Darkhouse

NINETEEN

Richie stood by a black station wagon, scribbling a parking ticket. He folded it and slipped it under the windscreen wiper. Shaun walked out of the coffee shop and rolled his eyes.

‘I wouldn’t mind a quick word,’ said Richie, jogging up behind him. ‘I just want to clear something up.’ He stopped and took out his notebook, tilting it to avoid the misty rain that had started to fall.

‘Sure,’ said Shaun. ‘But I’m on my way back to school.’ He pulled up the hood on his parka, casting a shadow over his eyes.

‘Just remind me again,’ said Richie. ‘Where exactly did you say goodbye to Katie?’

Shaun took a breath. ‘Over there, I guess, by the wall down to the harbour.’

‘Did you hear the singing?’ asked Richie.

Shaun froze. ‘What?’

‘You said you were down by the dry dock before then.’

‘Yes.’

‘So was a Spanish boat with twenty drunk sailors singing at the top of their lungs.’

Shaun said nothing.

‘So where did you go when you left Katie’s house? It doesn’t look like you were at the harbour.’

Shaun’s heart pounded. Cold sweat trickled down his side.

‘We were at the harbour, but earlier…’

The owner of the station wagon came out of Tynan’s and threw his hands up in the air.

‘Ah, for Christ’s sake, guard. I was two minutes. Look – a newspaper! How long do you think that took? I’ve just come down from Dublin for a couple of days—’

Richie shrugged and turned away.

One of the old barflies was walking past and leaned into the Dublin man. ‘He won’t listen to you, you know. “Double yellows” he’ll tell you. And he’ll point at them. He’s a bollox.’

Richie ignored the muttering behind him and stared at Shaun.

‘Then we went to…for a walk,’ said Shaun.

‘Now you’re talking shite to me, Shaun. Where were you really?’

‘I told you. For a walk.’

‘Leave the young lad alone,’ shouted the barfly as he disappeared into Danaher’s. ‘Y’bollox,’ he muttered.

‘Where did you go for a walk?’ said Richie.

‘Up through the village and—’

‘Out of town, then all the way back here out of the way of her house to say goodbye?’

‘No.’

‘Through the village where? Up to your house, then back here out of the way to say goodbye?’

Shaun couldn’t stand still.

‘Was something wrong, Shaun? You can tell me. Did you have a fight?’

‘No. Everything was fine. I’ve said all this before.’

‘So you didn’t have a row or anything.’

‘No,’ said Shaun.

Richie started writing. ‘She wasn’t upset.’

‘No,’ said Shaun.

‘She wasn’t crying. She didn’t tell anyone she had a fight with you a few minutes before she disappeared.’

‘No.’ His voice caught.

‘You’d swear to that.’

‘I…don’t know.’

Richie kept writing, then closed the notebook and nodded. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

Frank was standing in front of the bulletin board at the station checking the notices were still in date. He pulled out tacks and repositioned posters, throwing the old ones in the bin. He didn’t hear Joe come in.

‘Sorry to bother you, but there’s something I think you need to know. It might have a bearing on your investigation.’

‘What is it?’ said Frank.

‘About a year ago, I killed someone,’ said Joe. ‘On the job. A guy called Donald Riggs. He kidnapped an eight-year-old girl, collected the ransom, then blew her and her mother to pieces. I saw it all. I shot Riggs and he was lying on the ground, dead. I walked over to him and he had a pin in the shape of a hawk in his hand. That same pin is in an evidence bag somewhere in One Police Plaza in New York. So why did I find one outside Danaher’s on Sunday?’ He held out his palm.

Frank looked at the pin, then looked at Joe.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘I think someone is after me and my family,’ said Joe. ‘The man’s name, I think, is Duke Rawlins.’

‘That could be any old pin and—’

‘It’s not any old pin,’ said Joe. ‘It’s specific to an event,’ he could barely say it, ‘that happened back in the eighties when…look, I know it sounds nuts, I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s—’

‘You’ve been through an awful lot,’ said Frank.

‘What?’ said Joe.

