Death at Whitewater Church Page 22

  I looked through the documents.

  “Alison wants us to go away, you know – the three of us. I don’t know if I have the energy. I’d be just as happy to stay here, but she says she wants us to do all the things we never had the chance to do.” He added sadly, “That’s the one thing I regret. We’ve done nothing but work to build up the businesses, and I regret that. I should have given her more. She deserved more …” His voice trailed off, then he saw me frown.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  One document wasn’t complete. “This one here. It’s called a Particulars Delivered form – it’s for the Tax Office. It needs your tax number.”

  “Could you hand me my coat? It’s on the back of the door there. My wallet should be in one of the pockets. I think there’s a tax docket in it. If not, I’ll get Alison to call the accountant.”

  Kelly pulled a leather wallet from the coat I brought him and opened it. While he poked about in the notes section for what he was looking for, I caught sight of a picture, a small photograph in a plastic sleeve at the front of the wallet. It wasn’t difficult to recognize Alison, wearing a wide sun hat, smiling broadly. In the same sleeve was a lock of black hair. Kelly caught my gaze and closed the wallet with a slightly embarrassed expression. He handed me a slip of paper.

  “Here’s the number.”

  “Thanks, that’s great. I’ll get moving on this as quickly as possible. Is there anything else I can do for you while I’m here?”

  He gave me a crooked grin. “You mean like a will?”

  “Not unless you want one,” I said gently.

  “Nah, think I’m all right for the moment, thanks very much.”

  I walked out into the brightly lit corridor. White tiles, aluminium trolleys, antiseptic smells, the pale frightened faces of patients shuffling along in pink fluffy dressing gowns and sensible slippers. No wonder Kelly was anxious to get out of here.

  I opened the swing door marked Exit and ran straight into Alison Kelly with Trevor.

  “Oh good, you’ve seen him.”

  “All done and dusted.”

  “How was he?” she asked anxiously.

  “Good.”

  Trevor yawned behind his hand.

  “Trevor.” His mother’s tone was reproachful. She looked at me apologetically. “He’s hungover – too many parties lately. That’s the problem with working in a pub.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be for much longer.”

  “The pubs are on the market?”

  She nodded. “Fingers crossed.”

  “Well, good luck with it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Trevor yawned again and Alison tutted. “I wouldn’t mind the parties except that it’s muggins here who ends up having to go and collect him. He has me driving all over the peninsula.”

  Her son raised his eyes to heaven. “I have an overprotective mother.”

  I laughed. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  Trevor grinned at me, showing perfectly even white teeth. “She just wants to keep an eye on me. Afraid some girl’s gonna get her claws into me.”

  Alison gave his shoulder an affectionate shove. “Poor baby.”

  I got back to the office about six and dumped the papers Kelly had signed on my desk. I noticed Leah had left the planning file there, too, but I decided I’d look at it in the morning.

  The morning seemed a long way off at the moment. Before then I had to talk to Molloy and tell him things I had never told anyone. It was time; I had backed out too often. I called into the Oak to pick up a bottle of wine to take home, then I changed my mind and bought two. As I was handing the money to Tony, the door to the Ladies opened and Claire Devitt came out.

  She climbed onto a barstool and picked up her drink. She didn’t seem to notice me, which was odd as I was the only other customer in the place. Tony threw me a glance but didn’t say a word. I tapped Claire lightly on the shoulder. She turned around and flashed me a broad smile. Her eyes were half-closed.

  “Ah, how are you? Sit down and have a wee drink with me, why don’t you?” she said.

  “I can’t, I’m afraid. I have to be somewhere.”

  Her face fell in an exaggerated sad clown expression. “Aw.”

  She took another gulp of her drink – a clear liquid with a slice of lemon in it. A gin and tonic or a vodka, I assumed. She waved her arm in a broad sweeping gesture while Tony showed impressive reflexes in quickly moving a mixer bottle to one side.

  “So what do you think of all of this drama then? I can’t keep up, I swear.” She was slurring her words.

  I picked up my bottles of wine. “I’m sure you’re pleased to have Conor back at least.”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t be? It’s absolutely wonderful. Excuse me for a minute.” She was up off her stool again and heading back towards the door to the toilets.

  “Is she all right?” I asked Tony.

  “Does she look all right to you?”

  “No. Is she drunk?”

  “She’s drinking water. Hasn’t any money for anything else. Not that I’d serve it to her even if she had.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  He shook his head. “I called her mother’s house about twenty minutes ago. Conor’s coming down for her. She sure as hell can’t drive in that state.”

  As I crossed the road to the car, I heard a noise behind me and glanced around to see a man standing in the shadows smoking a cigarette. It was Conor Devitt. Back in the role of big brother.

  Chapter 30

  I LIT THE fire. The cottage was freezing, turning my breath to white mist. Molloy had said he’d get here at seven, but I was beginning to hope that he’d be late. I turned on the heating, opened one of the bottles of red wine, placed it by the hearth, and sat down on the couch to wait.

