In the Morning I'll Be Gone (32 page)

“I just locked the door when no one was looking?”

“Yeah. That’s all you did. You know why magicians never reveal their tricks?”

“Why?”

“’Cos the tricks are all so fucking stupid.”

Harper shook his head. “That’s not what happened, Duffy. The place was locked.”

“Tell me the truth, Harper,” I said with a malevolent insistence.

“I’m not telling you anything, Duffy! I’ve had enough of this! I think you should be leaving now. From now on any further communication between us should be conducted through and in the presence of my solicitors.”

I stood there looking out at the black water.

I wondered whether my word and my theory would be good enough for Mary?

Almost certainly not.

She’d probably had suspicions about Harper herself. But suspicions weren’t bloody good enough, were they?

I tossed the fag, unbuttoned my sports jacket, reached into my shoulder holster, and pulled out the .38.

“What the f—” he began before I cocked the revolver and pointed it at his face.

“No sudden moves, Harper. This thing has a hair trigger. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said. His eyes were wide, terrified. He didn’t know me. Maybe I was one of those bent peelers you were always reading about in the papers. One of those coppers who was capable of anything.

“All I have is guesswork, Harper. You’ve got a decent alibi and there’s no will, which means there’s no motive. So not only will I never be able to prove any of this in court in front of a jury but I’ll never even be able to convince the Director of Public Prosecutions to take up the case. You will not be sent up for this, I guarantee you that.”

“What?”

“As you so rightly point out, Harper, I have nothing but speculation and circumstantial evidence. Not a shred of proof. I give you my word that you will not be arrested for this crime, much less sent to trial.”

“So . . . so . . . so what do you want from me?” he said.

“I want you to tell me your side of it, Harper. How the whole thing was an accident that night. How you just came to talk to her. You didn’t mean to kill her. You got in a fight. One thing led to another . . . I want to know your version of events.”

“If . . . if . . . I say I killed her it won’t be the end of it. You’ll kill me. Here and now!”

“If you tell me the truth, Harper, I’ll leave you alone. You’ll never hear from me again.”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that. I know I can never prove this, not in a million years, but I want to know! I want the intellectual satisfaction of knowing that I was right.”

“And if I don’t speak?”

I grabbed Harper by the throat and shoved the gun against his cheek.

“I’ll shoot you in the fucking head and I’ll tell Jane and everybody else that after I confronted you about Lizzie’s death you went for me and we fought and you grabbed my gun and turned it on yourself.”

“You w-w-wouldn’t,” he stammered.

“You want to take that chance?”

He thought about it for a few seconds.

Sweat was pouring down his face.

“Speak!” I ordered.

“I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Tell me, you motherfucker! Tell me or I’ll fucking blow your brains out!”

“You were right! It was her idea! It was all her idea!” he sobbed.

“Elaborate.”

“She’d heard about Jim Mulvenna’s death when she was still at Warwick and when I picked her up at the airport she was bursting to tell me. She knew my dad had had his stroke and was in no condition to make a new will. She knew we could do it.”

“Do what? Tell me, Harper!”

“Like you said. To get the will and destroy it.”

“What was in the will?”

“Dad must have been out of his fucking mind. I mean, I knew he didn’t like me but what she told me was evil. She said that I was getting next to nothing. The house was going to the National Trust. His firm was going to be sold and the assets were going to be divided between the RSPB, Oxfam, and the rugby club. James Mulvenna had known that I might sue so he made the will fucking ironclad. I’d get a pittance. Me and Lizzie would get a pittance!”

“How much money would you stand to lose?”

“The house and the firm? Jesus! Three million.”

“So what was Lizzie’s plan?”

“That we’d break into James Mulvenna’s office and steal the will and destroy it and then when my father died intestate I’d get everything. The house, the firm, the bank accounts.”

“But your dad was the wild card, wasn’t he? He was getting better.”

“Euthanizing the old man was never part of her plan. She wanted me to wait until he died from natural causes. How long would that be? Five years? And you were right. He was on the mend. I knew he’d be speaking soon. Within six months the old bastard would have been fully recovered . . .”

The words were spilling out now. Everybody, I supposed, needed a confessor. I released my hand from his throat and took a step away from him. The night was perfect for it. I could smell peat burning in fires up and the down the lough shore and there was a sea mist moving in from the water.

“So you wanted to kill your own father but you knew you couldn’t trust her not to turn you in? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“She was a good girl, was Lizzie. How could I trust her with something like that? But it didn’t matter. That was only part of it. There was something else . . .”

“What else?”

“She was away at university. I mean, I’d loved her once, but . . . They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it’s not true, is it?”

“You didn’t want to marry her?”

“I already knew Jane. We’d gone out for a drink a couple of times. You can’t blame me what with Lizzie across the water half the year.”

“Lizzie didn’t know about Jane?”

“Of course not!”

“But if she found out the whole deal would be off.”

“Exactly.”

He fumbled for his smokes and I lit him a second fag.

“Ta,” he said, almost as if we were mates now.

If the tape hadn’t been rolling I’d have told him what I knew about Annie too. But Mary didn’t need to hear about that.

The conversation had momentum now. I kept the gun on him but I took another step back to give him some breathing room. He was relieved at that.

“Could you have offered her money? Would she have taken a million, say?” I asked.