‘You’re under a lot of pressure.’

‘Of course I’m under a lot of pressure,’ said Joe. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with this. I think he’s come to Ireland.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘But there’s no other explanation for that pin being there. No-one here would know about it and no-one attached any significance to it at the time of the crime. It was just another personal effect of a dead perp. The only reason it means anything to me is the fact that it was the first thing I saw in the hand of the first – and hopefully the last – man I ever killed.’

‘There’s not a lot I can do with that information,’ said Frank.

‘It could be related to Katie in some way. He could have gone after—’

‘We have no way of finding out if he’s here.’

‘What? Immigration! At the airport!’

‘Joe, it doesn’t work that way. If he’s a criminal, he’s not going to come here with an official work permit. And if someone travels here on a short holiday visa, we don’t take a record.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘They can pretty much do what they like.’

Shaun walked in to the empty computer room at St Declan’s and sat down at a PC. He clicked on Mail and typed in his password. There was one message in his inbox. The subject was blank and the sender was a string of letters that made no sense. He opened the message and a photo appeared. It was the lighthouse. Flames burned on the grass in front of it. It was from his mother’s shoot. He jerked the mouse across the mat, clicked the file closed, then grabbed his bag from the floor beside him. He was still furious when he got home.

‘I really think it’s sick the way you all can get on with your lives,’ he shouted at Anna as he walked in.

‘I’m not getting into this with you again,’ said Anna. ‘I’m tired and yes, I have to work. There is nothing I can do about that. I know you’re going through a tough time—’

‘So why are you rubbing my face in it?’

‘I’m not rubbing your face in it,’ she said. She turned around and saw his expression. ‘How am I doing that?’

‘Your email.’

‘What email?’

‘Of the fucking shoot!’

‘What is wrong with you? I will not have you using language like that to me, whatever has happened. Have some respect. What email are you talking about?’

‘The email I got today. From you.’

Joe came into the kitchen and put the portable phone down on the counter.

‘That was Frank Deegan,’ he said, furious. ‘Shaun, were you talking to Richie Bates today?’

‘Yeah. Why?’ said Shaun.

‘Richie said you denied having an argument with Katie before she disappeared. But they have a witness who says you did.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Shaun.

‘I’m just telling you what I heard. Richie said he spoke to you in the village earlier.’

‘He did, but I never said—’

‘Apparently, you denied, under caution, having an argument with Katie. He thinks you lied and he has it all written down in his notebook.’

‘What does “under caution” mean? Like “anything you say or do can be held against you”?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, then he didn’t caution me. I swear to God, Dad. I don’t get this. We were just talking.’

‘Jesus Christ, I’m gonna look like an idiot—’

‘Why?’ said Shaun.

‘Nothing. Come on, you and me are gonna have to go down to the station now to talk to them, clear up a few of these things. I’d like to know myself, Shaun, what the hell is going on.’

Ray walked backwards out of his apartment, pulling a black bag with him. He hauled it over his shoulder and walked to the metal bins lined up on the road at the end of the cul de sac. He flung the bag across the top and it landed with a stink onto the others. It was then he saw the tear across it.

‘For fuck’s sake, Ray,’ said Richie striding up behind him.

Ray turned around.

‘Look,’ said Richie, pointing to the mess Ray had left along the road from his house.

‘Well done, Garda Richie,’ said Ray. ‘You have successfully followed a trail. They’ll make you a sergeant yet.’

‘Shut your face, Carmody. And clean that up.’

‘Why are you so interested in what comes out of my sack?’ Ray smirked.

Richie grabbed Ray’s arm between his thumb and middle finger and squeezed hard.

‘Ow,’ said Ray. ‘You wanker.’ He couldn’t pull his arm free.

‘If I come home to this shit tonight,’ said Richie, looking back at the rubbish, ‘I swear to fuck, I’ll shove it in your letterbox.’ He released his grip.

‘I get it now,’ said Ray. ‘Cleaning up the streets of Mountcannon.’

‘Do you even own your apartment?’ said Richie.

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ said Ray.

