply, trying no doubt to look melodramatic. ‘He might even make me marry that odious baker and this I could not bear.’

  “Calm down, Miss Hernandez, I quite understand,” I said, “I know how fathers can be. Tell you what, why don’t I go into the kitchen while you ring Mrs Wilson and ask her if you can give the number to me?”

  Then I waited in that huge kitchen as the au pair made the call.

  Maria returned saying’ ‘Mrs Wilson says you will come here tonight at six o’clock and she herself will be glad to help you. OK?’

  At that I was ushered toward the door, but before it had closed completely I heard Maria pick up the telephone in the hall and heard her dialling a number.

  Arriving at apartment two, promptly on six, as instructed, the door was opened by Margaret Wilson who turned out to be very friendly.

  ‘Do come in, constable, I’ll just remove my coat. Do come through to the lounge and we’ll have a cup of coffee while we talk.’

  I was a little surprised when Mrs Wilson appeared to be in her forties, a little old for a woman to begin having children isn’t it?

  I was disappointed to find that Margaret Wilson had very little to add to what we already know.

  ‘As I told the other officers, my husband Nigel is a Captain in the Royal Navy and he is abroad at the moment. The only other people that reside her are my au pair, Maria Hernandez, and my son, David.’ She poured the coffee before continuing. ‘Maria has been with us for almost a year now and we find her most satisfactory. She’s at the university you know, studying to be a vet of all things.’

  “Does she have a regular boyfriend?” I asked.

  Before she could answer me the door to the room opened and the au pair walked in with a tray of sandwiches and practically screamed at me,

  ‘I do not have a boyfriend,’ then she became very agitated. ‘You must not
tell this lie. I know no one in this country, no one. Mrs Wilson she disapproves of the boyfriends and I will not do this. I have no boyfriend now or ever. I am here to look after the little boy only.’

  Her employer had looked shocked at her outburst and said,

  ‘Really, Maria, there is no need to take on so. The constable meant nothing by her question; she is simply seeking information about people who might know the dead women. Calm yourself down and go and bathe David for me.’

  Once she left the room Margaret Wilson went on to tell me that she had Knocked on door of number five once and had asked the woman if she had any spare fuse wire.

  ‘She simply said ‘No’ and shut the door in my face. Since that time, if I’d met the women on their travels, they never replied to my greeting, they merely nodded their head and walked past. So I’d given up speaking to them. They obviously needed their own space, and there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  “As it seemed she’d nothing further to add to the enquiries, I spent five minutes cooing over the freshly bathed Wilson junior and left.”

  She consulted her notebook.

  “The interview with the very slim, and very fashionable, fashion editor, Anna Woodward, who resides in apartment three, was just as futile.”

  A titter went around the room.

  “Put the claws away, Watson, stick to the facts,” said Lucas with a laugh.

  “She told me,” said Watson, mimicking Woodward’s voice, ‘I’m hardly ever in the place for more than a couple of days at a time as I’m usually jetting off abroad to some fashion meet or other. Mind you, I’ve seen the women a couple of times and I really admired the way they dressed. They certainly knew what they looked good in, and they both had the height to carry it off, but they never spoke.’ Then she looked me up and down, sneered, and that was it” Watson finished.

  Apartment four, with it’s out of this world décor, was occupied by two men, David Thornton, make-up artist, and Marcus Wellford, interior designer. They’d been interviewed by PC Tony King.