* * *
The weather was still grey and overcast as Hays and Lyons approached Roundstone. They asked at O’Dowd’s pub for directions to Geraghty’s house and took the opportunity to down a delicious smoked salmon salad. Hays would have liked a nice creamy pint of Guinness to wash it down but held back so that he could fully focus on the job in hand.
They found the place where Maguire was allegedly working, up a twisty narrow single-track road behind the town. The road was tarred, but the surface had broken up in the frequent heavy rain, and their car rocked and bumped over the many potholes before they arrived at the cottage on the left of the lane with a fabulous view out over Roundstone harbour and out to sea. Jim Geraghty was painting the outside of the cottage when the two detectives drove up. He looked curiously at their car, and the two that got out of it. Geraghty was a man in his fifties dressed in a dirty grey T-shirt and badly stained blue jeans. His substantial beer-belly hung out well over his belt, and his greasy grey hair and ruddy cheeks completed the picture of a man that was none too fussy about his appearance, or indeed his general well-being.
Hays introduced them and asked if they could have a word inside the house.
They made their way into the parlour of the small cottage where work was still in train to bring the place up to an acceptable standard. There was a lot to do. The floor, although slabbed with large stone flags, was uneven, and some of them were badly cracked making the surface rough. A large open fireplace housed a trivet for a kettle or a pot, and the remains of a turf fire, now cold in the grate, gave off a smell of ashes, some of which had clearly blown around the room in the draught. On the wall to the left of the old fireplace hung a framed photograph of President John F Kennedy, but the corresponding picture on the right of the chimney, which should have been of the Pope, had been removed, leaving a black outline against the nearly white wall.
“Do you live here yourself?” Lyons asked, noting that the place had very little furniture – just a bare wooden table with a milk carton on it, and two well-worn rail backed chairs.
“Not at all,” Geraghty replied gruffly, as if the detective should have known better than to ask such a daft question.
“I inherited the place last year when my father died and I’m doing it up for next summer to let it out to tourists,” he said.
“Who’s helping you with the work?”
“I’m doing it myself, as you can see, but I’ve got a few lads in for some of the specialty stuff – kitchen, electrics, plumbing.”
“Who’s doing the kitchen for you?” she asked.
“Yer man Maguire is giving me a hand when he has time. Feck all use he is too, I’d be better doing it myself. He’s too busy, and when he does come he only does a bit, and then he’s away again.” Geraghty wheezed and coughed a noisy, fluid cough, as if the utterance of the long sentence had been a bit much for his fragile lungs. He went purple about the face before eventually regaining composure.
“Can you confirm that Mr Maguire was here last Tuesday week between five and nine o’clock Mr Geraghty?” Lyons continued.
“If he says he was, then he was. I don’t pay much attention to the days to be honest. Why – what’s he done?”
“You gave information to one of our colleagues that Gerry Maguire was definitely here working on your kitchen between those times. Can you confirm that?” Lyons went back at him, trying not to show her frustration.
“Look, Maguire comes and goes when he pleases. He asked me to say he was here if anyone was asking, so that’s what I said. Now can you leave me in peace to get on with my work before the light starts to fade?” Geraghty said, getting up from the table.
Lyons decided not to push it any further. There was no point. But it was clear to both of them that Maguire’s so-called alibi was useless.
They left Roundstone and headed into Clifden where they intended to set up the arrest of Gerry Maguire with Sergeant Mulholland. When they got to the Garda station Mulholland was there on his own, muddling through a pile of paperwork at a very easy pace.
Hays told Mulholland of the plan to lift Gerry Maguire later that evening and bring him to Galway. Mulholland said that Jim Dolan was off for the day, and that he had the Garda car with him, his own vehicle being out of order at the moment. Mulholland thought Dolan might be taking his elderly mother to Galway for a hospital appointment.
“Well you’d better make sure that both he and the car are back here by eight o’clock,” said Hays in disbelief.
