Can Anybody Help Me? (9 page)

O'Mahony Thorpe had been one of the biggest firms in Dublin at the time, dealing mostly in detached homes in the rock star/stockbroker belt on Dublin's south coast. She also had a vague recollection of seeing O'Mahony himself – or maybe it
was Thorpe? – bursting out of a pinstripe suit on one of those property programmes that used to jam the airwaves. Advising people on second homes in the sun, and how to release equity on your city pad to add an extra swimming pool.

But that had been then. A few short years and a lifetime ago. It seemed like no one could avoid a bit of slumming these days. Even the ones in the pinstripe suits.

Berry was still talking.

‘So, we're, like, the main letting agency for Merview. And we got a call from the owner to say the rent on 123 hadn't been paid this month?'

‘Okay.'

Claire held up her hand.

‘Let's just go back a bit, please. Tell me exactly who owns the apartment and what your company does?'

She reddened slightly and felt rather than saw a slight grin on Flynn's impassive face. That bloody inflection was contagious.

‘What you do.' She growled, lowering the final word as much as possible.

‘Yeah, sure.' The young man continued in a stronger voice, clearly happier to be on home territory. ‘We, like, place ads, find tenants, check references, stuff like that?'

‘Right.'

Claire made another note.

‘So, you deal with the tenants on behalf of the landlords? And you found the tenant for this property?'

‘Yeah. About, like, three months ago?'

‘Okay.'

Finally it seemed they were getting somewhere.

‘The guy who owns this place, he, like, used to live there? But he got married and bought a house with his wife. He wanted to sell the apartment but he couldn't get, like, anything decent for it. So he decided to rent it. He's moved to, like, Cork so he needed an agent. So he came to us.'

‘And that's usually how these things go?'

‘Yeah. We put the ads online and stuff.'

‘And what happened then?'

‘Well. This guy was, like, kinda desperate …' Berry's voice trailed off. He swallowed, and stared at his hands, which were by now resting on the table. But his choice of words had been unusual.

‘Desperate?'

‘Well, yeah.' Berry refocused on her. ‘I was talking to him a few times, he had, like, a new mortgage and stuff and he really needed the funds, you know? Really needed to get the place let. But there's, like, tonnes of places available in Merview and the rent he was looking for was pretty high. I mean he had it set high because he needed the money, but I, like, told him he wasn't going to get, like, a grand a month for it. No way. I mean it was madness, there are units out there for, like, six-hundred and fifty …'

‘Is that so?'

Claire jumped, having almost forgotten Flynn was there.

‘Six-hundred and fifty!' The younger guard gave a small whistle, and jerked his head. ‘Jaysus, that's some drop.'

‘I know!'

It was the closest Berry had come to being animated. Claire shot her colleague a shut-the-fuck-up look, and nodded at the agent to continue.

‘Okay, so this dude wanted a grand, and I told him that there were too many others on the market, but he was totally sold on getting his money, you know? And then we got this offer, and this guy said he'd take it and …'

‘Hold on a second, please. You found a tenant for the apartment?'

‘Yeah.'

A flush had broken out under Berry's collar and Claire watched in fascination as it climbed upwards, flooding his cheekbones.

‘We found him a tenant and he moved in two months ago. It was fine until he didn't, like, pay his rent and …'

‘If I could just bring you back again, please, Mr Berry?' Claire stared at the young man, who was now bright red and visibly sweating.

‘Can I get you a drink of water or something?'

‘Yeah. Please.'

She motioned to Flynn, who left the room, returning seconds later with an overflowing paper cup. Berry downed half of it in one gulp, but remained silent.

‘And can you give us the tenant's name?'

Berry stared into the cup. ‘Yeah. Sure. It was … Spanish, or something? Like Solana? I have it written down back at the office …'

Claire scratched the name, or an approximation, in the notebook, but said nothing. Sometimes it was better to leave a gap that could be filled in. After a moment Berry continued.

