Bleed a River Deep (18 page)

‘She can stay with us for the night,’ I said. ‘My wife is at home.’

Behind Gilmore’s shoulder Natalia sat at the desk alone, worrying the nail of her thumb with her small teeth.

I brought Natalia home with me and left her sitting in our kitchen while I went up to wake Debbie and explain the situation.

She was still groggy after I roused her and it took several attempts to explain why an eastern European woman was sitting in our kitchen.

‘You brought a prostitute to our house?’ she repeated for the third time.

‘She has nowhere else to go,’ I explained. ‘She doesn’t know anyone else.’

‘What about Social Services?’

‘They can’t contact them.’

‘So we’re taking her instead?’

I smiled grimly, as if sharing in her exasperation.

‘It’s not funny, Ben. I don’t want her in my house. Find somewhere else for her.’

‘You can’t throw her out on the street, Debs. She’s nowhere else to go.’

‘
I’m
not throwing her anywhere. You do it. What are you thinking, offering our home to prostitutes?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘How come no one else took her? Why did it have to be you? This is my home. We have children here, Ben, who don’t need to share their home with a fucking prostitute.’

I tried to think of a reply, but Debbie got out of bed and brushed past me to get her dressing gown.

We went downstairs together. Debbie smiled stiffly at Natalia when she went into the kitchen.

‘I’ll make tea,’ she said, twisting the tap so angrily the water sprayed out at force, on to both the kettle and the window behind the sink. Natalia smiled at me with embarrassment, then gestured around the room. She angled her head to catch Debbie’s eye. ‘S’nice,’ she managed. ‘Nice.’

Debbie thanked her, then finished making tea in silence. I brought the cups and milk and sugar to the table while Debbie carried over the teapot. She sat down opposite Natalia, smiling at her, attempting to engage her in conversation of some sort, though with little response.

Finally, glaring at me, she suggested that she take Natalia up to her room. I heard her explain to Natalia the whereabouts of the toilet and the fact that the children were sleeping in the next room. When she came back down, I was standing at the back door having a final smoke before going to bed.

‘Thanks, Debs,’ I said. ‘She’s a nice girl.’

‘I still want her out of here in the morning,’ she said, placing the dishes in the sink.

I continued smoking in silence, hoping to ride out her reaction.

Finally she asked, ‘What happened to her?’

‘She was raped.’

Debbie stopped what she was doing for a second and stared at me.

‘And I think it was my fault,’ I said, flicking the smouldering butt out on to the back path and closing the door.

Chapter Nineteen

Friday, 20 October

The temperature dropped overnight and our lawn was dusted with frost when I woke. Though past 7 a.m., it was still dark out and the house was silent. Something had disturbed me. Fearing that Natalia had absconded, I crept across the gallery and listened outside her bedroom door. From inside I could hear her gentle murmuring in her sleep.

I checked on the children, then returned to my bedroom. It was then that I noticed the light on my mobile phone, which was sitting on the dresser. I had missed a call from Jim Hendry.

‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said on answering his phone when I called him back.

‘I’m meant to be off work, you know,’ I said.

‘Not so as anyone would notice,’ he retorted.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Karl Moore is – since last night,’ he said. ‘He’s ready to talk.’

‘Any chance I can speak to him?’ I asked.

‘Not a hope,’ Hendry said. ‘Though we’re all in Ward Two, Room C, in Altnagelvin, if you fancy dropping by for a wee visit.’

After the chill of the morning, the heat in the hospital was oppressive. The ward was loud with the clatter of plates and the activity of the nurses. In Karl Moore’s room, two PSNI officers stood with a young female duty solicitor. I knocked on the door and Jim Hendry turned and beckoned me in. He introduced me to the others in the room and explained to the solicitor, Alex Kerlin, that I was present as part of a cross-border investigation into a crime in which we believed Moore was involved. One of the uniformed PSNI men went outside and took up position in front of the now closed door, to stop anyone from coming in and interrupting the interview.

Karl Moore lay back on his bed. His skin was the same green as his hospital gown and his dull eyes were sunken in their sockets.

