Death at Whitewater Church Read online

  The basic rule of cross-examination is: never ask a question unless you’re sure you’ll get the answer you want. My parents were never going to get the answers they wanted if they kept asking questions. Never. And if everything came out, there was a possibility I could lose them entirely. My head was spinning. I walked through the square trying to suppress the sense of rising panic.

  I couldn’t go back to the office yet. I had Phyllis’ committee waiting to see me and I needed to be able to think straight for that. Five minutes was all I needed. Five minutes of fresh air and I would be okay.

  I walked on a little bit out the Derry road, down the hill towards the old fish factory, trying to work out what to do. Lie? Tell them I had spoken to the pathologist and she had refused to change her story? Or that she had refused to engage with me at all? My real fear was that they would try to contact her themselves. I couldn’t manage this one by myself. I realized I needed to talk to Molloy – properly this time. As soon as the decision was made, my breathing started to calm down, and I could feel the tides of anxiety ebb.

  I looked up, and discovered with a jolt that I wasn’t sure exactly where I was or how far I had walked. I looked around me to get my bearings. Across the road was the back entrance to the hardware shop: a dusty lane with high wire fencing on either side through which the builders’ supplies and wood were delivered.

  I was about to turn on my heel and walk back up the hill to the office when I heard voices coming from the lane. Which was odd, as it wasn’t usually used by pedestrians. There were two stone pillars at the entrance. I crossed the road and stood behind one of them. A car drove by and suddenly I felt conspicuous. Like Danny Devitt, I was going to get a reputation for lurking. Taking my phone out, I pretended to be reading a text. I peered around the pillar but couldn’t see anyone. The lane curved inwards so my view was limited to about fifty feet. I strained my ears to listen. The wind carried two voices towards me, one male and one female, but I couldn’t hear what either of them was saying.

  I walked down the lane a little, expecting at any second to hear the roar of a cement lorry behind me, but hoping not to. Then I turned a corner and saw Eithne. Leaning over her, talking to her in a low, threatening voice, his face almost touching hers, was a man in a dark coat. Eithne’s face was bright pink, and she was clearly protesting vehemently about something. As I watched, the man threw something on the ground. As Eithne stooped to pick it up, he took a further step towards her and she jerked back, almost falling, her back colliding with the wire fence.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I shouted.

  The man spun around, his face calm, impassive. It was Conor Devitt.

  I walked towards them. “What are you doing to her?”

  “Who are you?” he said coldly.

  “Don’t worry about that. I said, what are you doing to her?”

  “I’m not ‘doing’ anything to her. We’re just sorting a few things out. Isn’t that right, Eithne?”

  Eithne nodded, said breathlessly, “I’m fine.” She shoved whatever it was she had picked up into the pocket of her cardigan.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Honestly.” Her tone was pleading.

  “I’m not leaving you here alone with him.”

  “Really. There’s no problem,” she insisted.

  Conor put his hands in his pockets. “It’s okay. We’ve finished. I’ve said what I needed to say.”

  He gave Eithne one last look and strode past me, back down the lane towards the main road.

  I put my hand on Eithne’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She was shaking.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Please go.”

  “Do you want me to call the guards? I can call Molloy.” I took out my phone.

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “I’ve said I’m fine! How many times do I have to say it?”

  I put my hands up. “Okay, okay. But he looked like he was threatening you.”

  “Well, he wasn’t.”

  Eithne refused to allow me to walk her back up to the chemist’s shop, so I arrived back in the office five minutes later to a packed waiting room.

  Acting for committees always frustrates me. The members never entirely trust each other; in this case, seven people had turned up to see what was happening. With Leah’s help, I dragged a couple of extra chairs into the front office, and three people stood leaning against the wall. Phyllis, of course, managed to nab one of the chairs. And, true to form, did all of the talking.

  “We need to set up a limited company,” she said.

  “Okay. You’re a charity, aren’t you?”

  “Aye, we’re like a wee local Saint Vincent de Paul, I suppose. We help out those families in the community who are in trouble.”

  “Very commendable.”

  I looked around the room to give an impression that I was engaging with more than one person, but I was looking at a sea of blank faces. Mere observers.

  “Founded about …” Phyllis looked around her for assistance… “Fifteen years ago?”

  The others nodded.

  “And why do you want to set up a company now, if it’s been working fine so far?” I enquired.

  They looked at each other, silently nominating Phyllis to reply.

  “We’ve come into some money. A considerable amount of money,” she said. “And none of us relishes the idea of being personally responsible for it.”

  “I see.”

  “From a very generous, anonymous benefactor.” She tapped her nose with her forefinger.

  “Well, the best model for you then is a company limited by guarantee,” I said. “And we’ll see if we can get you charitable status. It’ll exempt you from most taxes.”

  Phyllis lagged behind, the rest of them having trooped out of the office.

  “Was there something else?” I asked.

  She grinned. “I thought you might like to know who our generous benefactor is.”

