Deadly Intent (7 page)

And then Fergus Malden came into the room. He looked bewildered but his arrival was enough to make Dominic beat a retreat to the garden. Nessa shouted at Fergus to shut the French windows, after which they rushed around the house in a frenzy of locking doors and windows. It was only when Fergus told her that Dominic's dark blue BMW was no longer outside that she attempted an explanation. By then, neighbours had also arrived and the evening became another blur of phone calls and half-conversations.

As far as she understood, a garda from Castletownbere caught up with Dominic somewhere between Adrigole and Glengarriff, about an hour after he fled the house. He was breathalysed but she was unsure of what happened after that. In the morning, however, she got a message from Bantry to say that Maureen was being transferred to Cork's Regional Hospital for a brain scan, and that her husband was making his way to the city too.

Nessa lay hunched in the darkness, wishing she could obliterate every impression left by Dominic. She knew she should get up and distract herself, but even when she heard her phone ring, she stayed under the bedclothes. Her limbs felt heavy and useless, as if she had been flattened by a falling boulder.

Just as the ringing stopped, she sat up in fright and grabbed the phone. It could be Patrick trying to get through. She had tried over and over to contact him the night before, but all she got were the same shrill beeps in her ears.

It was not Patrick's name on the screen, however, but Caitlín O'Donovan's. Her friend had phoned earlier in the morning, to reassure her that she would stay a few nights at Cnoc Meala once the guests had gone, if that would help. Nessa decided to wait a while to phone her back this time, until she had doused herself in the shower and swallowed a cup of tea. She would also have to find a few phone numbers for Patrick's cousins in Malawi, to get a message to him. He must have arrived by now, even if every airport en route was on strike. She wanted so much to hear his quiet voice, telling her he would be home soon.

Then they would have to make a decision about Dominic. As Sergeant Fitzmaurice had explained, the gardai could not investigate his actions without an official complaint from her. They would certainly keep an eye on Dominic, but could not bring him in without his consent unless she made a statement, which the sergeant encouraged her to consider. The problem was the dilemma this would involve: how would it play in the local media, for a start, if she stood up in court and swore that one of her guests had assaulted her, but was not believed by the jury? What marks had she to show for the terror she felt as Dominic breathed into her face? Suppose Jack Talbot decided to take a sniggering pleasure in her distress?

Caitlín mentioned to her earlier that Jack had an article about Cnoc Meala in the morning's paper. It's a ridiculous scribble, she said, and I wouldn't wipe my dog's backside with it, so I was in two minds whether to say a word about it at all. But I've opened my big mouth now and maybe forewarned is forearmed.

Caitlín tried to retreat from the subject then, but Nessa made her say what Jack's headline was. On a normal day, they might have laughed out loud about it. ‘Hubby awol as hols awry' was his paper's poetic effort for the day, and as Caitlín read out the piece to her, Nessa realised that the journalist still knew nothing about Dominic's accusation against Oscar. All he had was a minor tale of a holiday mishap sauced up with some innuendo, and printed in a corner of an inside page. Nessa felt more relieved than angry as she listened to Caitlín, but she was afraid that Talbot would pounce if he sniffed another opportunity.

She slid down the pillow and pulled the duvet over her. The guests had departed after breakfast, but her rosy idea of a restful weekend had disappeared too. Another ten minutes, she told herself, and she would do her best to trudge up those steep steps out of the darkness.

It was no wonder, really, that breakfast time had been such an endurance. Soon after Caitlín's phone call, Sal had arrived home. The night before, Nessa had made frantic efforts to phone her in case Dominic was still lurking in the vicinity when she and Darina returned from the party. But Sal did not answer in person, and instead, sent two brief texts. The first was probably meant to be reassuring: ‘Fine, got msg, no worries'
.
The second, dispatched after midnight, announced a change of plan: ‘Dar left way too early, gr8 buzz, best me stay here 2nite'
.

Nessa waylaid her in the hall before she disappeared upstairs. She knew it was a bad time to have a row, but the words came out sharply all the same.