Hendry had set up a tape recorder beside the bed and, having turned it on, introduced himself, the other officer in the room, Ms Kerlin and myself. He then advised Karl Moore of his rights. Moore waved his hand as a sign that he understood and accepted the advice given, a gesture that Hendry described.

‘You understand why you are being questioned?’ Hendry said.

Moore nodded his head.

‘You are aware that your wife, Janet Moore, is dead?’

Again Moore nodded. He attempted to speak, but seemed to have difficulty in doing so and swallowed hard instead. Hendry added that Moore had nodded in response to the question.

‘Were you responsible for your wife’s death, Mr Moore?’ Hendry asked.

The hospital ward seemed to have gone silent as Moore gathered his strength to speak.

He smacked his lips drily several times, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, finally.

The noise began again and somewhere outside the room someone dropped a pan, the clatter echoing up the corridor.

‘Can you repeat that, Mr Moore?’ Hendry asked.

‘My client has answered the question, Inspector,’ Kerlin protested. ‘Can we move on?’

‘I just want to verify beyond all doubt that Mr Moore is accepting full responsibility for the killing of his wife.’

‘My client isn’t contesting that fact. Can we move on, please?’ she insisted.

‘Perhaps you can describe to us the events that led to your wife’s death, Mr Moore. In your own words,’ Hendry suggested.

What followed was one of the most painful things I have witnessed in my time as a Garda officer. Karl Moore did not attempt to hide his guilt, or transfer responsibility to anyone else. He struggled to speak and frequently whatever he was attempting to piece together seemed to die in his throat. His eyes glistened as he spoke. At points his hands gripped at the bedclothes, though without strength.

‘I asked her if she was having an affair,’ he said. ‘She was. She told me she was. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t stop. She was shouting at me about him. About Bradley.’ He stopped and swallowed hard. Alex Kerlin handed him a plastic tumbler of water from his bedside cabinet and he sipped from it. In the close heat of the room, the foulness of his breath seemed to grow increasingly strong.

‘I told her to stop. I . . . my hands were on her. I couldn’t stop. I . . . I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop.’ His eyes welled up and his mouth tightened as he attempted to hold back his tears.

‘How did you know she was having an affair?’ Hendry spoke softly. Karl Moore was admitting everything; there was no need for forcefulness.

‘She mentioned “Leon” a lot. Kept getting calls from him. Then someone confirmed it.’

‘Harry Patterson?’ I asked, earning glances from those in the room to whom this information came as a surprise.

Moore nodded. ‘He told me at the football . . . “Watch your wife,” he said. “She’s making a fool of you . . . Her and Leon Bradley.” She’d got him a ticket for something, said it was for me.’

I nodded. Patterson’s actions were inhuman and unprofessional at best, and quite possibly criminal. Whether he had foreseen the eventual outcome was irrelevant. Moore had, however, moved on to a topic in which I was even more interested.

‘I asked her when I got home and she denied it . . . So I wanted to ask Bradley. I sent him a message from Janet’s phone . . . the next day, asking to meet, so he’d think it was her . . . I hid her phone all day . . . so he wouldn’t call her and find out it wasn’t.’

‘What happened when you met Leon Bradley?’ Hendry asked, pre-empting a further interruption from me. I nodded my head to let him know I appreciated the question.

Moore’s eyes rolled backwards and closed, and for a moment I thought he had passed out. Then he swallowed drily and exhaled noisily. ‘He denied it. Said they were doing some story on pollution. I said I didn’t believe him . . . Told him I knew he’d been at that goldmine with her when it opened. He said they’d thought the mine was to blame, that’s why they’d been there . . . Said they’d been wrong. They were working together, he said. That was all.’

He coughed, the sound rattling in his throat. Taking a sip of water, he continued, ‘When Janet came back from Belfast I told her I’d seen him. She went mad . . . Then she admitted it. She said I was pathetic . . . I wasn’t worth lying to. She was proud of it. . . She didn’t even think I was worth a lie. Not even worth a lie.’ He continued to mutter to himself, his face turned slightly from us, his gaze starting to lose focus. He was regressing to somewhere inside his own mind, reflecting on some unspoken thought or memory.

I couldn’t let Leon drop. ‘If he denied it, why did you kill him?’ I asked.

He looked at me in bewilderment. He glanced at each of the people assembled in his room as if noticing their presence for the first time.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ he stated, simply.

