by Paul Charles
Noah Senior died in 1996. With the money the father left the son, he bought his first business – XTC Ltd., a thriving, yet bankrupt, pub with a strip-club upstairs. The bank was happy to get rid of the troublesome property at a greatly knocked-down price. And the recent cash from his father’s Will greatly assisted Noah’s cause. Once the pub was officially his, the first thing he did was to contact Samuel Brice, a fellow Crumlin Road Gaol inmate he’d done time with. He brought Brice in as his “enforcer”. And Noah Woyda hadn’t crossed the line of the law, nor looked back since then.
* * *
When McCusker and O’Carroll pulled up outside Mr Noah Woyda’s stone-walled house, quite literally just off Malone Road, all the lights were still on, even though it was just before 3 a.m. Furthermore, the master of the house was up and about and as wide awake as if it was the crack of dawn.
There was the black Mercedes, G-Wagen, and the red Alfa Romeo, Giulietta, parked in their normal positions.
‘Can you confirm that both these vehicles are yours?’ McCusker asked, as Woyda came out of the house without being summoned and approached the detective.
‘Yes, of course they are, bought and paid for,’ Woyda boasted, as Samuel Brice, in his trademark blue plastic car-coat with its tricolour of hoops, joined them.
‘Were you and Mr Brice out for a drive in either of these vehicles this evening?’ McCusker asked, as he appeared to concentrate on the red one.
‘No, of course not, they haven’t moved all night,’ Woyda claimed. ‘Isn’t that right, Samuel?’
‘Of course, that’s correct, Mr Woyda,’ Brice offered, in confirmation.
‘That’s very funny,’ McCusker declared.
‘And why’s that?’ Right on cue, Woyda took a black and white mint humbug from his pocket, unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth.
‘Well you see, Sir,’ McCusker replied, as he took several photographs of the bonnet of the black Merc G-Wagen on his mobile phone, ‘dew forms on a car when the temperature drops below a certain level – I believe it’s 50 degrees, but we can check the exact temperature for you. Of your two vehicles in the drive here, one – the red one, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta – has dew on it, and one hasn’t – the black Merc G-Wagen. You’ve just claimed that both cars weren’t used all night. However, when a car is driven, the heat from the engine makes the dew on the bonnet evaporate. Therefore, if the car hadn’t been driven, the dew would still be on the bonnet of the Mercedes G-Wagen, as, in fact, it is on the red Alfa Romeo’s bonnet.
‘Something we can have a wee chat about next time we meet with Leanne,’ Woyda said, as he offered a threatening look to McCusker.
‘No need to wait, Sir,’ O’Carroll said. ‘We’re arresting you both for the murder of Mr Louis Bloom. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be used in evidence.’
Woyda was so shocked he didn’t even notice that O’Carroll had secured him in handcuffs, while McCusker did the same to Samuel Brice.
* * *
Proceedings resumed at 9.00 a.m. the following morning when O’Carroll and McCusker, freshly showered and, in McCusker’s instance, shaved, met Mr Samuel Brice in the company of his solicitor, Mr Victor Savage. Savage was a junior – and consequently less expensive – member of Leanne Delacato’s company. He made it clear from the very start that he wasn’t singing from the same hymn sheet as his boss and clearly really wanted to do what was best for his client.
Brice was either in his late forties or his early sixties – for a faceless, mortgaged man, the in-between doesn’t exist. He wasn’t exactly what you would call overweight, but as McCusker would say, and frequently did, “He’d leave pretty deep footprints up on the West Strand at Portrush.”
As Brice confirmed during the interview, he’d met Noah Woyda when they were both doing time. It appeared to McCusker that Brice didn’t really have a life outside of Woyda and was on call, quite literally, 24/7. According to Brice, he was paid well for his efforts and loyalty, plus he received generous bonuses and assistance with his mortgage. It was difficult to work out who was taking advantage of whom – probably easier to say it was a relationship of mutual inconvenience. His loyalty extended to not completely selling out his boss. But, where there was a direct conflict with his own potential liberty – as there was with Woyda borrowing Brice’s famous blue car-coat on the previous Thursday night – he erred on the side of his own, personal interests.