“Oh, by the way, the doc was looking for you earlier. Said he couldn’t raise you on the mobile. He asked if you could give him a call,” Mulholland said.
Hays called Julian Dodd’s number using the landline at the station but was told that the doctor had gone out for an hour or two, and that he would call Hays back when he returned.
* * *
Julian Dodd, as good as his word, phoned Hays at Clifden Garda station as soon as he returned to his desk.
“Inspector, I wanted to call you about two things that may be of interest, though I’m not entirely sure to be honest,” Dodd said.
“Firstly, I was talking to the forensic boys. There’s no trace of any grit or sand in the driver’s side footwell of the hire car that young Palowski was driving – nothing from out Ballyconneely way in any case. But here’s a funny thing. I was doing a bit more work on the girl last week and I combed out her hair. I found some small grains of what I assumed to be sand in both her hair and her right ear. Just to be sure, I sent them off to be analysed, and guess what?” he said, continuing without a pause, “they turned out to be sawdust!”
“Sawdust!” Hays exclaimed, looking over at Lyons in surprise.
“Yes, and there’s more. The analysis shows that it’s a very particular kind of sawdust. The sawdust itself is from a high density MDF board, but there are particles of dark grey composite material mixed in with the sawdust, so it looks as if they have come from a kitchen worktop or some such thing,” Dodd said.
“OK, Doc. Thanks for that. It could be really important. Make sure that those samples are carefully preserved for us, won’t you?”
“Of course. No need to ask,” Dodd said, and hung up.
Hays related the call to Maureen Lyons.
“Come on,” she said, “we have time to get back to Geraghty’s cottage and collect some samples of our own before Maguire is brought in. Let’s go.”
They drove the old bog road back to Roundstone as quickly as the undulating surface would allow without making them both sick. Back at the cottage Geraghty was just finished painting the outside of the house in the fading light and was packing up his brushes, ladder and other equipment. He was none too pleased to see the two detectives arriving back.
“What ails you this time?” he asked gruffly as the two approached him.
He reluctantly allowed them to collect some sawdust gathered from the base of the kitchen worktop, but when they asked for a small off-cut of the worktop itself he got cute and asked them for a receipt.
Lyons was well up to this kind of nonsense.
“Certainly, Mr Geraghty, that’s no problem. But you’ll have to accompany us to Clifden Garda station and sign a statement to the effect that these samples were taken from your kitchen. It could take a few hours. And then there’s the small matter of the alibi you provided initially for Mr Maguire. You’ll have to rescind that and give us a proper statement about that Tuesday. There may even be charges arising from your initial story,” she said.
“Ah to hell with you both. Get out of my sight,” he snarled, and he turned and continued to tidy up his painting stuff.
Maureen smiled to herself.
* * *
The Clifden squad car driven by Jim Dolan bounced down the dirt track to Gerry Maguire’s house with its blue lights flashing. As Dolan pulled into the yard and stopped by Maguire’s van he put on the sirens for a moment just to add a bit more drama to the occasion.
Both Gerry and Mary Maguire appeared at t
he door and Dolan explained that he was arresting Gerry Maguire on suspicion of the murder of Lisa Palowski, and read him his rights.
Amid much protestation and a lot of tears from Mary, Gerry was finally bundled into the back of the squad car. Dolan was now quite wound up, so he drove back up the lane aggressively, with the suspension of the old Ford bottoming on the rocky track. He had, as instructed, got the blue lights flashing. Maguire started to speak to the Garda, but Dolan told him to stay quiet. It would be better for him if he said nothing at this point, the Garda pointed out.
* * *
Hays and Lyons had returned to Galway Garda station, stopping at the forensic lab to drop off the samples taken from Geraghty’s cottage.
When Maguire arrived after a hair-raising drive from Ballyconneely, he was shaken and angry at the same time. He was shown into an interview room and given a cup of tea before being joined by Hays and Lyons.
As soon as they entered the room, Maguire started to protest his innocence.
