by Bateman
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well then, you are a sad and twisted individual. But for the record – and that’s a laugh, though I do hope someone is recording this, because it will be very sad when it goes on YouTube – but for the record, yes, I very much believe my husband was murdered.’
‘And who do you think was responsible?’
‘You know this already.’ I indicated the audience, and she let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Okay. All right. I became convinced that Fat Sam Mahood was responsible.’
‘And what did you do about that?’
‘I appealed to the O’Dromodery Brothers to help me prove it, but they very understandably wanted to leave the investigations to the forces of law and order. Look – I very much believe that the Lord moves in mysterious ways, and that when Fat Sam was killed, that was Him doing some of that moving. And that’s about as much as I know about this whole sordid business. Sean? I’m sorry for your loss, and the only reason I’m here is that I’ve come to believe that . . . Sergei . . . isn’t guilty of anything – and that’s where I hoped all this was leading. But no, all we’re getting are the state-sponsored ravings of a lunatic.’
She made a point of looking at DI Robinson and then allowed her gaze to settle back on me.
I said, ‘They’re not state sponsored.’
‘State indulged,’ said DI Robinson, ‘but there is a limit to the state’s patience.’ He gave me the eyes.
I don’t take many of my cues from James Patterson, but brevity now seemed the way to go. I said, ‘Nicola, nobody is accusing you of actually physically killing anyone, but you did, without doubt, orchestrate the deaths of Fat Sam and the O’Dromodery Brothers and you organised the attempt on my own life.’
‘What about my Francis?’ Sonya Delaney demanded.
‘No,’ I said, without taking my eyes off Nicola. ‘But I’ll come to that. Nicola, your husband Bobby was the architect of the WestBel project. He worked closely with the O’Dromodery Brothers and was often on site.’ I turned to my left. ‘Is that right, Sean?’ He nodded. I turned back. ‘You have told me yourself that he was unhappy about something in work, and that Fat Sam came to see him, and they had an argument, and the following day, Bobby was knocked down and killed. You say your husband never discussed with you the nature of the problem at work?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘These defixios,’ and I indicated the screen, ‘are without doubt inscribed with Latin curses. Nicola, would you mind identifying this next photograph?’
I clicked it up and she looked at it, and there was a moment of incomprehension, followed by a moment of comprehension. It showed two rows of young people, somewhat formally posed, and looking studiously at the camera. Judging by the hairstyles and fashions, it was at least twenty years old.
‘Nicola?’
She said, ‘It’s my year at Queen’s.’
‘Yes, indeed. You are well remembered in the History Department, and one phone call brought me to this picture. You are – as we look at it – back left, two from the end of the row.’ There were a few whispered comments from the audience, no doubt alluding to the fact that since then she’d put on a lot of weight. ‘And your late husband?’
‘Yes, in the front row, right in the middle. With the glasses.’
‘I see. Yes. Bobby Preston. But, Nicola – this is more than just your year group. This is a club within the university, isn’t it? Will you tell us what that club is?’
‘It’s the History Society.’
‘Be more specific.’
‘It’s the Latin Club, within the History Society.’
Murmurs.
‘You and your husband were both passionate about Latin.’
‘Yes. It isn’t a crime.’
‘Well, that remains to be seen.’
There was a ripple of appreciation for that. I felt a little surge of adrenaline.
For the first time, Nicola looked a little piqued. ‘So I know Latin. I also speak German, but I am not guilty of war crimes.’
‘Well, that remains to be seen.’
She did not like that, but my audience loved it. There were beads of sweat on her brow. The lights were helping, which was intentional.
I said, ‘Nicola – I have great sympathy for you. I do believe your husband was murdered by Fat Sam Mahood. We know that they argued on the night before Bobby was killed. That argument must have been about the bodies found on the building site, but there would have been no need for it unless Bobby had some evidence he could show to the authorities. And this is what I believe he had.’ I indicated the table with the defixios. ‘And this is what Fat Sam wanted – the return of the coffin, which your husband somehow smuggled out. Are you with me on this?’ Nicola nodded warily. ‘You’ll agree, he must have been under tremendous pressure.’
