“That’s great, Pat, much appreciated,” Flynn said.
“But you lead the questioning. I’ll just sit there looking menacing to remind them how it went down the last few times.”
The two men finished their substantial meal. Dineen paid for both of them ignoring Flynn’s protestations, and they returned to the station feeling well satisfied and ready to tackle the Morrissey brothers.
* * *
The Morrisseys’ solicitor, one Eric Tyndall, had arrived some time ago, and had consulted with the two boys to see if they could cook up some kind of make-shift story to keep the Gardaí happy. Tyndall was waiting in reception when Dineen and Flynn walked in. He was a slight man who went only about two-thirds of the way to filling his well-worn grey suit. He was about five foot seven in height, with balding dark hair and thick lensed glasses. Dineen had met him on at least one previous occasion, and if things ran true to form, the solicitor would be of little use to the two suspects.
In the interests of saving time, Dineen had decided to interview the two at the same time, as it was inevitable that they would have synchronized their stories in any case. The two suspects, their solicitor, and Dineen and Flynn, were all packed into the small, drab interview room. The Morrisseys sat facing the door, side by side, with Tyndall at the end of the table, leaving the two detectives with their backs to the door.
Flynn introduced himself and addressing the two, said, “Have you two any idea why you have been brought here?”
“No. Police harassment I suppose. We haven’t done anything,” the older of the two brothers responded.
“I don’t think that’s very accurate now, lads, is it?”
“Can you tell us where you were on Wednesday night of this week?” Flynn asked.
“At home, or maybe in the pub. We can’t remember,” the elder brother continued.
“That’s funny. You think you would remember stealing a car and driving to the wilds of Connemara in the middle of the night,” Flynn said.
“What’s this guy on?” Dingo said, laughing. “Jazz told you, we were at home.”
“Then perhaps you can explain how we found your fingerprints and DNA all over a stolen BMW in Galway on Thursday evening?”
“Must be some mistake. Nothing to do with us,” the elder brother piped up.
“So, you’ll have witnesses then that are prepared to swear you were at home on Wednesday and Thursday?”
“Sure, how many do you want?” Jazz responded, smirking.
“You see, you guys were unlucky. When you thought you had burned out the car, destroying your prints and other evidence, what do you think happened but a fire engine came along and put the fire out before it had really started,” Flynn paused, and the brothers looked at each other.
“So, there’s no point in denying it, the evidence is clear. You took the car and drove to Galway.” Flynn paused to allow the information to sink in.
“But what I really want to know is why you drove all the way out to Derrygimlagh and set the house on fire?” Flynn said, putting down a photograph of O’Shaughnessy’s burnt out cottage on the table.
“Nice job. Almost total destruction – but not quite,” he said, leaving the innuendo hanging.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Derry what’s it... where the fuck is that?”
“It’s where you poured petrol in the back door of Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s cottage and set it on fire.”
Tyndall cleared his throat, and said in a very uncertain voice, “I presume you have some evidence of this accusation, Detective?”
“I’m glad you asked that, Mr Tyndall. Yes, indeed we do. Let’s assume that your two clients here did take the BMW and were using it on Wednesday night. We can place the car at the scene quite easily. There are distinctive tyre tracks that belong to the car at the cottage.”
“That don’t mean shit,” said Jazz. “You’re just fishing. Don’t say no more, Dingo. They can fuck off!”
“Very well then, gents, if that’s your attitude, but I should warn you both that we’ll probably be charging both of you with murder, or at least accessory after the fact. Now, I need a break. Shall we say thirty minutes?” Flynn and Dineen got up and left the room.
Outside the room, the two detectives walked back to Dineen’s office.
“Well done, Eamon. That was a nice touch. When we go back in they’ll admit to the car theft. They’ll not want to be anywhere near a murder charge, wait till you see.”
The half-hour flew in quickly with Flynn and Dineen just making small talk about life in the force, and the challenges the Gardaí face with criminals becoming more sophisticated, and, it seemed, more vicious every day.
On the way back to the interview room Flynn said, “How do you think we should play it this time?”
“Just as you were. Get them to confess to the car theft. Then lead them into setting the fire at the house. Talk about O’Shaughnessy’s death, and then they’ll probably cough up what they know.”
As soon as they were seated back in the interview room, Tyndall spoke up.
“Let’s just assume for the moment, hypothetically of course, that my clients did confess to taking the BMW and attempting to set it on fire in Galway, and let’s just assume, again hypothetically, that they could be of some help with the, eh… other business, what are we looking at?”
“That’s a lot of hypotheses, Mr Tyndall. Here’s how I see it. Your two received some instruction somehow to go to Connemara and torch Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s house. They went out and pinched a set of wheels, drove to the house and set fire to it. Then they drove to Galway and tried to burn out the car, but that didn’t work, as we know, and they left fingerprints and DNA all over it. We might be able to do something about the car theft. It was well insured after all. Not so sure about the arson at the house, that’s trickier. But if we had solid information about who was behind it, well, we might possibly be able to do something,” Flynn said.
