Last Goodbye_An absolutely gripping murder mystery thriller

by Arlene Hunt

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Shut up. Her name is Olivia and she’s seventeen years old. Hear me when I tell you this: I don’t want to find her behind closed doors with you again.’

  He stared at her, astounded at her naked hostility.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘I see you,’ she said, her eyes boring into him. ‘I want you to know that you might have Walter and the rest of those featherheads fooled, but Nadine and I were friends, we spoke.’

  ‘My wife was a troubled woman, you know that.’

  ‘Was she?’ Maureen’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Or did she see you for what you are too?’

  She left his office, deliberately leaving the door open behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Roxy arrived at the station house a full hour before her shift was due to start. It was a new day and she was more determined than ever to prove to Quinn that she deserved her spot on the squad.

  She opened the door to the incident room and got a surprise. Eli Quinn was sitting at a desk, hunched over his EN, pecking at it with his index finger. There were several empty coffee cups and a pile of peanut shells by his elbow. He glanced up when he heard her, and she could see from the shadows under his eyes that he hadn’t slept much either. He wore a faded blue shirt open at the throat, and his chin was covered in dark stubble. Stick a cowboy hat on him and he could have stepped straight off a cattle ranch in Montana.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  Not friendly, but not unfriendly either.

  ‘I thought I’d get a head start on gathering intel on Andrea Colgan.’ She removed her jacket and sat down.

  ‘What we need is a new profile. Sergeant Lynn is right: there are some aspects of this latest murder that don’t quite gel with what we’ve got so far.’ He leaned back in his chair and stretched. ‘Have you heard of Lizzie Brennan?’

  Roxy froze. Suddenly it felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room.

  ‘She’s a criminal profiler,’ Quinn continued, seeming not to notice her shock. ‘Miranda reckons she’s the best.’

  ‘Yes, I know of her.’

  ‘Have you worked with her before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to give us something we’ve missed.’

  ‘Missed?’ Roxy said. ‘We’ve barely had the case for twenty-four hours; we don’t know what we have, let alone what we might have missed.’

  Quinn glanced at her, frowning slightly.

  ‘I’m not talking about just the Colgan case here … Are you all right, Malloy? You’re as white as a sheet.’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine … If you’ll excuse me, I need to go see …’ She mumbled something inaudible and bolted from the room.

  In the ladies’ bathroom, she washed her face in freezing water and dried it with paper towels. Then she leaned on the sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. This was bullshit. She was better than this, wasn’t she? Why wouldn’t they call her in? Lizzie Brennan was excellent at her job. Lizzie was excellent at everything.

  Including, apparently, being the girlfriend of Roxy’s ex, David.

  She was completely over David, though, right? It was all water under the bridge. They were adults and they’d moved on with their lives. Stop thinking about Lizzie Brennan, she ordered her brain. It had been nearly a year since David had walked out. So why then was her heart racing in her chest? Why had she acted like a deer in the headlights in front of Quinn when he’d mentioned Lizzie’s name?

  She couldn’t face going back to the incident room, and besides, there was something bugging her.

  By the time she reached the forensics lab, she’d managed to regain a modicum of control.

  ‘Is he here?’ she asked Briana Lu, Johnson’s right-hand woman in the lab. Briana didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was.

  ‘Nope, can I help?’

  ‘He was supposed to run a test on a urine sample taken from a homicide yesterday, but I didn’t find it in the notes he sent over to Inspector Quinn.’

  ‘Oh, right, that’s actually done. I was going to send it over later this morning. Do you want me to go get it?’

  ‘Please, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  She waited by the window looking out over the courtyard, hands behind her back, marshalling her thoughts.

  ‘Here you go.’

  Briana returned carrying a brown envelope. Roxy thanked her and left with it under her arm.

  Upstairs, Quinn was nowhere to be seen, thankfully. She picked a desk, sat down and opened the envelope. She was still reading the analysis when Fletcher arrived carrying a Styrofoam cup in one hand, a leather satchel in the other.

  ‘I thought I’d be first here.’

  ‘You’re not even second.’ Roxy closed the file and tapped her index finger on the spine, thinking. She looked at Fletcher.

  ‘We’re doing the door-to-door at Andrea Colgan’s apartment building, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why don’t we head over there now, get ahead of the curve?’

  ‘If you want.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s a bit early, no?’

  ‘It is, but I want to see a man about a dog.’

  Fletcher wrinkled his brow.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way.’ She got to her feet.

  ‘Have you spoken to Quinn about it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Roxy said. ‘He was here earlier.’

  It wasn’t a lie, she reasoned as they took the lift to the car park. She had spoken to Quinn that morning.

  And as with everything in life, the devil was in the detail.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ambrose Bailey stood at the bottom of his garden and swore under his breath. The crocuses that had been starting to push their way up through the soil were broken, the stems crushed.

  Bloody kids acting the maggot, he thought, fuming. He poked at the dying flowers with the tip of his slippers. He did not like kids, not the ones that went around the place these days anyway. Didn’t know they were born, half of them, rude little shits.