‘What do you think you were up to last night? First you promise to come home with Darina, then you pull a fast one and wait as late as possible before you tell me—'

‘It wasn't my fault! I didn't know Darina was going to do a Cinderella act and disappear just when things were warming up nicely.'

Nessa noticed the little smile her daughter allowed herself. ‘Darina is shyer than you are, Sal, so I hope you didn't abandon her at the party? I assumed you'd both agree on a time to leave …'

‘And maybe we did agree, but Darina changed her mind – did that occur to you? I mean, just because she's obsessed with her art and wants to do nothing else all weekend, you want
me
to be a party pooper.' Sal gave another infuriating glimmer of a smile. ‘Besides which, if Dominic went loopy last night like you said in your messages, I thought you'd prefer me to stay away. So when you think about it, I was doing us all a favour.'

Nessa decided to give up on the argument until the family had the house to themselves. Fergus Malden was hovering to ask her something, her French guests wanted advice on the most scenic route to Gougane Barra, and the two sisters, Zoe and Stella, had just gone into the dining room. Already, Nessa could hear Zoe declaiming loudly that she was going to Castletownbere to join a protest against the owners of the abandoned Russian ship. She gritted her teeth as she approached their table with a choice of tea or coffee.

‘Did you hear the argument I had the other day about those poor sailors?' Zoe turned from her sister to address Nessa. ‘I had an argument with Oscar Malden, on Tuesday or maybe Wednesday.'

Nessa smiled as best she could. Zoe was an energetic young woman with an inexhaustible supply of views on many subjects. Nessa liked her greatly at first, but by midweek she felt weary of her. The problem with Zoe was that she never tired of her own opinions.

‘I said it was scandalous to allow ships whose workers are treated like slaves into our ports. We should ban them, I said to Oscar – but guess what he said back to me?'

Nessa waited, aware of the glow of conviction in Zoe's eyes. She was a community worker in Dublin's inner city, and also seemed to be involved in other campaigns.

‘He said that if morality was the guiding force in world trade, we'd all be as penniless as the Russian crew. Do you not realise, he said smugly, that our happy lifestyle in Ireland depends on the sweat of millions of other people? Can you actually believe he joked about that?'

‘Oscar was trying to wind you up,' said Stella. Her voice was very quiet and Nessa thought that she too might be weary of the rhetoric. She was as understated as Zoe was boisterous. The two were half-sisters and had first met only six months previously. Stella was adopted as a baby and grew up in England, and Zoe was the one to track her down when she learned about their mother's first baby, born when she was single and facing the harsh condemnation that inevitably followed in that era. Not surprisingly, Zoe had a store of strong opinions on adoption issues too.

‘Really, we should leave Oscar be,' Stella added more firmly. ‘We're not likely to see him again, after all.'

But Zoe was not inclined to let go easily. She continued declaiming as Nessa made her escape to the kitchen. ‘I'm damned sure he didn't get rich without hurting people along the way. But there he is up on a pedestal while the rest of us are supposed to bow our heads in admiration!'

Nessa closed the kitchen door, as if to shield herself against a winter's gale. She felt a turmoil of shock, anger and shame welling up in her since Dominic's assault and the events that preceded it. But at least she had managed to play things down among the guests. All she needed was for Zoe to denounce Dominic as well as Oscar from the rooftops of Castletownbere, and the world would conclude that Cnoc Meala was a place to avoid.

It was almost two o'clock by the time she was up for the second time that day, sitting at the kitchen table cradling a cup of strong tea. She was about to make her phone calls when she heard a knock on the window. She opened the door to Caitlín, and knew immediately that her friend had come with bad news.

‘I'm sorry, I was going to phone you back soon. I just didn't—'

‘Don't mind that now, I've come to tell you how very sorry I am.' Caitlín took her hand and led her back to the table. She was a large soft-featured woman, and settled herself slowly into a chair beside her.