‘Do you own it?’

‘I’m renting. But what’s that got to do with you? Just because you and your boyfriend clubbed together and bought a little love nest.’

‘I own the place. Oran rents from me.’

‘Why are we having this conversation? Is it because you’re a woman?’

Richie shoved Ray’s shoulder.

‘Whoa, keeper of the peace,’ said Ray. ‘You’re in uniform now. What will the neighbours say?’

Richie looked around at the empty streets.

‘Fucking watch yourself,’ he said, shoving his face into Ray’s.

‘I do. And I like what I see,’ said Ray. ‘I could watch myself all day.’

Shaun was slumped in a chair at the station, his long legs stretched away from the desk. He hadn’t said a word apart from a muttered hello to Frank.

‘We just have to wait for Richie,’ said Frank. After five minutes, Richie walked in, red-faced and sweaty. Frank stared at him, then turned to Shaun.

‘Just tell us where you were that night,’ asked Frank. ‘Please. This has gone on too long.’

Joe sat by Shaun’s side, looking around the room, focusing in the silence on the bulletin board mounted on the pale cream wall. A bad colour photocopy was pinned in the corner with a girl’s face framed at the centre. Her eyes were small under thick eyebrows, her hair a mass of black frizz. Her pudgy cheeks pushed against the edges of the shot. MISSING was printed above her. Siobhán Fallon. Last seen in American Heroes, Tipperary town on Friday, September 7th. Joe had never heard anything about her. One missing person can capture the media’s attention, while another, less attractive victim, went no further than a homemade poster on a station wall.

‘Seascapes,’ said Shaun, suddenly.

Joe spun around. ‘I goddamn knew it.’

‘Seascapes. Holiday homes?’ said Frank, ignoring him.

‘Yes.’

Joe was shaking his head.

‘What time was that?’ asked Frank.

‘Seven-thirty.’

‘And what were you doing there? Working?’

‘No,’ said Shaun. He glanced at his father. ‘Me and Katie…we went there to be alone.’

‘Why did you need to be alone?’ asked Frank.

Shaun flushed. ‘We were…’

Joe held his breath.

‘What?’ asked Frank.

‘We went there to have sex.’

Joe exhaled and closed his eyes.

‘Did Katie know that’s why you were there?’ said Frank.

‘What?’

‘Is this something Katie expected to happen?’

‘Yes, she did,’ he said.

‘And did it happen?’ asked Frank.

‘Kind of. I don’t know,’ he said.

‘How do you not know? Did you or didn’t you?’

‘She was, you know, it was her first time. She was nervous.’ He began to cry. The questions got more personal, almost medical. Every answer was dragged out of him. Then it was Richie’s turn.

‘So, basically, nothing was happening, she was too tense and this pissed you off?’

‘No,’ said Shaun. ‘That wasn’t the way it was. It did happen, but then it hurt so we stopped.’

‘And you got angry because this wasn’t all going the way it was supposed to!’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t give up the goods, so you lost it.’

‘No!’

‘Maybe she didn’t even know why she was there at all. Maybe this was all a big surprise to her. You’d get her a bit drunk, then in you go.’

‘You asshole!’ said Shaun. Then he couldn’t stop. ‘You fucking asshole. I loved Katie. This is all bullshit.’ He cried harder, his mouth quivering. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Richie, ‘have no clue what happened, you weren’t there. I put my arms around her and told her not to worry, that she could call it off any time she wanted. You don’t know anything about me and Katie! Why am I even telling you this stuff?’

‘You called me and asked us to come in here for an informal chat, Frank, not abuse,’ said Joe. His face ached with every word he had to get out. He propped his elbow on the desk and leaned his head against his hand. He looked up. ‘We’re helping you out here. If you had anything more on Shaun, he would be arrested by now. But you don’t. Apart from his alleged denial of having an argument while under alleged caution.’ Richie’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to reply, but Frank was quick to put a steadying hand on his arm.

‘So is it true that after this you had an argument?’ said Frank gently.

‘Yes,’ said Shaun, wiping away his tears.