  Muttering, he crossed the scrubby sun-starved lawn and checked the bird feeder. He was surprised to find it running low. Probably the blasted magpies; try as he might, he couldn’t keep the buggers out of his garden.

  Still muttering, he unlocked the shed door and fetched the little bag of birdseed he bought once a month. Mr Bailey hated almost everyone and everything, but he liked songbirds, and his garden was generally a welcome haven for them.

  He was halfway through filling the feeder when the bushes beside the greenhouse began to shudder and shake. He heard a low growl, and then, cheeky as you like, a large black-and-white cat burst from the vegetation, its jaws firmly clamped around a robin.

  ‘You bastard! You rotten bastard!’ Mr Bailey screamed, and ran for the garden rake. But by the time he’d got it, the cat had hopped up on the wall and jumped down the other side.

  Furious, Mr Bailey flung the rake aside and stormed back to the house to dress. This was the final straw; that wretched filthy creature of Bannon’s had finally pushed him over the edge. It wasn’t enough that it shat in his flower beds, it wasn’t enough that it kept him up at night yowling and fighting with other cats; now it was killing his songbirds.

  He would go round and have words. He wasn’t a violent man, but by God, if Bannon didn’t do something about that murdering creature, he’d … he’d … well, he’d think of something.

  Twenty minutes later, he marched up Hugh Bannon’s path and raised his fist to hammer on the door. It swung wide open at the first blow.

  ‘Bannon?’ he called. ‘You in there?’

  He cocked his head, listening.

  ‘Bannon, it’s Ambrose Bailey. I want to talk to you about that cat of yours.’

  He waited. No one appeared. The house felt empty, yet he could hear music coming from a room to his right. Was the bugger ignoring him, hoping he’d go away?

  ‘
Bannon?’

  He stepped over the threshold and walked slowly towards the door, acutely aware that he was now trespassing. Well, he thought, he had just cause, didn’t he? His robin was dead.

  He pushed open the living room door and stared.

  It wasn’t the blood that caused his heart to stutter, he would explain later to a sympathetic young nurse. It was seeing Bannon’s head resting on top of some books in the middle of the coffee table that caused him to have a turn.

  ‘He looked like he was about to ask me a favour,’ he said, still horrified. ‘He looked like he was going to ask me to go fetch his body.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘Didn’t you already interview this guy?’ Fletcher wanted to know, peering at the number on Falstaff’s door ‘Shouldn’t we start with the apartments on the ground floor and work our way up?’

  ‘We can do that after we talk to Falstaff,’ Roxy said.

  She rapped on the door again, good and loud, and heard barking from somewhere inside. Eventually the door opened.

  ‘Good morning!’ She beamed the fakest smile she’d ever mustered. ‘We met yesterday – Sergeant Malloy, and this is my colleague Sergeant Fletcher.’

  Jerome Falstaff stood in the doorway of his apartment blinking and scratching his bare chest. He was wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. The shorts had dancing unicorns on them. His hair was wild.

  ‘What time is it? I was sleeping.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Roxy replied, trying to ignore the little dog that had come out to investigate the callers and was barking up a storm. ‘We didn’t get a chance to finish our chat yesterday, did we, what with the kerfuffle. I thought you’d like an opportunity to revisit your statements.’

  ‘Have you caught him then? Noel? Did he confess? I didn’t hear anything about it on the news.’

  ‘That’s a nice little dog,’ Fletcher said. ‘What breed is it? Maltese?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I hear they’re very smart, easy to train.’

  ‘They are!’ Falstaff was no longer scowling and was in fact looking at Fletcher with something approaching civility.

  ‘May we come in, Mr Falstaff?’ Roxy asked.

  They followed him up the hall to the same untidy sitting room. Falstaff plonked the dog down and swept an armload of clothes off the sofa. He looked around for somewhere else to put them, gave up and dumped them on the floor next to a stack of cardboard boxes.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got any coffee, but I’ve got herbal tea.’

  ‘That’s okay, Mr Falstaff,’ Roxy said. Fletcher got down on one knee and scratched the dog behind its ears.

  ‘Oh, he likes you,’ Falstaff said. ‘You’re blessed; he’s a very astute judge of character, you know.’

  ‘Dogs always like me,’ Fletcher said. ‘Dunno why, even as a kid.’

  ‘Do you have one of your own?’

  ‘No. When I retire I’m going to get two, probably Staffies, I like Staffies.’

  ‘You live here alone, right, Mr Falstaff?’ Roxy said quickly before there was any more talk of dogs. What was it with Quinn and his band of chatterboxes?

  Falstaff dropped onto the sofa and crossed one pale leg over the other, exactly as he had done the day before. ‘Well, apart from Edgar and my cat.’

  ‘And this was your mother’s place.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You said yesterday that you were an actor. Are you working on something at the moment? You mentioned something about reading a script.’

  ‘I’m between jobs at the moment.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘I mostly do voice work these days. Audio books and adverts, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I imagine it’s a difficult business.’

  ‘It’s not a business; acting is my life.’ Falstaff reached for a packet of cigarettes on a side table and lit one. ‘But you’re right, Sergeant, it can be difficult. Especially since every bloody halfwit with internet access thinks they’re a bloody star. Amateurs: they mess it up for the rest of us, see, no understanding of the craft. Don’t even get me started on them.’