  “Don’t tell me if you’re not supposed to,” I warned her.

  “I know you’re not going to tell anyone.” She put her hand in front of her mouth in an exaggerated stage whisper. “It’s Mick Bourke.”

  “Really?” I probably shouldn’t have let the surprise show in my voice.

  “Yes,” Phyllis said. “I was pretty astonished myself. The carpentry business must be doing well.”

  “How do you know it was him?”

  “He was stupid enough to leave the money in an envelope along with an old receipt with his name on it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be anonymous, after all.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  I nearly collided with the man in the dark coat standing on the footpath outside the office. Conor Devitt looked down at me, all heavy eyebrows and brooding, fixed stare. One thing he had in common with his brother. I managed to make some noise resembling a greeting, if not a particularly friendly one.

  “So you’re the solicitor O’Keeffe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Conor Devitt.” “I know.”

  He didn’t react. He must have known that he was the talk of the town.

  “Were you waiting for me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a reason why you didn’t come into the office and sit in the waiting room like a normal human being?”

  “I was on my way in.”

  “Right.”

  “I want to talk to you about my mother. I know you came up to see her the other morning.”

  I didn’t respond. Didn’t admit or deny.

  “I was there. I saw you through the window.”

  As I thought.

  “What were you talking to her about?”

  “I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.”

  “Was it about Danny?”

  I started to repeat what I had said. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

  He cut in. “I’m not going to be around for very long, Miss O’Keeffe. I have some
things I need to attend to and then I’ll be gone. But I do need to make sure that my mother is all right.”

  “Your mother seems to be fairly self-sufficient, Mr. Devitt.”

  I stopped myself from adding: “She’d need to be, since you haven’t seen her in six years.” I knew it was rich, given my own circumstances. Also, something made me think Conor wasn’t overly blessed with a sense of humor. Phyllis had been right about him.

  He crossed his arms. “You seem to have taken a certain view of me.”

  “You can hardly be surprised by that. I’ve just seen you threatening a woman who is about half your size.”

  “You’re quick to judge.”

  “I wouldn’t say that particularly.”

  “Do you always assume that things are as they appear?”

  I didn’t like the way the conversation was going.

  “So why were you shouting at Eithne then?” I demanded. “You know she could report you to the guards? That’s a public order offense, threatening and abusive behavior.”

  He gave the smallest glimmer of a smile, and I saw a trace of the young man I had seen in the photograph from the paper.

  “She is absolutely free to report me. Did you ask her if she wanted to?”

  “Yes. She didn’t,” I admitted.

  “No, she wouldn’t. Now: Are you going to tell me what you were talking to my mother about?”

  His patronizing tone really riled me. “What are you doing, Mr. Devitt – sorting out all the people in the town you don’t like? Is that what you came back to do? And I’m on your hit list because I talked to your mother?”

  He turned and walked away.

  Chapter 29

  AFTER THAT EXCHANGE I needed a coffee – and not an instant one. Molloy must have had the same idea. I met him in the doorway of the Oak, takeaway cup in hand.

  “Why don’t you get Tony to put that in a real cup and join me for a bit,” I suggested. “I need ten minutes away from the office.”

  “Okay. What are you having?”

  “Same as you, assuming it’s black coffee.”

  I took a seat at one of the tables by the fire. Molloy reappeared a couple of minutes later with two mugs.

  “So what’s up?” he said.

  “Why should there be anything up? Maybe I just want to shoot the breeze with you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Quite apart from the fact that I’ve never once heard you use the expression ‘shoot the breeze,’ I’m sure there’s something specific you want to talk to me about.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I suppose I should be grateful you’re not lurking in the bushes somewhere spying on me.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  I could feel the heat moving up my neck and into my face. I chose to pretend it wasn’t happening, though I’m sure Molloy could see it.

  I took a sip of my coffee. “Any developments in the investigation into Danny Devitt’s death?”

  Molloy sighed. “Not really. Eddie Kearney is still our only witness, and I can’t exactly imagine him shining in the witness box, even if he had seen who was in the other car.”

  “Anything turn up on Danny’s car?”

  “Nope. We got nothing. It didn’t help that it was a wreck of a thing he was driving to begin with. That wasn’t the first crash he’d had in it.”

  “You don’t think Danny saw something someone didn’t want him to, do you, on one of his nighttime excursions?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “McFadden said he told Alan Crane he knew who was doing the robberies.”

  “You talked to McFadden?” Annoyance flashed across his face. “What the hell was he doing, keeping all of that from me?”

  “I think his motives were good. He cares about the family.”

  “He’s a guard. He shouldn’t have let it skew his judgement.”

  “No, probably not. You’re not going to do anything about it, are you?”

  He shook his head. “Not this time.”

  I took another gulp of my coffee. “I ran into the infamous brother, by the way.”

  Molloy leaned back. “And?”

