The Broken Shore

by Catriona King

She lifted her finger and pointed at Craig triumphantly. “The very one. Mr Cullen showed me a lot of photos and I picked him out.”

  “You’re sure he wasn’t going grey?”

  She nodded emphatically. “He was dark. He wasn’t old enough to be grey.”

  Craig nodded. Her description fitted Jonno Mulvenna except for three things. Jonno Mulvenna had blue eyes, very blue; he’d noticed them both times they’d met. But the man Jenna Farrelly had seen had brown. Mulvenna also had greying hair and although he was well-preserved he would never pass for thirty. She was describing someone who looked like Mulvenna had when he was young. Davy had checked and viewed every available photograph; there were no younger brothers, cousins, sons or nephews anywhere in the Mulvenna family that fitted the bill. That only left one explanation.

  Craig stood and extended his hand again. “Thank you for that, Mrs Farrelly, and I believe you’ve given us an excellent sketch as well. If you wouldn’t mind waiting here, Chief Inspector Cullen has a car arranged to take you home. Liam?”

  He nodded Liam to follow and they walked to the end of the corridor in silence, then Liam turned to Craig with a questioning look on his face.

  “You’re sure it’s not Mulvenna, boss?”

  “Sorry to rain on your parade, Liam, but not unless he was wearing contact lenses and miraculously became thirty years younger. Mulvenna has blue eyes and greying hair and there’s no way he’d pass for that age.”

  “If it’s not Mulvenna then maybe he has a brother or a son?”

  Craig shook his head. “I got Davy to check with the DVLA and passports. There are no males in Mulvenna’s extended family that fit the bill.”

  Liam went to moan then he saw a smile in Craig’s eyes that said they weren’t dead yet. “What? You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

  Craig nodded but said nothing.

  “You have to tell me, boss. Otherwise it’s like...” He searched around for an abuse that compared. “Cruelty to animals.”

  Liam realised what he’d said at the same time Craig did and they laughed simultaneously.

  “That ranks up there with your best. Nicky will love it.”

  Liam shrugged, knowing it would be back at the office before he was, but he wasn’t letting go of his theme. “Come on, boss. Tell me what makes sense of Mrs Farrelly’s sighting.”

  “I will, I promise you, but first I need to call John.”

  He turned on his heel and pushed through the fire-exit again for another phone call and more air, leaving Liam running through the last ten minutes in his head and coming up blank.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re sure, John?”

  Craig gripped the phone excitedly and willed his friend to repeat his words.

  “Positive. We found a hair under Lissy’s nail and it didn’t belong to her. I’ll start the search once we’ve got the D.N.A..”

  “Do me a favour, add Jonno Mulvenna to your check-list. I’ll give him a call and clear it but I don’t think he’ll object to giving you a sample of D.N.A..”

  John voice was shocked. “You really think he did it? But I thought his alibi held up.”

  “Yes, it did, and no, I don’t think he did it, but I need you to compare his D.N.A. to the hair and tell me what you find.”

  John frowned in concentration. There was only one reason for doing that if he didn’t think Mulvenna was their killer. He thought he was related to whoever was.

  “Does Mulvenna have a son?”

  Craig smiled to himself. He’d known it wouldn’t take John long to work it out.

  “Not as far as we know, but…”

  “But how many men have sons they know nothing about.”

  “Exactly.”

  They fell silent for a moment, imagining how many unknown off-spring they both might have. John gulped, thinking of his misspent youth and the endless sperm donation sessions that had paid for his student beer. He continued briskly.

  “Right. I’ll do that. But what prompted this sudden change of tack?”

  “Liam’s witness I.D.ed Mulvenna as the man she saw Lissy with on the Sunday night, only nearly thirty years younger and with brown eyes.”

  “So you thought, brown-eyed mother and Mulvenna’s sperm. Good call. Have you told Liam yet?”

  “In outline but I’ll give him the detail once you tell me for sure. We’ll keep on pursuing other leads in between.”

  “Leave it with me.”

