No Simple Death (2019 Edition)

by Valerie Keogh

  For the first time, Clark squirmed as much as he was able to, wedged into the small chair as he was, and didn’t answer.

  West looked at him intently. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It wasn’t relevant to my inquiry,’ Clark hedged and began the slow process of extricating himself from the chair. ‘All the information I needed for my investigation is there. Information you require for yours, I’m afraid, you’ll have to collect yourselves.’ And on that note, he left the office and closed the door on the annoyance and frustration of the two men behind it.

  West took a deep breath, and let it out in a stream of colourful swear words he’d picked up over the years before opening the Johnson file again, and spreading the meagre information out on the desk. He held the enclosed photo beside the computer-generated photo of their victim again. They were different people, certainly, but there was a marked similarity. ‘And look here.’ He indicated the physical statistics. ‘It could describe the same man. Both six two, both around one ninety, both with brown hair.’

  ‘And both work as engineering consultants,’ Andrews pointed out, leaning over the desk.

  ‘Two men, same name, same description, same occupation. One married to Edel Johnson and disappears; the other she finds dead. Way beyond the bounds of coincidence, we have a conundrum on our hands.’ West stood abruptly. ‘Right, we have our work cut out. I think we can agree that the Johnson missing person case and ours are linked. I’ll have a word with Inspector Duffy and get his go-ahead to take it over. I can’t see Clark making any fuss about it somehow,’ he added, indicating the meagre information still scattered on the desk. ‘Get Garda Allen to give you a hand and start filling in the gaps on both men. And get one of the others to contact every estate agent in the area, find out who sold that house to the Johnsons and where they got the wherewithal. I’m going to head back to Mrs Johnson and see if I can fill in some blanks there. I’ll call in to the inspector on my way.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s four o’clock; we’ll have a briefing at five thirty, see where we stand.’

  As Andrews left, he ran a hand over his head and frowned down at his desk before shoving everything back into the file. A quick visit to Inspector Duffy gave him permission to take over the missing person case and he headed off to Wilton Road, determined to fill in some of the gaps in their information.

  Pulling up outside Edel Johnson’s house, he groaned when he noticed the car that had been parked in the driveway was gone. With no idea where she was, or how long she’d be away, there didn’t seem to be much point hanging around. Scribbling a note asking her to contact him, he got out to put it in her letterbox when he saw a man coming out of the driveway opposite, a recycling bin clattering noisily behind him.

  ‘Hello,’ he called, bringing the man to a halt. ‘I was hoping to catch Ms Johnson, I don’t suppose you know where she is?’

  The man looked him up and down critically and then with a look that said West had passed muster, he said, ‘Not sure where she’s gone but she was in a hurry, and she was carrying a holdall, so, I guess she’s gone away for a while.’

  Scarpered, done a runner, vamoosed. West’s expression closed down in annoyance. Thanking the neighbour, he crushed the note in his hand and got back into the car.

  He still looked annoyed when he returned to the station just after five. He headed straight to his office and dropped heavily into his chair, his expression only relaxing when Andrews came through the door with two mugs of coffee, one of which he deposited on the desk in front of him. ‘Cheers, Peter,’ he said, picking up the mug and taking a tentative sip. Andrews had mixed up their two mugs on numerous occasions and a mouthful of oversweet coffee was something he didn’t need right now. He’d got it right today though; he took a long drink of the strong, bitter coffee and sat back with a sigh.

  ‘It looks like Edel Johnson has done a runner,’ he said. ‘Neighbour saw her leaving in a hurry with a holdall.’

  ‘Maybe it was something she’d planned?’

  West shook his head. ‘No, that just doesn’t ring true. After her reaction to “come to good,” I’m convinced there’s something off about her. We’re just not seeing it.’

  ‘We’ve managed to find some information on our murder victim, less on our missing man,’ Andrews said. ‘Do you want me to fill you in now?’

