MURDER AT THE
HOLIDAY HOME
Irish detectives investigate a peculiar homicide in this gripping murder mystery
DAVID PEARSON
Published by
THE BOOK FOLKS
London, 2019
© David Pearson
Polite note to the reader
This book is written in British English except where fidelity to other languages or accents is appropriate.
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We hope you enjoy the book.
MURDER AT THE HOLIDAY HOME is the seventh book by David Pearson to feature Irish detectives Maureen Lyons and Mick Hays. It can be enjoyed as a standalone or as part of a series.
Full details about the other books can be found at the end of this one.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Epilogue
Character List
More fiction by David Pearson
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Chapter One
Senior Detective Inspector Maureen Lyons awoke with a start. It was pitch dark, save for the dull green glow coming from the alarm clock on the night stand. It was 3:22 a.m.; Lyons turned over and instinctively reached out across the cool white cotton sheets for Mick, her partner, but her outstretched arm didn’t find him.
Then she remembered. Detective Superintendent Mick Hays had gone to Dublin for a meeting at Garda Headquarters in Phoenix Park, and had been asked to join the Commissioner along with a number of other senior regional members of the force for dinner after the meeting. He would have preferred to have come home, but you didn’t decline this type of invitation if you knew what was good for you. The dinner would involve drink – a lot of drink. When this gang got together, things could easily go on well into the small hours, so Hays had booked himself into the Aisling Hotel beside Heuston Station for the night, or whatever portion of it would be left when the revelry was over.
Lyons turned over. It was silly, and she knew it, but she missed him. Even for one night. Since she had moved in with him on a trial basis four years ago, they had become very close. She relied on him more than either of them realised, although she managed to feign independence extremely well – well enough to fool even herself most of the time. As she lay in their comfy king-sized bed, she thought to herself how well the relationship had actually worked. She had had doubts at first – after all, colleagues as partners was fraught with pitfalls of all sorts, but somehow, they had managed to avoid them, and they got along well both at work and away from it. The mutual respect that they had for each other’s professionalism was certainly a large part of their success – both she and Hays were good detectives, and between them had solved some very challenging cases.
Lyons tossed and turned with sleep eluding her as the clock moved into the next green hour.
“Damn – this is no use,” she said to herself, and turned on the bedside light, swung her legs out and wriggled her feet into her slippers. “I may as well get up, this is hopeless.”
For the next three hours she busied herself tidying the already neat kitchen; ironing a couple of Mick’s shirts, and hoovering the lounge, which, in truth, didn’t need it. But she had to do something to pass the time. Eventually, at seven o’clock she yielded to the television to watch the early morning news on Sky.
The news was the usual mix of feckless politicians making excuses for the poor state of the health service; the housing crisis; the inexorable rise of crime, particularly in rural Ireland, and the usual array of vocal opposition members who seemed to have all the answers.
“Some things never change,” Lyons said out loud, switching the thing off, and going upstairs to shower and get dressed.
* * *
It was just before eight o’clock when Lyons got to the Garda Station at Mill Street. The place had been recently refurbished and extended, so that now the Detective Unit, which had been based for over a year in an overflow building just down the road, was back in the main station again. It was a relief to have all the resources under one roof.
Lyons spent this somewhat quieter time before the normal hub-bub of daily tasks got underway, reading the many bulletins that had been posted by headquarters over the previous twenty-four hours. Most were purely informative, but one or two required a response, or some minor change to procedure which she would have to implement for her team of two detective Gardaí, a Detective Sergeant, and a less senior Inspector, as well as Garda John O’Connor, the unit’s techy guy. Following the departure of Inspector James Bolger, the graduate entry officer who had joined the unit a year ago but didn’t really fit in, Eamon Flynn had been made up to that rank, leaving a vacancy at Sergeant level which was yet to be filled. Her two junior detectives – Mary Costelloe and Liam Walsh – were not ready to be made up yet, so she was depending on Superintendent Mick Hays to find her a suitable candidate, and it was taking longer than she would have liked.
Lyons was engrossed in her work on the PC and didn’t notice the time slip by, except that her own body was telling her it was time for coffee. As she locked the computer screen, the phone on her desk rang.
“Lyons,” she said.
“Maureen, Maureen it’s Séan here. Look, Maureen, we have a spot of bother out here.”
Lyons immediately recognised the voice of Séan Mulholland, the Member in Charge of Clifden Garda Station. Although Lyons was now two ranks ahead of the sergeant, he still called her by her first name. At one time, they had both been sergeants together, and Mulholland never lost the habit; Lyons wasn’t bothered in any case.
“Hi, Séan, what’s up?”
“Peadar Tobin was called out to the cottages at Owen Glen earlier. There were reports of some odd goings-on. We thought it might have just been a break-in, or maybe a domestic, but it turns out it’s far worse,” Mulholland said.