“I didn’t even consider it. She was besotted with me. She wanted it all. The house, the money, the lifestyle. She wasn’t like her sisters. She wasn’t interested in the fucking cause. She just wanted a bit of comfort. And she thought she could have that with me. And she thought that her knowledge of the will would be something she could keep in her back pocket so I’d never leave her or have an affair. It was a kind of blackmail.”

Poor girl. She had no idea who she was dealing with.

“So when you heard that she was working alone in the pub the same night you’d be in Belfast you concocted a plan . . .”

“Concocted is the wrong word, Duffy. It all just came to me the day before.”

“Tell me about the key.”

“Are you joking? That was the easiest part. I asked her if I could borrow some change from her purse. I told her I had to run to the supermarket. I drove into Antrim, got the key cut, and was back in fifteen minutes.”

“You needed to lock the back door after you left just in case someone came by.”

“Yes.”

“And if you didn’t get a chance to pull the deadbolt over after you and the cops had broken the front door down, you knew that, at the very least, the back door would be locked.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s why you needed the pub key. As insurance. But it didn’t really matter in the end. No one saw you slip off to push the deadbolt over.”

“No.”

“And hey presto: the back door and the front door were locked and bolted.”

He nodded. I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh. “Where did you get the idea for a locked room mystery?”

He pointed behind him at the books. “Da has hundreds of the bloody things.”

I nodded. I wondered whether Mary needed the details about the actual killing itself. Do parents want to know exactly how their children died? Did Harper talk to her? Was there a struggle? Were there last words?

I didn’t want to hear the details. You got enough stuff like that in my line of work. “Did she know you were going to kill her?” I asked.

“She never knew a thing about it. I hit her from behind and then I did it quick. I read that SAS book about how to break someone’s neck. I hate to say it but it was easy.”

“The weapon?”

“A rolling pin.”

“Dr. Kent was right. Where is it now?”

“Long gone.”

“No qualms about any of this?”

“Do you think I’m a monster? Of course there were qualms. Of course! But what choice did I have? What would you have done?”

I wasn’t going to get on my high horse. “All right, Harper,” I said, and walked off the balcony back into the library. I uncocked the revolver and returned it to my shoulder holster. He followed me inside. “That’s it? You’re done?” he asked.

“I’m done.”

“No charges? No nothing?”

I shook my head. “No proof, so no charges, no nothing.”

He grinned and breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what it’s like going to the priest?”

“Usually the priest doesn’t need to resort to firearms.”

I walked back into the hall. Harper followed me. “And this is really it? You’re going and you won’t be coming back?” he said, unable to believe his luck.

“I gave you my word, Harper. You’re never going to see me again.”

“Inspector Duffy, where are you off to? Are you not staying?” Jane yelled from the parlor.

“No, I’m not, I better go,” I said.

“The rain is supposed to get worse before it gets better. Stay! A wee bite to warm you up,” she insisted.

“Aye, stay for dinner,” Harper said.

He thought we were friends now. His grinning face was inviting a right hook.

“No. I better go. I’m late for another appointment,” I said, and left the house for the last time.

As Jane had predicted the drizzle had become a hard rain. I walked down the Fitzpatricks’ drive and stopped outside the living-room window. I could see the family illuminated by the blue light of the TV screen.

I stepped onto the porch, hesitated, and rang the doorbell.

Annie answered it. She was wearing a green sweater and a long corduroy skirt. She was barefoot. Her hair was tied back Mary Tyler Moore–style. She looked pretty.

“Hello,” she said, pleased to see me.

“I’ve got something for you,” I said. I undid the elastic band from my notebook and took the free luncheon vouchers Barry Connor had given me for his restaurant.

“Take these,” I said. “You’ve got to get used to that French food if you’re moving to Montreal.”

“Wow! I’ve heard about this place. Thank you!” she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

“You’re welcome.”

“What are you doing here, Sean?”

“I’m here to talk to your mother.”

“Oh, is it about Lizzie?”

“Yes.”

“Any news?”

“No. No news. In fact, I think we’re going to have to shut down the case.”

“A waste of precious resources, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“So I won’t be seeing you again, Sean?”

“I don’t think so.”

“OK,” she said. She frowned and wanted to say something, but didn’t have the words.

“You’ll do great in Canada, I’m sure,” I said.

“It’s better than here anyway.”

She sniffed and touched me on the cheek and then she turned and ran into the back kitchen.

I’ll tell Dermot that you’re doing well, Annie
, I said to myself.

“Ma! Somebody at the door for you!” Annie yelled.

Mary appeared in the hallway.

“Who is it?” Jim asked from inside.

“I’ll talk to the policeman, Jim,” Mary said.

“Maybe we should talk outside,” I said.

I stepped backward onto the porch and Mary closed the front door. We stood there with the rain bouncing three feet back off the granite steps.

“Well?” she said, folding those blue meat-axe arms across her ample chest.

“I’ve got a name for you,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Go on.”

“Before I give it to you I want you to think about something,” I said.

“What?”

“Revenge is a mug’s game, Mary. The person getting revenge injures himself far worse by the act of vengeance than he was ever suffering before. He ends up living miserably. I’ve seen this first hand. A few years ago I revenged myself on a man who did terrible wrongs and it has brought me no satisfaction and considerable regret.”

She scowled at me and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Tell me the name, Duffy!”

“Tell me you’ll think about what I said.”

“I’ll think about it, Duffy.”

I nodded.

I counted to ten in my head.

If I told her it would be his death warrant.

“Harper McCullough,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She was the witness to his father’s will. His father was going to leave him nothing.”