The Irish Scissor Sisters (10 page)

Kathleen also had a second story that Noor had suddenly left her and she’d heard nothing from him. In early April, Kathleen rang Ali Suleiman Abdulaziz asking if he had heard from Farah. Abdulaziz and Farah were quite close but he had not seen the Somalian and asked Kathleen whether the pair of them were still going out. Kathleen became upset and wouldn’t answer and hung up on him. He tried ringing Noor’s mobile over the next few days but kept getting a message that the number was not in service. Ali had spent the previous Christmas Eve drinking with Farah, Kathleen and Charlotte at Richmond Cottages and was genuinely worried about his friend. He could not get the missing man out of his mind. Three or four days later he rang Kathleen to see if Farah had changed his phone number and she sobbed, ‘Ali, I’m finished with Farah.’

She also met and chatted with Karen Tobin, the landlord’s wife, and told her she ‘did not know what it is like to give somebody three years of your life and for that person to then walk out on you’. Mulhall told Karen that gardaí knew that Farah had ‘gone off’ and was ‘not legal’ and was using an assumed name. Karen Tobin later stated that she felt that Kathleen was trying to give the impression that she had been in a committed relationship with Noor and was devastated that he had left her.

In the second week of May, Kathleen ran into a man she knew from drinking in the Parnell Mooney pub on Parnell Street. She had not seen him since Farah Noor had attacked him during an incident in the pub. It later emerged that she said he would not see the man who had tried to beat him up again because the police had deported him.

On 23 May 2005 Kathleen Mulhall made one of her regular visits to the community welfare office at 77 Upper Gardiner Street. She spoke to Community Welfare Officer Dermot Farrelly who, in later investigations, made the following statement to gardaí: ‘Last month Kathleen Mulhall came into the office and I spoke to her at the counter. She was by herself. She was worried about Farah Swaleh Noor. She didn’t know about his whereabouts. She was asking me to tell her from the records on file if we knew where Farah was, if we had any address for him. She wanted to know if we knew if he was all right. I told her that we weren’t in a position to give out the information to her. She then said that Farah might be using his real name. She said she didn’t know how to spell the name but it was Sheila Swaleh Shagu. That’s how she pronounced the name. She wasn’t very clear on the exact pronunciation. I have put variations of the name into the system but there is no match that is similar to the name at all on our computer files. I know from the information on Farah on our computer, his mother’s name is Sumeha Shigoo.’

Kathleen was going to great lengths to inform as many people as possible that she was looking for Farah. Some time after going to see Dermot Farrelly and enquiring about Noor, Kathleen ran into the community welfare officer in the Gala shop on Summerhill Parade. Farah’s body had still not been identified at this stage so Kathleen spoke to him again. Mr Farrelly was on his lunch break and didn’t really want to talk to her outside work but he didn’t want to be rude either. They exchanged small talk before going their separate ways.

As well as sorting out her cover story in the weeks and months following the murder, Kathleen was still obsessed with cleaning up the crime scene. She had removed quite a large area of carpet from her flat that needed to be replaced. On 26 March she paid a visit to Carpet Mills on Thomas Street. She gave a shop assistant the measurements of the bedroom and front room and was quoted €365 to re-carpet both rooms. Kathleen couldn’t afford anything like this. She walked around the showroom wondering what to do and was looking at a large piece of lino when the owner, Thomas Eustace, offered her help. She said she wanted to buy a piece of vinyl but was short on cash and couldn’t afford much. She then examined some Threadford carpet, which is usually fitted in schools and offices and wouldn’t be suitable for domestic use. Kathleen knew she had to come up with a story to explain why she had just removed certain sections of carpet and not the whole lot. She said that her flat was infested with cockroaches and handed over €50 for the blue carpet. It measured about 6 feet by 10 feet and was delivered by Carpet Mills’ deliveryman and fitter, Joseph Tackaberry, three or four days later. She told him she could fit it herself and took it from him at the door of Flat 1. It was too small to fit the whole bedroom so she cut an area off with her penknife. This would at least replace the pieces she had taken up because they were covered in blood.

There had been a problem with bugs at 17 Richmond Cottages between February and mid-March 2005. John Tobin had hired the company Pest Guard Environmental Services to deal with the problem. Lee Kelly, a surveyor with Pest Guard, visited each flat and found evidence of a major infestation in one of the upstairs rooms. The experts thought that the cockroaches had been brought into the house from abroad. To explain the problem with the carpet, Kathleen cleverly dwelt on the cockroach story. She knew that if the gardaí ever had to ask her why she had removed carpet from a house, just days after a violent murder, she would then have a plausible explanation. Kathleen’s flat, however, only had a very minor cockroach problem and all four flats were sprayed on four separate occasions, effectively eliminating the infestation. Another Pest Guard employee, Kevin Conroy, had visited Flat 1 a couple of times. He later said that he thought there was no problem with bugs of any sort in the flat.

Proceeding with her plan, Kathleen rang John Tobin on 30 March and said she had seen another flat and wanted to move out. He told her that she had to give him two weeks notice but if she paid the following week’s rent, they would call it quits. She wasn’t willing to do this and said that she had lifted the carpet in her bedroom and found cockroaches there. She told him they had laid dozens of eggs. The landlord knew that the pest control people had only been in the flat two weeks before and had given it the all clear. Tobin asked Kevin Conroy to go back and check the flat again. The pest expert found no evidence of any bugs and said that it would be very rare for cockroaches to be living in bedrooms. They favoured the warmth of kitchens, with easy access to leftover food.

A day or two later, the landlord called around to collect the rent, which Kathleen always left inside the door. John Tobin let himself in and noticed that all Kathleen’s belongings were packed in black bags. It looked like she was ready to move out.