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone this earlier?’

‘Because I thought she was going to come back,’ he sobbed. ‘I thought she was trying to freak me out. I didn’t want to let everyone know what had happened. Her mother would have killed her.’ When he heard what he said, he started to sob harder. Everyone waited until he had calmed down.

‘What was the argument about?’ asked Frank.

‘It was stupid,’ said Shaun. ‘She asked me had this happened to me before, with anyone back home and I asked her did she want me to be honest. And she said yes, so I told her it had never happened to me, that before when I had been with someone, everything had worked out OK, but that I didn’t mind that it didn’t happen properly for us.’ Richie sucked in a breath. Shaun ignored him and kept talking in desperate bursts.

‘I thought she knew it wasn’t my first time, but she had presumed it was. I don’t know why she asked me what she did, but I guess she was feeling bad and, I don’t know. Anyway, she got upset that I hadn’t told her I had done it before. And I tried to reassure her that it didn’t matter what had happened before, which it didn’t, but she was too upset. She said some things and then she stormed off. I ran after her, but she pushed me away.’

‘What did she say exactly?’ said Frank.

Shaun began sobbing again. ‘She said, “Leave me alone. I feel like a loser. You made me feel like a total loser.”’

‘And what did you say to that?’

‘I said,’ he looked up at the ceiling, ‘I fucking said, “Fine. I’ll leave you alone, then.”’ He went on, through his sobs, ‘And I did. I left her alone. I went back to the house and washed the goddamn dishes. And now look.’ His body shook. His tears flowed. Joe put his arm around him. Shaun was wailing now. He got up and ran for the bathroom.

Joe shook his head at Frank and Richie.

‘He shouldn’t have lied,’ said Frank.

Joe’s jaw was locked shut and his teeth were like spines in his mouth. He had been grinding them hard through the entire interview.

‘I’ll go and check on him,’ said Frank.

‘You know, you never have to look too far to find the killer,’ said Richie, when Frank was gone. ‘What is it again? Ninety percent of murders are committed by the husband, the boyfriend—’

Joe shook his head. He thought of the guys he grew up around, the ones you couldn’t reason with because they were so stupid. It was too easy to fight them.

‘You’re fairly quiet now, aren’t you?’ said Richie. ‘Shiting on with your stupid fucking suggestions until your son gets pulled in. Then all we get is a guilty man’s silence.’

Joe’s jaw spasmed.

Richie lowered his voice to a growl, ‘I’m just saying young Shaun here bangs the arse off his girlfriend, they have a fight, she storms off and her body turns up three weeks later in his back garden. He doesn’t say a thing about any of this when we question him. What would that say to you? Would you look into him if it was your case, detective?’ He spat the last word.

A narrow strip of grass ran along the centre of the laneway up to the Lucchesis’ door. Two vans were parked by the trees and to their right, hidden behind the trunk of an oak, Duke Rawlins was studying the phone numbers on their side panels. Mark Nash. Lawn Order SUV. 089 676746. Duke closed his eyes and stored the number. Suddenly, he heard an engine from the top of the lane. He hunched down. The Jeep moved up the drive towards the front door of the house. Duke waited until it stopped before slipping back through the trees.

Frank was about to call O’Connor when O’Connor called him.

‘Frank, hello, it’s Myles. I’ve been going through the statements and I think I’ve come up with something.’

Frank tried to stop him. O’Connor ploughed on. ‘Here’s what Robert Harrington says: “I was at the harbour from seven p.m., checking out some new computer equipment on one of the boats that had come in. I saw Katie and Shaun up on the walkway. Then they were kissing and hugging.” That’s fine – four different fishermen confirm this. But further down, Robert says that later on, Katie and Shaun, “must have been down by the lifeboat launch.” Not “were”, but “must have been”. Kevin Raftery and Finn Banks did not see Katie or Shaun at all. They arrived to meet Robert at eight-thirty p.m. So all sightings of Katie and Shaun happened before eight o’clock that evening. And the person with the strongest emotional attachment to the missing girl and her boyfriend – Robert Harrington – is leading us to believe they were nearby, but hasn’t claimed to have actually seen them.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ said Frank.

