‘Yes. Maybe frustration.’
He unfroze the image. Let it play until Richard exited the refuse room. Froze it again on the frame that best favoured Richard’s face. ‘A man under some pressure, would you say?’
‘It’s the pain in his shoulder.’
‘Impressive jump. Richard kept himself fit?’
‘Well, yes. But he didn’t go to any gym.’
‘Concerned about his condition, no doubt ….’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Some with his condition are very cautious, but evidently your husband was not one of those. He was an active man.’
‘Well ….’
‘Out on sites with his job. Active in the physical world.’
‘When he had work.’
‘He was out of work in recent times?’
‘He was doing some consultancy work.’
‘Yes. I saw from his files.’
‘He was applying for a post.’
‘A man of his skill is always in demand, I’m sure. He wasn’t … anxious, you tell me?’
‘Depressed, you mean?’
The detective offered only the slightest inclination of the head.
‘Down, maybe,’ Gloria admitted.
‘I don’t wish to pry, but you know that I must have a clear sense of Richard’s state of mind at the time of his disappearance.’ It was his third visit, but Detective Barrett had made scant acknowledgement of Gloria’s job as a stenographer, someone well used to ribbons of intimate detail provided by strangers.
‘I know what it is you’re doing,’ she said plainly.
‘I’m sorry for this.’
‘Don’t be.’ Her voice sounded bitter. That hadn’t been her intention.
The detective inclined his head in the opposite direction. ‘In time I hope to be able to answer all your questions.’
‘Are you going to play those pictures again?’ Gloria asked.
‘No.’
‘Can you leave the disc with me?’
‘I’ll keep it safely, Mrs Meadows. Can we talk again, soon?’
Gloria nodded tearfully. She could scarcely rise to her feet to see Barrett to the door, such was her response to the cctv images of Richard. After he had left she found that her muscles were tense from rehearsing Richard’s leap into the dumpster. She couldn’t so much as shake her head. She just stood in the quiet, eyes tightly shut, teeth clenched, until her muscles began to ache and she felt their strength leaving her.
Action.
She could have a clear-out. That would be good. She could act on that. Offer his clothes to friends. No. His clothes to Oxfam. Make his workroom her workroom, where she might sit and read and roll out her yoga mat: better to have the wooden floor than bedroom carpet underneath.
She had thought that if the dead were to make contact across the divide, they might soften the shock by making the first pass via the telephone. Richard would approve of her deleting his number from her mobile phone. She could do that.
In the end, she vacuumed the place from top to bottom, not forgetting the Persian prayer-rug outside the hall door. She cleaned out the fridge, gathered up his medicines and his shaving gear: all that would be going in the dumpster after Richard. Before the sky fell down she opened a pricy bottle of Bordeaux and drank it all, then went to bed without immediate regret.
17
‘All right,’ Gloria said aloud, ‘let’s see you do something really brave.’ Step into the lift, take that journey down to the bin-room to show that you care.
So, she did it. She left the door to the apartment unlocked and made her descent. She moved slowly past their parking space, looked hard into the emptiness, but there was nothing she could learn from it. There was no meaningful trace that she could discover. The car was burnt and gone. So, too, was Richard.
Gloria tried to remember what it was like to sit in the car, to drive it, to be driven in it. What came to mind was the sound of the windscreen wipers in the wet. They needed to be replaced.
She had put the car out of her mind; consigned its burnt husk to Detective Garda Barrett’s care. He was preoccupied with it. He had spent a long time just staring at her set of car keys; staring as if they might speak. He was thinking about this and other acts of destruction, she supposed, while he brushed his teeth or lay in his bed at night.
The insurance payout on the car made her fret. She wasn’t ready to drive again, despite encouragement from friends. What would she do with that sum of money if she didn’t put it towards buying another car? Go on an extended holiday by herself? Take a friend, any friend who would go; take her mother? She didn’t want that.
