Can Anybody Help Me? (17 page)

‘Don't bloody eat it, then! Starve if you like, I don't care.'

Oh, Mikey. Her little star. The softest one of them. The eldest adored his daddy, the baby was too young to think of her as anything other than food and warmth. But Mikey was all hers. Mothers didn't have favourites. But Mikey was her special boy. And the last words she'd spoken to him had been angry ones. Oh, Mikey. You know I care …

Well, fight for them, then.

He had fallen silent now, the only noise in the car the muffled tap tap tap of the gun against his jeans. The drugs he had given her had been effective. She could feel her brain clouding over, her senses dulling. Her mouth was dry, her tongue thick. But Mikey. She kept her eyes shut for another moment. Focused on his face. And then jerked sidewards, pressing against the
door with all her strength. She had bumped the car against the gatepost when she was nine months pregnant, clumsy and uncoordinated. Hadn't told Jim about the accident, they couldn't afford to get it fixed and she knew he'd fret if he thought she was driving around with a door that didn't properly close. But sometimes things happen for a reason. Her shoulder hit rubber and kept on moving, she felt grass under her cheek and then she was up, stumbling then running, making the most of the second or two it had taken for him to realise she had gone. Branches brushed against her cheek and she narrowed her eyes, pushing them out of her way. She knew where she was now, the Reilly's place was less than two hundred yards away. Declan would be in the top field, he always was at this hour of the morning, he'd hear her and he'd help her and she'd get away and she'd get back to them and …

The breath was knocked from her body as she fell heavily onto her stomach.

‘Very fuckin' smart, aren't you?'

A neat rugby tackle, he wasn't even out of breath.

‘Bitch.'

He tugged on her hair and she felt her face lift from the ground.

‘Don't want to leave a mark on you, now, do we?'

He put his mouth against her ear, and she flinched from the hot, wet snarl.

‘DO WE?'

She wasn't a small woman. But he was able to pick her up with surprising ease and carry her back to the car again. Leaving only a clump of flattened grass to show how hard she'd tried.

*

Lost in thought, Jim realised he had missed his turning and was heading the wrong way, back in the direction of the town. He cursed, and slipped the tractor into reverse. There was a large ditch on one side of the road, it was a hoor of a place to have to do a three-point turn but he had no choice. If he kept going, he'd be all the way to Main Street before he'd get a chance to turn and the traffic would be animal at this time of the evening. And he needed to get home before his wife or there'd be no surprise.

He depressed the accelerator again. The engine revved and the wheels spun as they hit a patch of mud. Wedged now halfway across the road, he pumped the brake and hit the clutch again, easing away from the ditch in tiny delicate movements.

Just then he heard the noise of another car, carried on the breeze and fast approaching. Jesus. He was inches away from the bottom of a hill and would be almost invisible to the vehicle until it was right on top of him. All other worries forgotten, he turned on the engine again and began to inch the tractor forward and then back, forward and back, wheels skittering tightly across the narrow road

Within seconds, the car was beside him and ground to a halt just inches away. He let the engine cut out again when he saw who was driving. The sergeant. Oh, God. How many penalties points did you get for stalling a tractor in the middle of the road? Right at the brow of a hill. Jesus. He felt the sweat prickle under his armpits. Martha would kill him.

The guard approached him, hat on straight, eyes steady. Jim leaned out of the cab.

‘Howerya, Sergeant. I'm awful sorry …'

But there was something unfamiliar in the man's eyes.

‘Shift the tractor in off the road, will ya, Jim? There's a good man. I'll talk to you then.'

A thud in his belly. What the hell? He deserved a bollocking, not this gentleness. Almost without thinking, he started the engine again and righted the tractor in three swift accurate moves. The guard had taken his hat off, was holding it in his hands by the time Jim quelled the engine.

‘Are you going to give me penalty points for that?' But his voice was too high, trying too hard to be cheerful. The guard looked at him.

‘I was trying to get you on the mobile earlier.'

The phone was in the glove compartment. He took it out, five missed calls, three messages. Jesus. He hadn't been able to hear it over the music.

‘Will you hop down from there a minute? You need to come with me now.'

He heard those words and then he heard accident, and car and body. But he didn't want to hear them and he didn't want to move. He wanted to sit where he was and turn the music up and let the voice and the guitar and the keyboards and the drums lift him far, far away, back to the days when his only worries were getting a few bob together to buy an album and a lift from his father as far as the town.

He didn't want to be here, listening to a guard talking about Martha's body. The words ‘taking her own life' were used, but what sense was there in that? Martha never took anything for herself.

He wanted to turn the music up, up, up until it filled his head and his brain and took him away from here and the
guard, and his talk of secluded areas, hosepipes and cars. But instead he turned the engine off. Pocketed the key. And jumped down from the cab, and into his new life, where everything that had ever been good had simply ceased to be.

DOES ANYONE EVER FEEL LIKE ITS ALL TOO MUCH?