  ‘Andrea Colgan worked for Albas Entertainment. I gather a lot of actors are on their books.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you and she ever work together?’

  ‘We knew a lot of the same people.’ He shrugged. ‘Acting’s a small world.’

  ‘You were friends then, as well as neighbours?’

  ‘We knew each other well enough to chat now and then. I mean, we weren’t best friends or anything like that.’ He took another drag on the cigarette. ‘You know what they say, good fences makes good neighbours.’

  ‘Can you remember the last time you saw Andrea?’

  He looked up to the right, scratched his chest, thinking. ‘Last week sometime. She’d had her hair done.’

  Roxy smiled. ‘You noticed?’

  ‘She had wonderful hair, that girl. I told her she looked like a young Jeanne Moreau.’ He glanced at Fletcher, who offered no comment.

  ‘Who?’ asked Roxy.

  ‘French actress, very famous back in the day.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry, Mr Falstaff, like I said yesterday, I’m not much of a movie buff.’

  ‘Nobody is these days,’ he said sourly.

  ‘You said that after you saw Noel Furlong downstairs, you had a premonition.’

  ‘Did I? It was all so traumatic.’ He picked a piece of tobacco off his lower lip. He had shredded the filter. ‘I’m sure I told you everything yesterday.’

  ‘I’m just making sure I have the details right. Tell me exactly what happened. You hammered on the door and …’

  ‘I called Andrea’s name, got no answer, called again, saw the blood and knew something was wrong.’

  ‘You didn’t go inside?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you came down here and then what?’

  ‘I made a drink…’

  ‘You made a drink?’

  ‘For the shock. That’s not illegal, is it?’ He was defensive. ‘Look, I don’t like these questions, Sergeant, you’re making me feel like I’ve done something wrong.’

  ‘Was Edgar with you when you went upstairs based on your premonition?’

  ‘I … What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’d brought him outside – for a widdle, I believe you said – so I’m wondering if he was with you when you went upstairs.’

  ‘I’m sure he was.’

  ‘Remind me again, was the door open or closed?’

  Falstaff opened his mouth to speak, but before he got the chance, Roxy held her hand up.

  ‘Mr Falstaff, before you say what I think you’re going to say, let me stop you right there. Do you realise we have a forensic database?’

  She was no long smiling, no longer acting chummy.

  ‘We keep all manner of things on it, samples and the like. How long do you suppose it would take us to compare Edgar’s urine sample with the urine we found on a rug upstairs?’

  Falstaff blinked.

  ‘Mr Falstaff?’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting—’

  ‘I’m not suggesting a thing. But I’m curious as to what Edgar was doing inside Andrea Colgan’s living room. You said you didn’t enter the apartment, so why was he in there?’

  ‘I think I’ve said enough.’

  ‘Maybe you should come down to the station with us. Sergeant Fletcher, will you accompany Mr Falstaff while he gets dressed.’

  ‘Sure.’ Fletcher got to his feet. Edgar got up too and wagged his tail. ‘Come on, Mr Falstaff.’

  ‘This is outrageous, it’s harassment.’

  ‘You’ll be back before you know it.’

  * * *

  At the station house, Roxy processed Falstaff and put him in interview room one.

  ‘I think I’m going to have to burn these clothes,’ she said to Fletcher, desperately trying to brush some of the animal hair from her uniform. Fletcher wasn’t pa
ying attention. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Hope little Edgar will be all right. Falstaff told me on the way here he’s got separation anxiety.’

  Roxy stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Not the dog’s fault, is it?’ He frowned. ‘Can’t believe you nailed him with dog wee. Didn’t know we could differentiate what breed it came from.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  He looked at her.

  Roxy shrugged. ‘Listen, anyone stupid enough to think we keep a database of dog piss deserves whatever is coming to him.’

  She left him and went upstairs to the incident room. Again there was no one there, but when she opened her EN, she discovered that Miranda had sent her a file. She opened it and read the message.

  ‘Holy shit.’

  There were fifteen pages in total.

  And all of it was about Jerome Falstaff and his history of assaulting women.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Eli Quinn was sitting on a low couch in the reception of Albas Entertainment, admiring a very shapely pair of pins and wondering whether the owner of said legs had a boyfriend, and if not, whether she might be interested in taking a chance on some dinner with a slightly scruffy-looking inspector.

  ‘Don’t even waste your time trying,’ Miranda said without looking up from the magazine she was flicking through. ‘She is so way out of your league she might as well be in a different solar system.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Please, I can hear the little plinks of drool from here.’

  To distract himself, Quinn got up and walked around, pretending to study the black-and-white headshots of the company’s various clients. He thought he recognised a few faces here and there, but most were strangers to him. After a while, he got bored and sat back down.

  ‘It’s a weird job, acting.’

  ‘Weird how?’

  ‘Grown men and women pretending to be someone else; don’t you think that’s weird?’

  ‘If you pare any job back to the basics it sounds weird.’