Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  Still, there were others who were worse off. He was reminded of that later that afternoon as he sat waiting for Andrew Bowen in the bar of Walsh’s pub just around the corner from Andrew’s office. Little Joe Bloggs, who’d been swimming with the fishes, was, as Jack had predicted, a heroin addict. One of Dun Laoghaire’s many. He’d been given the Probation Act the last time he was convicted of possession. What was the point in sending a minnow to Mountjoy, the judge seemed to think? Jack was in two minds. Of course there was no rehabilitation in prison. All the boy would have done was work out even more ingenious methods of getting hold of his gear and getting out of his tree. But on the other hand, removing the little bollocks from the area wouldn’t have been a bad move either. Anyway, the deed had been done. And somehow little Joe Bloggs, identified by his fingerprints as Karl O’Hara, had ended up being half beaten to death, then dumped somewhere, the tidal experts reckoned, between the harbour walls and Dalkey Island. He had been alive when he hit the sea, his lungs were filled with saltwater. Jack hoped for his sake that he hadn’t been conscious, although according to the pathologist he probably was. Conscious but in agony. Blows to the kidney, liver, three broken ribs, a badly crushed ankle, and a broken right arm. The poor kid had got a right going-over. He’d been in the water for three to four days, but his mother, when Jack had called to see her an hour ago, said she hadn’t seen him for weeks. Jack had backed hurriedly out of her front door. The woman looked young, much younger than he’d have guessed for the mother of a twenty-year-old. Well dressed and made-up. As clean and neat as her house. She must have been dusting when Jack knocked on the door. There was a J-cloth in her hand the whole time he was speaking to her and it never stopped moving. Flicking invisible specks of dust from the polished dining-room table and chairs. Wiping tiny smudges and smears from the brass handles on the interior doors. He fought to suppress a giggle, winking surreptitiously at Tom Sweeney who was hanging back on the doorstep. She’d be a brilliant clean-up person after a job. Never miss a print.

  But she’d absolutely nothing to tell them about her son.

  ‘I haven’t set eyes on him for months,’ she said flatly. ‘Not since he robbed the new TV and the microwave and the CD player. He even took all my Garth Brookes CDs. I could’ve killed the little bastard. So I kicked him out. Up until then I’d been making excuses for him, feeling sorry for him, trying to help him.’

  Being a mother, Jack thought.

  ‘But after that, I’d had it up to here.’ She waved the cloth above her blonde head. ‘His father always said I spoiled him. Gave him everything. Treated him different because he was the only boy. And the youngest. And the cutest.’ She gestured towards the framed photos on the sideboard. Family groups. Mother with baby in arms, swathed in a crocheted christening robe. First communions and confirmations. Four blonde heads smiled. Three pretty little girls, and an equally pretty boy. She was right, Karl had been a cute little lad once.

  She began to crumple then, her anger giving way to the sense of loss, which Jack knew had been waiting, probably for months, to be acknowledged. He offered to make tea, but she walked him to the front door and jerked it open.

  ‘I’ve nothing more to say to you lot,’ she said. ‘If you did your job properly my Karl would be alive today. He’d be a normal, healthy, happy lad, with a job and a car and a girlfriend. It’s all your fault. You don’t give a toss about people like him. You can’t be bothered. You’re fucking useless. Now,’ she stood back to let them pass, ‘get out, get lost and leave me alone.’

  She had a point. He knew in many ways she was dead right. He said as much to Andrew Bowen as they waited for their pints to settle.

  ‘They don’t want much, do they?’ was Andrew’s response. ‘I suppose it would never cross her mind that her darling son should’ve tried taking a bit of responsibility for his own actions. I tried telling him often enough, the number of times he was in to see me. But it was like water off a bloody duck’s back.’

  Jack watched the head of his pint turn to cream and waited for the moment when it was ready to drink. Andrew, he noticed, wasn’t waiting. He had ordered a whiskey chaser and he had already drunk half of it. Jack picked up his glass. He raised it in salute before he put it to his lips.

