TORN (25 page)

Reuben explained carefully. ‘There’s been a great injustice, a crime committed, yet the ultimate transgressor wasn’t effectively punished. The journalist wrote about it, the policeman covered it up, lost evidence, took a bribe, whatever. The doctor is connected in some way, how I’m not yet sure. The politician presumably pulled some strings.  But someone, somewhere, committed this original crime. The true perpetrator.’

Reilly nodded in understanding.

‘He wants us to know what it’s all about,’ Reuben continued, ‘so I would imagine that the video – or videos – will appear soon. They will be cryptic, but they will give us some degree of understanding all this.’  He fidgeted with his hands. ‘He lives alone.  He is a professional, meticulous person - calm, collected, studious even.  In fact, he is probably the very last person you would suspect of such brutal crimes.’

O’Brien had his eyes fixed on Reuben. ‘Will we catch him?’

‘The million-dollar question.’  The profiler sighed. ‘Sadly, I suspect not until he’s ready.’

Lucy edged her car out of the parking space, deep in the bowels of the GFU building. The quiet thrum of the engine vibrated through the seat – the car seemed as eager as she was to escape the lab for a few hours.

She emerged from the gloom into a bright winter’s day. She was planning to earn her stripes on this case, spending several days working overtime to try to isolate the soil samples, and had finally come up with a match from a small village near Kildare town. But before saying anything to Reilly, she was going to grasp the nettle and investigate the area herself. She could imagine it was what her boss would have done when she was learning the ropes at the FBI Academy. Lucy never tired of hearing Reilly’s stories about her time at Quantico, which always sounded so brilliantly exciting, almost glamorous.

So much better than studying for a Forensic Science degree at boring old UCD.

The N8 was one of the better roads in the area, and Lucy felt herself unwinding as she drove, Today FM chirping happily from her radio, the gear changes crisp and sharp as she pushed her little Mini along at speed.

Some thirty minutes later, she reached the village of Clane and pulled into the car park of the pub. It was a large white painted building with a brown tiled roof. A bare cherry tree stood by the pub’s wooden fence, its branches still tinged with dew.

Lucy climbed out of the car, stretched and took a deep breath of the cold, clean air. She was dressed casually, jeans tucked into brown leather boots under a heavy winter jacket, and her curly hair pulled back. She zipped her jacket up and hurried into the pub.

It was a quiet family establishment with a blazing fire burning in the hearth.  Lucy unzipped her jacket, and settled onto a stool at the bar. A bored-looking teenage girl chewing furiously at a piece of tired gum sloped over.

‘What are you having?’

Lucy looked around.  If she wanted information this was not who she needed to talk to. ‘Is your boss around?’ she asked politely.

The girl maintained her air of effortless boredom.  ‘You mean Mr Cooper?’

‘Is he the owner?’

The barmaid nodded, smacked her gum.  ‘Him and his missus.’

Lucy remained polite.  ‘Could I talk to him, please?’

The girl shook her head.. ‘Wednesday is Mr Cooper’s day off.’ 

‘I see.  So who’s in charge today then?’  

‘Mrs Ellis, the bar manager.’

The girlcontinued chewing furiously, bringing to mind a ruminating cow.

‘Well, could you go and get her for me, please?’ Lucy asked.

It wasn’t long before Mrs Ellis appeared. She popped out through the doorway looking slightly breathless, and turned towards the barmaid. She was in her mid-forties, with short brown hair and a slightly worried expression on her face. 

She bustled over. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

Lucy smiled, keen to reduce the woman’s obvious nervousness.  ‘Hello, Mrs Ellis. My name is Lucy Gorman, I’m an investigator with the GFU.’ Lucy proudly showed her ID, feeling like she was in a TV show or something. It was merely her lab access card and nothing like an official investigator badge, but the woman wouldn’t know that. ‘I wonder if you could answer a few questions for me?’

. ‘The guards … is something the matter?’

