by Arlene Hunt
* * *
Roxy stood at the front of the ferry, watching as it approached the heavily guarded pier of Lambay Island, where the huge fortress prison overlooked the bay. When it docked, she made her way to administration, left her ID and weapons behind the desk, got a temporary index code imprinted on the back of her right hand, and accompanied an armed guard through a series of barriers, down a long hall that smelled strongly of disinfectant.
They stopped outside a metal door.
‘You know the drill, right? No touching, no passing of items, no taking of items.’
Roxy nodded.
‘Proceed.’
She raised her hand to a screen, waited for it to read her barcode and unlock the door.
She stepped inside.
It had been many years since she had laid eyes on her father. He had aged, but not dramatically so. His hair carried more white; his face, thin like hers, had a few more lines, but other than that he looked pretty much the same.
Prison life clearly suited him.
‘Roxanne.’
Still, it was hard not to shiver, hearing her name on his lips.
She sat down in a chair on the other side of the metal table bolted to the floor.
‘You’re looking …’ he tilted his head to one side, cool, appraising, like he was judging stock, ‘a little—’
‘I’m not interested in how you think I look.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Then to what do I owe the honour?’
‘How do you do it?’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘How do you carry on, write, eat, sleep, walk, talk?’
‘I imagine in much the same way you do, albeit with less variety of places to go.’
‘I don’t have blood on my hands, though.’
He sat very still, studying her intently.
‘No,’ he said, after a while. ‘You don’t.’
‘You could have done things differently, you could have …’ She faltered, suddenly aware that she had no idea if what she was going to say was true or not. ‘You murdered Francis Hill in cold blood.’
‘He deserved to die.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘You know they might consider letting you out some day if you’d show a little remorse.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because that’s what people do: they show remorse, they show that they have learned the error of their ways.’
He looked bemused, which infuriated her.
‘We have a system in place, we have laws, we have protocol—’
‘Protocol would have seen Francis Hill free in ten years; would have allowed him to rebuild his life. Tell me, what would it have given me?’ He sat back again. ‘Is that why you’re here, Roxanne? To talk to me of protocol?’
‘I’m here because I wanted to see for myself how deep the poison runs in our blood.’
He tapped his chest, over his heart.
‘I still carry you both here.’
Roxy snorted.
‘Why did you come here now, after all this time?’
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ she said softly. ‘I wanted to know if you ever considered that what you did was a mistake.’
‘If you crack the spine on a philosophy book, you’ll learn there are no mistakes.’
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There is nothing amusing here, Roxanne. You asked me a question when you came in: how do I live with myself, yes?’
Roxy nodded.
‘Well I’ll tell you.’ He leaned a little closer, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. ‘I think of the alternative. I think of Francis Hill sipping a cold beer on a warm summer day, I think of him enjoying the embrace of another human while my wife lies under the soil and my daughter looks at me as if I’m a stranger. I think of all these things and am glad I did what I did. I would do it again in a heartbeat.’
Roxy felt as though someone had walked over her grave wearing spiked heels.
‘That’s all it takes?’
‘That’s right,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s all it takes.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Roxy mulled the conversation with her father over for a few days, and then, against her better judgement, she made an appointment to see Dy Anderson on her next day off. First, though, she sent him a long and detailed email setting out her theories.
When she entered his office, he smirked, but his eyes were filled with such undisguised hatred it unnerved her slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You expect me to lend credence to your ridiculous ideas? My God, I’ve heard some garbage in my time, but this takes the biscuit. Gregory Milton is accusing me of murder?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Frankly, I’m baffled, Sergeant, but not at him, at you.’
‘Me?’
‘Gregory Milton is a degenerate and a liar; he abused my staff, my trust and our friendship for years, and now he’s attempting to slander my reputation – and for what? Personal gain? A more lenient sentence?’
‘I don’t believe he killed Andrea Colgan,’ Roxy said. ‘I think he raped her like he raped Delia Shawcross, I think he was happy Andrea was carrying his child; I think he got off on it.’
‘You do realise I was at a charity gala the evening Andrea was killed? For goodness’ sake, there are multiple witnesses, including, if I’m not mistaken, the Minister for Justice.’
‘So you’re his alibi and he’s yours.’
‘That is how alibis work, Sergeant.’
‘Milton must have been a loss to Albas Entertainment, although Maureen Kelly tells me they weren’t going to renew his show, and his last book sort of tanked.’
‘Ebbs and flows, that’s the nature of show-business.’
‘It would look really bad if it came out that he was raping women on your staff and you were covering it up, though, right? Perception is everything in PR, right?’
Anderson’s eyes narrowed to slits.
‘I wonder how many more little Miltons there are out there. I wonder if we threw out a big enough net what we might catch.’
‘What you’d catch is a lawsuit that would cripple you and your entire enterprise.’ He steepled his fingers before him. ‘Besides, I am not my brother’s keeper, Sergeant.’