  ‘Sorry,’ Andrew looked embarrassed, ‘bad day today, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Andrew’s thin face sagged. He reached for the pint glass and picked it up. He took a long swallow and wiped the froth from his upper lip with the back of his hand. ‘Well, to be honest, it’s not the day itself that’s bad. It’s the going home part that’s the real killer.’

  ‘Could you not move her into a hospital or some kind of residential care, or something?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, of course I couldn’t.’ Andrew’s tone was exasperated. ‘I couldn’t. What would everyone think?’

  ‘Do you care at this stage? “Everyone” isn’t looking after her the way you do.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it to her, Jack. Her home is pretty much all she’s got left now, and all her little routines. They’re what keeps her going. Without them she’d give up.’

  ‘And what keeps you going, eh?’

  Andrew shrugged and picked up the whiskey glass. ‘This, I suppose. This is a big help.’ He drank and put it carefully down on the shiny tabletop. ‘And . . .’ He paused.

  ‘And, yes, go on.’ Jack’s tone was curious.

  ‘And, you know, “and”. Do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘You don’t have to, but it might be interesting, might spice up the conversation a bit.’ Jack smiled at him, watching a sudden flush spread across Andrew’s face.

  ‘Ah, go away with you. Leave it out. Leave a bloke with his private life. Let’s just say that it’s something to look forward to after a dull day at the office. Although, to change the subject,’ Andrew held up his hands against Jack’s protest, ‘funnily enough something very interesting cropped up in the job today.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t say. You amaze me. Interesting, among that lot of no-hopers who parade past your desk every day. You could have fooled me.’

  ‘My, oh, my.’ Andrew sat back and folded his arms. ‘Talk about me having a bad day, what’s got into you?’

  ‘Ach, you don’t want to know.’ Jack finished his drink and gestured to the barman for a refill.

  ‘Wives, eh, former, present, something like that?’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it. It just depresses me. Come on. Tell me, interesting cases in the probation and welfare service. Surprise me.’

  And he was surprised. Although looking back on it he shouldn’t have been. A letter should have come from the Department of Justice, telling them that a prisoner of Rachel Beckett’s standing was due for TR and was planning to live in their area. He would be very surprised if there hadn’t been some kind of notification. It was standard procedure. And, after all, she wasn’t just any common-or-garden husband killer. Her husband was a guard. And not just any old guard but one who was very well known and highly regarded, from a family of guards. Been in Special Branch during the eighties when things up North were really bad. Done all kinds of surveillance, gone undercover. Practically a hero. And when he’d been shot and she’d spun the line about the men who’d broken into the house and killed him, everyone believed her. To begin with. Until after the funeral anyway. Then it had all begun to unravel, her carefully stitched-together story.

  Tell me again, Rachel, what time did this happen?

  Describe to me again, Rachel, if you wouldn’t mind, these men. What did they look like – height, weight, physical build, accents? What did they say to you? What did they say to Martin?

  You were definitely on your own the whole time, were you not? Apart from the ‘masked men’, definitely on your own the whole time, is that what you’re saying?

  You and Martin, how were you getting on, Rachel? Was everything all right between you? Are you sure about that now?

&n
bsp; And you’re sure about these ‘masked men’, you don’t want to tell us anything else?

  Because we’ve found something. You see, you know you told us that they’d stolen Martin’s gun, after they shot him with it. That they took it with them when they left. Well, you see, we’ve found it, wrapped in a plastic bag, dumped in a skip not half a mile from here.

  And do you know what else we found in the same skip? A nightdress. And do you know what was all over it, Rachel? Martin’s blood. And do you know whose nightdress we think it was? We think it was yours.

  And do you know what we found on the gun, we found fingerprints, and we’d really like to take your fingerprints if you wouldn’t mind, just so we can eliminate you from our enquiries. Just so we can be sure. Sure that they’re not yours. Because we’ve tested the gun and the shot that killed Martin. And, well, you see, you were definitely right about that. It did come from Martin’s gun.