‘No, no, not at all, ,’ Lucy smiled. ‘I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the local area.  Have you lived around here long?’

Mrs Ellis drew herself up to her full height.  ‘Born and bred here in the village.’

‘That’s wonderful.’  Lucy looked past Mrs Ellis to the barmaid, standing just behind her and pretending not to listen. Lucy indicated the empty table behind them.  ‘Could we sit somewhere quiet and chat for a minute?’

The older woman caught the glance. ‘Oh, of course!’ She untied her apron, tucked it under the bar, scampered out from behind it and led Lucy over to a small table that looked out over the deserted car park.

‘So how can I help you?’

‘It’s nothing serious. I just wanted to talk to someone with local knowledge.’

Lucy opened her handbag and pulled out an OS map that covered the local area. She spread it across the table. ‘Do you know of any abandoned stables or barns around here – anywhere horses might have been kept?’

‘Well, you’re in Kildare, honey, the place is riddled with stables! But abandoned, you say?’

‘Either abandoned, or else quiet, tucked away. Somewhere private.’

‘There’s a few places you might want to look,’ the woman informed her. She found a spot nearby on the map, pointed at it with her stubby finger – Lucy noticed that her nails were chewed to the quick. ‘Bradshaw’s farm would be worth a look.  There’s a couple of old stables there …’  She marked the point on the map with a red pen.  ‘You might also look there – it’s not much more than an abandoned plot of land, but we had some travellers through there a couple of years ago. Then there’s …’ her eyes scanned the map, ‘… ah, here it is.’  She pointed to a spot about four miles out of town on a quiet country lane. ‘That’s probably your best bet.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘It’s so isolated. Just look at it. That lane’s a dead end.  It winds up at the estuary, and the farm has been abandoned for about seven years, since old Mr Harrington died.’  She leaned in closer. ‘It was hardly more than a ruin even when he lived there – can’t imagine what it’s like now.’

‘Do you know who owns it these days?’

The woman shook her head. ‘Not sure. I think some relative inherited it. It’s up for sale now.’

Lucy smiled. ‘That’s very helpful, thank you.’ She began to fold her map.

‘You won’t be going to these places on your own now, will you?’ Mrs Ellis asked, looking dubiously at her. ‘I presume you have a big strapping partner with you—’ Then she put her hand to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I know we’re not supposed to say things like that these days, but—’

‘It’s fine,’ Lucy waved her apology away. ‘And don’t worry, of course I’ll have somebody with me.’

‘Good. The world is a funny place these days, and I don’t like the idea that it might be me who’d sent a little scrap of a thing like yourself off to … I’m sorry, there I go again. No doubt the likes of you are so well trained these days, you could kill me stone dead as soon as look at me!’

Lucy smiled. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

Having finished collecting soil samples from the first two farmlands, Lucy headed to the third location Mrs Ellis had indicated on the map. As the bar manager had pointed out, it was near the bottom of a lane, with no other buildings anywhere around.

The lane was rutted, full of potholes – she had to pick her way carefully along it at barely twenty miles an hour, weaving a path around the various obstacles. The high hedges on either side blocked her view, and the farm was so well hidden that she almost missed it.

Lucy hit the brakes and looked to her right. Through a small gap in the hedge a narrow track disappeared round a curve.  She backed up, then turned onto the driveway, noting a ‘For Sale’ sign tacked onto a nearby fence post. The terrain was even more potholed than the road, but after about fifty yards or so it opened out into a farmyard.

Straight ahead was an old farmhouse – traditional style, two up two down, brick built, the tile roof showing signs of neglect. To her left was a low concrete outhouse. Lucy cut the engine, took a moment to look around and allow her mind to absorb what was there.

She pushed the car door open and got out.

What to do? Should she give Gary a call back at the lab just in case, let him know where she was? Then again, this was only a fishing mission, no need to overexcite anyone just yet. She was here to take soil samples, that was all.

