by Paul Charles
‘I can’t believe that you still haven’t told me your two regrets yet, McCusker.’
‘Okay, okay, sorry about that wee diversion – that was the beginning of my Ferrari soapbox moment. They had him parked in the pits for 48 seconds, Grace, that’s two lifetimes in Formula One!’
‘Okay, okay,’ she said, laughing, ‘it’s nearly twenty years ago now – don’t you think it’s about time to let it go? ‘
‘Right,’ he agreed, and let it go. ‘Okay, so my two regrets. 1) I never learned to ride a horse. 2) I never moved to the USA like I always dreamed I was going to.’
‘So Anna Stringer got a chance to do what you wanted to do,’ Grace offered slowly. ‘Does that make you feel bad?’
‘No, not at all. The time I could, probably should, have gone to the States was when I was younger, and it was no one’s fault but my own for not being brave enough to take the plunge. Apart from anything else, America then was a much younger country when the “land of the free and the home of the brave” afforded equal opportunities for those brave enough to take said plunge.’
‘Anna Stringer didn’t really resist taking the plunge, did she now?’ Grace offered, without sounding judgemental.
‘In her defence, she wasn’t as much going somewhere, as she was getting away from somewhere… or someone. She was getting away from a failed marriage and that’s what really took a lot of courage.’
‘True,’ Grace agreed, ‘but if she hadn’t then I’d never have met you!’
‘Exactly!’
‘What would you have done if you had gone to America?’
‘My dream was always to become a detective over there.’
‘And you’ve never ridden a horse?’ she said, in total disbelief.
‘Well, for a couple of summers I worked part-time in the West Strand, up at the Port. I used to lead the ponies or donkeys up and down the beach taking the kids for a ride. The ponies were pretty docile – they needed to be docile, to accommodate some of the screaming kids, whose parents wanted nothing more than a respite from the non-stop give-me’s. We’d charge 10p a time and I used to take an occasional go myself when business was quiet. The owner drummed into us “Ponies with riders are our best adverts, so when business is slow, mount up yourself”. Business was always slow when it rained and so we spent our time as drenched human adverts.’
‘Why did you not take lessons?’
‘It was always something I was going to do at a later date, and sadly, I just never got around to it.’ McCusker lifted himself on to an elbow. ‘Here’s me blethering away ten to the dozen, but what about you? Do you have any regrets?’
‘Just one really,’ she said quietly, ‘and it’s that my mum and dad never got to see what a brilliant detective my sister is.’
‘Hmmmm.’
‘Lily told me that you both watched that DVD of Louis Bloom’s lecture. Apparently, in the lecture he talked about when you meet someone, someone special, and you start to have a relationship with them, sometimes you reach a point with them that it is so special and so new. Lily said Louis said it was like having a new toy to play with and you spend some of your time planning what you’re going to do with this new toy next time you meet. That’s really what it’s like with you.’
McCusker grimaced. He wasn’t really great at taking compliments, and he couldn’t fake it. He would admit himself that he did like people to think well of him, he just wasn’t great when they showed it.
‘I was wondering,’ she started up again, perhaps sensing he’d been having a bit of a moment, ‘if we could maybe play with our new toy a wee bit more tonight?’
He looked at her and felt his entire being shudder with a mixture of anticipation and delight. He didn’t like to talk about doing things; he just liked to do them. He did, however, feel like this moment called for something, if only because he was caught up in the thought that this woman appeared to be as attracted to him as much as he was to her. Now surely that just wasn’t possible?
He cleared his throat in preparation for his great delivery. ‘Aghahuragha!’ he offered, in his best impression of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan.
Chapter Forty
Day Six: Tuesday
First thing, 06.45, on the Tuesday morning, O’Carroll had Noah Woyda picked up and brought into the Customs House, to “help the PSNI with their enquiries”. The three of them had to wait until 14.28, so that his solicitor, who was on her way to Dublin, could be contacted and persuaded to make her way back for the interview. They’d expected her back earlier and if they’d known they wouldn’t have been able to able to start the interview with Noah until after lunchtime, they most certainly would have used their time better, but, McCusker figured, that was usually the way with life.
