Unti Lucy Black Novel #3

by Brian McGilloway

  “I see,” she said, impassively.

  Chapter Twenty-­One

  “DUFFY SENIOR WASN’T happy to hear you’d gone downstairs,” Fleming told her in the car after they’d left.

  “He’ll be even less happy to hear that his son is having sex with one of their client’s children,” Lucy said.

  Fleming grimaced. “With a dead body out in the driveway, too,” he added.

  “I never took you to be squeamish,” Lucy joked.

  “Sex and death,” Fleming said.

  “What?”

  “I remember I had an English teacher who told us that all poetry is about either sex or death. Or sometimes both,” Fleming said, glancing out the window. “Maybe it’s that primal urge, attempting to create new life in the face of death.”

  Lucy glanced across at him, her eyebrow raised. “That’s very deep.”

  Fleming nodded. “Or maybe it’s just that most poets are perverts.”

  “Or most English teachers are,” Lucy joked.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Fleming spoke again. “I remember the poem, too. ‘My Son, My Executioner.’ ”

  Lucy nodded, unsure what else to say.

  “Bloody good poem,” Fleming concluded. “And that’s saying something. One of those things you only understood after you’d left and had your own kids.”

  “How is your daughter?” Lucy asked cautiously. Fleming’s ex-­wife and daughter had moved to Australia the year before and, in doing so, had precipitated his first slide back into drinking in years. It had taken a suspension from work to get him back on his feet.

  “Great,” he said. “She seems to like it over there. I might go over and see her at some stage.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “How’s all with you?” Fleming asked, in reciprocation. “How’s Robbie doing?”

  “He’s okay,” Lucy said, realizing that she’d intended to call with him to speak to Helen about Doreen’s burglary. “He uses a walking stick to get around sometimes. He still has a limp.”

  “He’s lucky it’s only a limp he has,” Fleming commented.

  Robbie had borne the brunt of a small explosive device attached to Lucy’s car during a previous case she had worked. The device had not detonated properly, but had still caused damage to Robbie’s leg. In addition to the walking stick, he was increasingly relying on pain relief to help him function.

  “And what about you and him? Still going strong?” Fleming added.

  Lucy hesitated. “I’m not sure ‘strong’ would be quite the right word for it. I still call to visit him, but things are complicated.”

  “Things aren’t complicated,” Fleming countered. “Being a cop screws with every relationship you have. Dealing with horrible stuff and death all day, then trying to have a relationship. Civilians can’t handle it.”

  “Death and sex again,” Lucy reflected. She realized she’d described their relationship twice as “complicated.” The complication was her: the guilt she felt at what had happened to Robbie, and the nagging worry that she continued to stay with him primarily because of that guilt. Rather than dealing with it, Lucy hoped that sidelining it would give her space to think it through more clearly. So far, that strategy hadn’t proven too successful.

  “So, what’s your thinking about Duffy then? Is he telling the truth?” Fleming asked to fill the silence in the car.

  “Duffy claimed he was in her house for almost an hour and a half, with the van in the drive. If they were having sex, or in the shower, as he claims, then perhaps someone could have swapped over the bodies in the driveway without his knowledge. Or maybe he was set up by this girlfriend, Lisa Kerns.”

  “It would need to be a secluded driveway for someone to swap a body without it being seen by the neighbors,” Fleming commented. “You’d imagine someone would have reported it otherwise.”

  IT TRANSPIRED THAT it was, indeed, secluded. The house was set back from the neighboring ones, the garden enshadowed by thick fir trees, which formed a solid hedge the whole way around the perimeter, hiding the driveway completely.

  Lisa Kerns looked slimmer than the CCTV image suggested, though she was undoubtedly the girl in the image. Her face was drawn in panic as she opened the door and saw Lucy and Tom Fleming standing there, Lucy with her warrant card on display.

  “Is it Cathy? Has something happened Cathy?” she asked in response to Lucy asking if she was Lisa Kerns.

  “Who’s Cathy?”

  “My sister,” she said, pleadingly. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Lucy said. “It’s nothing like that, Miss Kerns. We need to speak to you about your boyfriend, Ciaran Duffy.”

  “Ciaran? What about him?”

  “Can we come in?” Lucy asked, motioning to step forward.

  “Of course. It’s definitely not Cathy?”

  “Definitely not! Look, is your mum or anyone about?” Lucy asked, reluctant to broach the subject of how she and Duffy had spent Monday afternoon, without first checking that there were no inappropriate ears listening.

  “My mum’s dead. And my dad now. It’s just me and Cathy.”

  That explained her reaction, Lucy thought. The girl was obviously terrified of being alone. Lucy wondered if that explained her relationship with Duffy; was she so scared it had driven her to the first welcoming arms she found after her father’s death?

  “Look, we’re trying to trace the whereabouts of Ciaran on Monday afternoon. You went to Belfast with him, is that right?”

  Lisa nodded. “Cathy’s iPhone was broken; she dropped it in the toilet of all places. She was devastated. I wanted to take it up to the Apple Store to get it replaced.”

  “What time did you leave at?”

  “About 3:30. I made it just before they closed. Ciaran dropped me off on his way to the crematorium.”

  “Did you and Ciaran spend some time here before you left?”

  Lisa’s expression furrowed in thought. “A minute or two, maybe. I think he asked to use the toilet; that was it. I’m not fussed on having ­people I don’t really know in the house.”

  Lucy looked across to Fleming, who raised his eyebrows speculatively.

  “You’re sure Ciaran wasn’t here for longer than that?”

  Lisa looked to Fleming, then back at Lucy. “Of course. Why?”

  “Ciaran told us he was here from after 2 p.m. He said you and he had sex, then showered, before going to Belfast.”

  The girl rose suddenly. “What?” she exclaimed. “He said what?”

  “It’s no crime if you did, Lisa,” Fleming said. “We’re not interested in what you were doing. Only how long you were here for.”

  “We did not have—­I barely know him. After Dad died, he was very good, calling to check we were okay, sorting out things with the grave. That was it. He called on Sunday to see how we were doing and I told him about Cathy’s phone. He offered me a lift; said he had a run to do to Belfast the next day and would be away for a few hours. He’d drop me in town and collect me again after to bring me home. I thought he was being nice.” She sat again, then raised her hands to her face. “Why would he say that? Asshole!”

  Fleming stood and glanced out the window at the driveway. “Have you other family round about?”

  “An uncle and aunt in Dungiven,” Lisa said. “My dad’s sister. Why?”

  He shook his head, as if dismissing his own thoughts rather than her question. “Did you open the coffin on the way to Belfast? Or did you see anyone else interfering with it in anyway?”

  The girl stared at him with disgust. “I’ve seen too many dead ­people in my life already. Riding in the same van as one was disturbing enough; I’d not have agreed to go up with him if I’d known he’d have a coffin in the back, but by the time I found out, I’d already promised Cathy I’d get her phone
fixed. Why would you think I’d want to see a corpse? I’ve seen two recently, both my parents, three years apart. I don’t need to see another fucking body ever again.”

  She began to shudder, plump tears dripping from her eyes, though she made no attempt to stymie them.

  “I’m sorry for asking, Miss Kerns,” Fleming said. “It’s part of our inquiry. The body that was taken to Belfast was not the one it should have been. Someone swapped the bodies and we can’t work out who or where.”

  “You’re sure it was 3:30 when Ciaran called?” Lucy asked, moving to the girl and putting her arm around her.

  She nodded. “Cathy had band practice. She was collected at 3:15 by her friend’s mother. I hung out a washing, then Ciaran arrived.”

  “What age are you, Lisa?”

  The girl looked at her, as if attempting to guess the angle to the question. “Eighteen,” she said, slowly. “Why?”

  Lucy shook her head. At thirty, she was barely able to keep on top of the work in the house and she lived alone. Here was this girl, barely an adult herself, acting as both mother and sister to her younger sibling and, seemingly, doing a good job of both. “Cathy’s very lucky she’s got someone like you to look out for her. If you ever need anything, give me a call.” She handed the girl her card. “I mean it. Anything at all. Just call.”

  Fleming moved across. “I am sorry about the questions, Miss Kerns,” he said. “They had to be asked. I’m sorry if they offended you.”

  THEY DID NOT even have time to discuss what she had told them, for, as they left the house, Fleming’s phone rang. Lucy listened to Fleming’s responses, unable to fill in the gaps.

  “We didn’t . . . He’s . . . Are you sure? . . . When? We’ll look into it.”

  He hung up. “That was the station. Ciaran Duffy has done a runner,” he said. “His father came down to help him with the embalming and he’d vanished. He’s wondering what we said that could have made his son run away.”

  Chapter Twenty-­Two

  THEY RETURNED TO the PPU Block in Maydown station. Fleming had agreed to contact the City Center Initiative about the image of the car Colm Heaney claimed to have seen. Lucy, meanwhile, called Gabriel Duffy to get further details about his son’s disappearance. Avoiding making such calls, Fleming said, was one of the few perks of promotion.

  Lucy listened to Duffy’s complaints without commenting on their suspicions that his son had been involved in swapping Stuart Carlisle’s body with whoever had ended up in the coffin. For all she knew, she reasoned, the father could have been complicit in it. Instead, she assured Gabriel Duffy that his son had not been missing long enough to warrant too much worry. Still, she took details of the boy’s phone number and bank account details and agreed to watch both if he hadn’t reappeared by the following day.

  Having done so, she remembered she’d promised Doreen Jeffries that she’d get someone to come out to her house. She knew if she put in an official request, it could take days to process, considering Burns’s frequent complaints about being understaffed. Instead, she called through directly to a Forensics technician, Tony Clarke, with whom she had worked on an earlier case, and asked him to fit it in.

  “We’re up to our neck in crap, Lucy,” Clarke protested. “Literally. We’ve been shifting through all the rubbish that was pulled from the compactor to make sure we’ve not missed any of the evidence in the ‘Bin-­man killing’ and I’ve two more out sifting through bins in an alleyway, thanks to your boss.”

  “I know,” Lucy said, recognizing that the protest was more to elicit sympathy than a prelude to refusal. “I’m sure you’re stretched thin. I’d really appreciate it, though,” she added. “She’s a lovely old woman. It was her life’s collection of jewelry. From her late husband,” she added. “She’s terrified to stay in the house alone and I’d really like to be able to get the place cleaned up and back to normal for her.”

  There was silence for a moment, then Clarke agreed. “Enough with the guilt trip,” he said. “I’ll get someone out. Or I’ll do it myself.”

  “You’re a star, Tony. Can you send the results to me rather than going through the system?” Lucy added. If, as she expected, Helen Dexter’s prints were found on the jewelry box, she wanted the opportunity to try to deal with it without it being processed and someone in CID picking up on it as a quick and easy case to close. Besides, Burns would wonder why she was handling a burglary.

  She heard her phone beeping to indicate she had another call coming in. She glanced at the number but did not recognize it. Thanking Clarke, she ended his call and answered the other.

  “DS Black,” she said.

  “Is that the woman cop from the railway museum,” a girl’s voice asked.

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “Who is this?”

  “I think I know where Crackers died,” the voice said.

  THE BUILDING, LOCATED in Waterloo Place, had housed a bank at one stage but, several years earlier, when the market collapsed, they’d closed up a number of their branches and relocated out of town to a single unit where the rent was cheaper. Many of the high street businesses were closing down or cutting back, and the Poundlands and Quick Cash shops which had replaced them were operating on too tight a profit margin to be able to afford the rental for the whole block, meaning that on many streets, only a handful of units would be active in any row. Besides, much of the city center trade had shifted to the industrial parks and supermarket complexes out of town.

  Despite that, from a distance, the abandoned building looked to be in state of good repair. It was only as Lucy and Fleming drew nearer that they realized that it was one of the buildings that had been given a false frontage. The windows had been boarded up with sheets of wood, painted to look like windows, showing through to blackness. The main door was, ironically, another solid sheet of wood, painted to look like a large green wooden door.

  “Maybe Jim Lowe designed it,” Fleming nodded, then glanced at Lucy’s unresponsive expression. “The song? ‘Green Door’? I’m wasted on you, you do know that,” he said.

  “I only know the Shakin’ Stevens version,” Lucy said. “That’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “Understandably,” Fleming agreed. “So, where’s your caller?”

  Lucy stood outside the building and, turning, surveyed Waterloo Place itself. It was, Lucy realized, shaped like a capital A, with one upright leading up from the Strand Road and up Waterloo Street, an incline lined with pubs. The other leg ran across toward the Guildhall. The triangular space in between was a pedestrian area, at the center of which was a seating area. Above it, dominating the far end, was a large LCD screen which had been erected during the London 2012 Olympics and which remained, silently relaying images of great sporting achievements over the heads of those shuffling beneath, trying to get their shopping and get home. Lucy knew there had been statues of emigrants in the Place for some time, to mark the multitude who had had to leave Ireland for a new life somewhere else during the Famine years. She realized with some surprise that the statues were gone.

  “Were there not statues of kids and that here?” she asked Fleming.

  “They moved them to Sainsbury’s along the river,” Fleming said. “To the point from which they would have departed.” He scanned the area the moment, then added, “You could say they’ve emigrated.”

  Lucy smiled, if only to keep him happy. She’d known him long enough to know that his good humor was a facade itself. He’d not mentioned Terry Haynes since, but she wondered as to the effect the loss of an AA sponsor might be having on him.

  “There we go,” he said, pointing. Lucy followed his gaze and spotted someone she recognized. Sitting on one of the benches outside Supervalu was a girl, pretending to watch the silent footage of an athletics competition playing out on the screen above her. However, every so often she would glance across at Lucy and Fleming. She smoked a tight roll-­up cigarette a
nd sat, one leg tucked under her bottom, the flash of the red sneakers unmistakable.

  When she saw that Lucy had spotted her, the girl straightened, nipped off the tip of her cigarette, and stood. She wore a light vest top, which accentuated the narrowness of her frame and the thinness of her shoulders and upper arms. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and began walking toward the Guildhall, passing the bank building on her left without glancing at either Lucy or Fleming.

  “Let’s go,” Lucy said. “She doesn’t want to be seen helping us.”

  They followed her alongside the city’s Walls, as if toward Guildhall Square, past the lines of stalls set out by street traders hoping to capitalize not just on the good weather, but on the influx of tourists they hoped the City of Culture year would bring. Then she cut suddenly to her right, in through Magazine Gate. Lucy and Fleming followed, realizing that the girl had, just inside the gateway, climbed onto the steps to her right, which would take her up onto the Walls. In doing so, she was now standing at the portion of the Walls against which abutted the rear of the old bank building.

  When she saw them approach, she moved across to one of the rear windows on the first floor of the bank, but actually at chest level to the girl in her elevated position on the Walls, and she pulled back the board on the window. Behind remained the glassless frame of the original window, giving way to what would, at one stage, have been an office but which now was now in considerable disrepair. The girl glanced at Lucy, then climbed in.

  “Jesus, I’ll never fit in there,” said Fleming.

  “I’ll go in with her,” Lucy said.

  “I’ll go in through the front,” Fleming protested.

  “It’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “I’ll call if I need support.”

  Using the stonework at the top of the Walls for leverage, she hoisted herself up, then dropped down in through the open window frame. “Don’t stray too far, please,” she added.

  “Pull the board closed again,” the girl said. “Leave a gap for light.”