You’re on your own, girl. A Marks & Spencer basket on a Friday night. Investigate any new lines on the shelves. Slippers at nine o’clock.
Gloria entered the bin-room half expecting to find her husband there, dead and alive. She stood in the concrete room with large bins on three sides of her. Stood where he had stood before launching himself.
Hello Richard. Me.
Nothing came back. She studied the junk in one corner that didn’t get put in the bins: the glass top of a coffee table, an ironing board, an office printer, a box television set. There were places to dump such things.
She listened to water travelling in pipes above her head. She heard the distant whirr from the lift-shaft. She hoped it wasn’t her friend, Fidelma, because she wasn’t ready to talk today. She glanced over her shoulder. It was old Billy going out for one of his runs. She heard the creak of the electric gate to the car park opening at what always seemed to be halfspeed. Even old Billy had to temper his running so as not to have to stop on his exit. When she turned her attention back to the bin-room, she stepped towards Richard’s chosen dumpster. The smell wasn’t too bad. He mightn’t have smelt bad getting out.
She looked into the bin and, with a little bow of her head, made an altar of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, then turned to leave. She noted the cctv camera that was mounted on a cement girder beyond the open door. It was one of the new models, a dark little thing with a ring of ultra-red pin lights. She hadn’t noticed it there before being introduced to its work. It was right that the detective had taken away his player and disc, Gloria decided.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered again as she passed under the eye. Though she was not feeling at all brave, it was the first of a number of walks she would take in Richard’s name.
18
Gloria found a boarding pass for a London–Dublin flight folded in a shirt pocket. She was putting the shirt to her face when she felt the card in the breast pocket.
She studied it, but could give no detail to the basic scenarios she imagined. Richard had gone to London to … visit a friend. Who? He liked London. It was a place to go in a crisis. A place to get lost. To start something. Start what?
Maybe he had gone to see his Trinity College friend, Sam? She had a number for Sam. Poor old Sam had given it to her after the funeral. But wait: Sam had left London for a post in the U.S. That one they used to hang out with – Nicola – she went to London with Sam, but Sam went to New York by himself. Broke up with Nicola, according to Richard. She might still be in London. Had he gone to her? Richard never thought much of her.
They had liked going to London together, she and Richard. Some piece of human scaffolding collapsed inside her. She couldn’t put flesh on any speculative proposition.
She didn’t do it immediately, but later that day she rang her detective.
‘Mrs Meadows. What can I do for you?’
‘It’s probably not important, but I found a British Airways boarding pass in my husband’s pocket. A flight from London to Dublin. For the time we’re looking into.’
‘Let’s not talk on the phone.’ It wasn’t convenient for Barrett, but he offered to call to her apartment immediately.
‘If you think it might shed some light.’
‘We’ll see.’ Detective Garda Jarleth Barrett liked Gloria Meadows, liked her melancholy ey
es, her slim shoulders, her tangled hair, her delicate complexion. He wanted to acknowledge her sadness and the sudden incompleteness of her life, but he didn’t dare. He was surprised at the effect she had on him, but he couldn’t let that show.
Did she want him calling? She wasn’t sure. ‘Perhaps you can find out more. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time.’
Gloria agreed to a prompt interview. She looked around and saw the mess that she had created, with piles of displaced clothes and personal effects. When Barrett buzzed from the lobby she came down and took him and the British Airways boarding pass to the café across the street, where they sat in a window seat.
‘As I said, I don’t want to waste your time.’ In truth, Gloria was glad to speak again to somebody official.
‘That’s clear to me.’
She slid the flimsy card over the table-top. Barrett studied the boarding pass.
‘Something unexpected?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Never mentioned?’
‘No. Never.’
‘But he goes to London regularly, for his work?’
‘Occasionally. I’d always know when he was going.’
Barrett nodded gravely. ‘Just the one, you found?’ he mumbled. ‘You found no other?’
‘No.’
‘There was no ticket?’
‘Not that I could find. I did look.’
‘You told me before, when he left the apartment – after you had words – he didn’t take a bag ….’
‘No. He didn’t.’
‘Didn’t come back to fill a bag?’
‘I’ve checked.’
‘You’ve checked.’
‘I’ve looked. All our luggage bags are where they should be.’
‘A light canvas bag, or the like…?’
‘I have checked.’
‘What do you make of it yourself, Mrs Meadows – his trip to London?’
‘It doesn’t really have anything to do with him being knocked down, does it?’
‘What I mean is, what do you make of his going to London?’
‘He ran away.’
‘Without a word.’
‘Yes.’
‘He doesn’t want to come home. Not yet. He decides to make a visit.’ Barrett gave a leading shrug.
‘I can’t think who he was visiting, if that’s what you’re asking. ‘We have friends there, but there’s no one I can think he’d visit without my knowing.’
‘In that emotional state ….’ He seemed to be indicating the basement car park of the apartment building where the bins were kept. He shrugged again. Gloria didn’t like the shrugging.
‘Look, we had a row – hardly a row. Call it a temporary falling-out. I imagine Richard was upset when he left the apartment ….’
‘But you left before him,’ he confirmed.
‘Yes. We were both upset. I’m sorry. I am wasting your time here.’ She looked at his brimming cup in a way that indicated it was time to drink coffee. She took a sip from hers; he was compelled to take several gulps in succession, though he broke to say: ‘You’ve done exactly the right thing.’ When he had finished scalding his mouth, Barrett briefed Gloria on the investigation to date – which was little more than informing her of procedural matters. Nothing new; nothing that she didn’t already know. She listened dutifully, but his words soon fell away. She took in his face. A boy easily led, she thought, who had grown into an inhibited teenager, who had grown into a not easily fooled man.
‘Didn’t bring a bag, I expect, because he didn’t know he was going, given the state of his mind.’
‘Something like that.’
‘He did what he did in the basement ….’
‘He jumped in the dumpster.’ Now she was extending his words. It made her uncomfortable.
Barrett nodded and squirmed a little in his chair. ‘Then … took off. That would make sense. He flew to London – and who knows what …?’
Here was that studied vagueness cops used as a method of winkling out further information. Gloria had nothing to add.
‘We’ve seen the cctv footage,’ he continued. ‘We know from his behaviour ….’
He changed gear, but preserved the musing tone. ‘For what it’s worth, Mrs Meadows, in my experience odd behaviour usually isn’t quite so odd once we know what has caused it.’
Now she saw it: his lack of experience, his covering with received wisdom.
‘Once we have the context,’ she added darkly.
‘Exactly,’ he replied.
She had seen policemen in court perform like this. Usually they turned out to be extremely cunning. This one, however, had something in the eyes that let her warm to him, despite the shrugging, and his eagerness to finish her sentences. Perhaps he, too, had suffered a great and untimely loss.
He broke her introspection by pointing out the window. ‘There’s somebody waving at you,’ he said.
‘Where?’
Fidelma was giving a tight little wave of solidarity from the opposite pavement. Gloria readily returned the gesture. ‘My neighbour.’
Detective Garda Barrett gave a polite wave, too – which was unnecessary and somewhat awkward.
‘Her name is Fidelma,’ Gloria said, to save the detective from himself. ‘She’s a friend.’
He let a flash smile fall quickly from his face. He struggled to regain his concentration. ‘Could I ask you to think about why he might have travelled to London? It may, of course, have nothing to do with your husband’s … accident.’
The conversation had gone full circle. Gloria’s eyes grew more distant. Neither of them was going to drink any more coffee. ‘You want to catch up with your friend,’ Barrett said, extending a hand.
‘Yes,’ she replied. That wasn’t true, but she rose to her feet.
‘I’ll be in touch soon,’ he assured her.