“All I did was try to help. This is so wrong. You have no right to grab me from my home in front of my wife like that. She’s distraught. I need to get home to her,” he ranted on.
When he stopped for breath, Lyons got a chance to start her questioning.
“See here, Gerry, you haven’t been entirely honest with us, now have you?”
“Tell us everything about you and Lisa Palowski.”
“I don’t know what you mean. All I know is that I stopped to see if I could help and look what it’s done for me. I should have left it alone,” he said, looking away to the side of the bare room as if to imply that the matter was concluded.
“But you knew the girl before you allegedly came across the scene that night, Gerry, didn’t you?” Lyons pressed on.
“What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t know her. That’s crazy!”
“Crazy is it. Well how come we found your semen on a tissue in her bedroom then, and more of it on her bed sheets. How do you think that got there?” Lyons asked.
“That’s nonsense. You’re making it up. You’re trying to frame me. I’m an honest working man with a lovely wife and a happy marriage,” he insisted.
“Aye, Mary’s a grand girl OK,” Hays interjected, “makes you wonder why you’d want to spend your time screwing a hooker.”
“That’s bollocks. You’ve made a mistake. Let me out of here,” he shouted.
“And then there’s the matter of exactly where you were on that Tuesday before you allegedly turned up where Lisa was lying in the ditch,” Lyons said.
“I told you. I was working at Jim Geraghty’s cottage doing the kitchen,” Maguire replied.
“Good one, Gerry. Very good,” Hays said, leaning across the table to bring his face nearer to Maguire’s. “It’s just that Jim Geraghty won’t confirm that. And what’s more, he says you told him to say you were there if anyone asked.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now, Gerry. Sergeant Lyons and I are going to take an hour or so to catch up on some paperwork. You can stay here and make your mind up to start telling the truth. Do you need something to eat?” Hays asked.
“I’m not feckin’ hungry. I just need to get out of here back to Mary.”
“It’s not going to happen, Gerry. Not till you start being honest with us,” Lyons added getting up to leave.
* * *
Back in Hays’ office Lyons called the forensic lab. They had arranged for a technician to stay on to compare the fragments found on the dead girl to the samples they had collected from the floor of Geraghty’s cottage. When she had finished the call, she told Hays that tests were ongoing, but there was a ninety per cent chance of a good match at this stage. If they had been able to recover more of the dust from the girl’s hair, the process would be quicker.
“Ninety per cent is good enough for me,” Hays said to Lyons.
* * *
They took more tea back into the interview room when they resumed their questioning of Gerry Maguire.
“Now then. Can we just go over this once again with you, Gerry?” Lyons said, putting a plastic cup of tea down in front of him.
“All right. Listen. I did go with Lisa a few times in Galway. It didn’t mean anything, it was just sex. Mary seems to have gone off the whole thing lately, and well, you know, a man has needs.”
He went on to describe how he met her when he was doing some electrical work at her apartment building. She had been kind to him, giving him tea and biscuits, and one thing led to another till they ended up having sex on three or four occasions. He had paid her twice, but the other two times he had done work on her flat in exchange for sex. He knew she was an escort, but he said it wasn’t like that between them, it was more than just a commercial relationship. They had talked a lot too. About her life in Poland and her family. Gerry had told her a lot about himself too. About Mary, his first love, and how things had started to go wrong between them. How they bickered a lot, and how sex had become a rarity in recent times.
“When were you last with her?” Lyons asked.
“On the Monday, the day before she died. She wanted an extra socket put into the kitchen for a new coffee machine she had bought in Argos. So, I went there, and after I had fitted the new plug we made love.”
It’s an old story, Lyons thought to herself. The client almost falls in love with the escort, and always thinks that there’s more to it from her side too. And Lisa Palowski would have been very good at cultivating those feelings in her clients. Lyons was sure if you asked James McMahon and Gerry Byrne about it, they would say that they were special to her as well – more than just a source of money. Indeed, McMahon had already told them that he did favours for her, driving her around to get her shopping. In extreme cases, the punter tries to save the girl from a life of debauchery, and usually ends up getting badly hurt. These girls instinctively know how to play their clients. How gullible some men are, she mused.