I found it hard not to believe him. Having already confessed to killing his wife, there was little to be gained by his denying killing Leon.

‘He was found the day after you met him in the River Carrowcreel. Someone shot him,’ I said.

Alex Kerlin stood up from her seat. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of this.’

Hendry raised his hand in a placatory fashion. ‘When I introduced Inspector Devlin I explained that he was investigating a cross-border element to this. Janet Moore’s lover was also found dead last weekend. By his own admission, your client arranged a meeting with him. The last person to see someone alive is generally the person who killed them.’

‘Trite, Inspector Hendry,’ Kerlin retorted with more ire than I’d expected from her. ‘But Mr Moore hasn’t admitted to being the last person to see this Leon Bradley alive. He simply said he had met him.’

Moore himself looked from one to the other, attempting to follow the conversation, his mouth forming the words of each speaker like an echo.

‘He was going somewhere after I met him,’ he said to Kerlin, who indicated that he should address his comments to Hendry and myself. ‘He was going somewhere else . . . He said he knew where the pollution was coming from. He was angry that I wasn’t Janet. He said he’d broken the story himself.’

‘Where was he going?’ I asked.

Moore shook his head and swallowed. Kerlin held the tumbler of water to his lips and he drank again.

‘You’re shaking your head,’ Hendry said for the tape. ‘Does that mean you don’t know where he was going?’

‘He didn’t say,’ Moore said.

Hendry turned to me to see whether I had any further questions, but there seemed to be nothing further to ask. I was more frustrated than ever. Instead of getting a solution to Leon’s killing, I had been led a step further, only to hit a brick wall. Then Moore seemed to remember something.

‘His camera,’ he suggested, timidly. ‘His camera will show you where he went.’

‘What camera?’ I asked, my heart rate rising.

‘He had a camera. He was going to take photographs of where the pollution was, he said.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

Moore nodded his head slightly. ‘He showed me his camera, to prove he’d come to meet Janet for work.’

I tapped Hendry on the shoulder and let him know that I was going out on to the ward. I took out my mobile and was about to call Helen Gorman when one of the nurses stopped and, hands on hips, nodded towards a sign on the wall stating that the use of mobiles was not permitted. In the end, half gratefully, I went downstairs and, standing outside the main door, lit a smoke. After a few attempts I managed to get a call through to Gorman. She was more than a little reluctant to speak to me.

‘I’m not looking for a favour,’ I explained.

‘They found pollution,’ she said, perhaps assuming that that was the purpose of the call. ‘You were right. They found pollution in the water in his lungs. High levels.’

‘That’s good to know,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

‘I had to tell the Super, sir. I’m sorry. It’s my job,’ she stated frankly.

I was disarmed by her honesty, though I knew Caroline Williams would have been more circumspect.

‘I know. That’s fine; I shouldn’t have put you on the spot. I just want to know something. When Leon Bradley was found, was a camera recovered?’

She paused for a second, either trying to recollect the details of the find, or trying to gauge whether my request was one that could land her in trouble. Finally she answered: ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

‘Just wondering,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised. If Leon had gone into the water upriver, his camera would have sunk, possibly destroying any evidence it might contain.

There seemed little point in going out to the Carrowcreel myself at this time of day. The light would already be dimming, particularly under the tree canopy. The best thing to do would be to go to Patterson first thing the following morning and demand a search of the river. After what Moore had told us, he was in no position to refuse.

I called Gilmore while I was still outside to see whether he’d had any luck in picking up Pol Strandmann. I was not particularly surprised to learn that his house in Ballymagorry had been empty.

‘We’ll keep an eye out for him,’ Gilmore said.

‘He’ll be doing the market on Sunday,’ I said.

‘So you told us. We’re sending a team down. You’re welcome to come along,’ he added. ‘After all, you know what he looks like.’

‘What about Natalia?’ I asked. ‘Have you a place arranged for her?’

He paused and I guessed where this was going. ‘I was hoping you could keep her for another day or two. The Women’s Centre is looking for somewhere, but the language issue is causing problems. And we can’t really put her in a hotel on her own. Some of the places we’ve tried are reluctant to take in a foreigner.’