  Two minutes later, I stood up again and went into the kitchen to put out some food for Guinness, who hadn’t made an appearance yet although I was sure he would turn up eventually. I sat down again, decided I felt hungry myself, made a cheese and tomato sandwich, which I found I couldn’t eat, then went to sort out a load of laundry instead. My mind was racing. This whole idea of pouring my heart out to Molloy was a bad one. He wouldn’t understand, he would judge me. I should ring him and cancel. I looked at my watch. If he didn’t arrive in the next fifteen minutes, I promised myself, that’s what I would do.

  Surprisingly, shoving dirty clothes into the machine helped to calm me down, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to think about Faye, properly. To picture her as she was that last time I’d seen her. Always thin, she was gaunt then, but it only made her look even more striking. But she had been distant, taut and erratic, her eyes not meeting mine, despite a flashy show of affection. I remained glad my parents hadn’t seen her then. They could remember her as she was.

  I jumped at the knock on the door. Molloy was standing on the doorstep wearing a heavy blue sweater over his uniform, and carrying a heavy-looking brown paper bag in his hand.

  “I thought you mightn’t have eaten yet either, so I took a risk and brought Chinese.”

  The sitting room had warmed up, and I could feel my appetite returning. I disappeared into the kitchen and produced a couple of plates and glasses. To my surprise, Molloy accepted a glass of wine.

  “Just what I need,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Long day?”

  “You could say that.”

  I poured myself a glass. “Something happen?”

  “You’ll hear tomorrow, I’m sure. It’ll be all around the town. We’ve arrested Mick Bourke.”

  “For what?”

  “For all those robberies.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you know it’s him?”

  “He made a few mistakes getting rid of the stuff. We managed to trace it back.”

  “God. Do you think Danny Devitt knew it was him? Was it Bourke he was talking ab
out?”

  “No idea. We think there was someone else involved as well. Bourke wouldn’t have had the wit to run something like that on his own, but he’s not saying who helped him.”

  “Have you any idea who it might be?”

  “It has to be someone with local knowledge. Someone who knew who was getting married and when, who was going on holiday and so on. Bourke made a blunder with Paul Doherty’s place. He didn’t have time to do the job properly and cover his tracks like he did with the honeymoon break-ins.”

  “That was him, too?”

  Molloy nodded. “We think he did that one on his own and made a mess of it as a result. Got greedy. He had to change his contacts to get rid of office equipment rather than household appliances.”

  I thought about what Phyllis had told me earlier. Had Bourke been trying to get rid of dirty money by giving it to charity? Did he suspect someone was onto him? I needed to speak to Phyllis again before I could pass that information on to Molloy.

  After we had eaten, I took the remains of the food into the kitchen. Molloy leaned against the sink, glass in hand, and watched me as I loaded the dishwasher.

  “So do you still want to have that chat with me, or have you changed your mind again?”

  I straightened myself and said, “No, it’s time I spoke to someone. I should have done it years ago.”

  “It’s entirely your business, you know, Ben. You’re under no obligation to tell me anything.”

  “I know, but we’re friends, and I should at least have told you before you heard it from someone else. Which, let’s face it, was always a possibility.”

  He gave me a smile. “I will admit it was a bit odd discovering that I didn’t even know your real name.”

  “You make it sound as if I’m using a false name. It’s my second name and my mother’s maiden name. I haven’t done anything illegal.”

  He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Conceded.”

  “And, by the way, for all your magnanimity now, you were pretty cold to me for a while there when your ‘friend’ was around.”

  His smile disappeared.

  “You seemed angry with me,” I said.

  Molloy avoided my eye and gazed at the wall.

  “I’m sorry for that,” he said slowly. “But there was more going on there that I don’t really want to go into. It wasn’t to do with you.”

  My stomach did a flip. “Oh.”

  “You said you needed my advice?”

  “I do.” I paused, but I couldn’t seem to drop the subject of the pathologist even though it was clear Molloy wanted me to. “What did she tell you?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to? As much or as little as you like.”

  “Okay.” I opened the second bottle of wine and poured myself a glass.

  Molloy refused a top-up. I took a sip and placed my glass on the counter.

  “You know I’ve been in Inishowen for six years.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know I was in the States for a year or so before that.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me that.”

  “Well, what I hadn’t told you, but which you now know thanks to your friend, is that before I went to the States, my sister Faye was killed.” I heard a slight tremor in my voice.

  Molloy was silent, still leaning back against the sink and continuing to study me as I spoke, listening intently. I was grateful to him for not delivering some sympathetic platitude at that point. I didn’t think I could have continued if he had.

  “And as you know, there was a trial. A fairly public one. Her killer was convicted of manslaughter. He’s serving ten years. That’s the information in the public domain so to speak.”

  Molloy nodded.

  I took a gulp of my wine.

  “For my family, the whole nightmare started nine years ago. I was working in a big commercial practice in Dublin, one of the big five. A plum job that I got straight out of college. My parents were very proud. It was at the beginning of the boom and there was lots of money about.” I paused again. “There was another young lawyer working there. Luke Kirby.”

  As soon as I said his name, I realized I hadn’t uttered it since the trial. I took another mouthful of wine before continuing.

