If I Never See You Again (3 page)
‘Hey, a little more respect for your mother,’ Dan
instructed, catching Jo’s eye behind his back and straining to keep a straight face.
Jo heard a whimper upstairs and went to get Harry.
Dan and Rory were arguing when she got back, but they stopped talking as soon as they saw her.
‘What’s going on?’ Jo asked, moving quickly to the cooker to turn the heat down. Gloopy water was overflowing from the pot of spaghetti.
‘Go on, tell her,’ Rory said, eyeballing his father.
Dan looked at Jo sheepishly and muttered something about Rory’s school reports which Jo couldn’t make out.
‘Tell me what?’ Jo asked, placing Harry in the high chair and handing him a rusk.
Dan opened his mouth to say something, but Rory spoke over him angrily. ‘Okay, so my grades are down. Big deal. When your parents split, that’s what happens. I’m a textbook broken-home kid. Shoot me.’
‘Do not speak to me like that,’ Dan said.
‘Why not?’ Rory asked. ‘Because tonight we’re playing grown-ups who get along? You want to get everything out in the open so much, Dad, why don’t you tell Mum about the new place you’re planning on moving into with your girlfriend?’
Jo looked at Dan. When he didn’t say anything, she handed Harry his milk. As soon as he started guzzling, she left the room.
‘I was going to tell you,’ Dan said, following her to the front room.
Jo was sitting on the couch studying her hands, which lay on her knees.
Dan knelt down in front of her. ‘Don’t do this,’ he said, clasping his hands over hers.
‘He’s a bright kid, he’ll be fine,’ Dan said coldly. ‘The move with Jeanie . . . it’s not the way it sounds . . . It’s temporary, until I find somewhere of my own. Her place is too small. She was moving anyway!’
Jo wanted to change the subject. ‘We need to talk about my transfer,’ she said.
‘Not now,’ he answered, sounding frustrated.
‘When?’ she asked, keeping her voice down. ‘Your secretary keeps refusing to give me an appointment.’
Dan plunged his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Take it that Jeanie will book you in tomorrow morning.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘All you have to do is say the word, Jo. You know how I feel about you.’
‘And where does Jeanie fit in?’ Jo asked calmly. ‘You’re just stringing her along in case things don’t work out between us, is that it? And what if we did get back together . . . Would she stay on as your secretary, just like the old days?’
Dan’s voice hardened. ‘How many times do I have to tell you there was nothing between us before you kicked me out? And what’s happened since isn’t serious.’
He brushed past her lightly as he headed back into the kitchen.
When he called out, ‘Grub up,’ minutes later, she walked stiffly back to the kitchen and sat down alongside Becky, opposite Dan and Rory. She ate forced mouthfuls in between making light conversation. There was one humorous moment when Dan made Rory laugh by telling him about Jo’s rooftop claim that she didn’t want to be a cop, or to
work. Jo tried telling them that she’d pack it all in at the drop of a hat if she won the Lotto, but they all just laughed harder at her, even Becky.
After Harry was winded and the strings of spaghetti removed from his hair, Jo pulled his hat on and kissed his rosy little cheeks before handing him slowly over to Dan, with a tube of Bonjela.
‘I thought you were staying,’ Jo said, as Rory began to follow his father.
Rory mumbled something before disappearing out the hall door. Becky tottered out behind him, telling Jo as she trooped out behind him, ‘No offence. It’s just that if my mum found out I was going to stay here, she’d, like, have a meltdown.’
Jo started to massage her neck. If Dan was letting Becky stay over with Rory in his place, they’d have to have the birth-control conversation. Something else to look forward to. She listened to Dan’s car drone down the road and around the corner then went out into the garden, jostled the For Sale sign to the ground and dragged it around to the side of the house, where no one could see it. If Dan thought she was going to let him sell her family home just so he could use the proceeds of his half to buy one with Jeanie he had another think coming.
She was headed for the station, technically five minutes away.
Technically
. Her wipers slashed at the rain sheeting down, in high summer. The repetitive thump alternated with the throb in her head, which the pills had moved from the front to the back of her skull. When the lights changed but not a single car moved and her petrol warning light flashed up, Jo slid her right arm under her shirt collar to peel the nicotine patch off the top of her arm and relocate it on her left breast, directly over her heart, hoping for a maximum infusion. Seconds later, she leaned over to the dash where she stashed her emergency box of Silk Cut Lights and lit up. The car bunny-hopped until she grabbed the choke again.
After eventually managing to ditch it on a double yellow, she crossed the Luas tram tracks and hurried past the Victorian Coroner’s Court, the last port of call for murder
victims’ families denied justice by the courts. Each morning, a new set of shattered faces could be seen heading into the building beside the station, arms linked, hands clutching photographs of the deceased, and clinging to the last hope – of restoring some dignity to the dead with a verdict of unlawful killing . . .