In the meantime, a freshly showered and shaved DI Jarvis Cage called in to update O’Carroll on the stakeout at Miles Bloom’s house. Miles hadn’t once set foot outside the house since the stakeout began. His wife would leave each day (Sunday excluded) around 07.10. She would return at the earliest at 17.00 (Saturday) and at the latest at 19.00. They had no visitors apart from the postman, the pizza delivery man and takeout food delivery of an undetermined type.
The elusive Thomas Chada was still elusive, but due to report in that afternoon.
Furthermore, Barr’s boys were still not ready to give up their discovery from Louis Bloom’s rubbish bag, so generally it was a day for kicking one’s heels. McCusker had one little experiment, and he required one of Barr’s boys and an independent witness to undertake it for him. Apart from that, the only business attended to was taking official statements from Mariana and Francie Fitzgerald, and Murcia Woyda. In fact, McCusker and O’Carroll were getting so frustrated waiting that at one point they were actually thinking of paying Miles Bloom a visit to see if they couldn’t infuriate him into doing something. But just as they were about to leave the Custom’s House on their ruse, Woyda’s solicitor walked into the reception.
By 14.30 and after McCusker’s missed lunch, the two detectives, Woyda and his solicitor, Leanne Delacato, were all in the interview room as O’Carroll pressed record, and announced that proceedings had officially started. She’d asked Superintendent Larkin to attend the interview, because that is what she believed she should do. But Larkin had declined. This had worried McCusker; if Larkin didn’t want to be attached – directly or indirectly – to the proceedings, maybe he wasn’t 100 per cent confident of the outcome.
‘I would like to go on record,’ Leanne Delacato stated, spelling out her name and pronouncing it – Del-a-cat-o – for the digital recorder, ‘to protest about my client being brought into custody at 06.45 this morning.’
‘We interviewed Mr Noah Woyda, 59 years old of Malone Road, Belfast, yesterday,’ O’Carroll started, in a very controlled voice. ‘Mr Woyda himself terminated the interview and suggested if we needed to speak to him further, it had to be in the presence of his solicitor. You, Miss Delacato, were on your way to Dublin.’
‘You could have released my client until such time as I had returned to Belfast. It was very inconvenient for me to have to return to Belfast 48 hours early.’
‘We are investigating the murder of Mr Louis Bloom. We needed to speak with Mr Woyda to help us with our inquiries. Your client has a criminal record. He has done time in prison. In my opinion he was a flight risk. I am sorry to inconvenience you, but it couldn’t wait.’
‘I have my complaint on the record,’ Miss Delacato replied, in a high-pitched, school marm tone – one hardly befitting a woman in her mid-thirties. She theatrically ticked off the first note on her legal pad.
That was one of the reasons McCusker was happy working with DI Lily O’Carroll – she kept her cool about all the official stuff and never reacted to the bait spouted out by those who made a living defending professional criminals.
‘You know the procedure by now, all complaints to PONI,’ O’Carroll replied and turned to address Woyda directly. ‘What were you doing between the hours of 9.0
0 last Thursday evening and 2.00 the following morning?’
Woyda leaned across to his solicitor and, with his hand protecting his mouth, whispered something to her.
‘My client says he has already answered that question,’ Delacato replied, on her client’s behalf.
‘Agreed,’ O’Carroll replied, ‘we just need it officially on the record.’
Woyda leaned across again and whispered to his solicitor. This time she raised her hand and whispered something back again. Woyda whispered to her again. This time she audibly snapped back, ‘Just tell them yourself!’
Noah Woyda’s face registered shock at his solicitor’s reaction. He continued staring at her as he replied, ‘I was out driving around Belfast, and the countryside and towns around Belfast, looking for poster sites for a new bill-posting company I’m setting up. Samuel Brice, my associate, was with me the entire journey. Mr Brice confirmed this to be a fact at our previous meeting. Can I go now please?’