‘'Scuse me, please. 'Scuse me.'

Arching her back to make her bump as prominent as possible, Claire wriggled her way past three buggies, four oblivious texters, an elderly woman with a massive shopping trolley and a pair of lost tourists, staring hopelessly at a map.

‘'Scuse me!'

She made it off the Luas just before the tram doors slid shut and emerged, panting, onto the platform. It had started to rain. Again. Digging her hands into the pockets of her jacket she tried to remember why she'd neglected to bring her overcoat to the funeral. There were two things you could almost always depend on when it came to Irish funerals. It would always be wet and it would always be cold. The service of remembrance for Miriam Twohy hadn't been an exception. The church had been packed, steam rising from the coats of the huddled mourners, the raindrops beginning again, spattering the crowd just as the body was removed from the church to begin its final journey.

Feeling her nose prickle, Claire raised a hand and pinched her nostrils, stifling a sneeze. She didn't have a tissue in her handbag and the pockets of her grey suit, its once-baggy jacket
straining over her middle, were empty of everything bar her frozen fingers. Oh, yeah, that was why she hadn't worn an overcoat. She didn't own one that fitted.

Christ, she was tired. Sniffing, she shoved her way past another buggy and then stopped short. Enough whingeing, girl. She rubbed her eyes and thought back to the frozen face of Fidelma Twohy as she walked slowly down the aisle of the church, her shoulders ironing-board stiff behind the coffin of her only daughter. Her husband had shuffled one pace behind her, tears streaming down his reddened face, a damp and dirty hanky balled up in his hand. Beside him Gary had pushed their grandchild in a cheap pink buggy, the little girl sucking on a lollipop, oblivious to the tears she was bringing to the eyes of everyone who saw her. Claire straightened her own shoulders and began to walk forward again. Get over yourself. There are bigger problems out there.

Taking her hands out of her pockets, she walked past Busáras and looked up at the pedestrian lights located right outside Dublin's Central Bus Station. Paused for a moment, noted the red man and then plunged forward into the traffic, joining the rest of the city's foot soldiers in their mad dash to dodge the slow-moving cars and get to the other side. Only parents of small children, or German tourists, waited for the lights to change and Claire didn't, as yet, fall into either category. Her breath coming heavily now, she slowed her pace as she reached the other side. Fact of the matter was she had plenty of time before her next appointment. But she had been rushing since the alarm had gone off at seven o'clock that morning and her body had become accustomed to moving at speed.

That morning's case conference had been scheduled for 8.30 a.m., but everyone had been in their seats by twenty-five past. Claire, delayed by a call from the
Evening Post
's crime correspondent, had been last to arrive and all of the chairs had been occupied by the time she arrived in the room. Still bristling from the call from the journalist who was threatening to run a ‘Gardaí Baffled' story if he didn't get a fresh line that day, Claire had found her mood lifting slightly when a blushing Flynn rose from his own seat and offered it to her. She hadn't allowed the smile to fully emerge though. She had given the
Post
reporter the standard line: all avenues being investigated, anyone with information asked to come forward, etc., etc. But the one thing she couldn't say, and this is what he had pounced on, was that Gardai were following a ‘definite line of enquiry'. Because they weren't, and she knew it, and the
Evening Post
knew it too. It had been almost three weeks since Miriam Twohy had disappeared, four days since her body had been found, and she wasn't the only person in Collins Street Station frustrated at the lack of progress being made.

The Superintendent had opened the meeting and Claire had found herself moved by the genuine empathy in her boss's voice as he spoke sparingly but meaningfully of the murder victim, the pain being felt by her family and the need for the investigation to move forward at speed. It wasn't an original speech. Claire had been listening to versions of it for years, but never failed to appreciate the real feeling that lay at the heart of his words. But this time, she could also hear frustration.

Usually at this stage of the investigation, with the post-mortem
concluded and the funeral process underway, there would be at least the suggestion of a suspect. Dublin was a small town and its murders tended to have a definite pattern. Gang members killed their rivals. Husbands killed their wives. But, right now, there was no such simple solution to the mystery of Miriam Twohy's murder. This time, Claire was clueless. Or baffled, as the
Evening Post
wanted her to say.

Miriam Twohy hadn't been married and, despite her brother's protestations, her former partner had been all but ruled out as a suspect. A quick chat with the local police in Canberra had confirmed that Paul O'Doherty hadn't left the country in at least five months. Réaltín's father wasn't a particularly attractive character; he had already picked up a fine for driving under the influence in his adopted hometown. But he turned up at his job as a telesales operative every day and the barman in his local confirmed his presence on the second stool from the right every night. He might be a bit of a shit – the lack of any transfer of funds between his and Miriam's bank account said a lot about his reliability and his dedication to father-hood– but he hadn't physically killed her and didn't look like a man who could afford to hire anyone else to do it either. And Mrs Twohy could rest easy. From what the Australian police had said, a custody battle was the last thing on O'Doherty's mind.