Entering the red-bricked, refurbished barracks, she swiped her ID card past the ice-block walls and solid beech doors and headed for the windowless incident room on the first floor. More desks than the room could accommodate were crammed in haphazard rows. A detailed map of Dublin city centre hung on the back wall, with little coloured pins highlighting the primary crime flashpoints. Immigrants were breathing new life into many of the no-go areas where marked cars would have been rammed or stoned in previous years, but the transition was creating a whole new set of tensions, especially now jobs were so thin on the ground.
Shiny white boards took up most of the end wall. A posthumous close-up of Rita Nulty’s bloodied face had already been taped up, beside details relating to a previous case which somebody had made a half-hearted attempt to rub out.
Two men were working inside. She knew them both – liked one, couldn’t stand the other.
Jo made a beeline through the fug of body odour and stale coffee towards Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton, who was studying some paperwork at the top of the room. He was sitting at the desk with the only computer. The other guy – the one with acne on his neck and an All Blacks fleece over his uniform – looked up when she entered. He was known as Mac. She hadn’t a clue what his first name was or how his surname ended. Staff were split into four units to provide
cover for twenty-four hours. You could go your whole career never having met someone working in the same station, but Mac she knew by form. He’d been the focus of an inquiry some years back after a mouthy juvenile died in a cell on his watch, but the DPP couldn’t make any charges stick. Every cop on duty that night had suffered a collective lapse in memory. It made her sick to the teeth the way ranks closed whenever trouble loomed.
‘Sexton,’ she saluted, scooping up copies of
Evening New
s splashed with the banner headline ‘Murdered Hooker’. That was quick, she thought, dropping it on to the floor with a loud bang, managing to locate the keyboard that had been buried underneath in the process. Taking her arms out of the sleeves of her leather biker jacket, she slung it over the back of the chair.
Sexton looked up and grinned. He was short by police standards, and handsome, with Mediterranean good looks. It was only a few months since Jo had last seen him, but he’d aged so much she had to look twice. Grey slashes had appeared in his dark hair at the sides, and there were puffy bags under his eyes. He looked a lot older than his thirty-two years, Jo thought.
‘Haven’t seen you in a while, Sarge,’ he said.
‘That’s Inspector to you . . . I got promoted, remember?’ She plonked herself in the chair, wheeling it sideways with little steps, telling him to ‘push over’ with her elbows so she could work on the computer.
‘How could I forget?’ he replied.
The running joke that she’d cheated her way up the ranks was wearing very thin, but Sexton she let get away with it. He was three years younger than she was but the most instinctive cop she’d ever worked with, and rumoured to be
on course for promotion when the next list came out. She knew first-hand how good he was and so she didn’t begrudge him, especially when he’d also had to overcome huge personal tragedy – his late wife, Maura, had taken her own life, must be a year and a half ago now. Jo remembered it as happening at much the same time she and Dan broke up. Sexton hadn’t taken a day’s leave since, as far as she could tell, but he point-blank refused to discuss it whenever she tried to bring it up. She still hadn’t been able to talk to him properly. She’d also heard on the grapevine that he’d only found out from Maura’s autopsy report that she’d been expecting their first child.
‘You need a shave,’ she told him.
He rubbed his jaw. ‘Did I ever tell you, you’re the image of that actress . . . what’s her name?’ he asked.
Jo jabbed the keyboard, tabbing through the PULSE crime programme as she answered, ‘Orla Brady – I wish, and yeah, you tell me all the time.’ She didn’t entertain it for a second. Sexton could charm the birds out of the trees.
‘Wasn’t she in
Mistresses
?’ Mac asked with a snigger.
Jo shot him a look of contempt, but Sexton distracted her with another question.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, linking his hands behind his head.
‘I want to do a bit of research on the murder victim today,’ Jo answered, still eyeballing Mac. ‘You know, Rita Nulty – I found her.’
‘I heard. Lucky for us. What were the chances of you being
in situ
at that location today, eh?’ He stretched over to grab a novelty mug from her desk. ‘So what have you been working on lately?’ he asked.
‘Don’t ask. Deskbound, mostly.’
‘Pays the same.’ Her eyes moved across the screen. The computer system was an exercise in frustration. The software had cost
50 million and was incapable of basic tasks. Unlike the HOLMES system in the UK, it didn’t cross reference relevant information and, as the plan for a national DNA bank was in its infancy, it couldn’t throw up the hits needed to solve crime. Plus there was the fact that, if the civil liberties crowd ever found out that the details of people who’d reported a crime were permanently stored with those of suspects who’d been long since cleared, there’d be hell to pay.
‘Shit boring though, right?’ Sexton guessed.
Jo shrugged.
‘Milk, two sugars?’ He held a mug up.
Jo pressed two pleading hands in his direction like she was praying. He nodded ‘no problem’. She watched him as he walked towards the coffee machine on a bench on the opposite wall and thought how tired he looked.