Owen Glen was a small estate of twenty-eight holiday homes that had been built during the Celtic Tiger along the main Galway road, close to the Owenglin river, just two kilometres outside Clifden. They were a mixed bag of one, two, and three bedroomed houses with nicely pitched roofs and colourful front doors, tastefully spaced out in a large parkland area. They were originally priced at between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand euro, but since the crash, they had been selling for just a little more than half that, with many early buyers keen to realise their asset to settle other debts.
“Go on, Séan,” Lyons said.
“Well, when he got there he found the front door of one of the houses up at the back – number twenty-two – open, and the lights on inside. He tried to raise the occupier, but got no response, so he went inside, and he found a woman on the floor in the kitchen – God, Maureen, this is awful – and a large kitchen knife sticking up out of her chest with blood everywhere,” Mulholland said.
“Jesus, Séan, he must have got a terrible shock. Was the woman dead?”
“She was indeed, at least as far as Peadar could tell. I s
ent two other men out and the ambulance of course, but I told them that if the woman was dead, not to touch her till you get here.”
“Good man, thanks. OK, I’m on my way, and I’ll get Sinéad Loughran out too with her team. Make sure to secure the area for us, Séan. See you soon.”
“Oh, I will to be sure. Thanks, Maureen. See ye.”
Lyons wasted no time in letting Sinéad Loughran know that she was needed out in Clifden. She asked Sinéad to call Dr Julian Dodd, the pathologist, and get him out there too. Then she summoned Inspector Eamon Flynn and Sergeant Sally Fahy, asked them to follow her out in one of their cars and gave them the address of where the victim had been found.
* * *
It was still before 10 a.m. as the detectives set off in their two separate vehicles. The sun had been up for some time, and was now quite high in the sky, peeking over the tall sycamore and pine trees that lined the road out to Clifden. Lyons was driving quickly, and when she had passed Moycullen she saw the unmistakeable large white 4x4 covered in bright yellow and red decals that she knew to belong to Loughran up ahead. Lyons had traded in her ageing Ford Focus earlier in the year, and was now the proud owner of a shiny, almost new, Volvo S60. Ever since she had borrowed Superintendent Finbarr Plunkett’s Audi A6, she had been hankering after the luxury of cream leather and walnut. She eventually found it in a demonstrator at the local dealer, who had given her a generous allowance on the old Ford, even though it was, by that time, rather the worse for wear. Her new car had been fitted with a host of gadgets, courtesy of the Garda Technical Bureau, so that she could keep in touch with the entire force from anywhere in the country if required. It even had the latest Automatic Number Plate Recognition system installed, with a direct link to the Garda database of registered owners and stolen vehicles, although the system had not yet been connected to the insurance database, as it was in the UK, due to some data protection issue that had yet to be resolved.
As they made their way slowly through a traffic clogged Oughterard, Lyons spotted that Flynn and Fahy had fallen in behind her. There was still no sign of Dodd’s Lexus, so Lyons called Loughran on the hands-free phone.
“Hi, Sinéad, I’m right behind you. Did you talk to Dodd? Is he on his way?”
“Hi, Maureen. Yes. He was in the middle of some ghastly procedure, but he said, as it was for you, he’d hurry up and be out shortly. I think he has a soft spot for you, Maureen,” Loughran said mischievously, smiling to herself.
“Maybe when I’m dead, Sinéad, but not as long as I’m breathing. Thanks. Who have you got with you?” Lyons asked.
“Deirdre Mac and Tom Gillen,” Loughran said.
Deirdre Mac, as she was known to everyone on the team to differentiate her from another girl with the same first name, was a highly experienced officer with a meticulous eye for detail. Gillen was young, and less experienced, but had learned a lot in the eighteen months he had been working with Loughran, and showed a good aptitude for forensic work.
When the little convoy reached the Owen Glen estate, it was clear that word had got out among the locals that there was something amiss. A small crowd of about ten people stood beside the entrance on the footpaths chatting and gossiping about what might be going on. There was no one from the press there yet, but the Gardaí knew that it was only a matter of time. Garda Peadar Tobin was manning a cordon of blue and white crime scene tape just inside the entrance to the complex, and he raised it up so that the cars could pass beneath. He noted the names of the new arrivals on his clipboard.
At the house itself, Garda Jim Dolan was standing on point at the front door. He greeted the team, relieved that someone more senior was now available to take over the macabre scene. Lyons got out of her car, and said to Fahy and Flynn who were just getting out of their own vehicle, “Right, you know the drill. Sally, can you take Jim here and start a house-to-house down the right-hand side; Eamon, you can go on your own down the left. I don’t think there are too many of the houses occupied yet, so it shouldn’t take too long. If anyone saw anything, stay with them and call me, I’ll come down.”
The two detectives acknowledged her orders, and set off in different directions. Lyons donned a white paper suit, gloves and overshoes, and followed Sinéad Loughran into the cottage, while the two other forensic officers started working the grounds immediately surrounding the house.
Lyons noticed that there were bloody marks along the wall of the short hallway at just above waist level, but they didn’t prepare her for the shock of what she saw on entering the kitchen. Lyons had seen plenty of dead bodies in her time, but nothing like this. There, in the middle of the floor was the body of a woman who was probably in her late forties, lying on her back. She had short blonde hair and was dressed in a pink towelling dressing gown that had fallen open to reveal floral patterned cotton pyjamas. The woman’s lifeless eyes stared out at her, still filled with the terror that she must have felt as she was being attacked and killed. In the middle of her chest, a large green-handled kitchen knife was sticking straight up, and her pyjamas and the floor all around her were covered in blood. She had something clenched in the left hand, but Lyons couldn’t see clearly what it was, and she wasn’t going to move anything till the forensic team had completed their grim task.
As Sinéad got to work around the body, the familiar booming voice of Julian Dodd was heard coming from the direction of the front door.
“In here, Doctor,” Lyons said turning towards the entrance. A moment later, the diminutive figure of the bespectacled doctor appeared in the doorway. He was, as always, dressed as if he was going to a medical conference, with a starched white shirt, yellow tie and an expensive tweed suit and stout leather brogues. He carried his well-worn leather doctor’s bag by his side.
“Ah, Ms Lyons. And what have you brought me all the way out here for today, may I ask?” he said, in his usual slightly pompous manner. Despite his superior attitude, Lyons had great respect for the good doctor who was amazingly thorough and had helped the detectives solve many a complex case over the years. Lyons thought his attitude was his way of compensating for his truncated stature, as she had always found him to be friendly and helpful beneath all the bluster.
“Good morning, Doc. See for yourself,” she said indicating the prone form of the poor woman lying on the floor.
“Oh, dear me,” the doctor said approaching the body, his attention now diverted to the business in hand.
Lyons stood by and waited while Dr Dodd examined the body as closely as the situation would allow. He had a small dictating machine in his left hand, and from time to time he spoke softly into it, as if he might disturb the poor woman’s slumber. He moved to the side of the corpse away from Lyons, and gently peeled back the dressing gown from around the woman’s throat. After a few more minutes of examination, he stood up wearily, and indicated to Lyons to step outside the room.
“Well, my word, what a puzzle you have brought me this time, Inspector.”
“In what way, Doc?” Lyons said.
“Well, as you can see the woman had been stabbed in the chest. She is, for the record, dead, by the way.”
“I had gathered that, Doc. But why is it a puzzle?”
“I can’t be totally sure till I get her back to Galway, but I think she’s been strangled too, and judging by the amount of blood all around, it looks to me as if strangulation occurred post-mortem.”
“What? So, you’re saying that she was stabbed to death with the knife and then strangled afterwards?” Lyons gasped, “but that doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would a killer strangle her after she was already very obviously dead?”
“That, dear lady, is for you to figure out. I just certify death and try to help find out where and when. The rest is up to you,” Dodd said.
“Speaking of which,” Lyons said.
“Oh, I’d say roughly about 3 a.m. or thereabouts, or at least between one and four. Sinéad can take the knife, I don’t need that, and then we’ll get her back into Galw
ay for a full post-mortem. It might have to wait till the morning though, I have something I need to finish up this afternoon,” the doctor said.
“Oh, OK, thanks Doc. By the way, how was she strangled?” Lyons asked.
“A ligature of some sort. Not wire – something softer, maybe cord or fabric. Sinéad may be able to recover fibres from the creases in her neck, but that’s her department.”
“Right. Is that you done then?” Lyons said.
“Yes, that’s it now, except that I need a cup of coffee. Coming?” Dodd said.
“No, you’re fine. You go and get some in town. I need to stay here and organise things. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chapter Two
By the time Dodd had finished his examination of the body, Sally Fahy and Eamon Flynn had returned from the house-to-house that they had been carrying out.
“Well, did you get anything?” Lyons asked.
“There are only five houses occupied. One woman down near the front says she heard a car during the night, but she couldn’t say what time it was, or give any other details, I’m afraid,” Eamon Flynn said.
“Anything from your side, Sally?” Lyons said.
“No, sorry boss, nothing. I asked who owned number twenty-two though. The man wasn’t too sure: he thought it was an Airbnb operation, and was owned by someone from Westport, but he didn’t have a name. Did the woman have any ID on her?”
“No, not a scrap. No handbag, no papers, nothing to say who she is. I have Sinéad going through her clothes at the moment to see if she can see where the labels are from. That might give us a clue,” Lyons said.
“Is there a car belonging to her around anywhere?” Flynn asked.
“Nothing obvious, Eamon. But can you have another look for me, and then maybe you two could go into town and ask the local estate agent if he knows who owns the house? I’m going to wait till the forensic team has finished, then we’d better get the body back into Galway. Dr Dodd is doing the post-mortem in the morning,” Lyons said.
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