  The phone clicked off then Craig thought of something else. He pushed open the fire-door and prepared to give uniform some more work.

  ***

  It had been five days since Lucia had received the last creepy text message and four nights of folding herself into her teenage single bed, instead of stretching out on the king-sized divan that she shared with Richard when he was home. She glanced at the pink floral duvet cover that she’d once loved so much, then up at the ‘Take That’ poster emblazoned on the ceiling above and made up her mind. She was going home. Not here, the teenager from hell home, but her own grown-up retreat.

  Lovely and all as her parents were, there was only so much opera a girl could stand first thing in the morning, especially when accompanied by her mother yelling up the stairs at her to ‘come have the breakfast’. She felt as if she was in Groundhog Day with the date somewhere in the ‘90s, and she missed her quiet time, thinking and reading the papers over an espresso before she went to work.

  She cast a last look around the bedroom and then prepared to go downstairs and give her folks the news, bracing herself for their sad looks. Their looks wouldn’t be the main obstacle. After that she had to persuade Annette that it was a good idea. If she didn’t do it properly then her big brother would get involved, and that, everyone could do without.

  ***

  Craig smiled at the composite photo, pleased with the changes they’d made. Jonno Mulvenna’s 1983 mug-shot stared up at him, minus the number beneath his chin and the height markings on the wall behind, but plus a pair of dark brown eyes instead of his own blue. The grey in his hair had been erased and its style had been modified to give it a more noughties cut. Craig remembered some of the seniors at school sporting the shoulder length mullet in Mulvenna’s mug-shot and it hadn’t been a good look even back then.

  He placed the photo beside the sketch Jenna Farrelly had helped work up and gasped. They were identical. This was the man she’d seen. He nodded Ian Flood to run off one hundred copies and picked up the phone to give Liam a call. He was saved the bother by the sound of his booming voice outside in the corridor, telling some unfortunate newbie to ‘let the tea stand next time’.

  Craig yanked open the door and stuck his head out. “Liam, leave the lad alone and come in here and take a look.”

  Liam lumbered in, carrying a cup of tea so pale that at first Craig thought it was milk. He could see his point. He lifted a copy of the photo and waved it in front of Liam’s face.

  “What do you think?”

  Liam sniffed and stared at it as if it was some sort of trick. “What do you mean, what do I think? It’s Jonno Mulvenna when he was young. You showed me it before.”

  Craig laughed and shook his head. “No, it’s not. Well, not the one I showed you anyway.” He tapped the paper. “Look. His eyes and hair have been changed, to bring it up to date and we’ve given him brown eyes.”

  Liam stared again and then nodded, humouring Craig. “Aye, aye. Very good boss. Blue Peter would be proud of you.” He paused for a moment and then stuck his neck out even further. “What’s the point?”

  Craig raised his eyes to heaven. Liam was probably right. The changes were subtle, maybe too much so. Or just maybe it might jog the memory of some passer-by who’d seen Lissy Trainor’s conversation on the promenade.

  “We’re going to circulate it to the troops and get a few put up around town and along the sea front. Someone might recognise him, whoever he is. I’m going to run it past her friends and family and see if it rings any bells.�
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  Liam nodded then looked at his tea and abandoned it as a lost cause. Craig wondered if he’d listened to anything he’d just said, then he smiled. He’d heard all right, and if he asked him to repeat it, it would come back rote. Liam lifted a pile of photocopies and went off to distribute them, while Craig braced himself for the call he had to make and the interview that couldn’t be delayed any more.

  ***

  The man watched as they stapled a picture of his face to the lamppost across the street, and handed them out randomly to passers-by. Even from where he stood he could see that it was a match, they’d even got his hair almost right. How the hell had they done that without knowing who he was? But they didn’t know or they’d have been knocking on his door right now, instead of wasting paper littering the sea front.

