If I Never See You Again (8 page)

She was absolutely furious with herself. She didn’t deserve a badge, let alone the chance to head up an investigation. She covered her mouth as she thought of all the warning signs she’d ignored, which, when put together, were so bloody obvious. She should have realized the instant she’d seen him showing Freeman around Anto Crawley’s crime scene what he was up to. So Sexton had been to visit Stuart Ball on the day he died, had he? And was driving around in a car worth several years’ wages. Maybe Katie was in danger even now? Jo hit the accelerator and overtook a car on two continuous white lines. Sexton had been one step ahead of them all the time. Now she knew why.

‘Sexton’s wife . . .’ Foxy said, as Jo pulled back on to the right side of the road.

Jo glanced over. He was holding the bottom of the passenger seat with his right hand and had hooked his left into the overhead handle. Jo had been so lost in thought, she’d forgotten he was there.

‘Suicide,’ Jo answered.

‘Do you remember the incident at the funeral?’ Foxy asked quietly.

‘What was his wife’s name again?’ Foxy asked.

‘Maura,’ Jo said, slamming in the clutch, hitting the indicator and guiding the car into the kerb as she reached for the handbrake.

‘What?’ Foxy said.

Jo flicked the visor down and pulled the street map free. She flicked the fold open on the north inner city and traced her finger along some of the streets. ‘Dear God,’ she said, flinging the map into Foxy’s lap and glancing into the wing mirror before taking off again. ‘The streets where the victims were found form the letter M for Maura, at least they will when the last body is found in East Wall. I don’t think we’ll find Sexton at home – he needs to leave one last body to form the last leg of the letter.’

‘Let me see,’ said Foxy, studying the map. ‘In the O2?’

Jo nodded. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

Foxy reached for the radio. ‘Maura was buried in Deansgrange. I’ll dispatch a couple of the lads to the grave, see if there’s any signs of disturbance.’

Jo stretched across and blocked him with her arm. ‘Sexton could pick up the call,’ she reminded him. ‘Phones only.’

They were still negotiating traffic when Dan rang Foxy, who relayed each sentence, covering the mouthpiece in between.

Jo frowned.

Foxy put the phone back to his ear. He grunted, and hung up. ‘Dan wants us back there now, Jo.’

‘Fuck that,’ Jo said. ‘I’m going to Sexton’s home.’

‘You can’t go in there without a warrant. Anything you get without one will be inadmissible.’

‘Life always takes first priority, remember?’

‘Not when we don’t have any missing-persons reports to justify a search.’

‘Spare me,’ Jo said, pulling up. ‘Station’s a ten-minute walk from here.’

‘I’m not leaving you.’ Foxy folded his arms obstinately.

Jo thought for a few seconds. ‘Why don’t you call Dan and tell him we’re on our way back? We don’t have to mention we’re going via Sexton’s. Okay?’

Foxy grunted, and did as he was told.

Jo pulled out again into the traffic.

‘I say the name Gavin Sexton to you, what’s the first thing you think of?’ she asked.

‘The job,’ Foxy said. ‘Someone who lives and breathes the job.’

‘That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,’ Jo said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, in all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never known him not to call in even when he’s on holiday – that’s when he takes his holidays.’

‘He went to Old Trafford a couple of years ago.’

‘So he supports Man United – so do half of all Irish males. I don’t know anything about his private life, though. Do you?’

‘I know, Foxy, I know,’ Jo said, pulling up outside a bookie’s on Dorset Street. Sexton lived in the flat above it.

‘You know, he never once asked me in,’ she said as they approached Sexton’s door, at the side of the shopfront. ‘All those times I dropped him home, or he kipped in my house, he never so much as offered me a cuppa.’

After picking up a key from the manager of the Indian restaurant next door, whom she knew was leasing the place, Jo opened the door to a narrow set of stairs.

‘Stairs?’ Foxy said, reading her mind.

Access to and transport from off-street parking without being noticed would have been difficult, next to impossible even, especially if Sexton was trying to haul anything life-sized in or out.

Jo’s eyes travelled the skirting for any stains. Nothing. She climbed the stairs and rapped the door then, realizing it had been left unlocked, pushed it open.

The place was the kind of bedsit that gets called a studio flat in a classified. It was sparsely furnished: an armchair facing a TV, a computer on the dinner table. It all looked desperate for a woman’s touch. There wasn’t even a carpet on the floor.

‘Christ, it’s a hovel,’ Foxy said. ‘I wouldn’t leave my dog here for the night.’

‘Wouldn’t the dust rising from the concrete play havoc with your lungs?’ Foxy asked.

‘Or sinuses,’ Jo replied, glancing at the two doors on the back wall and crossing the room.

The second door led into the bedroom. Jo headed to a bedside locker and started going through the drawers.

‘You think that’s why he’s got no carpet?’ Foxy asked.

Jo pulled out a credit-card receipt and held it out to Foxy. It was dated 9 p.m. the previous night and was from an off licence, showing the purchase of a bottle of red wine.

‘Sexton brought one round to my house last night, but there was one in Mac’s bin too.’

Foxy nodded. ‘I know the place. It’s right beside the IFSC. Where Mac lived.’

‘And died,’ Jo said. The receipt put Sexton at the right time and place for Mac’s murder. It was all the proof she needed to get a warrant for his arrest.