When he realized the dregs in the coffee pot were burnt into a sticky glue at the bottom of the pot, Sexton clicked his tongue and headed outside to the toilets to clean it. As he did so, the phone on his desk rang.
‘Sexton around?’ a gravelly voice quizzed.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Ryan Freeman.’
Jo looked at the newspapers on the floor and focused on the by-line on the murder story. She weighed this information up against the ten-odd seconds it would take to get Sexton back to the phone to take the call from the country’s highest-profile crime reporter. ‘He’s not available,’ she lied, ignoring Mac’s open mouth and hanging up.
She returned to the computer search. ‘Did you find out
who owned that apartment?’ she asked when Sexton returned, adding, ‘Cheers,’ as he handed over a polystyrene cup from the machine outside. He held the coffee pot up to show her how the ring of glass in the bottom had come away when he’d tried to clean it.
‘Yeah,’ he said, sitting on the desk. ‘Foxy actioned the job, but the key-holder was kosher. He’d bought it from the plans, never set foot in the place.’
‘Had the victim any previous?’
‘Lots – soliciting and shoplifting.’
‘Drugs?’
He shook his head.
Jo wasn’t surprised. The scale of the resources to tackle the drug problem was a joke, and with all the cuts to public-service pay, morale was at an all-time low. Nobody took chances with their personal health and safety when it came to drug arrests any more. ‘How long had she been there?’
‘Pathologist reckoned under twenty-four hours.’
‘Could have told you that myself from one look at her bus ticket.’ She blew on and then sipped the scalding coffee. ‘Heard who’s in the running for heading up the investigation yet?’
‘Chief super’s due to announce it in the morning. But between you, me and the wall, he’s already given me the nod that it’s mine. He wants this one solved quickly. Did you hear he’s up for promotion? Assistant commissioner!’
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Dan was one of only six chief superintendents in the city, which meant that he’d be a contender for the top job of commissioner in a few years’ time. ‘They’d have to move him out of here then, wouldn’t they? It won’t happen. I’d never be that lucky.’
Sexton laughed.
‘Listen, just to give you the heads-up, I’ve asked Dan to
give me the Rita Nulty inquiry,’ Jo said. ‘Nothing personal, but I’m going to fight for it. You don’t mind, do you?’
He nodded several times too often. ‘If that’s how things pan out, so be it. I’ve no problem taking orders from a woman, though a lot of men in here would. As the fella says, “May the best man win.”’
Jo was typing with her two index fingers when PULSE miraculously threw back the information she was looking for. Sexton leaned over her shoulder to read from the monitor.
‘What’s your take on what happened today then?’ he asked, leaning in close. He smelled of one of those trendy, androgynous aftershaves she didn’t know the name of but liked. Too ‘new man’ for Dan. He’d even treated his wedding ring like jewellery and left it on the shelf beside his shaving mirror every morning.
Jo stretched across the desk for a pen. ‘I get the feeling the killer hasn’t finished yet. And I doubt today’s victim was his first. I’m trying to dig out any old trophy-killer files.’
‘Not just a punter coked out of his brain, taking things a bit far?’
She shook her head. ‘The killer went to too much trouble.’ She tapped the screen with her pen. ‘See what’s turned up. You were involved in this one, weren’t you? It was put down to a gangland hit.’
‘Stuart Ball?’ Sexton asked, reading the screen over her shoulder. ‘Yeah, I know him. His nickname was Git. He was a lowlife, a druggie. Used to be high up in the Skids until he started sampling the merchandise. What about him?’
‘The thing is, he was found on New Wapping Street,’ Jo said. ‘That’s just around the corner from where we found Rita today.’
‘Here’s the thing,’ she continued. ‘Git’s eye was gouged out and left at the scene. Given what’s happened to the victim we found today, I think it could be the same killer.’
Sexton straightened up. ‘Interesting . . . You fancy a drink?’
Mac reacted instantly. He was on his feet, zipping up his jacket.
Jo checked her watch. ‘Thought drinking on duty was your pet hate?’
‘We’re celebrating. Guess who’s just been knocked off? Anto Crawley! Only happened a couple of hours ago – his body’s still warm. Happy days, eh?’
‘Really?’ she said, understanding his euphoria. Anto Crawley was the country’s top drug lord and the Skids’ lynchpin. If he’d been taken out, it would be a major blow to the gangland.
‘Yeah,’ Sexton said. ‘Someone just did us a big favour. Really had it in for him, whoever it was, and they smashed his teeth in before they killed him.’
Jo winced as she made a note of the numbers of the files she wanted to retrieve from the monitor.
Sexton put one hand on the back of her chair. ‘You’re taking this hooker’s case a bit personally, aren’t you? You got no home to go to? Where are your kids?’
Jo bristled. ‘With Dan. You two go. I’m staying here.’