  “Luke was handsome and successful, and very dynamic. He was used to getting what he wanted and good at getting things done. That was part of the attraction at first. We started a relationship of sorts. I think I realized very early on that it meant more to me than it did to him, but I thought that might change. I introduced him to my parents. They liked him.”

  I forced out the words. “And then he met my sister.”

  Molloy didn’t move. He made no attempt at any kind of comforting gesture, such as putting his hand on mine or his arm around me, for which again I was grateful.

  “As soon as I introduced him to Faye, I saw the look in his eyes. Luke wanted her – I could see it. It was the same expression he used to have when he was about to close a big deal. He looked at her like a lion contemplating his prey; it was all he could do not to lick his lips.”

  A scratching at the door made me jump. It was Guinness; he went straight to his bowl. I locked the door and continued.

  “Faye had just qualified as a nurse. She was pretty and kind, but she’d always had a wild streak in her – a recklessness that I envied in some ways. I was so straitlaced. She was always the first to try the most dangerous things. We took a trip together once to the south of Italy, and the one thing she wanted to do was this Flight of the Angel stunt – Il volo dell’angelo, an adrenaline junkie’s dream. You fly on a high-wire between two villages, with only a helmet and a safety harness. Terrifying – I couldn’t do it. But Faye did. Halfway across, she let go of the safety line. The organizers were furious with her. In fact, we were nearly kicked out of the place, but she just laughed. She said it was amazing, that you felt like you were really flying.”

  I smiled at the memory of it.

  “Anyway, she and Luke started spending time together. It began with the odd coffee here and there when they ran into each other. She told me whenever they met – she was quite up front about it. But there was one thing I hadn’t told my family about Luke. He was a cocaine user. A heavy one. It worried me when Luke and Faye started to meet up, since Faye had such an extreme and addictive personality. But Faye said that they were just friends who had a laugh together, and Luke never allowed anyone to tell him what to do – he made sure to tell me that. He said I should be glad he got on well with my family.

  “I pretended otherwise, but it drove me crazy. I was besotted by him, and jealous, stupidly so. Eventually I split up with him, hoping that would bring an end to whatever was happening between him and Faye. It didn’t.” I swallowed. “They became a couple. I went to Luke’s apartment one night to see if I could talk to him, and I saw them together outside. That night, something snapped for me. I decided I needed to cut them both out of my life. And to my parents’ great distress, I did. I stopped returning Faye’s calls, stopped seeing her, and gradually she stopped contacting me. It upset my parents greatly, because then she started to avoid them, too. When she died, they hadn’t seen her in six months.”

  I could hear the shake in my voice, so I spoke quickly to get through it.

  “One night, my phone rang. It was late, about two o’clock in the morning. It was Faye. I ignored it. Let it ring out. She couldn’t leave a message because I’d taken my voice message off so I wouldn’t be tempted by hearing her voice – or his, for that matter. It rang again a number of times. Each time it was Faye and I ignored it. Eventually I put it on silent, even put the handset in another room so I wouldn’t see it light up. And I went back to sleep.

  “The next morning, Faye was dead. She was found by her flatmate returning after a weekend away. She’d been strangled. The evidence given by the pathologist was that there was cocaine found in Faye’s system when she died. Luke Kirby’s DNA and semen were found on her. He was char
ged with murder, convicted of manslaughter.”

  I stared down at the floor, the black tiles blurring before my eyes. My throat hurt. “He presented what had happened as a sex session, an asphyxiation game – strangulation to enhance pleasure. He claimed that the sex was consensual, if ‘a little rough’ as he put it. As usual he sounded utterly plausible. They were both up for it and it went wrong, he said. Unfortunately your friend the pathologist was unable to say definitively that this could not have happened. So he was convicted of manslaughter.”

  I looked up at Molloy for the first time since I’d started speaking. His expression gave nothing away.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked quietly.

  I took a deep breath. “As I said, Luke Kirby was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. I think Faye said no to him that night. And he took what he wanted anyway. I think she was changing her mind about him and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t used to having people say no to him and that made him turn violent.”

  Molloy nodded silently.

  “I also think she had started using cocaine.” I stopped. “Wait a minute – that’s not true. I knew she had. I recognized the signs. I ran into her one night in a club in town and she was in bad shape. I told her to be careful and she said she was fine, that she was happy. But I could tell she wasn’t. Then I saw she was with Luke, and I just walked away from her. I still wasn’t over him. How pathetic was that?”

  I wanted to weep.

  “That was about a week before she died. It was the last time I saw her.” I cried out: “My jealousy blinded me to the danger she was in! What happened to Faye is my fault!”

  “How could it be your fault?” Molloy said gently.

  I looked up at him. “I was the one who brought that bastard into my family’s life. I was the one who introduced him to my sister, and I was the one who ignored her calls on the night she died – because I was jealous.” I spat the words out. “What kind of sister does that?”

  Molloy took a step towards me. I pushed him away.

  “What was she ringing to say? That she was afraid, that she didn’t trust him anymore, that she needed my help, that he was hurting her?” My voice broke. “There were four missed calls on my phone that night – four. What the hell was wrong with me? How could I not have helped her?”