‘Yeah, so he moved in, we checked references, everything was grand and then he didn't pay his second month's rent, so the landlord phoned me this morning and he said there was
no money in the account and that your man wasn't answering his phone and that he was in Cork and could I call round to see what was going on, so I did and there was no answer, and I had a key and it's like completely legal so I, like, phoned and texted and stuff and there was no answer and I had a key and it's fine to do that so I went in the door, I opened the door and …'

The young man's flow of speech halted dramatically and he stared at Claire, tears pricking in the corner of his eyes.

‘I want to see a lawyer. Please.'

‘Yeah, sure. Okay.'

She closed her notebook.

‘If you have someone you want to call, you can do so right away.'

‘Detective Boyle?'

‘That's me.'

Claire was dying to go to the loo, but she tried not to let her discomfort show as she leaned over the counter that separated the station from the public office. She and Flynn had grabbed a quick coffee while Cormac Berry was making his phone call, and then she'd been sidetracked listening to the messages that had built up on her landline. She'd figured she'd still have a few minutes to freshen up before his lawyer got there. But it looked like Berry had used the BatPhone.

The young woman proffered a slim tanned manicured hand.

‘Ella O'Mahony. I'm a legal representative for O'Mahony Thorpe. I believe you are holding one of our employees here?'

‘Well I wouldn't say holding …'

It looked like the inflectious disease had spread to the legal profession too, but there the similarities between Berry and
his lawyer ended. Although a small woman, barely five foot two, Claire reckoned, Ella O'Mahony seemed to have sucked in every drop of the self-confidence that had drained from Berry during the aborted interview. The face was familiar, too; Claire had a vague memory of reading about her in one of the Sundays. The eldest daughter of agency boss Tom O'Mahony, she'd studied law and then come back to work for Daddy's firm, presumably with a view to taking over some day. Claire shifted from foot to foot and pointed across the counter at a door marked ‘No Entry'.

‘I'll come around and get you.'

As she guided the woman through the office there were more head swivels, but this time they were out of admiration. And Claire could understand why. Although her colleagues would never have suspected it – and given her work wardrobe, no one would have blamed them – Claire liked designer clothes. She rarely bought them, the demands of her job meant that black suits and flat shoes were easier to match together on a dark and rushed morning. But that didn't mean she didn't like looking at them. She could recognise a Chanel suit when she saw one. Ella O'Mahony was wearing the real thing.

Taking a swift look around the office she caught one of the younger uniforms in the middle of an appreciative eyebrow raise and indulged herself in a look that channelled her old head nun. The man flushed brick-red and buried himself in his paperwork again. Satisfied, Claire quickened her pace and drew level with the solicitor before showing her into the interview room. Cormac Berry stood up the minute she entered, but, after a quick glance from his lawyer, said nothing. Claire
paused, and then, channelling her favourite primary teacher this time, gave a bright smile.

‘Right! I'll just leave you two alone, then. I'll come back for a chat in a few minutes, yeah?'

She turned and left the room. Dragged the door shut behind her, but slowly, and was just able to catch Berry's sob.

‘I didn't—'

But Claire didn't hear the end of the sentence.

PRIVATE MESSAGE

‘So, he's telling us it was a coloured chap?'

‘Yes, Superintendent.'

Claire shifted around in the chair, her back giving a scream of protest. She'd been at work now for – she glanced at her watch – fourteen hours and counting and her body was threatening to collapse under the strain.

Her boss looked at her and frowned, as if tempted to ask if she was okay. Superintendent Liam Quigley was a father of four, his last child born when he and his wife had been well into their forties. It had been a difficult pregnancy, he had admitted that much to Claire during a quiet moment at the office Christmas party. Claire knew, just by looking at him, that he wanted to tell her to take things easy. She could almost see him swallow back the thought. Those ‘Dignity in the Work-place' seminars had done their job too well, and Claire knew he had to act as if she were no different to Flynn, or any of the other cops stationed just outside his office door. She should be grateful, she told herself, and fought the urge to ask to be placed gently on a couch and handed a pillow and a cup of tea.