‘I wanted you to hear it from me first, you see, before the guards arrive to tell you.' Caitlín's voice was unsteady. ‘I heard it from a friend of a friend who works at Bantry station. There's no official news yet, of course.'

‘How do you mean, official news?'

‘A posse of guards have been up near the Healy Pass for over an hour, and my contact is one of them.'

‘I'm not sure I follow you, Caitlín. Why the Healy Pass?' Nessa was colluding with her friend's roundabout style of speech. Someone had died, she understood that much only too well, but she longed to postpone the details for another while.

‘He was found near a little bridge, halfway up to the pass.' The women's eyes met and in that instant Nessa realised that they must be talking about Patrick. She had not heard from him for two days and had no confirmation of his arrival in Malawi. She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut. A blade of pain cut deeply into her stomach.

‘He was … His body was found in a bag, God help us all,' said Caitlín. ‘And as I say, there'll be nothing said officially until he's been identified, so that's why—'

Nessa gazed at her. Was Caitlín unable to say her husband's name? And what could she possibly mean about him being found in a bag?

‘My friend's friend recognised him straightaway, and because he was one of your guests last week …'

It took a few seconds for Nessa to register the words just spoken. She almost cried out with relief, and had to hold on to Caitlín to steady herself.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry, I don't mean, but I just thought …' She pulled herself away from Caitlín's shoulder and their eyes met once again.

‘The guards had been trying to contact him since Thursday night, hadn't they?' Caitlín's voice had faded to a whisper. ‘It's Oscar Malden, that's who they've found. He was strangled, may God have mercy on him.'

T
he room was buzzing. Twenty-five, thirty people, huddled in groups, voices sharpened by the task they faced. Rumours abounding from the scene of the crime, strong opinions on all sides. Redmond was having an argument about the period of time between a person's death and the smell of decay from the corpse. Twenty-four hours, a colleague said. Up to three days, Redmond countered. Both gave examples to prove their case. Neither admitted aloud that this would be their first experience of a murder investigation.

Three senior garda officers walked in. Chairs were shuffled and the hubbub died down.

An air of solemnity settled over the room. A violent death, and a man's body tossed by a stream like a fox or a rat. The social order of a peaceful community shattered. And of course, the hunt for the perpetrator could make or unmake careers. Murder was thankfully rare in the area, but now the incident room at Bantry station was the investigation's command centre.

While Redmond shared in his colleagues' solemnity, he was aware of other feelings too. Pride at being the first garda to lay eyes on the corpse, and silent rejoicing at the prospect of doing important work at last. Anxious thoughts, too, about which tasks he would be allotted, and how well he might prove his abilities.

Tim Devane, Garda Superintendent in Bantry, was introducing his own superiors, the chief superintendent from the divisional headquarters in Bandon and the assistant commissioner for the southern region. All three were acutely conscious that the eyes of the country were on their patch.

‘You're all very welcome here in Bantry this evening,' said Devane. His delivery was as solid and heavy as his appearance. ‘A grave burden has fallen on us, as we understand only too well.'

Redmond sat back in his chair. No matter how urgent the work, the super would take his time making a speech.

‘I'd like to mention some people who have joined us from outside our own ranks in Bantry. The investigating team will include several uniformed and detective members from Bandon, as well as two officers from Castletownbere station. We'll also be assisted by two colleagues from the County Kerry area of the Beara peninsula, who will coordinate with us on local interviews and other matters. In addition, three detectives have just arrived from the National Criminal Investigations Bureau up in Dublin.'

Devane paused, as if to allow everyone to ponder his or her status in the scheme of things. He had spent some years as a detective superintendent in the National Bureau in Dublin himself, as far as Redmond knew. ‘I have been asked to lead the investigation,' he confirmed then. ‘You will all receive a handout shortly, detailing your immediate tasks. Needless to say, everyone's contribution is of great importance, regardless of your experience.'

‘The deputy state pathologist is still at the scene, along with forensic staff from the Technical Bureau. We will receive their official reports as soon as possible, and meanwhile, I'd like to set out a number of points.'