‘No, you were his shield. Delia Shawcross came to you when she found out she was pregnant and knew her fiancé could not be the father of her baby. She told you her fears. You bought her off, threated her, silenced her.’
‘Delia Shawcross had a consensual relationship with my client. It was only after her partner discovered she was knocked up that she suddenly cried rape.’
Roxy laughed. ‘That’s how you’re spinning it?’
‘That’s how it is.’ He cocked his head. ‘I very much doubt Delia would like to retell that story in court. If my memory is correct, she accepted a very handsome redundancy package and signed a non-disclosure contract. I’d hate to see her lose everything.’
‘Delia might have let herself be coerced, but I’ll bet you my last pay cheque Andrea Colgan wasn’t so easily pushed around.’ Roxy leaned forward, her eyes locked on his. ‘What did she do, threaten to expose you? Go to her father? You thought you’d nip the problem in the bud, didn’t you? Kill her before her pregnancy made it over the twelve weeks, but you messed it up. You tried to make it look like it was Quentin Williams, but you got the details wrong. Boy, she must have really rattled your cage.
Anderson brought his hands up and gave her a slow clap.
‘Bravo, Sergeant, what an imagination you have. If you ever leave the Gardai, I can probably get you a position writing fiction on any number of shows, minus my commission, of course.’
‘Jerome Falstaff, that’s what I don’t get. Did he know you did it? Did he try to blackmail you? He wasn’t above blackmail, of course, or any other kind of sleaze.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, don’t you remember him? That’s strange. He wa
s Andrea’s neighbour. Funnily enough, he died yesterday, threw himself off his balcony.’
‘Oh, so now I’m responsible for his death too? Dear me, Sergeant, why don’t you go through all your unsolved deaths and bring them to my door?’
Roxy smiled. He was being glib, or trying to be, but somehow she felt the weight of truth in what she was saying.
‘You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?’ she said.
‘I think what I have is an excellent lawyer but questionable taste in friends. I will try to choose better ones in future.’
Roxy got up to leave; by the door, she paused and put her hand out.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m admiring this coat. Cashmere, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice.’ She brushed the sleeve with her fingers. ‘Real nice.’
‘Will that be all?’
‘Sure.’
She left.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
A few days after the conversation with Dy Anderson, Sergeant Eoin Fletcher stopped by Roxy’s cubicle.
‘I thought you’d like to know, I took Edgar, in case you were worried about him.’
Roxy leaned back in her chair and looked up at him.
‘You took Falstaff’s dog?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That was kind of you.’
He shrugged. ‘He needed a home.’
‘What about the cat?’
‘Can’t, my partner’s allergic to cats. Had a hard enough time convincing him to take Edgar.’
‘So where did it go?’
‘The animal shelter took it. I called them.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyways, I thought you’d like to know.’
‘I appreciate it.’
She worked for a while, trying to kill time while she waited for Briana Lu to get back to her regarding the samples of hair she had scraped off Anderson’s coat while she was pretending to admire it.
Finally her inbox pinged. She held her breath while the email opened, read the result and sagged.
No match.
She couldn’t believe it; she had been so sure.
* * *
That night, she lay on her back staring at the shadows on her ceiling, unable to sleep. After a few hours of thinking, she made a decision and dozed off almost immediately.
‘What the hell is that?’ Boy demanded the following day, when she arrived home carrying a large metal cage containing a yowling, hissing, hairy cat.
‘This is Cucumber.’
‘Shit, you said you were rescuing a cat! That’s not a cat, that’s a mountain lion!’
‘I think it’s mostly fur.’
Boy peered into the cage. Cucumber growled at him.
‘That thing is probably going to kill us in our sleep.’
Roxy set the cage down and opened the door. Cucumber stayed exactly where she was.
‘I guess she needs some time.’
Roxy went into the kitchen and made some coffee; after a moment, Boy followed.
‘I forgot to tell you, I got a new job.’
‘That’s great, where?’
‘Fontana.’
Roxy had never heard of it and said so.
‘It’s a snazzy little number off Parnell Street, two floors and get this, regular hours.’
‘Nice. You pleased?’
‘Very.’
He leaned his head out around the door.
‘Hey, it’s gone.’
Roxy hurried into the living room. He was right. Cucumber had vanished.
‘We didn’t leave any doors open, did …’
She spotted the cat sitting on the bookcase, looking out of the window with her huge tail curled around her feet.
‘I thought it would be hiding,’ Boy said, looking at Cucumber with something approaching awe. ‘What’s it doing?’
‘How should I know? I’ve never owned a cat before.’
Roxy went a little closer, but not too close. The truth was, she was a little scared of Cucumber, though she would never admit it in a thousand years to Boy.
‘It looks like she’s thinking.’