‘And feck all CCTV.'

‘That's right.'

Claire looked down at her notebook, now covered in scribbles, dashes, arrows and question marks after an afternoon spent banging the phones. Berry had spent almost an hour with his lawyer before making his formal statement, but that hadn't meant she and Flynn had been able to take it handy. Between them they'd contacted everyone involved with the apartment block, from the management company to the security firm that, according to the Merview website, was supposed to have a man patrolling outside twenty-four hours a day.

The calls had added up to absolutely no new information. CCTV footage from inside and outside the pedestrian gates had been sourced and was being sent over, but a truculent supervisor at the management company had admitted early on in the conversation that the camera coverage in the area was ‘patchy' and ‘broken'. The man had gone on a rant about tenants not paying their fees and companies having to work with the resources they were given, and it had taken Claire several minutes to cut through the chatter and demand his footage. She wasn't holding out much hope for it though. The same excuse was given by the security firm who'd admitted after some stoic questioning from Flynn that their twenty-four-hour surveillance was more like every second Tuesday, with the possibility of further cutbacks if the Merview tenants didn't increase their fees. And none of the other residents, when they'd finally been persuaded to open their apartment doors, said they had seen the occupant of 123.

Meanwhile, a local patrol car in Cork had been sent to the university to break the news to Sean Bradley, the owner of 123, that his new tenant had left more behind than a broken light bulb. He would have to come to Dublin to make a further
statement. But his alibi appeared to check out, he had a full-time job in the college and a new baby and had apparently either been changing nappies or doling out lecture notes every day for the past fortnight.

No matter, they'd question him anyway.

Claire sighed. She couldn't help feeling they were only going through the motions until they got in touch with the man who had actually rented the apartment. And Berry had proved as useful as a chocolate teapot when it came to doling out that particular information.

‘So, what's his description?'

Superintendent Quigley looked over his glasses at her. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his early fifties, he gave off the impression of being as laid-back as a human sunlounger, but Claire knew that the sharpest of brains lay behind the jovial exterior. She had huge respect for him as a boss and as a policeman and she wanted nothing more than to prove to him that she had made significant headway with this, the biggest case to come under the station's radar in quite some time. But the information to date was, to put it mildly, brutal.

She looked down again at her notebook as if it might have come up with something new on its own. But only her scribbles stared up at her. The tenant, according to Cormac Berry, had been black, possibly Nigerian. His name was Chris Solana. Claire didn't think this sounded likely. There was a quite a sizeable Nigerian community in the Collins Street catchment area and she'd never heard a name anything like Solana, but Berry had been adamant.

A copy of the rental agreement had been faxed over from his office, but the name on the lease was almost unreadable,
one of those flashy signatures that people put on their credit cards which made them all the easier to forge. It could have been Chris Solana, it could, at a push, have been Claire Boyle. There were no references. Claire had fought to keep her face on a neutral setting as Berry gave a tortuous explanation as to how he, like, hadn't quite, you know, finalized the paperwork? Like, totally? She knew this stank to high heaven, and that there was more to owning and renting than taking a deposit and handing over keys. The tenancy had to be officially registered. Taxation numbers exchanged. At the mention of the Revenue, Berry had shot a quick glance at the door, as if he could mind meld with the lawyer who was waiting for him outside. And then, reddening, had muttered it was all in hand.

Claire had tried as hard as she could to elicit more information but, fiddling with his cuffs, Berry had stuck to his story. The man had phoned the office, he said, and he had met him at the apartment the following day. He'd shown him around, the man had liked the look of it and had signed a six-month lease on the spot, as well as handing over cash for the deposit. The first month's rent had also been paid in cash, but the second hadn't arrived, and it was while trying to make contact with the tenant that Berry had made his grim discovery.