The Midnight Choir (35 page)
Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
TUESDAY
42
The first of five phone calls came shortly after ten o’clock and it was anonymous.
‘Payback time, fuck-face.’
The voice was familiar.
‘You piss on your colleagues, and when it comes your turn there isn’t a hand that’ll reach out to help, you
prick
.’
prick
.’
The answer machine was on, to filter calls while Synnott sat at his kitchen table and reviewed the copies of the statements he’d assembled the previous night.
‘See how you like it, fuck-face, see how you like it when the screws are turning. When—’
Synnott picked up the phone.
‘Ferry?’
‘When you go down, fuck-face, there isn’t a station that won’t have a party.’
The phone went dead.
The second phone call was from a sergeant in Chief Superintendent Hogg’s office. Synnott picked up. The morning conference on the jewellery robbery had been postponed; there would be a conference at 6 p.m., same as yesterday. That suited Harry Synnott. He was halfway through reading the statements, adding notes that might marginally increase the value of the file. The typed-up version of Dixie’s statement, slightly amended, was ready for her signature as soon as he finished here and got her out of custody. After this morning’s work, he’d be equipped to recommend putting together a full investigation file for the DPP’s office.
The third call was from Rose Cheney. Synnott picked up when he heard her voice.
She said, ‘Taking the day off ?’
He told her there’d been a development in the jewellery robbery. He was at home, working on statements. He had a witness who could place Joshua Boyce on O’Connell Bridge shortly after eleven o’clock – which sank Boyce’s Perry Logan superstore alibi.
‘Jesus, that’s great! What’s the witness like?’
‘Dixie Peyton – a tout, she’s given me reliable stuff before – grew up on the Cairnloch estate the same time as Boyce. It’ll stand up.’
Rose Cheney told him she’d be spending most of the day in court. Then she gave him the good news about the Hapgood rape case.
‘You won’t believe what Maxie Senior did – pissed on his own doorstep.’ Then she told him all about Roland J.B. Jackson, B. Comm., M.P.R.I.I.
Cheney was about to hang up when she said, ‘By the way, there’s something going on down here.’
‘Problems?’
‘The Chief Super was here until all hours last night. Lawyers in and out, two or three people from HQ – doors shut, not a word to anyone. This morning, the phone is hopping off the hook. At least two calls from the Commissioner’s office, according to the desk.’
‘Any notion of what it’s about?’
‘One of the lads heard there’s a contingent up from Galway, talking to the Commissioner – and he’s guessing it has something to do with the murders over there, the fella and the boy.’
The phone clamped between shoulder and ear, Synnott drew a line through several words on the copy of the statement in front of him. ‘We’ll probably read about it in the papers, so.’
The fourth phone call was from Michael. When Synnott’s mobile rang he looked at the screen and saw his son’s name.
Synnott put down the mobile and pushed away the file he’d been working on.
Later, Michael.
Right now, the prospect of a ramble down some remote byway of his son’s career fantasies, trying to display an interest in choices Michael might make in business careers that Synnott neither understood nor cared about, was too distracting.
Right now, the prospect of a ramble down some remote byway of his son’s career fantasies, trying to display an interest in choices Michael might make in business careers that Synnott neither understood nor cared about, was too distracting.
When Michael hung up, Synnott crossed to the answer machine and checked that it was on. After a few moments the phone rang and the machine invited the caller to leave a message.
‘Dad? You there?’
Synnott went back to the kitchen table and sat down.
‘Dad?’
Later.
The fifth phone call came just after lunchtime, as Harry Synnott was coming out of the O’Connell Street branch of the National Irish Bank, having withdrawn €3,000 in cash from his account. He’d put the thirty €100 notes into an envelope along with the typed version of Dixie Peyton’s statement. The envelope nestled in his inside jacket pocket.
‘Detective Inspector Synnott?’
‘Yes?’