‘Yes – yes, he was.’
‘And he may have been torn – the need to keep working in these difficult times versus perhaps his conviction that these bodies, these remains, should not end up under some shopping centre, but that they should be acknowledged and treated with the respect they deserved.’
She moved position, this time sitting straight up and gripping the arms of her chair. As she did so, her hat began to fall; she plucked out a longish hatpin, fiddled with it for a moment, and then changed her mind and took the hat fully off and placed it in her lap. ‘He was a nervous wreck,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t know why. If only I’d—’
‘He was chariman of the Latin Club?’
‘What? Yes, yes. Captain, we called it.’
‘So he was passionate about it.’
‘Oh yes, he lived and breathed it. He could have been an academic, but he said he didn’t want to ruin his love for Latin by teaching it. He just enjoyed the language.’
‘Nicola, do you think it’s reasonable to suggest that perhaps Bobby was a little bit . . . thrown, maybe even unbalanced by the pressure that was being applied to him? He knew all about defixios through his love of Latin, didn’t he? Is it possible, do you think, that he wrote these inscriptions? That he planted them at the homes of those who were putting him under this pressure? Is it possible, Nicola, that your husband predicted his own demise, and decided to organise his revenge in advance?’
Her mouth dropped open a little, and her eyes flitted from me to DI Robinson and back. ‘I . . . don’t know.’
I moved closer. I put my finger to my lips and stared at the projection above her as if I was just then working it out in my head.
I said, ‘Nicola – your husband was a middle-aged man, an architect, a Latin scholar, he was not a man of action. But he had worked in the building trade for a long time. It is an industry full of unsavoury types prepared to do things for cash, no questions asked. He suspected he was going to be killed so he set a plan in motion for what would happen if he was. He cut these defixios from the lead base of the coffin, inscribed them in his favourite language and ordered that they be planted, one by one, over a period of time so as not to arouse enough suspicion that the entire plan would be compromised, and once they were in place, then the killers he hired would strike, and take his revenge in the most bloody manner imaginable.’
I nodded around the audience. They were transfixed.
Nicola said, ‘I don’t know. That’s not very plausible. My Bobby – he did have this real sense of right and wrong, and also . . . also . . . he never really got angry – although he never forgot when someone hurt him, in life, or in business. He never forgot, so I suppose . . . I mean – could he have done that? Could he really?’
I spread my hands before her. ‘I think he could.’
‘My Bobby?’
‘Your Bobby.’
‘No, no – wait a minute,’ It was Sean O’Dromodery, on his feet. ‘That doesn’t make sense. My defixio was only planted a few days ago.’
‘True,’ I nodded, ‘but as I said, he knew if he planted them all at the same time, people would become suspicious.’
‘Okay –
but what about the one at your house?’ Sean demanded. ‘He could not possibly have predicted that my brother would hire you to look into this! He was dead long before you got involved.’
I made it look as if I was thinking about this. I rubbed at my jaw.
‘Well, perhaps he gave the killers free rein to take whatever measures they had to, to protect the master-plan. Perhaps they had access to the remaining lead from the coffin and created their own defixio. Engraving is easy enough.’
Sean was trying to work it out in his head, without much apparent success. He could build things, he just couldn’t take them apart and analyse them the way I could.
I said, ‘It’s as unlikely as it is complicated. But it is possible that Bobby Preston set this all up in advance. He was an architect, he made plans for a living, he designed extremely complicated things which had to work. That’s what this is and was – an architect’s revenge. In fact, almost the perfect crime.’
Sean stood there, shaking his head. ‘We were never anything other than good to him,’ he said, before dropping back into his seat. He raised his hands so that they covered his mouth and nose, almost in prayer. ‘He planned it all? He killed my brothers?’