‘Please just humour us a little longer,’ McCusker said, taking over at the pre-agreed spot, ‘did you stop anywhere on your journey for a bite, a newspaper, a pizza, fish and chips, even a wee sit down? I mean, specifically somewhere you would have used your credit card?’
Woyda looked at his solicitor who nodded at him that it was okay to answer the question.
‘No. We brought some lemonade, crisps and chocolate with us,’ Woyda replied.
‘Did you buy those items at the start of the journey?’ McCusker continued, trying to give the impression he was after credit card receipts.
‘No. I have a stash in the house.’
‘Did you maybe fill the Merc up with petrol before you set off on your journey and used your credit card to pay for it?’
‘No, afraid not – it was already on full.’
‘So you were driving from at least 9 o’clock until 2.00 the following morning?’ McCusker continued.
‘Just to be safe, let’s say from at least 8.30 until 2.30.’
‘So that’s a long journey – six hours?’
‘Yes, you see I need lots of sites for the posters to make this billboard company a viable business concern,’ Woyda replied, the length of his answers growing at the same rate as his confidence. ‘The more prime sites I have the more I can charge.’
‘Yes, that makes a lot of sense,’ McCusker replied, ‘and we don’t have a problem with any of that. No not at all. What we have a problem with is your mpg.’
‘Sorry?’ Woyda said, looking like he’d been thrown off his rhythm a bit.
‘Well, you see, earlier today we hired a vehicle – same model and year as yours, a Mercedes-Benz G-Class, G55 AMG a 4x4, nicknamed a G-Wagen because of its cross-country abilities. So we filled it up to the brim with fuel. We discovered the tank takes just under 21 gallons. We had one of our officers and an independent witness drive around. Some of the journey was in the city and some was out in the country and the surrounding towns and villages, and do you know what happened, Mr Woyda?’
Leanne Delacato’s eyes betrayed that she did, even if the penny still hadn’t dropped with Mr Noah Woyda.
When no reply was forthcoming McCusker continued with: ‘Well, the thing about the G-Wagen is that it was originally recommended to Mercedes as a military vehicle, by one of their major shareholders, the Shah of Iran. Turned out to be a brilliant idea in fact and it became a very successful military vehicle. So successful in fact they eventually made it available to the general public. I’ve always thought of this SUV as Mercedes’ version of a Land Rover. It was developed mainly for rough terrain consequently it does guzzle the petrol. It gets about 12 miles to the gallon. So that’s 252 miles on a full tank. We found that, running inside the speed limit of course,’ McCusker said, and checked on a report-like page he’d brought in to the interview with him, for effect, ‘that the said vehicle ran out of fuel after three hours and forty-two minutes of continuous driving.’
‘Yeah, and so what does that prove?’ Woyda said, sniggering.
‘Well, what that proves, Mr Woyda,’ O’Carroll offered, taking the reins back again, ‘is that you and Mr Samuel Brice were both lying to us about what you were doing last Thursday evening and Friday morning.’
McCusker wondered why Woyda didn’t come up with something on the spot. For instance, he could have tried “we always carry a spare five-gallon can of fuel in the boot”, or “we called out the AA”, or “we stopped another car and paid them to syphon off a couple of gallons”. It was as if Woyda really didn’t care that he’d been caught lying. Not only that, but he’d also persuaded his colleague to subscribe to the very same lie. No, Woyda looked like he’d been caught out because he had been concentrating so hard on not being caught out. He’d been preoccupied thinking that having to produce a credit card receipt would betray him. Either that, or he had something else up his sleeve and he was so confident with his play that he was prepared to give O’Carroll and McCusker the first spoils.
‘Mr Woyda: could you please tell us what you were doing from 9.00 on Thursday evening last to 2.00 on Friday morning?’ O’Carroll asked for the second time that afternoon.
‘You know what, I really can’t remember what I was doing but whatever I was doing it was with my colleague, Mr Samuel Brice.’