  He searched around urgently for the things he needed to take, his eyes lighting on the knife and rope that formed the next part of his plan. The Morphine he’d used for Lissy had been kind and eased her way; he wouldn’t use it kindly this time. He shook the image of Lissy’s clawing hands quickly from his mind. He’d got the dose slightly too low, but she hadn’t clawed for long before she’d finally closed her eyes, to open them again in the next world.

  He snorted to himself. The next world. It was funny how the concept stuck even though he’d abandoned religion long before. A lost cause, that was what his parents had said, as if Christian Charity could suddenly run out. Only so much Christianity to go around and he’d used up his lot. Finally his father had got tired of trying to show him the light with the back of his hand and thrown him onto the streets at fourteen. Fifty pounds, the address of a hostel and the last set of clothes he’d been bought; so much for God’s abundant love. He hadn’t stayed away for long. How could he? After all, his parents had made him what he was.

  He stared into the mirror at one side of the shop. It curved and distorted everything it saw, its only purpose to observe the aisles for thieves. His face stared back, pulled out of shape by the refracting glass. It made him look odd and plain, except that he wasn’t plain, he was handsome. Handsome enough to catch the young church curate’s eye and make him come calling at night on school trips. He’d whispered God’s will in the darkness as he slid his hands under his clothes and said that no-one would listen if he told. His God-fearing parents would never take the word of a child against a holy man. He’d been right, they hadn’t listened, so he’d used his fists on anyone who glanced at him and saw his shame. Until they labelled him hopeless, a lost cause, and finally set him free.

  He was handsome alright. Handsome enough to make girls stare in the street and smile to catch his eye. Even Lissy. He shuddered at the image it conjured and smiled at how she’d made him feel. Happy and confused and most of all angry, but not at her.

  He gathered his things as he thought, counting them in his head. The rope and knife and the sedatives at home, they were everything he would need. He cast a final glance at the uniforms stopping people on the prom then locked the front door and turned the notice to ‘having a ten minute break’. He slipped through the back and into his car then drove to the wood to bide his time.

  ***

  “Annette, honestly. I have to move back home before I take an axe to my Mum’s Pavarotti tapes.”

  Annette laughed despite herself, struggling to maintain her official face.

  “It’s not safe, Lucia. We haven’t got to the bottom of things yet.”

  Lucia rolled her eyes in exasperation and glared at her. Her voice matched.

  “What more is there to find out? I can’t think of anyone who would do this to me. The patrols haven’t seen anyone outside my place since I moved out, and the texts came from a throwaway phone that was bought with cash. There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “You can tell me about the phone-calls.”

  Lucia screwed up her face trying to work out what she meant.

  “What phone-calls? I only got letters and texts.”

  “Oh yes, I meant to say. The letters were written by a man and posted from Belfast somewhere.”

  “How do you know a man wrote them?”

  “Forensics said the sentence construction was male, whatever that means. Anyway, don’t avoid the question. What about the phone-calls? They were on your home line.”

  “I didn’t get any phone-calls, or any messages on my answerphone. Are you sure there were phone-calls?”

  “Certain. They were routed through New York to throw us off the scent. Some virtual phone exchange. Davy’s in contact with them now, trying to trace the calls back. I want you to stay at your folks until we do.”

  Lucia’s next words held a mixture of stubbornness and anguish. “God, Annette, do I really have to?”

  Annette’s silence told her the answer was yes.

  “Well then, you’d better explain to my Mum why her recording of ‘Nessun Dorma’ is in the bin. Then run, because she’s scary when she’s mad.”

  Annette laughed. “Just one more night, I promise. That should give Davy time to trace it, then we’ll catch this pervert and have you back home.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Boss, it was O’Carolan e-mailing Lissy. It took a w…while, but I’ve finally got through the fronts to his e-mail account.”

  Craig stared at the handset trying to catch up. A minute ago he’d been talking to Annette confirming that Darlene McKenna was clear and that Hugh Trainor’s bank accounts and other checks were clean. Neither of them had a motive to kill Lissy; he’d never thought that they had but they’d had to check. Now Davy was on the line without Annette even saying that she’d transferred the call.