  Sighing more loudly, West got up. ‘Thanks, no, it’s time for the briefing, I’ll hear it all then.’ They headed back into the general office where a number of gardaí were sitting on chairs and desks, comparing notes, catching up with department gossip. Sergeant Clark was also there, West noted with annoyance.

  Someone had organised a large whiteboard, and photos of the victim and the missing man were fastened to it with overlarge lumps of Blu-Tack.

  Andrews, at a nod from West, pointed to the computer-generated photo of the victim, Simon Johnson. ‘Here’s what we have found out about our victim. He was a forty-two-year-old engineer who worked on a contract basis for a number of companies. He was based in Cork for a number of years and had purchased an apartment there which is presently rented out. For the last year, he was based in Dubai, flying regularly between there, other Middle Eastern countries and the USA. He hadn’t been back to Ireland for the last year and was only back last week to attend a family funeral. Garda Allen spoke to his sister.’ He nodded to a small, ginger-haired man who stood awkwardly.

  ‘According to his sister, who also lives in Cork,’ Garda Allen read hesitantly from his notes, ‘after his aunt’s funeral, Johnson spent a few days visiting friends and family. The sister said, he had some business to attend to in Cork yesterday but she has no idea what that was. After that, he had planned to catch up with some friends in Dublin today before catching an early flight to Dubai in the morning.’ He fumbled to turn a page in his notes, licking his fingers to separate the pages. ‘The sister says he had planned to stay in the Shelbourne. He made the reservation for two nights, but didn’t show. We’re still trying to contact the friends; the sister gave us a few names but she wasn’t sure who he had planned to meet.’

  ‘What about Foxrock? Does she know of any reason he might have come here?’ West asked.

  ‘She’d never heard him mention Foxrock but doesn’t know where his friends live so perhaps one of them lives here. She did say, however, that as far as she knew all his friends lived in and around the Ballsbridge area.’ Allen closed his notebook and sat.

  ‘Do we have any idea what business he had intended to do?’

  Andrews spoke up. ‘I contacted his office. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t related to his job. I got his bank’s address from the sister. They won’t talk to us without a court order but that’s in progress and I have an appointment to talk to them tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay, good.’ West looked over his shoulder at the whiteboard, weighing up the information, analysing it for content and relevance. ‘Anything else?’ he asked, looking around the room. ‘What about our missing man, then?’ He pointed at the other photo on the board. Silence echoed around the room, broken by the gurgle of the coffee machine and the even louder gurgle from some of the men who had skipped lunch and were anticipating a big evening meal. A few glances were directed toward Garda Jarvis, the newest member of the team, who stood self-consciously.

  ‘I spoke to the estate agent, Kim Manners, who sold the Johnsons the house,’ he began hesitantly, stopping when all eyes fixed on him.

  ‘Go on,’ Andrews called encouragingly, ‘tell us what you found out.’

  ‘She remembered them well,’ Jarvis continued with more vigour. ‘They went around to see the house in the morning and Simon Johnson rang and put in a full asking price offer in the afternoon. Ms Manners said they always asked potential purchasers what their situation was, if they were waiting for a mortgage approval or if they had to sell a property prior to purchase. Our missing man told her they could proceed immediately because he had won the lottery a few months before.’

  The room erupted in speculation a
nd conjecture, the noise level increasing as the conversation grew wilder.

  ‘Okay, okay, enough,’ West shouted to be heard above the hullabaloo. ‘Did you check his claim with the lottery, Jarvis?’ he queried and acknowledged his shake of the head, saying, ‘Right, follow that up tomorrow. We want to know when he won and how much.’

  ‘How much did they pay for the house, anyway?’ Andrews asked.

  Jarvis checked his notes. ‘Ms Manners told me the house had been on the market for several months and the price had been substantially reduced to attract a sale. They paid five hundred grand for it but she said it was originally on the market for closer to eight hundred grand.’

  West frowned thoughtfully. ‘That seems cheap for the centre of Foxrock, doesn’t it? Was there a reason?’

  ‘She mentioned something about the graveyard putting people off, Sergeant,’ Jarvis offered.