McCusker, O’Carroll, Victor Savage and Samuel Brice sped through the interview and statement pretty quickly, so the detectives felt well prepared when they reconvened with Noah Woyda and Leanne Delacato in the same interview room at 11.00 a.m.
Delacato was all business and behaving as if she was confident that pretty quickly – like their previous meeting – she’d be walking out of the Customs House with her client a free man.
The two detectives, and not to mention DS Barr and Superintendent Niall Larkin, all had other ideas. McCusker was relieved to hear that the Super, pragmatic as ever, was taking the philosophical view that Miles Bloom would still have been a marked man, with both a target and a price on his head, even if he had detained Woyda yesterday with the insufficient evidence they had at that point.
O’Carroll switched on the digital machine and announced for the record all those who were present.
‘Mr Woyda we better get started; we’ve a lot to get through,’ she began.
‘First,’ McCusker continued, ‘we’d like to show you three photographs.’
The two detectives had discussed the tactic of producing the photographs right from the start. She favoured keeping them up their sleeve until they hit troubled waters and needed them. McCusker felt that it was always best to start off with what you hoped would be your winning hand – in other words, what you felt was your unbeatable hand. It gave you a bit of momentum and hopefully carried you through the first couple of hands. O’Carroll was happy to follow her partner’s lead on this particular occasion.
McCusker dealt what he felt was his best three-card-hand on to the desk between them. The photos were the right way up for Delacato and Woyda, but McCusker still edged them even closer to the accused and his brief.
Mr Noah Woyda let his mask drop for ten seconds. Right before the detective’s eyes, yet unseen by his brief, Woyda’s face physically contorted into a mask of hate personified. McCusker believed that if they’d been by themselves, Woyda would have done his very best to kill him in that instant. He also looked like he was absolutely bursting to say something.
‘These photographs–’
‘What could these photographs possibly have to do with my client?’ Delacato shot in, beating McCusker to the punch. She looked like she felt her client expected her to say something, anything. She too was behaving like her client, in that they both appeared to know something that the PSNI didn’t. Although, McCusker had to admit that apart from Woyda’s anger and Delacato’s discomfort, neither of them seemed overly concerned.
‘These photographs,’ McCusker repeated, ‘of Mr Woyda’s wife and Mr Louis Bloom sharing some intimate moments were secretly taken on behalf of Mr Woyda and delivered to Mr Louis Bloom in this envelope.’
McCusker paused to take a soiled and stained brown envelope, sealed in an evidence bag, from yet another file. The envelope bore the legend “L Bloom” hand-printed on the front in blue felt-tip.
‘Mr Bloom cut and tore the photographs into little pieces and discarded them in his rubbish bag. Perhaps that was the reason he was so keen to be out dumping his rubbish so late that night. Maybe he didn’t want to risk anyone else seeing these images. Maybe he just didn’t want these photographs in his house.’
‘I’ve certainly nothing to do with those photos,’ Woyda barked. ‘I’ve never seen those disgusting photos of my wife before and if the PSNI release them to the press… I’ll… I’ll… put you out of business!’
‘Before we move on,’ McCusker started, freezing his face to avoid a smirk, ‘if you’ve never seen these photos before or had nothing to do with them, could you please explain why your fingerprints are all over them?’
Leanne Delacato looked like she’d just been sucker punched, not to mention betrayed.
‘Would you accept that you and Mr Brice were not in fact driving around looking for poster sites last Thursday night?’ O’Carroll continued, not waiting for a response from either Woyda or his brief.
‘That must have been a different night,’ he conceded slowly, but still seemed generally unconcerned.
‘We know you borrowed Mr Brice’s distinctive blue plastic car-coat with the three stripes across the chest and the back last Thursday night,’ McCusker started.
‘Is that what Samuel said?’
McCusker was heartened by his response; at least it wasn’t a flat-out denial.
‘Yes,’ McCusker confirmed, as he patted the file in front of him, ‘it’s all in here, in his statement.’
‘Well, I’ve always said that Samuel had the better memory, so that must be correct,’ Woyda conceded, very well humoured.
‘We also have another statement,’ McCusker continued, shuffling his files and taping the new one on top, ‘this one is from a witness who was in the Botanic Gardens at the same time Louis Bloom was delivering his garbage bag to the rubbish bin, close to the shelter in the bandstand section of the Gardens. This witness saw you approach Mr Bloom–’
‘Correction, Mr McCusker,’ Delacato offered in interruption, ‘your witness saw a man wearing a jacket similar to the one my client borrowed from his colleague.’
‘Yes,’ O’Carroll conceded, ‘that’s what we also thought, but our DS Barr went to work on that issue for us and do you know what he discovered?’
‘I have a feeling I’m about to find out,’ Delacato replied, clearly still basking in the glory of her earlier victory.
‘He discovered that those jackets are not in fact sold over the counter in Ireland,’ O’Carroll continued, appearing to lay down one of her trumps, ‘but through Dobens, a mail-order catalogue, the suppliers of which state that they only managed to sell one of their blue plastic coats in Ireland, and that was to a certain Mr Samuel Brice, of Seaview Drive, Fortwilliam, Belfast BT15 4QU.’
‘Oh come on, Detective, surely you can do better than that!’ Delacato said, tutting away as her client basked in the sunlight of her glory. ‘We’re talking about the campus of Queens University, ranked in the top 1 per cent of universities in the world! There are around 25,000 graduates or post-graduates who have arrived in Belfast from all over the world. Surely it would not be out of the question to assume that out of those 25,000 students at least one – and maybe even as many as ten – might have also purchased one of these rare jackets in their homeland through the Dobens catalogue?’
McCusker thought Woyda really wanted to high-five his brief right at that very moment. The detective barely managed to hide his disappointment, as he reluctantly agreed that was possible. In fact, Constable Ian McKay, a bright young protégé of DS Barr’s, had made a similar point during the process of Barr’s research.
‘That’ll be a matter for the Director of Prosecution to decide,’ O’Carroll offered, sacrificing her trump. ‘Let’s say for now that our witness saw a man in a distinctive blue plastic, striped jacket approach Louis Bloom. They had heated words and Mr Bloom and Mr Wo–’
‘Uh-uh!’ Delacato offered, with a negative shake of her forefinger in chastisement.
‘Mr Bloom and a gentleman in a unique blue plastic, striped jacket,’ O’Carroll offered, to a nod of approval from Delacato, ‘walked off together. Mr Bloom was never seen alive again.’
‘Come on! Is that really all you have to throw at us?’ Leanne Delacato said, as she stood and started to pack her papers into her expensive but old-fashioned brief case. ‘Really? I’m shocked and very disappointed by the calibre of the officers currently in the PSNI.’
Noah Woyda also stood up, seeming shocked that proceedings appeared to have reached a conclusion in his favour so quickly.
O’Carroll and McCusker let them both put on their coats and pack away their paperwork. Just as brief and client reached the door the constable on duty failed to move out of their way.
‘If you’d just like to indulge us for a wee while longer, please,’ O’Carroll asked.
Client and brief looked at each other in false amusement.
‘Yes,’ O’Carroll continued, ‘we wanted to talk to you about Mr Miles Bloom.’
‘Yes,’ Delacato said, sitting down again but keeping her coat on. ‘I did hear through the grapevine that he committed suicide,’ she continued, revealing the reason for her and her client’s confidence. ‘That was so tragic. Apparently he left a note saying he was sorry for what he did to Louis.’
‘Well, not exactly,’ O’Carroll said, ‘you see, what actually happened, and I know you’re going to have trouble believing this… but we had an officer on duty outside Miles’ house for the last few evenings and not only did he see a distinctive black Mercedes 4x4 G-Wagen pull up outside Miles’ house in the very early hours of this morning, but he also recorded two gentlemen exiting the vehicle – one of them, in fact, wearing the infamous blue with tricolour strip, plastic car-coat. The officer in question, DI Cage, also caught Mr Woyda and his colleague, Mr Brice, on an iPhone camera, leaving their vehicle and entering the house. On top of which, DI Cage witnessed the lights go on, heard two pops of a revolver and then your two boyos swiftly leaving the house in a hurry, jump in their Mercedes and drive off without turning their headlights on. DI Cage also caught their exit on his mobile phone.
‘Mr Brice has already made a statement confirming that he was the gentleman in the blue with tricolour strip, plastic car-coat, who last night had entered Miles Bloom’s house. He has also confirmed that he was accompanied by Mr Woyda. They entered the house by breaking in through the back door. They climbed the stairs to Miles’s bedroom. Mr Brice confirmed that he and Mr Woyda forced Miles Bloom down to the lounge by gunpoint. Mr Woyda, while threatening Miles Bloom with his gun, tried to get Miles to sign a suicide note, which Mr Woyda had earlier prepared on his home computer. Miles pretended he was going to sign the note, but then at the last moment he rugby tackled Mr Woyda, spinning him and the gun around. Mr Woyda’s first shot missed Miles, hitting the wall in the opposite corner of the room. Mr Bloom scarpered back over across the room, dived over the sofa but landed on his head and knocked himself out. Mr Woyda leaned over the sofa and instead of shooting Miles up through the underside of his chin and into his brain, the way most suicides would go, he shot his second bullet right between Miles Bloom’s eyes.
‘Mr Woyda then scribbled an “M” at the bottom of the suicide note, rammed it into the fist of the corpse, and he and Mr Brice made their exit.’
Miss Leanne Delacato removed her coat and started to unpack her briefcase again.
Chapter Forty-Six
Mr Noah Woyda surprised McCusker by not protesting his innocence. He accepted that he’d been caught fair and square, but still, he didn’t show any remorse.
‘Tell me this, Mr Woyda, how did you manage to persuade Louis Bloom to accompany you when you met him in the Gardens? According to our witness, although there looked to be a bit of “static” between both of you, you didn’t use any force to get him to walk away with you.’
‘Very simple: I told him that my associate had Murcia in another part of Botanic Gardens and that he would hurt her if we didn’t join them in the next five minutes.
‘Of course, neither Samuel nor Murcia were in the Gardens that night. When I got Bloom as far as the secluded lane, I pointed to the hedge and said she was in there. When he went to look, I came up behind him and rammed the knife into his back and straight up and through his heart. It’s a wee trick I learned when I was up in the Crum. It was all over very quickly.’
‘But without Mr Brice to help you, how did you manage
to get him up to, and over, the Friar’s Bush graveyard wall?’ McCusker asked, as ever intrigued by the minutia of the murder method.
‘Well, first off, when I knifed him, he fell into the hedgerow and I pushed him in even deeper so that he was out of sight,’ Woyda continued, clearly proud of what he considered to be his handiwork. ‘It’s a quiet laneway in the hours of darkness. I hid him in the hedge and then waited until after midnight, when there was no one around. I snuck back into the Botanic Gardens, pulled Bloom out of the hedge, put him in a fireman’s lift and carried him over to the wall. I’d two wheelie bins waiting over there. I put one tight up against the wall and put the other one on its side and in front of the first one, using it as a step. I climbed up on the one on its side, then on up onto the one against the wall. I’d enough height to just slide Bloom down on the graveyard side of the wall, dropping him down onto the ground. I hopped in after him, lifted him up in a fireman’s lift again, carried him up to the Lennon Mausoleum and spread him out in front of it.’
‘Why by the Lennon Mausoleum?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Because he was a Beatles fan,’ Woyda and McCusker replied simultaneously, one more proudly than the other.
‘You’ve got to understand, it’s all about doing your recce,’ Woyda boasted. ‘It’s all about doing your recce. I discovered through my own recce that Louis Bloom used to take out his rubbish every Thursday night just before 9 o’clock. I knew every nook and cranny of the graveyard and the Botanic Gardens. I knew where to get the wheelie bins from. I knew they had to be taken back to where I got them. I knew where I could hide the body and not risk being caught red-handed with the corpse. I knew when the Gardens closed. I knew the easiest way to get into the Gardens when they were officially closed.’