  “Hang on a minute, Davy, can you put me back to Annette?”

  Davy paused and gazed around the open-plan floor. Annette was nowhere to be seen.

  “S…sorry but she’s disappeared. Shall I go on?”

  Craig grunted yes and frowned, then listened as Davy ran through the checks he’d used to trace O’Carolan as the man in e-mail correspondence with Lissy. It wasn’t like Annette to be so abrupt, and her disappearing off the floor while he was still on the phone wasn’t her style at all. There was something going on. Perhaps she’d thought he’d have guessed it if she’d kept talking to him on the phone.

  “And then the internet provider managed to track him down. It was James O’Carolan that Lissy had been e-mailing in code.”

  He paused and Craig knew it was his cue. He dragged himself back to the case and asked a question that he knew Davy would answer at length, giving him more time to think.

  “Any joy on breaking their code?”

  Davy launched into encryption speak and Craig returned to his thoughts. Annette’s home life was better now so she wasn’t avoiding him over that, and anything about the case she’d be happy to discuss. It was something else. Something that she specifically didn’t want him to know. That meant that it was personal. Davy’s voice rose excitedly, interrupting his thoughts.

  “And then we managed to find a key w…word.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and the encryption team at The Met. We cracked the code this morning. It was a s…simple cypher but Lissy used French instead of English words to set the key. Really clever.”

  Yes it was, and it relied on the fact that both she and O’Carolan were educated enough to manage it. Craig parked his concerns about Annette and turned one hundred percent back to the case.

  “What did they say?”

  “Ah now, that’s w…where it gets really interesting. Lissy was basically commiserating with O’Carolan about his mother’s death. She initiated the contact between them back in June.”

  “She must have read about the case somewhere and seen that O’Carolan blamed her mother for not putting Wasson away.”

  Davy’s voice grew more excited. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. She’d seen a magazine article he’d w…written, a piece on the victims of crime, and she contacted him. Their correspondence started from there.”

&nbs
p; “Why encrypt it?”

  “If you read some of the things she called her mother, you’d understand, s…sir. They aren’t pretty. Lissy seems to have hated her even more than O’Carolan did.”

  “Forward the decoded versions to me Davy, please. If that’s true then it undermines any idea we have that O’Carolan would have wanted Lissy dead.”

  “Definitely. She seems to have been his main ally in trying to getting an investigation opened into W…Wasson’s part in Veronica Jarvis’ murder.”

  “What? How far had they got with it?”

  “They were still at the planning stage but Lissy was applying to do her Masters in Human Rights Law and she was planning to use it as her dissertation case. S…She’d got accepted onto the course before she was killed and she’d e-mailed O’Carolan to tell him. They were due to meet up the S…Sunday she was killed, to discuss the case. I don’t know w…what time. It wasn’t in the e-mails and there’s nothing about it in her texts.”

  The ramifications of what Davy had found could open a huge can of worms. If Lissy had been working with James O’Carolan to investigate a cover-up that her mother might have led, then that would explain their attempts at code. She may have believed Melanie Trainor read her e-mails and it was her attempt at keeping them secure. What if her mother had found out what she had planned? Her own daughter investigating the case that made her career! It was dynamite, and it would have stymied her hopes of becoming Chief Constable for sure.

  Putting away Jonno Mulvenna had propelled Melanie Trainor into the spotlight and made it impossible for police hierarchy to keep her down because of her sex. If it turned out that Mulvenna had been wrongly convicted, no matter whether she knew about it or not, her career could fold like a house of cards.

  But would she really kill her own child to save her job? She was ruthless; anyone who’d ever worked for her could confirm that. And if the rumours were true she’d used whoever she needed to on her way to the top. But murder her daughter? Craig shook his head, but not as hard as he might have done. He wasn’t sure, and if he wasn’t sure then that meant that somewhere in the back of his mind he thought Melanie Trainor could be involved in her daughter’s death. Had she actually done it? Davy was still talking and Craig interrupted him urgently.