‘I’ll think about London.’ Gloria was already sliding away from the table, leaving the policeman to pay.
19
A review of Richard Meadows’ credit-card transactions showed the purchase of the one-way air ticket from London Heathrow to Dublin. The record also showed the purchase of a sea-ferry ticket, Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead, two days earlier. Barrett checked ticket purchases on either side of the Meadows’ transactions from the same credit-card machine for the London flight, to see if any connection might be made. Nothing significant presented itself. A family of four on the previous transaction; a businessman taking a connecting flight on the following transaction.
On the ferry ticket, Meadows had paid for two fares and a car. Not his car. Barrett found that the car was registered to one Virginia Coates. Drinks purchased on board with Virginia Coates’ credit card. With her credit-card information, he was able to get her telephone number. This number crosschecked with Meadows’ call log.
Detective Garda Barrett rang Virginia Coates, introduced himself, gave her the sad news of Richard Meadows’ demise. She was shocked. He didn’t tell her of his suspicions, just that Mr Meadows had been found on the roadside. it wasn’t a full interview. That would follow later. He listened carefully.
‘But what happened?’ Virginia Coates asked. She seemed to have little or no air in her lungs.
‘We don’t know.’ Barrett weighed heavily on the full stop. ‘You knew Mr Meadows well?’ he asked presently.
She knew what he was asking. Yes, she admitted, she knew him well.
‘He went with you to London?’
‘Yes.’
‘For a short break?’
‘Well, actually, I’m working here. I’m based here now.’
That wasn’t the answer in code. It was a deflection of sorts. That was to be expected. As little more detail was forthcoming, Barrett changed gear: ‘You had an ongoing relationship with Richard?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, without hesitation. There was a brief silence, followed by a suppressed sob.
‘I see.’ Barrett’s voice was flat, non-judgmental.
‘An ac
cident, you’re saying? Not his heart?’
Not a heart attack, Barrett told her. He give a timeline and location report. ‘I’m sorry,’ he concluded simply. She was grateful for this small acknowledgement. ‘How long had you known him?’
She told him that she had known Richard as a boy, that they had met again recently. Barrett sensed that she was about to launch into biographical detail. He didn’t want that now. He preferred to let the news sit. Let her think about his investigation, see if it alarmed her. See if, when he called again, she mounted a vigorous tactical defence, or remained upended. ‘I would like to talk again.’
‘Yes. I understand. How is his wife?’
‘You know Mrs Meadows, perhaps?’
‘I haven’t met her.’
‘You and I will talk in confidence.’
‘In confidence. Yes.’
He’d be ringing again soon to arrange a face-toface interview, he told her.
The insurance people had been on to Gloria. The mortgage would be paid off. The life-cover policy would provide a lump sum. It was thanks to her that the policy would pay out well. Had it been left to Richard, it would have been an altogether more frugal arrangement. Richard, now you see.
It felt vaguely fraudulent, but Gloria meticulously studied the terms, conditions and listed benefits accrued to the surviving spouse. She wasn’t afraid of a little velvet, as her mother would put it: a little prosperity. She knew how she might invest and spend the money, but that didn’t track how she might spend the rest of her life without her Richard.
She put on the white hard-hat Richard wore to building sites to study the insurance documents. Reading the policy made her want to get drunk. Instead, she fall into a deep sleep on the couch. She didn’t hear Fidelma knocking on her door.
At home that same evening, after a tiresome telephone conversation with his brother, Barrett put on Sibelius – something the widow Gloria might like. He went to bed early, allowed himself half an hour to think about the Meadows case.
The location chosen for dumping Richard Meadows didn’t show much planning, expertise or dark wisdom. Barrett was moving in the direction of manslaughter, a malicious, but unintended, killing, and a panicked disposal of the body, the remains being ferried in Meadows’ own car and dumped before the car was taken to the other site and burnt. The torching of the car was, he was sure, improvised at short notice.
Quiet City Page 8