“And what about this accessory stuff,” Tyndall went on, thinking he was on a roll.
“Let’s see what your clients can tell us about who told them to do this, and why. Then we’ll look at the whole picture. So, lads, what can you tell us?” Flynn said.
The boys looked at each other and shrugged.
“OK then,” the elder one said.
“We were in the pub Wednesday night and a guy we kinda know came over and gave me a bit of paper with a phone number on it. He said to call it, that there was a handy little job to be done,” Jazz said, a bit nervously. “So, I phoned the number, and this guy told me he wanted a house burnt out in the west. He said there was five hundred euro in it, but it had to be done that night. I asked him how we could be sure that he would pay up, and he said to ask the guy who gave us the number.”
Jazz went on to explain that the mysterious bloke on the other end of the phone had texted the coordinates of the location to him, and told him to be careful, that the house could be under watch. Then they went out and got the car. They set off for the house, picking up a can of petrol on the way, and arrived at about three o’clock.
“Well, I should tell you that earlier that same day an old man was found murdered in that house. His body had just been removed a few hours before you got there, so your fire destroyed any forensic evidence that there was,” Flynn said.
“Shit. We didn’t know that. We thought it was an insurance job. The place looked fucking abandoned to us.”
“Well, it wasn’t. That was a man’s home till you two burnt it out.”
“We didn’t know, honest,” the younger one said.
“Have you still got the guy’s number?” Flynn asked.
“Yeah. It’ll be in my phone from when he texted me the coordinates,” Jazz said, reaching into his pocket and taking out the very latest iPhone. He handed the phone to Flynn. Flynn scrolled down through the text messages until he came to the one that Jazz was talking about and made a note of the number.
“So, what happens now?�
� Dingo asked.
“Well, we’re just about finished here. You’ll be kept in for the night, then tomorrow you can both make statements, and we’ll see what happens after that. It’s not up to me if you’re charged or not, that’s Inspector Dineen’s decision,” Flynn said.
Tyndall then addressed the inspector, “I think you’ll agree, Inspector, that my clients have been more than helpful with your enquiries. I really think you should consider letting them go, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” Dineen replied. “I’ll see about it in the morning. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. Time for bed, I think.”
Dineen got up, followed by Flynn and Tyndall, leaving the two brothers to contemplate their fate.
At the front desk, Dineen told the sergeant to bed the two brothers down for the night, said goodnight to the solicitor, and headed off to his office with Flynn in tow.
“Well, what do you reckon?” Dineen asked when they were seated in his office.
“I hate to say it, but they could easily be telling the truth. What do you think the chances are?” Flynn said.
“You could be right. They tend to do that when they’re scared. They’re not such hard men really. Anyway, where are you staying tonight?” Dineen asked.
“Oh, I’m not. I’ll head back. The boss will want this as soon as possible in the morning, and besides, there will be no traffic on the road at this hour.”
“Well, if you’re sure. Mind the road though, there are roadworks north of Gort.”
“I’ll be fine, and thanks for your help, and the meal,” Flynn said.
“Don’t mention it. You can return the favour if I’m ever up in Galway.”
* * *
Flynn set off on the road back to Galway. It was a dreadful night. The rain lashed down on his car and the strong westerly winds buffeted it as he headed north. Fortunately, he was not the type to fall asleep at the wheel, which would have been fatal in those conditions. By the time he reached Gort, about two thirds of the way home, things had improved considerably. The wind was still strong, but the rain had given way to a patchy sky, and from time to time a large full moon broke through, bathing the landscape with an eerie blue light.
Flynn reached home at just after two and was fast asleep ten minutes later.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite the late hour the previous night, Flynn arrived at the Garda station just before nine the following day. Hays, Lyons and O’Connor were already assembled in the incident room. When Flynn arrived, Hays called the meeting to order.
“OK everyone, we have a lot more information now, so I’d like to go around the room to see what everyone has. John, can we start with you?”
John collected up some papers from his desk and started to address the others.
“Right. Well firstly there’s the bank statements. It’s all fairly straightforward as you would expect, except for one entry that appears every quarter. Sally has done a bit of digging on this and was on to the financial crimes unit in Dublin. They gave her a contact in the States, and as soon as they get to work she’s going to phone through and see what we can get on the dollar payments.”
Flynn piped up, “And I suppose you and Sally will have to go to New York for a few days to follow it up,” he said, causing a ripple of laughter around the room.
“Well, if everyone else is too busy, I guess we might have to,” O’Connor responded. “Then there’s the death of Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s brother. We looked it up on RIP.IE. Nothing odd about that. He died in an old folks’ home in Cork last year. The notice said ‘Donal O’Shaughnessy, quietly after a short illness, sadly missed by his brother Patrick, son Ciaran and daughter Caoimhe, may he rest in peace’.”
“We have to work on that then, but let’s press on. Eamon, what have you got for us?”
Flynn recounted his expedition to Limerick, and the long interview with the Morrissey brothers. When he had finished, Hays asked, “What’s your feeling about those two, Eamon?”
