Unti Lucy Black Novel #3

by Brian McGilloway

  Lucy knew of it, though it had been before she was born. The IRA had exploded two bombs in London, in Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, killing four soldiers, seven bandsmen, and seven horses taking part in the Changing of the Guard.

  “He left?”

  “A mixture of things,” Moore said. “An Irish stable hand wasn’t too popular after an Irish terror bombing. Besides, he had to help put down some of the injured horses. He was never right after it.”

  Lucy replaced the magazine carefully in the open bag, patting back the plastic to look undisturbed.

  “Aaron,” Seamus Moore shouted. “Are you here?”

  “When did you last see him?” Lucy asked.

  Moore glanced at her. “About six months ago,” he said. “We’re not close.”

  “But you bought him this house?”

  Moore nodded. “He’ll not be able to say I never did anything for him. Aaron,” he shouted again, angrily. “Are you here?”

  Lucy moved past him, into the living room. The room was dark, the one window facing out into a narrow yard overshadowed by the rear of the buildings backing onto this one from Artillery Street, which ran parallel to Pump Street.

  An old sofa sat against one wall, though it was covered in black bags of magazines, too, some of which spilled onto the floor. The wall behind it was festooned with horseshoes, of a variety of sizes, each nailed up. In their midst hung a faded picture of the Sacred Heart.

  The air in the room was stale with the smell of dirty clothes, which lay in a mound at the other side of the room. Moore moved past her, sharply pulling up the blinds and opening the small window that gave way out onto the yard.

  “Excuse the mess,” he offered, stepping over a mound of clothing gathered next to an aged television set and moving into the kitchen area. Lucy realized that the set looked almost as old as her own. No wonder Grace had commented on the decor of her house.

  “Jesus,” Lucy heard Moore mutter as he surveyed the state of the kitchen. From where she stood, Lucy could hear the clattering of empty cans on the linoleum floor as Moore kicked them from his path.

  “What exactly is your brother’s malady?” Lucy asked, diplomatically.

  Seamus Moore looked in at her from the kitchen. “He’s a dirty, lazy bastard,” he said.

  Lucy negotiated the mound of clothing and stood next to the window in the hope of catching a breath of fresh air. She looked out at the overgrown scrap of yard, the patch of weeds, though no bigger than a living room rug, almost standing knee high. At its center was a pile of soil, among which were pieces of rubble, though Lucy, glancing around the yard, could not see its obvious source.

  “Is your brother having some work done?” she asked.

  “What?” Moore asked, coming back into the room.

  She gestured at the mound in the yard. “It’s flattening the grass,” she said. “It must have been put there recently.”

  Moore shrugged. “Aaron does a bit of handywork. Did. When he’s dry. He worked on the building sites after he came home.”

  “He’s in construction?” Lucy asked.

  “He was,” Moore said. “He’s not been in years. On account of being a—­”

  “Lazy bastard,” Lucy said, completing his sentence. “You said.”

  Moore stared at her, as if challenging her to show more explicitly her disdain for his attitude.

  “Kamil Krawiec was a builder, too,” Lucy said, instead. “Maybe that’s what connected them? We believe Krawiec was part of a gang laying a driveway for the victim of the burglary. Could Aaron have been part of that gang?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” Moore said. “He didn’t feel the need to earn for himself. No sense of responsibility. No shame. It would appear he was even getting fed at a soup kitchen.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

  Moore raised a finger imperiously, gesturing for her to follow him into the kitchen.

  Lucy squeezed past the piles of bags that cluttered up the entranceway into the kitchen and followed Moore, bristling at the manner in which he had directed her.

  The mess of crumpled beer cans on the floor, which had been visible from the living room, was only a small part of the bigger disarray in the kitchen. The units and worktops were covered with rubbish bags, their necks knotted. Through some of the translucent white plastic of some of the bags, Lucy could see the flies crawling inside.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, echoing Moore’s earlier statement.

  “Look,” Moore said.

  On the windowsill of the kitchen, next to a spider plant whose green fronds hung down into the sink, lay a number of leaflets. Lucy picked the uppermost and saw that, though the leaflets were a variety of colors, they each proclaimed the same information: Hot Food Available. Mon., Wed., Fri. 11 a.m. Opposite the GPO. Great James Street.

  They searched through the rest of the house, quickly checking each room, but Aaron Moore was clearly not there. Despite that, as she left, Lucy could not help but feel that she was missing something.

  It was only as she was driving away that she realized: it was the spider plant in the kitchen, the leaves lush and green, the small plate beneath the pot brimming with water. The heat of the past days would have long dried it out. Someone had been in the house, watering it.

  Chapter Forty-­Two

  FLEMING’S OFFICE DOOR was shut when Lucy let herself into the PPU, though she could hear raised voices from inside. She went up to her office and deposited her bag and coat. The rains of the previous day had cleared the air and, through the small window, high up in the rear wall of the room, the fresh blue of the sky was just visible.

  She opened her bag and took out the ream of sheets from Beaumont. With the best will in the world, she had intended to work through them the previous evening, but her meeting with Fiona had put it out of her mind.

  She began scanning down through the first page, trying to make some sense of the lines of writing, but found herself losing her place as she went. Finally, she pulled over a thin manila folder sitting on the desk and used it as a ruler as she moved down through each name and date. She was just making it to the end of the third page when the voices below grew louder, as if the discussion that had been taking place in Fleming’s office had now moved out into the corridor below.

  There were two voices, one of which, she recognized as Fleming’s. The other, also a male’s, was shriller, raised in objection as Fleming attempted to calm him. Her interest piqued, Lucy went out onto the stairs and glanced down.

  Gabriel Duffy, father of Ciaran, stood in the corridor. “You drove him to it,” he said. “You pushed him into running,” he said.

  “We just wanted to speak with Ciaran,” Fleming said. “I understand you’re angry, but we simply wanted to know who had paid—­”

  “No one paid him!” Duffy shouted.

  “He deposited five thousand pounds in the bank on the day after the body was swapped.”

  “That wasn’t our mistake,” William snapped. “I told you that. You and that girl.”

  Fleming must have noticed Lucy standing watching, for he glanced up over Duffy’s shoulder at her briefly, long enough for Duffy to, likewise, register her presence. He turned to follow Fleming’s glance.

  “You!” he said. “You’re to blame, too, for what happened to my son. Skulking on the stairs.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Duffy,” Lucy said, moving down to them now. “I understand how you feel.”

  “No you don’t,” Duffy spat.

  “Ciaran got involved with ­people he shouldn’t have,” Lucy said. “He was paid to swap a body in the coffin. We believe that whoever paid him to do that probably killed him as well.”

  Duffy stared at her, his mouth a little agape. “Was he killed with an axe?”

  Lucy glanced at Fleming, who seemed equally unsure wha
t to say.

  “I heard that. Is that true?” the man demanded.

  “We’re still waiting on the results of the postmortem,” Fleming said.

  “You can’t even tell the truth, can you?” Duffy said.

  “Some things are best not known,” Lucy offered.

  “Only someone with no children could say that,” Duffy said, the tears brinking on his eyes.

  “DS Black is right, Mr. Duffy,” Fleming said. “You’re best remembering your son as he was. I say that as a father.”

  “How I remember him is hunted to his death by you lot,” Duffy said. “I curse the pair of you.”

  He pushed past Fleming and pulled at the door, which would not open. He turned and scanned the wall, looking for the release catch, thumped it with the soft of his fist, and pushed his way out into the sunlight.

  “Are you okay?” Lucy asked Fleming, who had clearly borne the brunt of his visit.

  “Fucking Burns,” Fleming said. “Burns set him on me.”

  “Maybe not,” Lucy offered.

  Fleming raised his eyebrows skeptically. “How else would he have known to come here? Or about the hatchet?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Line management,” Fleming said. “Control.”

  Lucy cleared her throat, waited for his anger to dissipate. “I think I’ve found a connection between Moore and Krawiec,” she said. “Moore wasn’t home, but I did find fliers for a soup kitchen in Great James Street. Grace, the girl who showed us where Krawiec was killed, told me that she knew he used it, too.”

  “When did she tell you that?”

  Lucy hesitated. “This morning,” she offered. “She said Sammy went to it as well.”

  “How did you get into Moore’s house?”

  “His brother, Seamus Moore.”

  Fleming nodded. “Seamus Moore is his brother? Very careless of Burns not to have picked up on that when he was telling us all about the soap theft yesterday. What did big brother have to say?”

  “He wasn’t the most sympathetic, to be honest,” Lucy said. “He did tell me that Aaron Moore was looking after the horses at Hyde Park when the bomb went off in ’82. Which would explain his current mental health issues,” she added.

  “And now he’s having to eat in soup kitchens?” Fleming shook his head. “How we look after our victims, eh? I’ve heard of the new soup place. Shall we take a visit?”

  Chapter Forty-­Three

  WHILE A NUMBER of the support centers in the city provided food and shelter for those living rough, the soup kitchen in question was the most recent to open its door. Fleming’s was targeted more at those making their way home from the pubs late in the evening; this one, it seemed, was providing for those who needed support during daylight hours. It actually operated out of a prefab building that had been set up in waste ground across the street from the Postal Sorting Office, as the flier had stated. The area had once been used as a car park. The prefab stood against the rear wall of a local pub, which, Lucy reasoned, was either dreadful planning or inspired, depending on the target audience for the kitchen’s wares.

  When they arrived, the prefab door yawned open and a man, dressed in kitchen whites, stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, feet crossed at the ankles, a cigarette in his mouth. As Lucy and Fleming approached, he flicked the cigarette out onto the ground and straightened.

  “We’re not open yet,” he said.

  Lucy raised her warrant card. “We’re with the Public Protection Unit of the PSNI. Can we have a word?”

  “Are we in trouble? The guy who owns this land said it was okay for us to be here,” he explained.

  “No trouble,” Lucy said. “We’d just like your help.”

  The man stepped down. “Come in, so,” he said, indicating with his hand that they should go inside.

