Deadly Intent (24 page)

She remembered again the story Caitlín had told about coffins being carried up to Ballaghscart, or Bealach Scairt, as the Healy Pass was known in the past, returning the corpse of a childless woman to her own people. They had speculated that such a woman had not earned the status required by her community for burial with her husband. To Nessa, the story illustrated starkly how the rituals of death could dishonour rather than honour the deceased, and she realised now what had niggled her about its link with Oscar.

Whoever killed him hated him bitterly – hated him enough not only to end his life, but to dump his body in a public place, where birds and animals could feast on his carcass. His killer wanted to shame him in death, and instead of hiding his remains, had put them on display for passing strangers. It reminded Nessa of something she had read about the ancient Greeks and their belief that a soul could not rest in peace until the person's corpse lay under a decent covering of earth. Oscar would not be left to rest in peace even after his murder.

She stood by the wall and tried to picture the murderer driving around Beara at night, preparing to dump his body – a man more likely that a woman, she thought, because Oscar's dead weight had to be hauled onto the parapet, and indeed dragged into the boot of a car in the first place. But wherever Oscar had been strangled, hiding his body would not have been difficult in Beara. The peninsula was dotted with woodlands, ditches and isolated mountain roads where it would have lain undiscovered for weeks, or indeed forever. In that case, gardai could have believed that Oscar had left Beara with whoever he had met that Thursday lunchtime, and would have had no idea where to search for him.

But if his body was deliberately dumped in the open, and the motive for his murder was a deep personal hatred, surely it was unlikely to be the outcome of business rivalries? Or could Dominic have grown to hate Oscar so viciously over the course of four or five days? It seemed more plausible that the killer had nursed a desire for revenge over a longer period. Caitlín had told Nessa about the message sent to a radio station on the day of his funeral, and she thought again about its insinuations of rape and torture against Oscar. The message, as far as Caitlín knew, did not say whether Oscar was accused of raping a woman once or repeatedly, and what kind of torture was suggested. But anything of that kind could certainly arouse a thirst for revenge.

Nessa shivered in the night air, disappointed that her glimmer of understanding a few minutes earlier had left her with more questions than ever. Why was she digging into Oscar's business history, if personal revenge was a likelier motive? She had encouraged Zoe in that direction, but had Zoe spurred her to do so in the first place? Should she even spend time pursuing Stella's list of contacts, or was she being led up a garden path?

But the two sisters were not the only people who had suggested that Oscar's entrepreneurial activities were key to his violent death. He himself had told Nessa that he was leaving Beara early because of an unexpected work problem. And she recalled somebody else referring to the pressures of his work the same day. Yes, it must have been his son Fergus, while they were on the way to or from the pharmacy in Castletownbere. Fergus mentioned a phone call his father got at lunchtime, about a business quarrel he was trying to sort out. He had added something about the call being from France, she remembered now, and that he was worried about it because of how his father dug his heels in whenever it came to a fight.

She took a last look down at the stream before getting back into her car. In the moonlight, she could see the water's ripples at the edge of the heathery banks. Perhaps she was wrong about the reason for dumping his body in this particular spot. The killer might have searched for a more secluded place, but then panicked in case his car was noticed and later identified. And it was also possible that two people were involved, just as she and Caitlín had concluded from their hurried experiment at the bridge.

Coming up with theories was one thing, but it was quite another to figure out which theory was worthwhile. Appearances and truth did not always coincide. The moon might shine brightly in the sky, making us believe that its radiance was generated from within, instead of being a reflection of the sun's low rays lighting up a cold and dark lump of stone.

Nessa decided to have a warm, comforting bath, to ease away the day's weary tensions. She poured herself a generous glass of wine and carried it upstairs to her bedroom. Now that she had made it all the way home, she did not have to worry about getting up early in the morning. She threw off her sweaty clothes and took a large towel from the ensuite bathroom. She was not going to confine herself to an indoor bath – instead, she would soak in the outdoor hot tub on the flat roof of a single-storey extension built beside the guest bedrooms.