But while she was here, Lucy figured she might as well take a look around.

She stepped over towards the rundown building, taking care to step on the drier, frostier patches of ground so that she wouldn’t leave any footprints. If this was a place of interest, the last thing she wanted to do was leave prints behind.

Up close the house wore its air of abandon like an old coat. The window frames were rotten, the paint peeling, the glass covered in years of grime. She stepped up to one of them and tried to look inside, but with the bright glare of the blue sky above, it was impossible to see anything of the gloomy interior.

She glanced around the small garden – it was wild and overgrown – then paused as a noise floated to her on the still air. A vehicle was approaching.

Lucy froze.  With her car sitting in the entrance to the yard there was no hiding the fact that she was there, and no way to escape if someone pulled up behind her. If someone did appear she would just have to bluff it out, say she was looking to buy the place or something.

The engine noise grew closer, sounding suddenly very loud in the quiet yard.  Lucy turned, and looked towards the narrow driveway, expecting all the time to see a vehicle pull up behind hers. Her nerves were taut, the skin on the back of her neck standing up … then the noise started to fade as a car just carried on past the lane and further up the road.

She breathed a sigh of relief.  It could have been anyone – a fisherman, someone going to take their dog out for a walk …

She glanced again towards the outhouse and a sudden loud barking startled her. From inside, several dogs – large ones, from the sound they were making – had become very agitated indeed, snarling and growling ferociously.  They weren’t simply sounding a warning, they wanted to attack whoever was out there.

Lucy had a strong desire to leave immediately.  The place was unnerving her.  She bent quickly, scooped some soil into a plastic evidence bag and sealed it tight. This was what she had come for, after all.

An icy wind raced around the side of the building and whipped at her legs.  She shivered. She had been here long enough, and was pushing her luck coming on her own. It was time to go.

Then she heard the unmistakable sound of a twig snapping.

‘We’ve turned up something on Jennings,’ Kennedy said.

Chris looked up from his desk. ‘The doctor? What did the wife have to say?’

It had now been over a fortnight since the first murder, and in the hope of finding so far elusive common ground between all four victims, Chris and Kennedy had arranged further in-depth interviews with the families.

Chris had just returned from the Coffey house, where Mrs Coffey had revealed she had no knowledge of Dr Jennings or Alan Fitzpatrick, nor could she think of any reason (other than work related) why her husband would be in possession of John Crowe’s mobile number.

‘Seems the doc has a previous conviction,’ Kennedy said triumphantly.

‘What?’ Chris sat forward. This he hadn’t expected. By all accounts Dr Jennings seemed your typical salt-of-the-earth GP. The staff at his surgery had been devasted to hear of his demise, and had nothing but good things to say about him.

‘Yep. His wife brought it up, actually; is convinced his killer is someone with a grudge.’

‘So what’s the conviction?’ Chris asked, somewhat heartened that they seemed to be getting somewhere. But he wondered why the conviction hadn’t turned up in their initial background search on Jennings.

‘An interesting one,’ Kennedy continued. ‘About a year ago, one of Jennings’ patients stockpiled antidepressants he prescribed and used them to top herself.’

‘Criminal negligence then?’ Chris queried.

‘The very one. Wife says he was really torn up about it. Seems the patient was a rape victim, and he was doing everything he could to try and help her, blah,blah,blah.’

Chris was silent for a moment as he tried to take in the implications. A rape victim.

He could understand why the doctor had been torn up about a patient suicide, especially if the supposed remedy he’d offered to try to ease her pain had had the very opposite effect. Or had it?

‘I don’t get it. How come none of this turned up Jennings’ background search?’

‘Good question.’ Kennedy slumped down behind an adjacent desk, and set Jennings’ file on top of it. ‘Which is why we need to go a little deeper where our good doctor is concerned.’ He looked at Chris. ‘I’m gonna give our HSE guy a call, see if he can dig up Jennings’ disciplinary record.’