The caller identified himself as a superintendent attached to the office of Colin O’Keefe. ‘The Assistant Commissioner asked me to instruct you to report immediately to his office at Garda HQ.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘How long will it take you to get here?’
Synnott said, ‘I’m on my way to meet a potentially important witness.’
‘Where are you?’
‘O’Connell Street.’
‘Assistant Commissioner O’Keefe will expect you within fifteen minutes.’
*
There was a young man sitting off to one side of Colin O’Keefe’s desk. The Assistant Commissioner said, ‘This is Garda Joe Mills – McCreary Street station, in Galway.’
The young garda nodded to Synnott. His lips briefly created an awkward smile.
Synnott turned to the assistant commissioner. ‘Is there something wrong, sir?’
There was a formality to O’Keefe’s manner that Synnott had never seen before. His bearing was impersonal, his expression detached. ‘I asked Garda Mills to come up to Dublin yesterday to brief me on certain developments concerning the two murders uncovered in Galway several days ago, the man and the boy.’ He nodded to Mills.
The garda picked up a notebook from O’Keefe’s desk. When he spoke he addressed Harry Synnott.
‘Myself and another garda, Declan Dockery, sir, we arrested a man, last Wednesday – an attempted suicide, on the roof of a pub. He was visiting Galway, he lives in Dublin. As a consequence of the arrest we called at a house in Bushy Park, where we discovered the two bodies. The man we arrested, Wayne Kemp, there’s no doubt that he committed the murders – blood evidence, a verbal admission—’
O’Keefe said, ‘And the man’s clearly certifiable. To cut a long story short, there’s no doubt that this Wayne Kemp will be a very old man before he sets foot outside the Central Mental Hospital. What complicates the case is that in the course of the investigation he made certain admissions.’
Garda Mills was leafing through his notebook. When he found what he was looking for he looked to O’Keefe, who nodded for him to continue.
‘What worried us was something Mr Kemp said.
When it started out, there was no rough stuff. I’d never hurt a woman before.
’ Mills looked up from his notes. ‘For the next few days, we were looking for another body, a woman, maybe in Galway, maybe back in Dublin – maybe he made it up, maybe he had hallucinations, we didn’t know.’
When it started out, there was no rough stuff. I’d never hurt a woman before.
’ Mills looked up from his notes. ‘For the next few days, we were looking for another body, a woman, maybe in Galway, maybe back in Dublin – maybe he made it up, maybe he had hallucinations, we didn’t know.’
O’Keefe said, ‘There was no woman. Not in Galway, not in Dublin – not now.’
Mills said, ‘Mr Kemp told us – it took a while to get it out of him, he’s not terribly coherent at times – that he killed a woman some years ago, in Dublin. He’d been living in Blackpool, then Manchester – he’s not clear on dates – he was back in Dublin a short time. While he was in England he’d done a handful of burglaries, he did the same in Dublin, all in the one area. He couldn’t remember where, though he lived in a flat in Drumcondra at the time and it was within walking distance.’
‘Four burglaries,’ O’Keefe said.
Mills said, ‘It didn’t mean anything to me, to be honest, sir, but my Chief Super, as soon as he heard the details – the little tattoo on the victim, on her lower abdomen, a rosebud – he made the connection.’
Harry Synnott said, ‘Wait a minute—’
O’Keefe gestured for Mills to continue.
Mills looked at his notes again. ‘Kemp was on the prowl, looking for a likely house, he saw a woman come home, go in, he went right up and knocked on the door, she answered, he pushed the door in—’
Harry Synnott stood up. ‘Hold on—’
O’Keefe said, ‘Thank you, Garda Mills. You may leave now – I’ll send for you if I need you.’
O’Keefe sat silently behind his desk until the door clicked shut behind the young garda. Then he said, ‘The Swanson Avenue case. Tell me everything.’