Anna was sitting on a keg in the cellar, staring at the rows of wine bottles, the stone wall cold against her back. A shaft of light cut through and she looked up at the silhouette in the doorway above. Joe walked down the steps and stood in front of her. He saw the pronounced angles of her cheekbones and reached out. She held his hand against her face and started to cry. He pulled her to his chest, holding her tight, letting his breath out. The effort of not touching for days had been exhausting them both. His stomach felt hollowed out, his head cloudy from medication, his eyes dry.

‘Say something,’ said Anna. He didn’t move. He didn’t look at her.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘I guess I’m pissed off that I thought everything was so perfect,’ he said.

‘It was,’ said Anna. ‘It is. It was years ago…’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But when I look at the guy, I see a fat, drunken loser and I think: that’s what I’m up against. That guy had my wife.’

‘That sounds so dreadful. And you’re not up against anyone. It was so stupid. What I did was stupid. I’ve always known that, but I love you…’

‘You should have told me,’ he said.

‘You would have left me.’

He pushed her back gently and looked into her eyes.

‘Yeah, I would have,’ he said. ‘So maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t tell me.’ He gave her a sad smile. ‘I’ve spent the last few days thinking about it. In the middle of everything. And all I’ve come up with is that in the big picture, I guess it doesn’t matter. What happened to Katie, what’s happening to Shaun…there’s only so much energy I have. And for now, it should be going Shaun’s way. We can’t be like this. I just can’t live separately, whatever you did. It feels too weird. I’m sorry about what I said to you. I didn’t mean that. I was just so angry.’ He took both her hands in his. ‘Why,’ he said, squeezing them, ‘has everything turned to shit?’ He hugged her close; she sobbed and he kissed her hair.

Martha Lawson was curled up on her sofa, wrapped in an oversized cardigan with the belt pulled tight around her waist. The doorbell woke her from a light sleep and she rushed to the door. She smiled weakly when she saw Richie.

‘How are you keeping?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, letting him in. She pulled newspapers and magazines off the sofa and offered him a seat.

‘Have you any news?’ she asked, grabbing cups and mugs of old tea from the table, wiping with her finger at the rings they left behind.

‘Don’t worry about all that,’ said Richie. ‘Sit down. I have a bit of news, but really, it’s between yourself and myself. I’m telling you this in confidence. As a friend more than anything.’

She looked at him, puzzled.

‘It’s about Shaun.’

The bedroom was in total darkness, the black-out blinds pulled tightly down to the window sill. The smell of sleep hung in the air. Joe put his hand on Anna’s shoulder and turned her gently towards him.

‘I’m going to Dublin,’ he whispered. She frowned and looked at the clock.

‘It’s seven in the morning.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I have something to do.’

‘Now? Are you crazy? What about Shaun? I can’t even send him to school today. What am I supposed to do? We’ve barely talked about what happened at the station.’

‘I’m going because of Shaun,’ he said. ‘They’ve let him go for now, but who knows what way they’ll pull the evidence together…’

‘How is anything in Dublin going to help?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t you do whatever it is over the phone?’

‘No,’ he said. He kissed her on the cheek before she had a chance to fully turn her face away.

Joe drove north on the Waterford Road and took the turn for Passage East, joining the queue for the ferry to Ballyhack. He left the Jeep for the five-minute trip, climbing the narrow steps to the deck. Each time, a different view was waiting when he reached the top. He stood against the railing and leaned into the cool breeze.

From Ballyhack, he drove east, passing signs for Rosslare to the right and Wexford town to the left. He took the left and drove until he hit the N11, making his way to Dublin in just over two hours. Then he crawled through a senseless system of one-way streets in the city until he finally found a space in a multi-storey car park in Temple Bar. He took a right onto Westmoreland Street and made his way past the curved stonework of the Bank of Ireland where he crossed the busy street to Trinity. He’d been to Dublin before, but had never walked the cobbles under the famous arch.