She padded across the house, pausing to take a sip of wine and to notice how quiet the house was. They had had motion sensors installed on the house lights the previous year and it was easy to make her way along the corridors. Nessa was surprised, though, that the hot tub switch beside the door leading on to the roof had its red light on, indicating that the tub was in use. Then she heard sounds from outside.

A gurgling noise and a burst of laughter, amplified when she pushed open the door softly.

She waited, clutching her wineglass tightly. Silence. Several seconds of silence, followed by a gentle murmur of voices, with a backing track of bubbling water. Words drifted across the rooftop air.

‘This was a seriously hot idea of yours, clever girl!'

‘Totally! I said I'd a surprise for you, didn't I?'

‘Mmnn …'

‘If only we had the place to ourselves regularly, it would be just …'

Silence again, and then an unmistakeable moan of pleasure. Nessa was rooted to the floor, as if her limbs had turned to stone.

Marcus and Sal, having a fine time for themselves. Clearly, her daughter had lied about the sleepover arrangement with her school friend. She was taking advantage of the upheaval in all their lives, but Nessa's first reaction was a pang of guilt at her own behaviour. She was allowing herself to be sucked into her old journalistic zeal, convinced that she could unearth truths others would miss, while ignoring Sal's need for quiet study routines and supervision.

‘You so have to let me spend more time in your house, Marcus.' Sal's tone was coaxing, even honeyed. ‘That's if we want to be together properly …'

‘I know what you're saying, babe, but it can't happen, I'm afraid. It's not as private as I'd like, see.' Nessa took a step from the doorway to the edge of a low screening wall and saw two heads close together. The water slopped around as Marcus detached himself and sat up a little. ‘I'm getting work done on the place, I told you that already.'

‘But workmen go home at night, don't they?' Sal turned her head and Nessa missed the next sentence or two. She rested her back against the wall, feeling utterly exhausted. Then she heard Sal's voice rise and become plaintive. ‘I didn't believe Darina when she told me that you had other women down there recently, but maybe I should have listened to her. She said you had a blonde visitor last week, from Eastern Europe. And I've heard other rumours …'

‘Hey, what's with the inquisition, kid? So, I've a business partnership with a woman who happens to favour a nice blonde hair colouring? And I sometimes have to meet with other females of the species? That's what the working life involves,
entiende
?' Marcus sounded more dismissive than angry. ‘Anyway, I don't get why you're paying so much attention to what Darina says. What do you think she knows about the outside world, locked up in her crummy barn with her paintbrushes and her hammers all day?'

Nessa told herself she had been eavesdropping long enough. Guilt gave way to anger, which burned in her stomach like vinegar, both at her daughter's lies and at her own naive stupidity. Yes, Sal was eighteen years old and Nessa could not be sure what she got up to at music festivals or friends' parties. But it was quite another thing to abuse her parents' trust at home, and in the midst of all their current troubles.

Marcus laughed as he moved back closer to Sal, his words dripping with casual charm. ‘Fact is,' he said, ‘I wouldn't ask who else gets to frolic with you in the tub, eh, Salomé? See, I'd sooner have fun with you than waste our precious time arguing.'

The bubbling sounds got louder as the two figures in the water intertwined. Nessa put her glass down on the ground and banged the door loudly. She stepped out towards the tub and heard herself shout hoarsely, ordering Marcus to get the hell out of Cnoc Meala. As for Sal, she had better get ready to account for herself in the morning.

A
n urgent search was underway, involving gardai in Cork city, Tipperary and west Cork. On Wednesday afternoon, four days after Oscar Malden's funeral, Maureen had left hospital without a doctor's say-so, and neither she nor Dominic had been seen since then. Redmond and Conor were on their way from Castletownbere station to Derryowen, to play their part in the hunt.

