Darkhouse jl-1

by Alex Barclay

  A box on the dressing table was filled with hair pins, scrunchies, makeup and cheap jewellery. He turned around and pulled open the doors of the wardrobe, running his fingers across the clothes. He bent down and saw piles of old shoes and two old tennis rackets. Then he saw an envelope, from an oversized greeting card, stuck into the side. He pulled it free from its slot in the wood and laid it on the bed. The big card was a birthday card, signed by several girls, love hearts and circles dotting the ‘i’s. The messages were all innocent. He reached his hand to the bottom of the envelope and pulled out more cards and letters from her girlfriends and from Shaun, birthday cards stretching back to her childhood and a few Valentine’s cards. One of them, in a soft pink envelope had a teddy on the front, holding a flower. He opened it. ‘Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Sugar is Sweet and So are You.’ It was a child’s writing. A big question mark filled the left-hand side. Frank was surprised anyone would write such a clichéd poem. But how old was the card? He flipped the envelope over. It was postmarked the previous year. Why would a child be sending Katie a Valentine’s card? Or was it someone trying to appear like a child? But that didn’t make sense. He flicked through the rest of the cards, had one last look around the room and walked down the narrow stairs to the living room. Martha got up expectantly.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  He waved the card at her. ‘Do you know where this came from?’ he asked.

  She took it from him and smiled. ‘Aw,’ she said, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I can’t believe she kept this. It was from Petey Grant, bless him. She thought it was so sweet. It gave her a bit of a boost at the time, even though she knew there was nothing really to it. That’s why she showed it to me. She’d never have showed me the others she got. I remember she laughed that he’d bother putting a question mark on it, because his handwriting was so recognisable. He used to pin notes on the boards in school to let them know if the floors were wet or a classroom had to be closed for cleaning.’ She stopped.

  ‘Anyway, I’m rabbiting on here. Do you need this?’ she held up the card.

  ‘No, you can hang on to that,’ said Frank.

  D.I. O’Connor parked his car in the lane andwalked up to the Lucchesis’ door, admiring the view as he went. Joe took his time answering.

  ‘You’ve done a wonderful job on the lighthouse,’ said O’Connor.

  ‘That’s my wife.’

  ‘I’ve always had a fondness for it.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a great place.’

  Joe nodded and waited.

  ‘As I’m sure you know, I’m Detective Inspector Myles O’Connor from Waterford and I’m heading the Katie Lawson investigation.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Come in.’

  They stood in the hallway.

  ‘This is about your involvement. I’m going to have to ask you to…’

  Joe knew O’Connor was hoping to avoid finishing the sentence.

  ‘To?’ he said.

  ‘To stay out of things. I’ve never been in this situation before with a person going around to people’s doors asking them questions, arriving unannounced at the station and telling our men what to do—’

  ‘I thought I was helping out. The information I was giving was based on my experience—’

  ‘Let’s just cut to the chase here. You obviously think we’re not doing our job right, that we’re some quiet village with a sleepy force…’

  Joe said nothing.

  ‘Do you honestly think an investigation into the death of a teenage girl is something every single one of my men is not putting their whole heart into? Things are done differently around here. Don’t mistake a measured approach for a leisurely one. We’re not all Flash Harrys speeding around the streets chasing down “perps”.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘Well that’s two misconceptions out of the way, then.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Joe looked past O’Connor.

  ‘Right, well, I won’t keep you. But I want you to know that we’re doing OK without your help.’

  He went to walk away, then turned back.

  ‘We don’t have guns or VICAP or HOLMES or a Ten Most Wanted list, but then we don’t have tens of thousands of murders a year. We have around fifty.’

  Joe shrugged.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said O’Connor, ‘we make our mistakes, but so does the NYPD, so does every police force in the world. But any time I’ve been on a trip to New York, I’ve never charged into a precinct—’

  ‘Come on. Katie was my son’s—’

  ‘Then you’re probably one of the last people—’

  ‘Would you stand by if it was you and do nothing?’