He suddenly felt old, surrounded by students, some of them dressed for Armagnac with the chaps, others looking starkly modern against the eighteenth century architecture. He made his way past the library and turned right, taking in the action on the rugby pitch where – stripped of the helmets and padding of the NFL – crazy men put themselves through similar paces. He soon found himself standing at the vast, monastic wooden doors of the zoology department. The impressive stone building was over one hundred years old, with a sense of history that hit Joe as soon as he pushed into the tiny hallway. On his right was Neal Columb’s office – white wooden panelling and frosted glass. There was a scrawled note on a barely sticky Post-it slapped onto the door: Back two-thirty. Even the smallest action gave a clue to who someone was. Joe was already imagining Neal Columb as disorganised and brusque. So when, at two-twenty, a neat, freshly showered man with a sandwich in his hand walked by, Joe didn’t pay much attention. The man shook his head at the Post-it, pulled it off and put it in his pocket. He unlocked the door, walked into the office and came out immediately with a perfectly scripted note that he stuck carefully on the door. ‘Back at two-thirty p.m. Thank you. Neal Columb.’ He called out to a secretary in another room, ‘Jane, I left you the note. You needn’t have wasted one of your precious Post-its.’ He was smiling. She laughed back at him. Joe quickly revised his appraisal of Neal Columb to well-organised and friendly. He was happy to give him his ten minutes for lunch, even though he felt like storming the office.

Finally, after checking his watch several times, he rapped on the glass.

‘Come in,’ said Neal. ‘Joe, is it? Have a seat.’

‘Ah. I saw you out running,’ said Joe. ‘Around the rugby pitch.’

‘I’d rather run around it than have a reason to be on it,’ said Neal. He was in his early forties, trim, fit and clearly not a man planning to throw himself into a scrum. Joe’s eyes wandered around the office. It had a definite academic feel, but enough photos on the walls and odds and ends on the shelves to make it cosy.

‘Let’s go up to the lab and have a look at what you’ve brought,’ he said.

They made their way up two short flights of stairs onto a small landing. An arrow for the lab pointed right, but Neal gestured left.

‘Would you like to see our Rogues’ Gallery first?’

Joe looked at him.

‘The museum,’ said Neal.

‘That would be great,’ said Joe.

They walked through the doorway into the musty chemical air of the small museum. Joe was sucked back in time. Antique mahogany cabinets ran the length of each wall and a heavy mahogany counter sat on top of more cabinets at the centre of the room. Behind each door were shelves of stuffed animals and creatures suspended in jars of murky formaldehyde.

‘Take a guess,’ said Neal, stopping at one of the displays and covering the plaque. Inside, was a large round, delicate-looking object the colour of ginger root, with a strange bulbous growth at one side. Around the back, a hollow was carved out revealing a centre lined with a gaping honeycombed effect.

‘I have no clue,’ said Joe.

‘It’s a camel’s stomach. Those little pockets inside are where they store water.’

‘Wow. That’s not what I expected.’

Neal pointed to another jar in one of the cabinets. There was a long string of what looked like tagliatelle suspended in a greenish solution.

‘Do you eat black pudding?’ asked Neal.

‘Aw, don’t spoil that for me,’ said Joe.

‘Well, this guy is the reason you should always cook it thoroughly. Tapeworm. It’s a big fan of pigs.’

‘I’ll be nuking it from now on.’ Joe squinted into the jar. ‘That’s just way too long,’ he said, shaking his head.

When he turned around, Neal was pulling out trays from a drawer that smelt of wood and naphthalene. Rows of preserved insects were secured onto a cream backing by straight pins. Neal talked through the different species, then stopped eventually to check his watch.

‘OK. The lab,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meeting to go to. Remind me again what can I help you with.’

Joe lied for a living, but he was feeling a strange compulsion to be honest with Neal Columb. However, he knew he couldn’t. So his compromise was to start with the truth.

‘There’s a forest near my house. I found this empty pupal case there two nights ago. I guess I was just curious. I did a little entomology in college, back in the States, but I dropped out…I’m still fascinated by it, though, but not one hundred per cent clued in.’