  ‘Nice quiet neighbours, I’d have said,’ Garda Allen put in with a gruff laugh at his own joke.

  ‘Apart from his claim to have won the lottery what else do we know about our missing man?’ West asked, looking around the room.

  ‘I got their last address from the estate agent,’ Jarvis said. ‘They lived in Drumcondra.’

  ‘Good, hit the phones tomorrow. Find out how long they lived there, when it was sold, how much for. Any information you can get. What about tax returns? He worked on a contract basis. He must have filed tax returns. Look into that too.’ Jarvis nodded, anticipating a heavy day on the phone.

  Andrews was looking through the information in the slim file they had received from Sergeant Clark. He took out a couple of pages, which had been stapled together, and held them up. ‘Our missing man’s bank statements are interesting.’

  West took them, raising an eyebrow. ‘What have you picked up?’

  ‘There were no cash withdrawals made on the account,’ Andrews said. ‘Two thousand euro was deposited every month and then immediately went out by direct debit to pay a number of credit cards. The monthly deposit of two thousand euro, you would assume is his salary since it comes on a regular monthly basis, but he works, we’ve been told, on a contract basis, sometimes from home, so surely his income would differ from month to month. But that’s not the only odd thing, look at this.’ He pointed to a series of letters beside each deposit amount. ‘These letters indicate that they are all internal transfers from another account.’

  ‘So, he has another account?’

  ‘He must have. If the two thousand euro were coming from an external source, they wouldn’t have these letters next to it.’

  ‘Why didn’t we get the details of all his accounts when we requisitioned his bank?’ West turned to Clark who leaned back in his chair, frowning.

  ‘Because we were looking for credit card use or debit card withdrawals,’ he answered indignantly. ‘His debit card is linked to that account. They weren’t obliged to give us data on any other account. His direct debit transactions weren’t of any interest to my investigation.’

  West glanced at Andrews who nodded in response to the silent request that he requisition full banking details tomorrow.

  ‘This is getting more and more complicated,’ West groaned, running his hand over his face. He looked at the clock. Almost six thirty. ‘Let’s leave it at that. Right, you all know what to do tomorrow,’ he said, dismissing them. ‘Get some rest. See you all at eight.’

  Then, remembering his luck earlier, he decided to ask one last question, halting the mass exodus in its tracks. ‘One more thing, do the words “come to good” mean anything to anyone?’

  He got the expected head shakes and shook his own in acknowledgement of defeat. A creak of a chair indicated movement from Sergeant Clark and West looked over dismissively.

  ‘Come-to-Good,’ Clark pronounced in a loud voice. ‘It’s a village in Cornwall.’

  6

  West, convinced that the answer to some of their questions would be found in Come-to-Good, decided that the only option was to go there. He headed to Inspector Duffy’s office wishing, not for the first time, that he had one of those, rare to be sure, bosses who respected intuition. It was hard to put forward a good case, when your sole argument was it’s just a hunch.

  The inspector wasn’t impressed. ‘Sounds like a red herring to me, you’d be far better off focusing your attention here. But,’ he conceded reluctantly, ‘it’s your case, Sergeant West, if you think hightailing it to Cornwall is in the best interest of your investigation, you obviously know what you are doing.’ He was an expert in damning with faint praise and more confident men than West had left his office feeling an inch tall and useless with it.

  The inspector had intended to retire the previous year but had been persuaded to head the detective unit in Foxrock when Inspector Morrison had gone on extended sick leave. It was supposed to have been for three months, then six. Now, a year later, he was still there. West knew he resented it, but he was a good officer and despite his objections, despite obviously thinking his idea was preposterous, he knew he could depend on him to liaise with his counterpart in the Devon and Cornwall police and obtain the usual permission.

  Back in his office, he used the internet to find the nearest airport to Come-to-Good. To his surprise, Ryanair couldn’t bring him further south than Bristol, a hell of a drive. Persistence paid off, and he found a flight to Plymouth with FlySouth. He checked the timetable and then his watch. There was a flight at ten; if he rushed, he’d make it. There was always a packed holdall in the trunk of his car for emergencies. He could go straight to the airport.