‘No.’
It was not I. Nor was it Nicola, making a last desperate attempt to save the reputation of her late husband. It was not even DI Robinson applying his jaundiced eye to my theory.
It was Sergei, sitting forgotten at the keyboard, with the violin and bow cradled in his lap. He had said it so quietly that at first only Nicola and I, being closest, heard him.
Nicola began to get up. ‘No . . .’
‘No!’ Sergei said louder. ‘It was not him!’
And this time he got everyone’s attention.
It was all going absolutely to plan.
49
I was certainly not alone in recognising that we had reached a tipping point. Sergei was involved in the murder of Fat Sam Mahood; he was definitely involved in the death of Francis Delaney; and if he was not physically involved in the killing of the O’Dromodery Brothers, he was at least connected to them, because they were connected to each other. He knew things, he had to know things, and whether it was his stay with Nicola, being reunited with his precious instrument or even having the memories dredged up by my skilful interrogation of the fake Professor Sikorsky that had prompted his interruption – well, it didn’t matter. The fact was that he was out of it and apparently ready to talk.
When the hubbub had died down sufficiently, I asked Nicola to vacate the witness chair and she did so without further comment. She lifted her hat and made her way – somewhat shakily, I might add – back to her seat, which was just two up from Sean O’Dromodery, who now appeared as buzzed as everyone else in the room. She avoided eye-contact with Sergei, who studied her every step of the way.
‘Sergei,’ I said, ‘will you please take the witness chair.’
He set the violin and the bow onto his seat and moved slowly but deliberately across to sit in the witness chair. He looked at the ground for several long moments, as if he was psyching himself up, and then his eyes ranged across the audience. They only settled on me when I said, ‘Over here.’
And he said, ‘Hello.’
‘So – you are Sergei, Sergei Litvinov, and you were principal violinist with the Beria Conservatory Orchestra, until you went missing in Vienna?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. And are you . . . feeling better now?’
‘Better?’
‘You have been unwell.’
His hand moved to his side and he said, vaguely: ‘Unwell, yes.’
‘In fact, you were seriously ill. Physically and mentally.’
‘I . . .’
‘You suffered a nervous breakdown once before, and another, more serious one while on tour with your orchestra. It came upon you so suddenly that there was no time to tell anyone; you just walked out of your hotel in Vienna and disappeared.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Christ,’ said Martin Brady, ‘he’s like a nodding dog – he says yes to everything.’
I ignored him. ‘And then you turned up here, Sergei. What brought you to Ireland?’
‘A ferry,’ he said.
‘I mean, why Ireland?’
He shrugged. ‘I do not know. I was in many countries, I think. I drink a lot of vodka. And the more I drink, the less money I have, and the cheaper vodka I buy. I . . . how you say . . .?’ He raised his arm and mimicked playing his violin, and then held his hand out in front of him, palm open.
‘You begged.’
‘Yes – no. I . . .?’ He kept his hand out.
‘Busked,’ said Jeff, from the back.
Sergei nodded. ‘Busked, yes.’
‘This was in Belfast?’
‘Yes, a very lovely people. But then they attacked me. Beat me. I do not know why. Many people, with feet.’
‘You were kicked, you mean?’
‘Many times. Yes. And then I woke up in hospital. I was not well.’
‘No, you were not.’ I moved to the laptop and pressed the button and the next image was thrown up on the wall. I allowed my gaze to wander over my audience until I found who I was looking for. ‘Dr Winter?’ He raised his hand. ‘Dr Winter, you work in the City?’ He nodded. ‘Do you recognise these medical records?’
‘No, I’ve never seen them before, and if I had it would be unethical and illegal for me to display them in this manner.’
‘Absolutely. But can you at least tell us what they show?’
‘Yes. They show that a male by the name of Joe Soap was admitted to the Belfast City Hospital, suffering from a catalogue of injuries. Head trauma, spleen, ribs, other internal damage.’