‘Very cosy I’m sure,’ McCusker whispered, low enough that it wasn’t audible for the digital recorder, even though McCusker was convinced Woyda picked it up nice and clear.
‘We’ve been advised that you arranged to have Mrs Mariana Fitzgerald beaten up in order that she’d reveal where your wife was hiding out from you,’ O’Carroll said, moving on as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘My wife isn’t hiding out from me!’ he spat back at the detective inspector.
‘Well, we also have a sworn statement from her, stating that you beat her up and she had to flee the matrimonial home in fear for her life,’ O’Carroll continued.
‘That’s just a wee misunderstanding between husband and wife,’ Woyda said, laughing, ‘it’s the same the whole world over, the strife between husband and wife, isn’t it? But you know what they say: “The best part of breaking up is when you’re making up.” I can tell you here and now, no matter what you say my wife will not stand up before me in a court of law and say those libellous things.’
‘You deny you subjected your wife to mental and physical violence?’ O’Carroll asked.
McCusker figured they both knew the answer but that O’Carroll wanted it on the record.
‘I’ve already told you, it was just a wee misunderstanding – we’ll work our way through it. She’ll come back, we’ll go to expensive counselling, I’ll buy her the new car she wants and everything will be rosy.’
‘So you’re saying your wife is lying?’ O’Carroll continued relentlessly.
Woyda just glared at his solicitor.
‘I believe we’ve covered this topic fully,’ she replied. ‘Let’s move on, shall we?’
‘Miss Delacato,’ O’Carroll said, ‘is it true that you’ve received notification from Mrs Murcia Woyda’s solicitor that she’s filing for divorce?’
‘That’s covered under client privilege, I believe,’ Miss Delacato replied smugly.
‘I believe you’ll find it’s not. It’s not a confidential communication between you and your client, its a notice of a public filing by a third party, a solicitor, on behalf of his client, Mrs Woyda, of her intentions.’
‘I’ll check the ethics on that when I get back to my office,’ Miss Delacato replied, successfully deflecting the issue. ‘Now, let’s move on here. Please! My client is a businessman and he’s been stuck in here all day, being forced to neglect important issues.’
McCusker’s eyebrows tried unsuccessfully to play ping-pong with each other.
‘Mrs Murcia Woyda has made a statement claiming she was having an affair with Mr Louis Bloom for the past several months and up until the time of his death.’
‘She’s just saying that…’ Woyda sta
rted, and pulled himself up short.
‘So you’re saying that even though your wife, and Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald, all state your wife was having an affair with Mr Louis Bloom, she wasn’t?’
‘Did my wife accuse me of having an affair?’ Woyda asked, innocently.
‘No she didn’t,’ O’Carroll replied.
‘Because I wasn’t,’ Woyda offered, to the slight concern of his brief, who clearly didn’t know where he was taking this. ‘If she had made such a claim to you then I would have defended it forcefully. But I’m not accusing my wife of being unfaithful, so why would I need to defend her?’
‘Here’s the problem, Mr Woyda,’ McCusker said, ‘Mr Bloom was murdered in Botanic Gardens last Thursday night. Your wife admitted that she was having an affair with him. She also admitted that she’s scared of you, that you beat her, and that she had to run away from your matrimonial home in order to protect herself. She said she fears for her life. You, Sir, don’t have a credible alibi for the time of Louis Bloom’s death.’
‘Most likely at least half the male population does not have an alibi for the time of Mr Bloom’s death,’ Miss Delacato claimed, ‘but I didn’t see a queue of them in the lobby of the Customs House awaiting their interrogation.’
‘But half the male population of Belfast do not have a beautiful wife who had been sleeping with the deceased,’ McCusker replied.
‘Nonetheless, you have shown absolutely no reason nor proof as to why you have the right to detain my client any longer, so unless you have anything else, we’re out of here.’
‘Here’s the thing,’ Woyda started up again, clearly sensing the momentum was with him, ‘every second I remain in here does untold damage to me, my marriage, my standing in the community and my numerous businesses, and any claim we make against the PSNI will reflect that.’