‘There’s—’
Harry Synnott felt the words melt from his tongue. He searched for a new sentence, something to say that would slow things down, give him time to match the past with the present, the assertions he’d just heard against the truth he’d known since he’d unravelled Ned Callaghan’s lies. Truth and assisted truth coiled around one another, impossible to tell apart. Several combinations of words, half-thoughts, collided and he finally reached for words that he knew were inadequate. ‘Sir, there appears to be a mistake of some—’
O’Keefe was staring down at the bare desk in front of him. ‘And before you say anything, you should know that right now I’ve got a Chief Superintendent at the home of former Detective Inspector John Grace, interviewing him about his recollection of the case.’
43
A long silence.
‘Harry, there’s just you and me here – I have to know the lie of the land. This is off the record, so tell me.’
‘Ned Callaghan murdered his wife.’
‘That’s not good enough, Harry.’
‘It’s what happened. I questioned him, so did John Grace. He denied everything. We knew from the kid—’
‘The kid was three years old and he’d just had his head fucked up, watching the life battered out of his mother.’
‘He said his dad did it.’
My daddy, my daddy—
‘Three years old – the state he was in – he made noises to you, Harry—’
‘I know what I heard. And Callaghan lied, repeatedly. His girlfriend, he suborned perjury. He made admissions.’
Harry Synnott’s eyes were staring towards the assistant commissioner’s desk, but they were focused somewhere in midair. He could see the dark patches of sweat on Ned Callaghan’s light blue shirt. He could see the desperation in the man’s eyes, he could see the patches of red on his cheeks, the broken veins beneath, he could see the man close his eyes, tilt his chin up, he could hear the voice so high in despair that it was almost a squeak.
‘
Please!
’
Please!
’
Harry Synnott met Colin O’Keefe’s gaze. ‘The guilt and the shame was all over him. He killed himself. What more do you need?’
‘I’ve checked – the detail about the tattoo, that never came out. This man Kemp, we already know him to be guilty of two murders, and he made an unsolicited admission about beating a woman to death, and he knew about the tattoo.’
Synnott said nothing for a while, then he said, ‘That Galway fella, Mills – he said it took them days questioning him before he came up with this shit. How do we know – Jesus, Colin, you said yourself he belongs in the Central Mental Hospital.’
O’Keefe said, ‘Remember the fingermarks found in the Callaghan house? This morning, we got a match with Kemp.’
Synnott said nothing.
O’Keefe’s voice was flat. ‘I had a couple of excitable chaps from the DPP’s office in here an hour ago. This rape case, the Hapgood thing, they’re extremely sceptical. They’re dropping the charge.’
‘Jesus—’
‘And they want you off the jewellery robbery – they say that if it was Boyce who did it you’ve almost certainly contaminated the case already just by interrogating him.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘This Galway thing is coming out, Harry. And what they don’t want is you on the stand, against Hapgood or Boyce or anyone else, being cross-examined about what a suspect did or didn’t say, with lawyers queuing up to rub your face in this fuck-up until every word you say stinks of Swanson Avenue. The DPP’s office wants Boyce released. I’ve just given instructions to that effect.’
He leaned forward. ‘Did Boyce, by the way, make any incriminating admissions to you?’
‘He made certain admissions.’
O’Keefe said, ‘I think you’ll find it very, very difficult to get this one past the DPP, Harry, if there’s verbal admissions involved. Do you have anything else on him?’
The envelope in Harry Synnott’s inside pocket, the three thousand and Dixie Peyton’s statement, felt like it had doubled in weight and volume.
It’s not a runner. Not now.
With the police and the prosecution lawyers behind her, Dixie Peyton could hold up long enough to put the bastard away. With the same gardai and lawyers testing every sentence of her story there was no way she wouldn’t crumble.
‘He made certain admissions, sir – that’s all we have.’
O’Keefe nodded slowly, like he’d heard something that was expected but still disappointing.
Synnott wanted everything to stop for a moment. He needed to think, to sweep away the extraneous detail and isolate the core of it all. What was certain? What was arguable? Where was there room to duck and weave, what were the immovable problems?
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