“So, what happened the following night Gerry?” Lyons asked.
“It’s just as I said. I was driving home in the rain, and I came across you lot at the bridge. I couldn’t believe it was Lisa. I had no idea what she was doing there or how she got there. I was very upset. It was awful. She was a very beautiful girl, you know, and here she is lying in the bog dead. It was unbelievable,” he said.
“Well, Gerry, that’s not really true, is it?” Hays said.
“Of course it is. It’s like I said.”
“Well then, Gerry, how do you explain that we found traces of sawdust in the girl’s hair? Sawdust that matches the sawdust from Geraghty’s cottage and that we could see clearly on your clothes when we first spoke to you at the scene?” Lyons asked.
“It must have fallen off me when I was standing there,” Maguire said, thinking quickly.
“I don’t think so. See, we found sawdust in Lisa’s right ear too. That side of her head was down in the ditch under water. It must have got there before she fell in,” Lyons said.
Maguire leaned forward, his head in his hands and began to sob. His whole body was shaking, and the tears flowed freely. After a while he confessed to what had really happened on that terrible night out on the old bog road.
He had been driving home at about eight o’clock when he saw Lisa sitting on the bridge wall, drenched from the rain, just sitting there. His mind went into overdrive. What was she doing here, so close to his home? Oh no. She had come to tell Mary about them. How he had promised to take her away from her sordid life and look after her. She was going to ruin his marriage and destroy his family. He just couldn’t let that happen. He had stopped the van and got out. When Lisa saw who it was, she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing, ‘take me home’ she had said, ‘take me to your house, Gerry.’
She had clung to Gerry like a limpet, holding him to her tightly. She kept asking him to take her home, that they could be together now as they had wanted. Gerry’s mind was racing. He saw the loss of his family, the loss of Mary, an
d his reputation all disappearing in front of his very eyes, and he knew he had to get rid of Lisa before someone came along the road and saw them together.
“You know I can’t take you home, you silly bitch! What are you doing here anyway? Coming out here to ruin me, no doubt,” he shouted at her above the noise of the wind. All she could say in reply was, “No, no, Gerry, I want you. We can be together, take me home with you.”
Gerry began to lose his temper. A fierce rage grew in him fuelled by a strong desire for self-preservation and the need to get rid of this woman before some real damage was done.
He pushed her away harshly, and as she turned around with her back to him, he picked up a rock from the top of the wall and struck her hard at the back of the head. She fell to the ground, blood pouring from the wound. His temper still up, Gerry rolled her away to the side of the road and pushed her into the ditch. He knew she was dead – the light had gone from her eyes, and she had stopped breathing.
As he calmed down, he began to feel remorse for what he had just done, but again, his preservation instincts were strong, and a plan began to form in his troubled mind. There had been no one about, no one had seen what had happened, and if he was a bit crafty, he felt he could get away with the killing. He just needed to keep his head.
He drove the van back to the old abandoned caravan site at Dog’s Bay. He climbed over the wall and used the old ruined toilet block to clean himself up and remove any traces of the girl from his hands and clothes. The place was ghostly on that wild night, with the wind whistling through the broken windows, and the rain lashing the tin roof. Luckily, there was water running in the old taps, and he managed a cursory wash and clean up, although there was no towel that he could use to dry himself. But by now he was calm and had decided on a plan that would see him in the clear, as long as he kept his head.
Then he drove back and stopped when he saw the Gardaí milling around at the scene, letting on that he had just come from work.
* * *
They had taken a full statement from Gerry Maguire where he had admitted the murder of Lisa Palowski out on the old bog road on that dreadful Tuesday night. He had been put back in the cells, pending a court appearance the following morning in the district court in Galway where the Gardaí expected him to be remanded in custody till a trial date could be set.
The Galway Homicides Box Set Page 11