“Well they’re a pretty rough pair, that’s for sure. But strangely I think their story holds up, or more or less. They may have helped themselves to a bit more of Paddy’s stuff than they are letting on, I think they torched the house for money.”
“Have they collected yet?”
“Yes. The money was left in their local boozer the day after they got back to Limerick. They destroyed the envelope, so we can’t get anything there. Dineen collected about three hundred that they had left, but it’s all in used twenties, so no use to us, I’m afraid.”
Hays made a mental note to phone Pat Dineen after the briefing to see if there was anything more to it. Dineen was a very experienced Garda, and he may have read more into what the two lads said than Flynn had recorded.
“Here are the things we need to get on with today, then. Firstly, John, can you follow up on Paddy’s brother’s will? Get onto the probate office and get a copy of the entire file faxed down to us. I want to know who the beneficiaries were and how much he left. Then see if you can track down the son and daughter. Get addresses for them if you can.”
“Eamon, you did good work in Limerick. That phone number could be very useful. Get on to Meteor and find out as much as you can about it. Where it was bought, how long ago – you know the drill,” he said. “Have you tried calling it?”
“Yes, boss. It’s disconnected, but let’s see what Meteor say.”
“Oh, and John, can you get Sally to pursue the dollar payments. I have a feeling that’s important.”
“Maureen, can you come with me. I have a few things that we need to attend to.”
* * *
Back in his office, Hays said to Lyons, “I’m going to call Pat Dineen in Limerick. I want to see how he thought Eamon did and check on what charges they are going to bring against the two heroes. Can you get back onto Neville Watson at the bank in Westport? Put a bit of heat on him, I think there’s more than he told us, especially about the U.S. connection.”
“Yes, sure, but I hope I don’t have to drive all the way out there again, boss, it’s an awful trek.”
“And what’s the story on Jerome Kelly? We need an address so we can go and interview him. If we don’t have that, we’ll have to phone him and pretend we want to invest some money with him, which I don’t like, ‘cos it smells of entrapment.”
“I’ll see how Sally is getting on with that,” she said, and left the room.
* * *
Hays got Pat Dineen on the phone within a few minutes.
“Morning, Pat. How goes it? I hear you had a late night last night.”
“Ah we’re well used to it here, Mick, nothing unusual,” Dineen replied.
“I was just calling to see how you thought Eamon Flynn handled himself with the two smart arses?”
“You have no worries there, Mick. He’s very tenacious. I was starting to feel sorry for the two scum bags by the time he’d finished.”
“Glad to hear it. Do you think he missed anything?”
“We removed O’Shaughnessy’s bank card from the elder brother. I don’t think Eamon knows that. That shows they were in the house before they burnt it down, I suppose. But other than that, I don’t think there’s anything,” Dineen said.
“What are you charging them with?”
“Car theft and arson for now, unless something else comes to light. I want them put away for at least six months, keep the little toe rags off my streets for a while.”
“Will they get bail?” Hays asked.
“Oh yes, they will. And we’ll probably encounter them again before they go to trial. They are fairly regular customers of ours,” he said with a sigh.
“Thanks very much for all your help with this, Pat. It’s really appreciated. And thanks for keeping an eye on Flynn,” Hays added.
“No worries, Mick, he’s a grand lad. All the best.” Dineen hung up.
* * *
Maureen Lyons waited patiently until ten o’clock when the bank in Westport started manning the phones wi
th something other than a banal recorded message. At five past ten she got through to a human and a couple of minutes later Neville Watson picked up.
“Watson,” he said.
“Good morning, Mr Watson, this is Detective Sergeant Maureen Lyons from Galway. You may remember we met a few days ago in your office,” she said in a business-like manner.
“Oh yes, hello Sergeant, how can I help you today?”
“I’m just checking to see if you have any more information about Mr O’Shaughnessy’s account for us?” she asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. Had you anything particular in mind?”
“Well we’re curious about the US dollar payments he received. Have you any information about the source of those funds?”
“None at all. You see all that is handled electronically these days. We’re just at the end of a very long train of electronic messages,” he said, as if he was explaining the workings of a bicycle to a child.
“But surely you must be able to tell where the money is coming from?” Lyons pressed on.
“I can say that our correspondent bank in the States is J.P. Morgan, so it will have come through them, but beyond that I can’t say. We don’t get any information about the actual sender,” he replied, as if the very thought of such a thing was ridiculous.
“And who could I contact in J.P. Morgan to help identify the source?”
“Really, Sergeant, I have no idea. They have over sixty thousand employees, and I have never spoken to as much as one of them. In any case, the account of origin is most likely not even held there. They just act as a conduit for moving the money.”
“The inspector is not going to be very happy when I tell him this, Mr Watson. He’s already muttering about obstructing the Gardaí in the execution of their duties.”
“Well, there is one thing. I have been on to head office, and they have given me permission to share something with you.”
“And what would that be?” Lyons asked, rolling her eyes to heaven.
“Mr O’Shaughnessy left an envelope here in our care. It’s a large white envelope with his name on the front, and it’s sealed with sticky tape.”
The Galway Homicides Box Set Page 19