  ‘I would leave it to the professionals—’

  ‘Am I not a professional?’

  ‘You’re an amateur over here. And you’re compromising our investigation. There are people in Mountcannon who think you’re consulting on this and that’s really starting to bother me. I’m asking you – formally now – to keep out of it. Unfortunately, you have a connection to the victim and for that, you and your family have my sympathies. But the brief interview we carried out with you at the beginning of all this is where your input should have ended.’

  Richie was making coffee when Frank arrived back from Martha Lawson’s.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing unusual,’ said Frank. ‘The only thing is, Petey Grant again. I found a Valentine’s card in Katie’s room from him. I know he’s a harmless divil, but maybe the rejection upset him or if she didn’t take him seriously…I don’t know.’

  ‘Why don’t I have a chat with him?’ said Richie. ‘You’ve talked to him already. You’re off this afternoon. I can fit him in then, save you the hassle.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frank. He paused. ‘That’s it! The documentary. He said he was in that night watching something on the Fastnet disaster. What theme would you call that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Discovery Channel.’

  ‘Don’t have it,’ said Richie.

  ‘Well, their nights are usually themed: superstructures, crime, whatever. Friday night is history night. Nora was watching…anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t see a programme on Fastnet fitting in there. It’s always history history, nothing that recent. Wouldn’t the Fastnet race be sport or shipping or something?’

  ‘I’ll check it out with Petey, honestly.’

  ‘You’d need to go easy on a lad like Petey Grant, Richie. Can you do that?’

  ‘No problem.’

  Ray leaned against the ladder in the lantern house with two tins of white and green paint on the floor beside him. The walls were smooth for the first time in years, transformed when they were stripped back and the panels were replaced.

  ‘Right,’ said Anna. ‘Do you know what you’re doing with the colours and everything?’

  ‘I think so. White on the walls, green on the ceiling and green on all the accent bits, like the ladder.’

  ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Richie stood before the small mirror in the station. He rubbed his finger down each temple, over lumps that ran like tiny beads under the surface. He softened hard wax in his palms and worked it carefully through his hair. His eyes lingered on the muscles that filled his shirt. He went to a gym in Waterford seven days a week – unlike the guys he trained with in Templemore. Some of them never worked out. They had beer guts in their early twenties that they never bothered to lose.

  ‘OK, Petey, what have you got for me?’ he muttered as he walked out the door. He drove to the school in the squad car, rather than taking the short walk.

  Students were let out early on Wednesdays and he found Petey Grant in a quiet classroom, washing a blackboard. The whole school seemed deserted.

  ‘Howiya,’ said Richie.

  Petey looked confused. He took a step back.

  ‘Hi Richie,’ he said. ‘Are you well?’

  �
��Yes,’ said Richie. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine, I’m just doing a bit of work on the blackboards.’

  ‘Look, Petey, would you mind coming in to the station to answer a few more questions?’

  Petey’s eyes widened.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Richie, knowing that Petey wouldn’t argue with him.

  ‘OK,’ said Petey, ‘I’ll get my coat.’ He walked down the corridor and into the staff room where he picked up his jacket. He felt sick.

  ‘I’m being arrested,’ he said to Paula, one of the teachers staying back late.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Richie is taking me to the station,’ he said. ‘I think I’m in big trouble. Bye!’ He rushed out of the building into the squad car, about to sit in the front with Richie.

  ‘Get in the back,’ Richie said roughly.

  Petey was trembling when he got inside and stayed that way for the whole agonising drive through the village.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Danny. ‘Your gold and maroon pin is here, hasn’t been checked out, nothing. And I got your big long list of known associates. You got a pen ready? Duke Rawlins.’

  Joe waited. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yup. Donald Riggs, Mr Popularity. Student most likely to be shot in a park.’