He discovered that the blue bedroom carpet had a piece the size of a door cut out of it and he could now see the concrete underneath. Another piece was lying against the wall in the bedroom. Tobin tried to ring Kathleen over the next few days to see what had happened but couldn’t get through to her.

Kathleen eventually made contact with him on 7 April to say that she had changed her mind about moving out and now wanted to stay. She claimed that one of her daughter’s kids had broken her phone so she couldn’t contact him. She said that she had got a new piece of carpet fitted in her bedroom for €90. Tobin told her that Flat 4 was free and she agreed to move in there. The landlord met her two days after she changed flats and helped her to take out four black bags for the binmen.

Kathleen moved into Flat 4 on 10 April and shared with two Russian men, who did not speak English well. Around this time Kathleen became quite friendly with her neighbour, Donna Fitzsimons, who lived in Flat 2. Maintaining her story, she told Donna that Farah had gone to live with a Chinese girl who’d had a child with him. She said that her old flat was too big now that she’d split with Farah and Donna later remembered thinking that this was a strange reason to move. Kathleen also confided in Donna that Farah was brutal towards her and used to give her bad beatings. Donna had seen her neighbour remove the carpet from the flat and had been there when the new carpet was delivered. Kathleen also showed her a robe that she was using as a tablecloth on the small kitchen table. She put on the robe, which covered her head and face and only allowed her eyes to be on show. Kathleen said that when she was with Farah in his own country she had to be covered from head to toe because he was a Muslim. Donna didn’t really speak to Kathleen when Farah was around. She had only previously called to borrow some milk and Farah had always ignored her. She recalled that the couple obviously liked to drink.

Donna felt that Kathleen ‘wouldn’t be allowed by him to say hello or anything like that. He was a Muslim and wouldn’t let her talk to us or open the door or anything like that. If I ever called to the door when he was in, she would only barely open the door and would hardly speak. She only spoke to me after he left.’

A woman called Catriona Burke moved into Flat 1, with her three-year-old son. Kathleen told her that she’d had to leave because she could not afford the rent by herself. Catriona was struck by the ‘big blue ring’ on the floor at the bathroom door, which was caused by a combination of cleaning chemicals and Farah’s seeping blood and brain matter. When she moved the double bed in the small bedroom there was no carpet, just concrete. Patches of carpet had been placed at the side of the bed to give the impression that the whole area was covered and the carpet at the bedroom window looked like it had been hacked. Catriona never noticed any other blood stains in the flat but she later said there was ‘a very bad sewerage problem’. This could have been as a result of flushing skin and bone fragments down the toilet. She never saw a single cockroach and was surprised when gardaí told her that Kathleen claimed that Flat 1 was infested.

Catriona subsequently found an Irish passport, in a foreign name, in the flat and gave it to John Tobin, and his wife, Karen, then handed it in to Dunboyne Garda Station.

A few days after the murder, Charlotte visited her family home in Tallaght and started drinking very early in the day. Her twenty-one-year-old sister, Marie, came in from work at about 6.30 p.m. and found Charlie crying in the bedroom. She went in to see if everything was OK but Charlotte was very upset and weeping uncontrollably. She initially wouldn’t say what was up with her but eventually turned to the apprentice mechanic and said: ‘We’re after killing Farah Noor.’

Marie later gave a statement saying: ‘I did not believe her at the time as Charlotte was in the habit of telling wild stories, particularly when she was drunk. She told me that herself and my mother, Kathleen, were after killing Farah Noor. She did not say when. I just let her talk. She said my mother, Kathleen, and herself were in a chipper and returned to a house they were sharing with Farah Noor. She did not identify the location of the house. They said they found Farah Noor trying to rape my sister Linda. Charlotte then said she hit him and he turned and caught her but she did not say where. At this stage my sister Linda hit him and he did not get back up. She did not describe the items used to hit Farah, nor did I enquire. She then told me that they then cut Farah Noor into two halves and buried him either side of the canal. She did not identify the canal, nor did I ask her.

‘I honestly did not believe her. Charlotte was very upset at this stage and I was shocked, to put it mildly, by the story she told me, even though I did not believe her. I left the house and went for a drive and returned some time later and Charlotte was sitting on the couch talking to my father. She had calmed down at this stage and appeared to be having a normal conversation. I went to bed and did not give her story any further consideration, nor did I discuss the story with my sister Linda or my father, John Mulhall.’

At the time Marie didn’t know that her mother lived in Ballybough, beside the canal, but she thought of the strange conversation a few days later, when a body was recovered from the water. The twenty-one-year-old didn’t know what to do but she eventually decided to let it rest and not to tell anyone.

Charlotte’s admission to her sister seemed to be an uncharacteristic blip – other than that outburst she seemed to be coping quite well with the gruesome events of 20 March. Not only was she happy to take money from a dead man’s bank account, she also met a few people she knew from the streets and sold them Farah’s rings, watches and other jewellery, in order to make some extra cash. While Linda and Kathleen had spent the day the body was discovered crying, Charlotte was getting on with her life. On 31 March, just a day after the Somalian’s remains were found in the canal, she met a man and started a relationship with him. She hooked up with a Russian called Dilmurat Amirov. He lived in Flat 3 at the cottages and that’s how they met.

Over the following weeks, Charlotte spent many days sitting at the side of the canal, drinking cans with her new boyfriend. They sat on the benches at Summerhill and regularly walked under the bridge where Farah’s body had been discovered. Charlotte showed no emotion as she strolled by.

Amirov also got to know Kathleen over the next few months. Charlotte’s mother followed her daughter’s lead and had a fling with Dilmurat’s friend, a Russian named Alex, who also lived in Flat 3. She started going out with Alex only a few weeks after her boyfriend was murdered. It didn’t seem to have taken Kathleen too long to get over Farah.