The Garda Forensic Laboratory in Dublin had confirmed earlier on Wednesday that fibres found on Oscar's jacket matched the woollen jersey worn by Dominic, providing strong evidence that both men had physical contact on the day of Oscar's death. But it was three o'clock by the time two Cork city gardai went to Dominic's hotel to request his assistance with their questions, only to find that Dominic had checked out and paid his bill an hour earlier. Maureen's hospital ward was contacted to see if he was with her, but instead, it became clear that Maureen was also missing. According to staff, she walked out the front door of the hospital in her dressing gown shortly after lunch, her cigarette packet in hand, and did not come back. When her room was examined, it was discovered that all her personal belongings had been taken away, presumably by Dominic at the end of his morning visit.

Blame and accusation soon swirled among gardai, hospital authorities, media and others. Superintendent Tim Devane demanded to know why city gardai had not acted more quickly and indeed maintained discreet surveillance of Dominic. In turn, they declared that hospital staff had promised to let them know of any change in Maureen's situation. They did not have enough on Dominic to arrest and charge him, and needed his cooperation, however reluctant, to question him yet again.

Meanwhile, a rumour got out that a garda in Dublin had tipped off a journalist about the forensic evidence, and that the same eager journalist had alerted Dominic by phoning him to ask for a comment. The pressure was already piling on himself and Maureen since publication of Jack Talbot's exclusive interviews the previous Sunday. Much hype had ensued: for example, one tabloid claimed on Wednesday morning that the couple had been overheard arguing bitterly in a hospital corridor, while a radio commentator claimed the opposite, that the pair were seen on Tuesday cuddling affectionately on a bench in the outdoor smoking area.

‘Now, what did I tell you, boy? Our friend knows that he's facing a guilty verdict and he's done a runner to prove it.'

‘A guilty verdict?' Redmond glanced at Conor. ‘That depends on us catching him first. He and Maureen could be halfway across the continent by now.'

‘Yerra, I don't think so. The ports and airports have been all eyes since last night. They'll be run to ground pretty soon.'

‘But the new forensic evidence wouldn't survive a challenge, would it? Who's to say which day the woollen fibres transferred from Dominic to Oscar, either directly or via contact with Maureen? And anyway, Dominic could hardly be convicted of murder on the basis of a few strands of wool. Reasonable doubt is all that's needed, as we know.'

‘What we also know is that whatever the feck happened to Maureen on the boreen, it wasn't an assault for the sake of money, because her handbag was found intact.'

‘But the DNA tests on those cigarette butts that were found nearby showed that they were all hers, isn't that true, even though Dominic is a smoker too?'

‘We should've agreed a bloody good bet on this from the start, Garda Joyce, with stakes upped every time new evidence appeared for or against Dominic.'

Redmond smiled, happy to be back in Conor's company after a few quiet days in Bantry. The investigation had been crawling along for a while, he felt, but the forensic breakthrough was not the only new development since the funeral. Malden's housekeeper had walked into her local garda station on Tuesday and signed a damning accusation against him.

‘What I bet is that you've been pumping your ever-reliable sources about the housekeeper's statement,' Redmond ventured then. ‘So tell me all.'

‘Well, what I've been told is that she's Ukrainian and her name is Irina. Her English is very limited, but a friend persuaded her to talk to the gardai in Tipperary this week, and an interpreter was brought in. Her story is that her employer raped her, not just once but on three occasions in the past year.'

Redmond frowned, trying to measure the news against other evidence. ‘Can her statement be linked directly to the message sent to the radio programme? Did she come forward because she had heard of other allegations of rape against Malden?'

‘That's a fair assumption, except that this woman Irina and her friend were asked about the message and they denied knowing anything about it.'

‘So we still have no idea where it came from?'

‘No, but the word is that Irina is a credible witness. She says she was terrified to say a word against Malden while he was alive, because he threatened to throw her out of the house and not to renew her work permit, the bastard.'

‘The story takes the gloss off Malden, that's for sure. You'd think he was a role model for society, what with a bishop on the altar praising his good deeds.'