  ‘Rawlins. Name sounds familiar. Anything on him?’

  ‘Nothing major. Spent eight years in Ely, Nevada. Stuck some guy with a knife in a parking lot. Your average bar-room brawl plus.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘No rape, no murder?’

  ‘Don’t sound so disappointed.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, just that it was the warden in the prison who kindly provided us with the link. He put a call into Crane after the Riggs murder, Crane scrawled a note at the bottom of the file. The guy’s writing…anyway, no-one paid any attention to it. Why would they? Riggs was dead. So I call the warden, nice guy. Seems Rawlins was mouthing off about Riggs to his cell mate. The cell mate gets into an altercation and bargains with the warden to avoid solitary. Tells him Rawlins’ pal Riggs was planning to kidnap some kid so a pile of cash would be waiting for him when he got out of prison.’

  ‘When did he get out?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Rawlins? Uh, July. Two months ago. Why?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Danny. I think the wacko’s after me.’

  ‘Why in the hell? The guy slashed someone with a knife and was a good little boy in the slammer. Doesn’t sound like a psycho to me. You think maybe he’s got Irish roots or something?’

  ‘This is fucking serious. He could have killed Katie.’

  ‘That’s what this is about? You think this Rawlins guy did this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.

  ‘Does someone go from drunken brawler to transatlantic psycho, that’s the question.’

  ‘Do we want to know the answer?’ said Joe.

  ‘How the fuck would he know you’re in Ireland?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.

  ‘Who else knows you’re there?’ said Danny.

  ‘Friends, family, the job…’

  ‘Yeah and none of them’s gonna tell anyone where to find you. What, you think he followed you to the airport?’

  There was an edge to his voice.

  ‘The cab driver who brought us to the airport could have said something, I dunno. One of the neighbours, someone came sniffing around…’

  ‘Joe, you sound nuts.’

  ‘How long have you known me, Danny?’

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘Right. And in general how often do I screw up?’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re on vacation now. I’ve never solved a fucking crime in my life sitting by the pool at the condo.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Joe.

  ‘Look, people just don’t give up that kind of information. People are suspicious these days, they want to know why someone’s asking. Hold on a second, I got a call coming through.’

  Joe waited on the line.

  ‘That TS guy is a total retard,’ said Danny. ‘The call was for MacKenna, I get stuck talking to his ma—’ Danny stopped. ‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ After two minutes, Joe hung up. Just as he walked away, the phone rang again.

  ‘A couple weeks ago,’ said Danny, straight to the point, ‘a Lieutenant Wade called here from the nineteenth, looking for you. The call was diverted and the bad news is that our boy on the TS has never heard of you, calls out to one of the guys who shouts back you’re in Ireland. And we know there’s no Wade in the nineteenth. And we know there’s a gimp on the TS.’

  Joe said nothing. His heart was thumping.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘He told him Ireland? But that’s it, right? Nothing else?’

  ‘That’s it, so he’s not even gonna know where you are in Ireland. If we’re assuming that’s the guy who made the call.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘We are assuming that. And I don’t know. Ireland’s a small country.’

  ‘It’s not that small.’

  ‘How many people live in Ireland, Danny?’

  ‘I dunno, twelve million?’

  ‘Four. And over a million of them live in Dublin. Which leaves under three million spread across the whole country. Believe me, that’s small. Look, leave it with me. I’ll see what I come up with.’ He was about to hang up, when he stopped. ‘Uh, Danny? You think you could call that nice warden, get to Rawlins’ cell mate, talk to him, see what he knows?’ Danny grunted. As soon as Joe put down the phone, he went to the den. He took a box from the back of a row of books and pulled out his dupe – a copy of his shield. It was illegal, but most offi-cers had one. Losing the original meant losing ten vacation days, so when he was on the job, Joe would leave his shield at home in the safe and carry his dupe. This time, there was no original. He had to hand it over when he vested out. He felt a surge of something like jealousy. He flipped open his wallet and looked at his ID card, stamped in red with the one word that changed everything: retired.