Then he moved on to the lie.

‘There was a dead animal nearby and I wondered if it had anything to do with that. Or if you could maybe pinpoint the species of the fly and how long it’s been there, you know…’

‘OK,’ said Neal, reaching out for the small brown pill jar where Joe had put the pupal case. He slipped it under a dissecting microscope and peered in.

‘You’re absolutely right. It is, indeed, a fly pupal case. Now let’s see if we can put a name on the little fellow.’

He pulled out taxonomic guides and looked back and forth between them and the pupal case. Every now and then, he would stop and point something out to Joe. Eventually, he went to a cupboard packed with bottled insect specimens and brought out a jar that held a pupal case and larva, suspended in a formaldehyde solution.

‘Right,’ he said after an hour. ‘What you have is a Calliphora, which as I’m sure you know, is a bluebottle. Species-wise, I would have said vicina or vomitoria, but now I can say for definite that it’s vomitoria, based on comparisons. That would also tie in with where you found it – it’s much more likely to show up in rural areas, particularly forests. It’s actually a great tool for estimating time of death in murder investigations.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘But, of course, you know all this.’

Joe nodded. ‘OK. And what would that mean in terms of life cycle…’ He trailed off, hoping Neal would just give him a time frame, so he could find something out that would help Shaun.

‘Well, bluebottles come to the body almost immediately. They have an extremely advanced radar for death. This, of course, won’t happen during the night, but it will during the day. So if your little fox or whatever was killed in the evening, the blow fly would be there the next morning, busily laying anything up to 300 eggs in one go, heading straight for the orifices or wound sites.’ He looked up at Joe. ‘I’m doing it again, telling you things you already know. So I’ll get down to it. Basically taking into account what you’ve told me, I’d say this would mean that your little creature died about twenty days before you found this.’

Joe hesitated. ‘Thanks.’ He tried to hide his disappointment. This put Katie’s death back to the night of her disappearance when the last person to see her alive apart from her killer was poor Petey Grant and before that – Shaun. He threw the pupal case in the bin as he walked back through the campus. His anger he understood, but the emotion that came out of nowhere hitting him like a slap, was an unfamiliar sense of embarrassment.

‘I meant to tell you,’ said Frank, ‘before Shaun was called in yesterday, Joe Lucchesi was here with some new information.’

‘That’s convenient,’ said Richie.

‘Come on now. Our job is to take it all in. Joe was concerned because he thinks someone from a previous case back in New York could be out to get him and went through Katie to do it. Joe shot someone dead last year – that’s not common knowledge – and the man’s friend has just got out of prison and could possibly have come over here.’

Frank watched how Richie’s eyes would glaze over if the conversation stretched to more than a few sentences. His right eye would turn out slightly, then in again as he came back to reality.

‘Why does Joe think that?’ he said eventually.

‘Well, in fairness to the man, he found some evidence outside Danaher’s the other night that was a direct link to the original shooting.’

‘Wow,’ said Richie after thinking it through. ‘That’s weird. There could be something to this.’

Frank strained to find the sarcasm until he realised there was none. He could not understand Richie. One minute he was one way, the next minute he was another. He clung to each new development as if it was a single unit. Whoever was attached to that development was, by Richie’s rationale, a suspect. Suspects walked in and out of his sights accordingly: Petey, Shaun, Joe, Duke Rawlins…

Frank was about to remark on this, give a weights and measures speech, but he was too tired for a head-on collision with the spiky young guard. Instead, he filled him in on more details and left.

Anna was sitting on the sofa with her glasses on, reading a book. Her legs were stretched out onto the low coffee table. Joe walked in and sat beside her. He grabbed the remote control, flicking channels on the muted TV.

‘So you’re not going to tell me anything,’ Anna said. ‘Our son has been lying to us, you’ve been keeping things from me…’

‘Not this again.’

‘Yes, this again. We don’t just talk when it suits you, Joe. This is serious. He lied.’