  The interior of the prefab was furnished with a number of white plastic patio tables and chairs. At one end was a set of stainless steel bains-­marie, behind which worked a middle-­aged woman, again dressed in whites, wearing a cap and hairnet. She was pouring a large pan of soup into one of the stainless steel containers, the sediment from the bottom of the pan slopping in with a soft splash.

  “Ellie. Them’s police.”

  Ellie smiled, put down the pan and wiped her hands on her apron. “Is something wrong?”

  “We’re investigating the disappearance of a number of homeless,” Lucy said. “We believe that they may have crossed paths here.”

  “We’re not here too long,” the man began. “We’ll not know them yet.”

  Ellie moved around from behind the unit and gestured to Lucy and Fleming to sit on one of the plastic garden chairs.

  “We only started here a few months ago,” she explained. “We began in Omagh and then branched out to here, too. We open for a few hours over lunch, just, to give anyone who needs it some hot food.”

  “What’s available?” Fleming asked.

  “Soup and bread at the moment,” Ellie said. “Our funding is limited, so that’s all we can manage.”

  “Do you charge anything?”

  “Of course not,” the woman protested. “We’re a charity.”

  “Based in Omagh?”

  The woman nodded. She fumbled in her pockets, beneath the apron, and produced a card. “Here.”

  The card carried on it the logo that Lucy had seen on the fliers in Moore’s home, above the title “Helping the Homeless.”

  “Do you only help those living on the streets?” Lucy asked. Aaron Moore did not fit into the narrow definition of that term.

  “We can hardly ask someone to prove they’re destitute,” Ellie said. “If someone is in such a state that they come to us for food, we’ll not turn them away. They’re not having to come here for food through choice.”

  “Do you know this man?” Fleming asked, handing Ellie a picture of Kamil Krawiec.

  “That’s Crackers,” the man, who had yet to offer his name, said. “He’s the one they found in the bins. Across the way. It was on the news.”

  He pointed out of the small grilled window of the unit and Lucy realized that the alleyway in which Kamil’s body had been dumped was indeed directly across from where they now sat.

  “What about this man?” Lucy said, as Fleming pulled out a picture of Aaron Moore.

  Ellie took it and stared at it, before handing it to the man. “He was here a few times, wasn’t he, Stephen?” she asked.

  “Stephen” took the picture and studied it. “Yeah. Bit of a loner. Keeps himself to himself. But he’s been here.”

  “His name’s Aaron Moore. Was he with Kamil?”

  Stephen shook his head. “He’s not with anyone. Sits on his own. Polite, but a bit odd.”

  “Oddness is relative,” Ellie offered. “Crackers was here a few times with a big man, graying a bit. Nice man.”

  Fleming tapped Lucy on the knee. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, before getting up and leaving the prefab. Ellie watched after him as he left.

  “When was the last time you saw Kamil—­Crackers?”

  “He came at the start,” Stephen said. “Then we didn’t see him for a few weeks. Then he came back again for a bit.”

  “That was when he was with that other man, the older man I mentioned. He told me his name, too, but I can’t remember it.”

  “We’ve not seen him this week,” Stephen said. “Either of them.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Apart from Crackers. We all know where he ended up, God rest him.”

  “They were chatting outside with a heavyset guy, drives a blue van,” Stephen offered. “I went out for a smoke one day and they were talking with him.”

  Lucy struggled to keep on top of the various ­people being named as “heavy guy.” “The man w
ith the gray hair?”

  “Yeah. Him and Crackers.”

  “And he was driving a blue van?”

  “No,” the man said, as if she was stupid. “Crackers and Gray-­hair were talking to a heavy guy with a blue van. He was a redhead, I think.”

  Ellie smiled apologetically. “As Stephen said, we don’t know all the names yet. Sorry.”

  Fleming came back into the prefab, a little out of breath, a patio chair skittering across the floor out of his path as he entered.

  He handed Ellie another picture. “Is this the man?”

  Lucy could see from the image that it was Terry Haynes.

  “That’s him,” Ellie said with delight. “He was with Crackers. Tony? Was that his name?”

  “Terry?” Fleming offered.

  Ellie clicked her fingers and smiled. “That’s it. Terry. Terry and Crackers were here last week, talking to the redhead in the blue van. I think they headed off with him.”

  “Can you tell us anything more about the van driver? Apart from the red hair?”

  Stephen shook his head. “Not really. He’d be younger than Terry. And bigger. He’s around every few days. He parks over on Patrick Street and stands at the corner of the pub some days, chatting with the men.”

  Stephen’s description of the man sounded similar to that which Doreen Jeffries had used to describe the one who’d intimidated her into getting her driveway laid. The man for whom Kamil Krawiec and Aaron Moore were, apparently, working. Lucy glanced at Fleming. “Maybe he’d been recruiting cheap labor?”

  Fleming nodded. “When was the van driver last here?”

  “Last week some time,” Ellie said.

  “There was someone different came after that. A younger guy, fitter looking. But in the same blue van,” Stephen added. “Could be his son, maybe? Similar looking, but much trimmer.”

  “You’re sure?” Lucy asked. “When was this?”

  “Yesterday? No, the day before. Two days ago. He was chatting with that funny old guy. The drinker. You know,” Stephen said to Ellie.

  Ellie shook her head.