  He had a quick conversation with Andrews who, like the inspector, considered the trip to be a waste of time. ‘Stop worrying, Peter,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow night and at least I’ll have put the Come-to-Good angle to bed. You talk to the bank, and have an alert put out for that bloody woman.’

  ‘You never told her she couldn’t go anywhere,’ Andrews argued. ‘Maybe she has gone on a visit somewhere. Could be something innocent, you know.’

  West looked at him scathingly. ‘You don’t believe that for a second. There is something decidedly fishy about Ms Edel Johnson. Coincidences keep piling up, and you don’t believe in them any more than I do.’

  Andrews shrugged then grinned. ‘You just go on your junket to Cornwall, Sergeant, and leave it all to me.’

  FlySouth was an efficient airline that had him on the ground in Plymouth ten minutes ahead of schedule. There were a number of car rental offices in the arrivals area and he walked to the first of these and within minutes of form filling was in the possession of car keys for a Ford Focus. He had rented a satellite navigation system and he quickly keyed in the postcode of the only accommodation in Come-to-Good, a piece of information Andrews had rung to tell him en route to the airport in Dublin. The sat nav quickly digested the data and displayed the information required. Arrival time would be one o’clock. He sighed wearily and hoped it would all be worth it.

  He was tired and crotchety when he pulled up in front of his destination in Come-to-Good, a beautiful old public house that showed not a hint of life. He hadn’t asked Andrews the name of the pub and saw, with a glimmer of amusement, that it was called simply, The Inn. He noted a sign for the car park and swung his car around, parking it in the corner of the virtually empty, unlit lot, assuming that there would be some means of entering the place. Andrews was supposed to ring and warn them of his late arrival.

  Grabbing his bag, he headed for the inn door and, giving it a tentative push, was relieved when it gave easily and opened into a warm, inviting room. It was just after one and the room was empty apart from a large man behind the bar who scrutinised him as he entered.

  He broke the silence. ‘Good evening. I know it’s late but there should have been a room booked for me. My name is West, Mike West.’

  The landlord reached under the counter and, for a brief terrifying moment, West thought he was reaching for a gun and fear flashed through him, searingly painful memories fol
lowing inevitably on its tail. The appearance of a disreputable ledger drew a short laugh of relief that drew a quizzical glance from the landlord.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he hastened to explain. ‘I’ve had a long day. I’m just relieved you are still open.’

  ‘We wouldn’t turn a traveller away this time of night. No matter how much the nuisance he was,’ the landlord said bluntly. ‘Anyway, your friend rang so we were expecting you.’ He turned to the relevant page and turning the ledger around toward West, used a large index finger to indicate the next vacant line. ‘Just sign here, please.’

  West dropped his bag on a nearby bar stool and, taking the pen, started to write his name. It’s a habit with most people, to read the other names in registers like this, and he was not immune to natural curiosity. The other name on the page surprised him so much, he dropped the pen and had to scrabble on the beer-sticky floor between the bar stools to retrieve it.

  Putting on his best poker face, he completed the signing-in process, managing at the same time to elicit information from the landlord about business at this time of the year. Armed with the information that only two of the ten rooms were occupied that night, he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room. He toyed with the idea of going from room to room until he located the only other guest but, with a protracted yawn, and the vision of a comfortable bed in front of him, he decided that morning would be soon enough.

  Moments later, he was stretching in the most incredibly soft bed he had ever been in and before the stretch finished, he was relaxed. He lay for a moment going over the events of the day, remembering clearly Edel Johnson’s reaction when he had mentioned Come-to-Good. ‘Perfidious female,’ he murmured sleepily and, shutting his eyes on that note, he didn’t open them until morning.

  In another room, not far away, Edel slept through early morning deliveries and the clatter of the bottles being emptied into containers behind the inn. It was the incessant bark of squirrels in the trees outside that eventually made her open one eye, quickly followed by the other. She stretched and lay for a moment, enjoying the play of light through the windows.