  “I don’t like him much.” I was close to telling Molloy about the row with Eithne but I stopped myself.

  “He’s fairly humorless, all right,” Molloy agreed.

  “I thought he was supposed to be a bit of a charmer?”

  “Maybe he’s changed. He has been away for a while. And he’s just lost his brother.”

  “A brother he hasn’t seen for six years,” I pointed out. “Is there a connection between his sudden reappearance and Danny’s death, do you think?”

  “You mean other than the obvious, that he came back to support his mother?”

  “Other than that.” I hesitated. “You don’t think he had anything to do with it, do you?”

  Molloy gave me a sardonic look. “Because you don’t like him?”

  “Of course not.” I blushed. “But they did have their difficulties with one another – feelings for the same girl, that kind of thing. I believe Conor was a bit of a tyrant.”

  I knew I was floundering. Molloy knew it, too.

  “I knew about Lisa, all right. McFadden mentioned something about it, when he finally decided to tell me about the Cranes’ complaint. But didn’t Conor steal Lisa from Danny? Surely that would give Danny a motive to kill Conor, not the other way around.”

  “I suppose.” I remembered what Danny had told his mother.

  “And in case you’ve forgotten, Danny was killed early last Wednesday morning – and if we are to believe what he tells us, Conor only came back into the country on Sunday night. Arrived up here on Monday.”

  “Are we sure of that?” I said suspiciously. “Have you seen his ticket?”

  “No, but we’ll check the passenger lists.”

  “Sibling rivalry can cause a lot of damage, you know …” I stopped. I wondered suddenly if I was allowing my own history to cloud my judgement.

  “It’s hardly enough for a conviction.”

  “I know. But there’s something about Conor Devitt … he makes me uneasy.”

  He smiled. “Not enough, Ben, not enough.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “Any other candidates?”

  “No. It could have been anyone who drove Danny Devitt off the road. Six o’clock in the morning is a good time to be somewhere you’re not supposed to be without anyone noticing. It’s the why that we have to figure out.”

  “Hmm.”

  He drained his coffee. “They’re reburying that young fella in the morning, by the way.”

  “That’s good. I’m sure his poor father will be relieved.”

  Molloy stood up to go.

  I stopped him. “You in a rush?”

  He checked his watch. “I am now. Was there something else?”

  “Could I have a chat with you later on? I need to ask your advice.”

  He moved to sit back down.

  I waved him away. “No, don’t, it’s fine. There’s no hurry, it’s to do with what we were talking about at the weekend. Maybe later?”

  “Want me to come over?”

  “That would be great.”

  “About seven?”

  I nodded. My mobile rang. It was Leah.

  “Sorry, I’m on my way back now. I needed a stiff coffee.”

  “It’s not that. Alison Kelly rang. She wants you to go up to the hospital and witness those documents for Mr. Kelly.”

  “Sure, I’ll go straight away.”

  * * *

  I drove up to Letterkenny in a fog of white. The snow had started again in earnest; tiny dusty flakes blew across the dual carriageway in gusts. I found Kelly’s room easily – there are few enough private rooms in Letterkenny General. I knocked, but there was no reply, so I pushed the door open a couple of inches.

  I was unprepared for what I saw. I guess it was Alison’s comment about him not really looking sick, and I suppose in a way he didn’t. Not physically, at any rate. H
e was a little thinner, his face a little grayer maybe. But it was his expression that disturbed me. It was full of fear, raw and sharp. He was alone and staring at a television screen above the bed, but not really watching it. A set of headphones led to an iPod on his bedside locker. When he heard the door click, he transferred his gaze to me. I smiled and the fear was erased. He removed the headphones.

  “The Jam,” he said. “You’d never guess I used to be a mod, would you?”

  “Well …”

  He gave me a weary smile. “It’s a lifetime ago.” He raised himself on his elbows and sat up, resting his head back against the pillow. “Thanks for coming. I wanted to come down myself. God knows why I’m still here. I thought they’d let me out today.”

  “That’s okay. I’m happy to do whatever I can to help.”

  “I’m sure Alison’s had something to do with it. She’s so bloody anxious. She thinks I’m going to keel over if I get out of bed.”

  “It’s understandable she’s worried.”

  “She’s told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish she wouldn’t, but it helps her, I think, to tell people. It’s obviously not something I want known.”

  “She did ask me not to tell anyone.”

  His expression clouded. “I know she needs comfort. I worry about her.”

  “As she does about you, by the looks of things.”

  He smiled again, weakly. “No need. She seems to think this bloody thing is going to kill me at some point, but I’m in no rush.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  He leaned over to open the door of his bedside locker and took out a folder of documents, saying, “Right, let’s get this done. Is this the lot?”

  I nodded and took a pen from my briefcase. His hand shook as he signed each of the documents.

  “Sorry. It’s these fucking drugs – they’re worse than the bloody tumor.” He handed the papers to me and leaned back onto the pillow.