  And so it had gone on. He remembered the details. His first case after he’d become a detective. A minor player, really, in the team. But somehow or other he’d been with Michael McLoughlin when they were called to the house. He’d seen the body. The blood all over the floor. The woman, frantic, handcuffed to the radiator beside him. And what he hadn’t seen and heard for himself he’d heard from the guards who’d been in on the interrogation. From the informal sessions that took place over coffee and biscuits in her sitting room, with her daughter asleep on the sofa beside her, to the arrest and the formal questioning, conducted in an interview room in Stillorgan Garda station, in a room that would have stunk of fear, and stale cigarettes, and misery.

  They’d celebrated for days after she’d been charged. Old Michael McLoughlin was her arresting officer. He was cock of the walk, in his element, at the time when he could still handle everything. The drink included.

  ‘How does she look?’ Jack asked, remembering how she had looked then.

  Andrew shrugged. ‘How does anyone look when they’ve been inside for that length of time?’

  ‘I dunno. Think of Nelson Mandela. He looked bloody great when he got off Robbin Island. Don’t they have a name for it? The sleeping-beauty syndrome, isn’t that what they call it? All that routine life, no alcohol or drugs, plain food, plenty of outdoor exercise. I remember reading some article or other in one of the English papers. They reckoned that he was at least twenty years younger than his actual physical age.’

  ‘Yeah, Jack, but there’s one major difference between our Nelson and Rachel Beckett. He didn’t have a guilty conscience. And he had three-quarters of the free world rooting for him. He had right and God and whatever else you choose to mention on his side. I’m afraid he was a one-off in that respect.’

  ‘So she’s not gorgeous any longer?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by gorgeous. Her hair’s grey now. She’s very thin, almost frail. Her skin has that dried-up, bad-diet look about it. But, you know . . .’ Andrew finished his second pint and raised his glass questioningly to Jack. Jack nodded. ‘Give her a couple of months, sea air, sunshine . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Gorgeous’ was the word Jack would have used about her back then. Some had been a bit more graphic, explicit. They’d all known her and fancied her at one time or another. She was old Gerry Jennings’s daughter. His youngest, his one and only girl, his favourite. And they’d all been surprised when even Martin Beckett fell for her. Martin wasn’t like that. He wasn’t the kind to get involved.

  ‘Do you remember at the trial, Jack, all that stuff about Martin’s brother, Dan? Didn’t she try and implicate him?’

  None of them had believed a word of it. Michael McLoughlin had pooh-poohed it right from the start. He remembered him coming back into the station after he’d been with her in the house. After he’d confronted her with the shotgun and told her about the fingerprints, that they matched hers. He’d walked in and announced to the whole room that the woman had come up with another great story. She was blaming it all on the brother. And did she have a reason for her allegations? It would have made some sense if there’d been something going on between them. But she was adamant, they were just friends, nothing more.

  So tell us, Rachel. Tell us again what really happened. You’re backing off from your ‘masked men’ story, is that right? So, start from the beginning. You say that you and Martin had a row. What was it about? Nothing much, you say. He was drunk. He was often drunk these days. And when he got drunk he got violent. Is that your story now? Well, you were right about one thing. He was drunk all right. His blood alcohol level was five times over the legal limit.

  So you were frightened what he was going to do, scared of him. So you phoned your brother-in-law to come and help. Why didn’t you just leave yourself, just get up and go? The car was in the garage, you were a free woman. So why did you stay in the house with a man who you say was drunk and violent? Tell us, then, what happened next? Tell me about Dan Beckett.

  ‘You went to the trial, didn’t you, Andrew?’ Andrew’s face was devoid of colour. He looked exhausted. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He gazed at his reflection, blurred, unfocused, in the mirror on the opposite wall. He knew he should go, that Clare would be waiting. But he couldn’t face her. Not just yet.

  ‘Hey, Bernie, same again,’ he called to the barman. He glanced over at Jack who was slumped back against the padded upholstery, munching handfuls of dry-roasted peanuts. Andrew had known him one way or another for years. He’d watched his progress through the guards, followed his domestic ups and downs. He had to admit that Jack was looking pretty good these days, despite his moaning about the wife. He’d lost weight, got his black hair cut short in a kind of Brad Pitt look, and he no longer wore that beaten-puppy air which had hung around him in the months before he’d finally left home. He waited until the barman had dumped their drinks on the table, taken his money and retreated behind the counter, then said, ‘The trial? Beckett’s trial? Yeah, I was there for a bit of it.’