‘Cats don’t think. They’re cats!’
‘Cucumber.’
The cat ignored her, though her ears flickered.
‘Here, Cucumber.’
Nothing.
‘You try.’
‘Me?’
‘Her last owner was a man.’
Boy pulled a face. ‘Okay, but just so you know, I’m not exactly a cat person.’
He inched closer, sliding his bare feet across the floor.
‘Cucumber? Here, girlie-girl.’
The cat turned her head and looked at him curiously.
‘It’s working!’
Emboldened, Boy went a little closer. ‘Cu-cu! Come on now, come on, pretty kitty.’ He lifted his hands to her. ‘Let Uncle Boy find you a— Ow!’
He held up his right hand, showing Roxy the stripes filled with tiny beads of blood. They both looked at the cat. She gazed back, defiant and vaguely haughty, then yawned, displaying impressive fangs.
‘Son of a bitch!’
‘Come on, I’ve got some disinfectant somewhere.’
In the bathroom, Roxy helped Boy clean the scratches, trying not to roll her eyes every time he winced.
‘I think we should leave her alone, let her settle in a bit.’
‘I think we should open a window, let her jump.’
‘Boy!’
They went back to the living room. Cucumber was exactly where they had left her. She turned her orange eyes on them as they entered and watched them go about their business. After a while she lay down, curled her tail over her face and fell asleep.
When Cucumber woke an hour later, only the female human remained. She was reading a book with her legs folded over the arm of her chair.
The cat hesitated. This was all new to her: the place, the humans, the view from the window. She wasn’t afraid, but she was cautious.
She stretched, arching her back.
The human paid no attention.
She groomed herself, pointing her toes skywards to reach the awkward spots.
Still nothing.
After a while, she got bored and jumped down. She kept one eye on the human as she left the room to investigate her surroundings. The space smelled funny, and there were not as many places to hide as before and nothing useful to sharpen her nails on.
Her ears flicked backwards and forwards, her nose twitched.
The human was moving.
She stood in the dark, listening, until curiosity got the better of her.
In the food room, the human was leaning against the preparation place reading the back of a tin, her features all scrunched up. Cucumber recognised the shape of the tin immediately and remembered she was hungry.
She rubbed her side against the door frame to indicate this, but the human wasn’t paying attention.
‘Marp,’ she said.
The human looked at her.
‘Are you hungry?’
A stupid question, but what could one expect from a human?
‘Marp,’ she said again, with a little more emphasis. This time the human understood.
There would be a period of adjustment, Cucumber thought, watching the human dump the entire tin into a ceramic bowl and place it on the floor without warming it or even breaking it up with a fork. Later, to show her displeasure, she would vomit a hairball onto something fabric and then they would be even.
Baby steps, Cucumber thought, baby steps.
Chapter Sixty
Fat flakes of snow drifted down into the machinery yard. Smelling cigarette smoke, Dominic Travers changed direction and walked towards it, his coat billowing out behind him. He saw a figure standing in the shadows, the ember of his cigarette glowing like a beacon.
‘What are you doing here?’
Eli Quinn pitched the cigarette into a puddle, where it hissed and went out.
&nb
sp; ‘A long time ago you told me the law was for the sheep not the wolves.’
‘I remember.’
‘I didn’t believe you at the time.’ Eli inclined his head. ‘I’m beginning to think I was wrong.’
‘What do you want, Quinn?’
‘Roxy Malloy, the kid I was telling you about before: she broke protocol and collected evidence she was told to leave alone.’
‘The Commissioner warned you to keep that dog on a leash.’
‘She did it because she believes in right and wrong; because she believes in justice.’
‘She believes in a pipe dream. Jesus Christ, Quinn, of all the people in the world, you should know that.’
‘What if she’s right?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You know the DNA we took from Andrea’s unborn baby was a match to Milton.’
Dominic’s face grew hard. ‘I know that.’
‘So Milton got off on having women carry his children, his progeny. When confronted by Delia Shawcross, he bought her off, had her sign a non-disclosure, let her keep the child, no questions asked; all she has to do is send him photos and an update once a year.’
He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it to Travers.
‘Read it.’
Travers tilted it towards the lamplight.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s a mitochondrial DNA sequencing result.’
‘For?’
‘Cat hair.’
‘What the hell do I want with—’
‘It came from Jerome Falstaff’s cat, to be exact. Malloy lifted it from Dy Anderson’s coat.’
‘Who the fuck is Jerome Falstaff and why would I give a shit about his damned cat?’
‘Because it’s Schrödinger’s pointing finger.’ Quinn smiled. ‘Malloy doesn’t believe Milton killed Andrea, same way as she never believed she was killed by the Sweetheart Killer. She thinks Dy Anderson killed Andrea and also Jerome Falstaff.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think she has good instincts, that kid; if we can rein them in a little, she might make a fine detective some day.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