‘Shaun’s sixteen. He was scared. The last thing you’re gonna do is tell any grown-up that you were having sex, let alone your parents and a bunch of cops.’

She stared at him.

‘What?’ he said. ‘You’ve never lied to your parents?’

‘You were never arrested for murder,’ she hissed. ‘Are you crazy?’

He stood up. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

Oran Butler and Keith Twomey sat in an unmarked squad car outside Healy’s Carpet Warehouse. Two other guards were in a car at the entrance to the industrial estate.

‘I can’t believe this is happening again,’ said Keith.

‘We don’t know that,’ said Oran. ‘They could show up yet.’

‘It’s two in the morning. We’ve been here four hours, Butler. Not a chance.’ Oran leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He dozed for an hour until the surveillance was called off and Keith drove them back to Waterford station.

Anna had forgotten to ask Shaun about the email he had received at school. She knocked lightly on his bedroom door and walked in. His thumbs were hammering on a Game Boy Advance, his bloodshot eyes focused on the bright screen.

‘I just wanted to know what you were talking about the other day,’ she said. ‘Some email I was supposed to have sent you.’

‘Supposed to,’ snorted Shaun, fixed on the game. ‘Who else would be sending me a photo of your stupid shoot?’

‘But I haven’t even seen those photos yet, Shaun. Brendan hasn’t emailed them to me.’

‘What?’ He lost his last life and threw down the game. ‘Damn!’ He stared at her. ‘But I saw it. In my school account.’

‘Why would I do that? Why would I even use your school account? I’d use Hotmail if I was going to email you. Bring it home to me tomorrow.’

‘I get my school mails forwarded to Hotmail. I can show it to you now.’

They went into the den and Shaun downloaded his mail. He clicked on the newest one. The image appeared on screen. Anna frowned. It was definitely the shoot.

‘But look,’ she said, pointing to the screen.

‘There’s Brendan. He’s in it. He couldn’t have taken this.’

Frank hated being in the station after hours. It was too quiet. He was reading and rereading every statement he had copied. Endless scenarios were running through his head. The phone on his desk rang and he was surprised to hear O’Connor at the other end.

‘Frank? Myles. I’ve a bit of news for you on Katie’s phone records.’

‘Fire away.’

‘The last person she called that night—’

‘She called someone?’

‘No. I should say “the last person she tried to call”…’

‘Yes?’

‘Was you, Frank.’

The house was quiet when Joe got back. He went into the den and closed the door quietly behind him. He took a deep breath, then dialled international directory enquiries for a number in a town that wasn’t even a tiny dot on the world map.

‘Officer Henson, Stinger’s Creek.’ The voice was slow, laconic.

‘My name is Detective Joe Lucchesi, NYPD. I’d like to speak to someone about a local guy, a Duke Rawlins, got out of prison some months back, would have been sent away in the mid-nineties.’

‘Duke Rawlins. Doesn’t sound familiar, but I’m kinda new here. Why are you asking?’

Joe chose his words carefully.

‘You think he might be involved in something? Well, you let me go check that for you,’ said Henson. ‘But I won’t be able to get back to you for a day or two.’

‘I just need—’

‘We lost an officer, detective. Funeral’s tomorrow.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ said Joe. ‘What happened?’

‘Uh, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Tragedy. Former Police Chief, too. Ogden Parnum, a good man. Retired only recently.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Joe.

‘So were we,’ said Henson. ‘Give me your number. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’

Joe turned on the computer and waited while it started up. He connected to the Internet and typed in three words: Stinger’s Creek Parnum. He got several hits on what seemed to be the same story. He clicked on the first one, a short piece from the Herald Democrat Online.

Town in Mourning after Suicide Tragedy

Former Police Chief Ogden Parnum from the small Grayson County town of Stinger’s Creek was found dead yesterday morning of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Chief Parnum first hit the headlines in the late eighties/early nineties for his work on the Crosscut Killer Investigation when nine young women were brutally raped and murdered, their bodies left in wooded areas off the I-35. To date, the case remains unsolved…

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe.