Murder at the Holiday Home

by David Pearson

  “Thanks. Yes, it’s about the other night when you said you went out for a couple of hours. I need to know exactly where you were, and if anyone can corroborate it,” Flynn said.

  “What! Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with that poor woman’s death, do you?”

  “If you could just tell me where you were, Mr McCutcheon, I’m sure we can clear this up very quickly,” Flynn said. He was sorry now that he had decided to do this over the phone. It was so much better to eyeball a witness when asking awkward questions. They gave so much away with their body language.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector, I can’t tell you. All I will say is that it was a perfectly innocent few hours, and I wasn’t anywhere near Owen Glen, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of that woman. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get on,” McCutcheon said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr McCutcheon, I really have to insist.”

  “Insist all you like, I’m not saying any more. Now I have to go. Goodbye, Inspector.”

  Flynn put down the phone, and paused to collect his thoughts. “Damn,” he thought, “I should have gone out there.”

  * * *

  Lyons and Fahy made their way back to number twenty-two Owen Glen. Fahy tried the keys in the door of the cottage, and to her surprise, the door yielded immediately to the second Yale key on the keyring.

  “Excellent, Sally. Well done. Now all we have to do is find out who they belong to,” Lyons said.

  “Well, let’s take them back to Sinéad and see if she can get any prints off them. Maybe she’ll be able to trace the car key as well. Here’s hoping,” Fahy said.

  The two detectives set off down to the entrance to the estate, and as they walked back towards the main road, Fahy was unconsciously pressing the button on the key fob. As they passed number twelve, the four orange indicator lights on a Ford Fiesta parked outside the house flashed, and there was a noisy clunk as the car door locks popped open.

  “Was that you?” Lyons asked.

  “Yes, I think it was. I was just pressing the button on the key fob. That’s interesting – I wonder who lives here?” Lyons said.

  “I think I remember. When we were out talking to the McCutcheons, they said that there was a woman who did a bit of cleaning for them that lived at number twelve, but I can’t remember her name. Let’s knock and find out,” Fahy said.

  Fahy knocked on the bright green door of number twelve, and a moment later the door was opened by a small thin woman in her late fifties with short grey curly hair, wearing an apron.

  “Yes,” she said as she looked somewhat bewildered at the two detectives.

  Fahy introduced them and showed the woman her warrant card, saying, “And you are?”

  “Agnes, Agnes Greely. How can I help you?” the woman said a little nervously.

  “Mrs Greely, may I ask if you have the keys to your car handy?” Lyons said.

  Agnes Greely said nothing, but went inside the house, reappearing a moment later with a single Ford key with a small white cardboard label attached to it by a piece of cotton thread. Lyons could read the word ‘spare’ written in blue ink on the paper label.

  “Thank you. This is your spare key. May I ask where the other one is?” Lyons asked.

  “I don’t know where it is, I’ve mislaid it, but it will turn up. I’m always losing stuff these days,” the woman said wringing her hands, which Lyons noticed were badly gnarled with arthritis.

  “Would this be it?” Fahy said, holding up the little bunch of keys that they had been given at the petrol station. The woman looked quizzically at the contents of Fahy’s open palm.

  “God, I’d say that’s them, all right. Where did you get them?” Mrs Greely said.

  “They were handed in at the petrol station. Someone found them at the side of the road. Mrs Greely, may we come in, please? We need to ask you a few questions,” Lyons said.

  Agnes Greely instinctively turned to look back inside the little house, before saying to Lyons, “Well, I suppose so. It’s not very tidy just now, I have just started cleaning up.” She stood back to allow Lyons and Fahy into the small reception room that doubled as a kitchen.

  “Can I get you a cup of tea?” Agnes said as they sat down on the two-seater sofa.

  “No, we’re fine, thanks. We won’t keep you long,” Fahy said.

  Agnes Greely sat at one of the three wooden chairs that surrounded the small, bare dining table in the middle of the room.

  “Mrs Greely, we think that your keys may have been discarded by someone who had something to do with the murder of the woman up at number twenty-two the other night. Can you tell us who would have had access to those keys, please?” Lyons asked.

  Fahy had her notebook out, and was preparing to take down every word the woman said from now on.

  Agnes shifted uneasily in her chair, and looked down at the floor.

  “I’m a bit short these days, you see. There hasn’t been much cleaning work for the last few months, and the pension isn’t really enough for me to make ends meet,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Lyons said.

  “God, this is awful. Will I get into trouble do you think? I’m only just managing as it is,” Agnes went on.

  “Can you just tell us what’s been going on, please, Mrs Greely,” Lyons said, starting to become a little impatient with the woman’s procrastination.

  “I gave the keys to the woman. She only wanted to stay one night, and she paid me fifty euro in cash, poor soul.” Agnes said.

  “What woman? The woman who was killed?” Lyons said.

  “Yes, yes that’s her, Maria Geller. She’s foreign you know,” Agnes said, her eyes welling up with tears at the memory of the visitor.

  “Sorry, I don’t understand, Agnes, how did you come to let Maria Geller into the cottage?” Lyons said.

  “Well, you see, when Mr McCutcheon hasn’t any bookings, I sometimes let people in for a night or two myself. It’s no harm. I clean up after them right proper, and they don’t use much electric. And I need the money,” Agnes said, sniffing loudly.

  “I see. And I presume Mr McCutcheon knows nothing about this?” Lyons said.

  “Sure, of course he doesn’t. He’d string me up alive if he knew, but he’s never here. He has that fancy shop all the way over in Westport that keeps him busy.”

  “How did Maria Geller know you to get in touch?” Lyons said.

  “She was here a few times before. The first time she booked it regular like, on Airbnb. Then we got talking when I was doing the cleaning up there, and she asked if she could come back once in a while and deal directly with me. She said it was better, as she didn’t want all and sundry knowing her business. So I gave her my phone number, and she’d call a few days before she got here to see if the place was available. There was no harm in it, really,” Agnes said.

  “May I see your mobile phone, please, Mrs Greely?” Fahy said

  “What? What mobile phone. I don’t have one. It’s the old post office telephone for me,” the woman said. She pointed to an old black rotary dial telephone on the kitchen work-top – the type with a coiled cable connecting the receiver to the instrument.

  “Did Geller come on her own?” Lyons said.

  “Oh, yes, always. Always on her own, and she just stayed one or two nights at most.”

  “Did she have a car?” Lyons said.

  “No, she never did. I used to collect her from the bus here in Clifden, and bring her out, and then take her back the next day.”

  “What about visitors? Did she have anyone regular calling on her?” Lyons said.

  “Now, I wouldn’t be snooping into anyone’s business. I never saw no one calling, but then I wasn’t looking for anyone either. What she got up to was her own business,” Agnes said indignantly.

  “And on the night she was killed, did you see anyone or hear anything out of the ordinary?” Lyons said.

  “No. Like I told the other policeman, I think I heard a ca
r leaving the Glen during the night, but I don’t know what time it was, and I didn’t even see it. I could have been dreaming. Will Mr McCutcheon have to find out?” Agnes said.

  “Probably. We need you to come into the Garda station and make a proper statement about all of this, Mrs Greely. We can take you in now, if that’s convenient?” Lyons said.

  “God, I suppose so. Get it over with. I’ve been very foolish.”

  Despite Mrs Greely’s protestations, Lyons insisted that she travelled into Clifden in the back of Lyons’ car. She would have preferred to have taken her own car, but Lyons wasn’t having it. When they got to the Garda station, Lyons asked Fahy to take Mrs Greely in and get her statement. “I need to have a word with Sergeant Mulholland. I’ll catch you a bit later,” Lyons said.

  Sally Fahy took Agnes Greely into one of the interview rooms and arranged a coffee for both of them while she took her statement.

  Lyons found Séan Mulholland in the back office.

  “Hi Séan. Listen, could we go out for a few minutes and get a coffee or something?” Lyons said.

  Mulholland sensed that there was something up, so he agreed readily. The two made their way into Cusheen’s Bar where Mulholland was well known. It was deserted at that time of day, and Mulholland ordered two coffees and sat well away from the bar beside the fireplace.

  “What’s up, Maureen?” he asked when they were settled.

  Lyons explained what she had discovered about Peadar Tobin’s part time work as a handyman for McCutcheon’s rental houses.

  “It wouldn’t matter if this thing hadn’t come up. I know many of the lads have a bit of extra work to supplement their income. No one minds as long as it doesn’t cross over with official business. He’s just been a bit unlucky this time,” Lyons said.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Did you know he was working for McCutcheon?” Lyons asked.

  “Look, Maureen, can you let me deal with this? Peadar is a good lad. He works hard, and he’s very obliging. He’s well liked in the town as well. It would be a real favour if we could handle this locally. What do you say?” Mulholland said.

  “I don’t know, Séan. These things have a habit of coming back and biting you in the arse. But I see what you’re saying,” Lyons said.

  “But it will be my arse, if it does go wrong, Maureen. No need for you to be involved at all.”

  “If only he hadn’t been the first responder, it would look much better if there had been two officers at the scene if it does come back at us.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking. Look, leave it with me. I’m sure I can sort it out,” Mulholland said.

  “Well, if you’re sure, Séan. But for fuck sake, keep me out of it. I don’t fancy a posting to the Aran Islands at this stage!” Lyons said.

  “Don’t worry, girl. By the time this mess is all sorted, no one will know a thing about it,” the wily old sergeant said, tapping the side of his nose with his forefinger, and smiling.

  * * *

  When Sally Fahy had finished taking Agnes Greely’s statement, they drove her back out to her house at Own Glen. It was clear that she was very bothered at being caught with her lucrative little side-line, and the Gardaí weren’t about to provide any reassurance in that regard. They left her at her house, and travelled back in to Galway through the bright afternoon sunshine. On the way back, Lyons called ahead and arranged a briefing of the team for five o’clock, and asked Mary Costelloe to see if she could get Sinéad Loughran to come across to the meeting as well.

  * * *

  “Right, folks,” Lyons said, standing at the top of the incident room where a whiteboard had been positioned, “let’s see what we have so far. We now know the victim’s name was Maria Geller, and we believe she’s a foreigner, but we don’t have any clue about from where as yet. She’s been to Clifden before, and stayed in that very house on a few occasions, but the owner was unaware, as she had an arrangement with the cleaner. The cleaner’s phone is an old Post Office job that doesn’t have a memory that would give us Geller’s mobile number. We can assume that she wanted to keep her presence in the house confidential, at least to some extent. Sinéad, have you discovered anything from your examination of the body and the murder weapon?”

  “Yes, quite a bit, actually. Firstly, you’ll recall she was holding something in her clenched fist when we found her. That turned out to be a small solid gold ingot,” Loughran said, holding up a plastic evidence bag with the shiny yellow metal clearly visible. “There’s only the victim’s prints on it, and we haven’t traced the origin of the gold yet, so that might tell us something when we do.”

  “Take it down to our good friends in Hartman’s. They’ve been helpful with this kind of thing in the past,” Lyons said.

  “Good idea. I’ll send Deirdre Mac down with it in the morning. As you know, we examined the woman’s clothes too. At first we thought they were just standard M&S stuff, but we took a note of the style numbers from the labels and called their head office in Dublin, and they told us that those designs weren’t sold in Ireland or the UK. They’re doing a bit more rooting around for us to see if they can establish exactly where the items were purchased. We should know tomorrow,” Loughran said.

  “What about the weapon? Anything there?” Eamon Flynn asked.

  “Precious little, I’m afraid. The knife is a bog standard kitchen item, but the green handle is a bit unusual. It may even have been in the cottage all along. We’ll be checking with the owner to see if he has an inventory, and if he has, if it’s on it. There weren’t any useful prints.”

  “Dr Dodd mentioned that you might be able to get some information from fibre particles left on the woman’s neck. Any luck?” Lyons said.

  “We’re still analysing those. I’ll know more tomorrow, but what I can tell you is that it was quite a fine cord with a distinctive criss-cross pattern to it. We didn’t find any other trace of it at the scene.”

  “Thanks, Sinéad. Eamon, did you follow up with McCutcheon?” Lyons said.

  “Yes, boss, I did – but I’m afraid I made a bit of a mess of it. I should have gone out there but I called him on the phone instead. I got nothing. He wouldn’t say what he was doing that evening, but if he was back home when he said, he can’t be our man anyway.”

  “Still, he’s obviously got something to hide. Why don’t you get one of the boys from Westport to pay him a visit at the shop and lean on him a bit? We can’t just leave that hanging,” Lyons said.

  “Will do,” Flynn said.

  “Inspector, why do you think the killer took the keys and dumped them on the road?” Mary Costelloe said.

  “Good point, Mary. Maybe he or she was planning on returning to the property, and in the heat of the moment didn’t realise he’d left the door open, or perhaps thought that the place would be locked up when he returned.”

  “Yes, but why would he throw them away then? It doesn’t make sense to me,” Costelloe said.

  “I see what you mean. We’ll check that out. OK, so now that we have the victim’s name, we can start looking into who she was, and what she was doing here. Sally, tomorrow morning will you get onto the immigration people in Dublin airport and see if they have a record of her coming through, where she flew in from and if she was travelling alone? Then get onto the airline and see what you can find out. See if you can get her bank details – get Mary to give you a hand. John, I want you to do a thorough comb out of all the social media sites you can think of using the name Maria Geller, and see if you can get anything,” Lyons said. She looked around the room, and decided that it was time to call it a day.

  “Right, that’s it everyone. Let’s reconvene tomorrow at around lunchtime for an update. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Lyons was tidying up her desk, logging off her computer and getting ready to go home when her phone rang.

  “Hi, it’s me,” Superintendent Mick Hays said.

  “Hi, Mick. I’m just about to head home. What ab
out you?”

  “Nah, I have to finish writing up this blasted budget nonsense. Plunkett needs it for the morning. He’s heading up to the Park for a meeting early on, so he needs it finished tonight. Listen, could you pop up for a minute?” Hays said.

  “Sure, give me two secs.”

  Lyons made her way up to the top floor of the building where Superintendent Mick Hays had his spacious office. She didn’t knock.

  “Hi. Come in. Grab a seat,” Hays said.

  “Thanks. What’s up?” Lyons said.

  “Plunkett wants an update on the dead woman out at Owen Glen. He thinks he might get questioned about it up in Dublin, so he wants to be prepared. What’s the position?”

  “There isn’t a position, Mick.” She told him all that they knew about Maria Geller and her killer, which didn’t amount to very much.

  “Hmm, I see what you mean. That’s not going to keep Plunkett happy. Any positive lines of enquiry at all?” Hays asked.

  “Well, it is early days,” she said rather defensively, “and we’re doing all the usual stuff. Any advice for me?”

  “I’m sure you’re doing fine without my interference. But since you ask, I’d say follow the money. That’s what I’ve done in the past when I’m stuck, and it usually helps to shake things up enough to produce a few leads,” Hays said.

  “OK, but there isn’t really a money trail to follow. Unless I’m missing something,” Lyons said.

  “Get onto Airbnb. Their headquarters is in Dublin now. Get them to trace the first time she booked the cottage on their site. That will give you her card details, and you can follow up with her bank, and so on,” Hays said.

  “God, Mick, that’s brilliant. Now I know why I miss you so much on the team,” she said, really meaning it.

  Hays blew on his fingernails and feigned polishing them on his jacket lapel.

  “Oh, it’s nothing really – just pure genius!”

  “So, how much longer are you going to be with these blasted budgets of yours, Mr Genius?”

  “About an hour at most, I’m nearly done. If you fancy hanging around for a while we could go and eat?” he said.