  O’Connor sat in front of a pile of folders and prepared himself to pick apart every single word of what he was about to read. As usual, each job in the investigation – chasing phone records, interviewing the person who found the body, calling in medical records – had been written on a triplicate form and assigned by the ‘book men’ to a detective. The blue top copy was glued into the left-hand page of the jobs book, with a note opposite saying who took the job and what the outcome was. The other copies were filed in the folders in front of him: Statements, Witnesses, Suspects…He looked at the stack and pulled out the one marked Statements. Top of the pile and four pages long was Shaun Lucchesi’s. He could think of three men over the previous five years who had murdered their girlfriends and walked free. If the gut instinct of every guard working their cases could have been admitted as evidence, three men would have been locked away for a very long time. O’Connor’s gut instinct was not telling him that Shaun Lucchesi was a killer, but it was telling him he was a liar.

  Joe almost ignored the phone when it rang on the desk beside him.

  ‘Hi, Mr Lucchesi. It’s Paula here from the school…Shaun’s history teacher. I can’t get hold of Petey Grant’s mother, so I thought I’d call you. He’s just told me he’s been arrested by Richie Bates and he’s going down to the station.’

  ‘What?’ said Joe. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, no. You know Petey.’

  ‘I’ll go down and check it out. Thanks for the call.’

  Richie and Petey sat in the station at opposite sides of the desk.

  ‘Why have you arrested me?’ asked Petey.

  Richie laughed at him. ‘You’re not being arrested, you’re…’ he held up his fingers to make quotes, ‘“helping us with our enquiries.” I mean, we don’t have any evidence…yet. So,’ he went on, deliberately friendly, ‘obviously you’re here because of Katie.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Petey.

&nb
sp; ‘Did you fancy her?’ said Richie bluntly. He was tapping his fingers loudly on the wooden surface.

  Petey blushed. ‘No!’ he said.

  ‘You sent her a Valentine’s card, didn’t you?’

  Petey’s eyes shot wide.

  ‘That was before she was going out with Shaun,’ he stammered.

  ‘And were you upset when she started going out with Shaun?’

  ‘No!’ said Petey, horrified. ‘Shaun’s my friend. So is Joe!’

  ‘Did you ever ask her out?’

  ‘No!’ He stopped. ‘I’ve never asked anyone out.’ He blinked back tears.

  ‘I’m going to get to the point here, Petey,’ said Richie. ‘Do you know anything about what happened the Friday night Katie went missing?’

  ‘No,’ said Petey. ‘I told you. I was inside, like I was supposed to be.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Richie, forcefully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Petey. He started tapping his foot on the floor.

  ‘Do you understand how important it is to tell us if you know anything?’ said Richie. ‘Another girl could die if we don’t have all the information.’ Petey looked shocked.

  ‘Someone else could die?’ he said. ‘Oh my God.’

  The doorbell startled him.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ barked Richie. Petey was shaking.

  Duke jumped up from the bench and put his ear to the thick round glass. He heard it again – a scratching sound, then churning, then scratching. ‘Shit,’ he said. The owner came over to him.

  ‘You got a problem with the dryer?’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ said Duke. ‘Think I left a pin in my jeans.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Well, here.’ She pushed a key into a slot at the side and turned it off. ‘You should be able to open it now.’

  He reached in and pulled out the warm, tangled jeans and jacket. On the bottom of the drum, a single euro coin was left. He picked it up, confused. It burned his palm.

  ‘Money,’ she said. ‘Even better.’ But Duke was panicked now, pulling out pockets, examining the denim, patting down the clothes he was wearing, emptying out his bag on the floor. His fingers ran over and through everything, until he was kneeling, panting, his heart pounding. He stood up and leaned heavily against the dryer, his head bent. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.