‘Fairly serious.’
‘Very serious. Life-threatening, I would say.’
‘And the name, Joe Soap?’
‘That’s like a generic name that would be used if a patient is brought in without indentification. In America they use John Doe – here no set name is used, so it could be a John Smith or a Fred Bloggs or in this case, Joe Soap.’
‘And what does the second document show?’
‘That would be a surgical record, which indicates that the patient underwent a double kidney transplant. Double transplants are extremely rare.’
‘Would I be correct in thinking that a single kidney transplant – the donor could be a relative, or a friend, or someone who has passed away?’
‘Yes, of course. It all depends on getting the right match.’
‘But a double kidney transplant would necessarily have to come from someone who has very recently died.’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Dr Winter – you have examined the witness, have you not?’
‘Yes, you know I have – you asked me to.’ I gave him a look. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘And can you confirm without us asking him to take his top off, if there is indeed a scar that would suggest that he has fairly recently had an operation in his kidney region.’
‘Yes, he has.’
‘And the third document I’m putting up now – it shows the name of the donor of these kidneys, does it not?’ He nodded. ‘Would you please read out that name?’
The audience was there way ahead of him. But he said it anyway.
‘Robert Preston,’ said Dr Winter.
Everyone jumped.
But not because of the revelations, but because the girl from the catering company had dropped her tray, and the metallic clatter sent a shockwave through them. As displaced vols-au-vent rolled under chairs, the embarrassed young thing was torn between apologising and retrieving them.
‘For God’s sake, leave them!’ snapped Sean.
The girl seemed to wilt under his gaze. She slowly eased herself back up onto her seat. Her colleague was both more subtle and less intimidated. The young man lowered himself from his chair, which was at the end of a row, into a crouching position which allowed him to move in behind the front row and o
ut of the eye-line of his employer to feel about for the spilled pastries.
This is what I was going to do next: I was going to get Dr Winter to explain the next set of documents, which showed that Bobby Preston had been filleted like a kipper and his body parts transplanted in no less than seven individuals in need of a heart, a liver, lungs, pancreas, intestine and thymus. I was going to jokingly ask what had killed him, because all his bits and pieces seemed to be in fine working order. I was going to then return to Sergei and ask how he had first come to meet Nicola Sheridan, and I expected that he would tell me that she had sought him out and in his weakened physical and mental state convinced him that the only reason he was alive was because of her husband, that he owed him a blood debt and that the only way to repay that debt was to exact vengeance, an eye for an eye and a murder for a double kidney. She had directed him to the All Star Health Club where he hid himself away at the end of the night and waited for Fat Sam. I did not quite know what he would say after that: whether he had been involved in the actual stabbing or whether it had been left to the others.
Yes, the others, who had definitely carried out the murders, who had gutted Fat Sam and thrown Fergus, and zapped Martin Brady before stabbing his husband, who had made an attempt to enter my house and whose final act of violence was to be today, on Sean O’Dromodery, and which I and DI Robinson had been anticipating all morning. That was why we had armed officers strategically placed around Sean, that was why when they made their attempt, they were ready for it.
Jackie McQuiston, the erstwhile All Star employee, now working for the catering company, took her seat as ordered and was replaced by Peter McDaid, another ex-All Star employee, who shuffled along the floor looking for lost vols-au-vent until he was right behind the last of the O’Dromoderys. He then produced his knife and rose up ready to slash Sean across the throat, only for the police officers to pounce upon him and drag him down as the audience screamed and threw themselves away from the mayhem.
DI Robinson hurled himself into the thick of it, while other officers piled upon Jackie McQuiston even though she was crying and shaking like an orphan in a snow storm. And I couldn’t help but clap my hands together joyfully because I had correctly identified Sergei and exposed the killers. Alison was smiling broadly at me and Jeff was giving me the thumbs-up.