  ‘What did you think of Dan Beckett?’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘He had an alibi. It was his mother, wasn’t it? Didn’t she say he was at home with her at the time? And I think the general feeling was that she’d be hardly likely to make up something like that to protect her son’s killer. Even if the suspect was her other son.’

  ‘Her adopted son, Andy. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘Yeah, so, her adopted son. Still the person who had been accused. Surely above all she’d want justice, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Even when it came out that they’d been having an affair. Rachel, her daughter-in-law, with Dan, her son?’

  ‘But even you lot didn’t believe that Dan was involved, did you? You didn’t believe what she said about what happened. You never charged him with anything.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. We had him in for questioning, all right. I remember. His father came with him. Tony Beckett, another old-timer. I never knew him, but everyone else did. Half the lads in the station were working for his security company, on the quiet. Doing nixers here and there. So they all knew Dan too. They all had stories about Dan, how he was Tony’s gofer. Drove him around everywhere in that big old black Merc. Bought him his Cuban cigars and his bottles of Bushmills. Took him to the golf club for his dinners and drove him home afterwards, old Tony snoring away in the back and Dan as sober as a judge. Also took him on his trips to the girls in the massage parlours that they did the security for.’

  ‘You’re kidding, massage parlours? At his age, lucky old sod.’

  ‘Yep, the guys in Vice knew all about it. But mind you, they know all about the foibles and peccadilloes of half the pillars of this society. They’ve got some stories to tell. Anyway, so when Dan came in for questioning it was all backslapping and reminiscing. The good old days, the great rounds of golf. But they didn’t get anything out of him anyway.’

  ‘And the same thing at the trial too. He said that when he left the house, Martin was asleep on the couch. The jury believed him and they didn
’t believe her.’

  ‘That’s right, that’s what it came down to. And what about you, what did you think? Then. And now, after you’ve met her, what do you think now?’

  ‘What I think, Jack, is that I’m late. I’m going to finish this in double-quick time, and then I’m going home. That’s what I think.’ He picked up his pint and drank deeply. He put the empty glass down neatly on the beer mat, stood, picked up his briefcase, nodded, then walked to the door.

  Poor fucker, Jack thought. What a life. Around him the bar was beginning to fill up. It was an odd place for a probation officer to drink, he thought, not for the first time. At a casual glance he could spot any number of Andrew’s former and current clients. They’d all have been mates of poor dead Karl O’Hara. He’d be seeing a lot more of them in the days to come. His heart sank as he thought about it and remembered the state of the poor kid’s body, and then remembered the way Martin Beckett had looked in death. It hadn’t been a pretty sight. A huge wound in his groin. Half his abdomen blown away. A dreadful smell. Blood everywhere. Dried, dark, sticky.

  But at least his face was untouched. They’d taken him home to his parents’ house after the post-mortem and all the forensic formalities. There’d been a huge crowd to pay their respects. Jack had been nervous about approaching the coffin. But Martin looked fine. Very pale, his fair hair slicked down over his forehead. His eyelids closed over his bright blue eyes. And she had been sitting beside him on an upright chair, silent, rigid with grief, he had thought. Jack had been part of the Garda escort to the church. He had liaised with Dan Beckett about the arrangements. The parents couldn’t cope at all, they were so distraught. He’d always liked Dan somehow. He was much more easygoing than his brittle, difficult, ambitious younger brother. But then, Jack remembered how he’d pointed it out to Andy, they were only brothers by adoption. Not by blood. What difference does that make, he wondered as he finished his drink and wiped his salty, oily fingers on a piece of crumpled tissue. It must mean something. It must be significant. There must be a difference, in personality, in character as there is in looks. He stood up and put on his jacket. And then he wondered if Dan Beckett knew that after all these years his sister-in-law was free.