Deadly Intent (20 page)

Redmond turned back quickly and saw that the lights over the lift doors showed Dominic's lift arriving at the floor above him. He hurried up the stairs two steps at a time, reminding himself that he had not been to the gym in the previous week. As he rounded the corner of the third landing, he heard his colleague's unmistakeable Kerry voice.

‘Now, my buckeroo, you'd better
whisht
awhile and listen to me.' Redmond guessed that Dominic had tried to confuse his pursuers by changing lifts, only to be confronted by Conor when he stepped into the second one. The sergeant was holding the door open with his foot, while blocking Dominic's retreat back on to the landing.

‘Get away from me, you bastard, you're way out of line. I've already complained to my solicitor about your harassment!'

Redmond decided to play the soft cop. They had no arrest warrant and Dominic was entirely within his rights to refuse to cooperate.

‘Take it easy, Dominic,' he said quietly. ‘We'd just like your assistance with a small detail. We tried to phone you last night, and when we got no reply, we figured we could drop by at your hotel, on our way to Malden's funeral.'

‘My head is done in with your stupid questions, and you still don't believe a fuckin' single word I've told you.'

‘You've nothing to fear from us, boy,' said Conor, ‘if you've kept your nose clean these past nine days.' He drew Redmond into the lift and pressed the button with his elbow. ‘Let's head back downstairs, Dominic, in case your friend the barman is worried that you've had a seizure on your way to the loo.'

‘The detail we'd like to clarify,' said Redmond, ‘is whether you met anyone while you were fishing at Pooka Rock on Thursday the 17th September, or spoke to anyone who passed you on your way there that same morning? Maybe there's something you've remembered since your last garda interview?'

‘There's nothing I could've remembered because I've been telling you the bloody truth all along. I didn't follow Oscar Malden anywhere, I didn't strangle him to death and I want to be left in peace.'

‘Let me ask the question once again, Dominic. All we'd like to know for now is what happened when you went to Pooka Rock. You parked near the hotel and walked along the coastal path to your fishing spot, is that right? So it's possible that Oscar strolled past you in the opposite direction?'

Dominic looked sulkily from one to the other. ‘Don't try to corner me with your clever words, guard. I'd no wish to see smarmy-face Malden that morning or any other morning.'

‘Suppose Oscar threatened you, or said something that started a row between the two of you, what happened then?' The lift had arrived on the ground floor but Conor pressed the button to carry them upwards again. ‘We're trying to help you here, Dominic, if only you'd listen to us.'

‘You're trying to pin a murder on me, you bollocks, and you know it. So give up your pretence of being nice to me.' Dominic spat the words angrily. ‘A few of the news people have given me a fair hearing, but as for you guards …'

‘We gave a fair hearing to your story about the boat near Pooka Rock, supposedly occupied by tourists watching seals or some such.' Conor had no difficulty remaining calm under provocation. ‘But as you didn't pay attention to the name of the boat, it's proving a bit tricky to identify it.'

‘The boat was flying a French flag, as I told your bullyboy colleagues. But maybe they're so stupid they forgot to write that down? Surely you can send out a radio call or something?'

‘We'd like to know what time you met Oscar that Thursday,' Redmond repeated. ‘Telling us the truth will work out for the best, you know.'

‘I refuse to say another single solitary word. I'm sick to my back teeth of the lot of you.' Dominic pushed Conor's hand away from the lift's control panel. ‘I've an appointment in the bar just now at midday, and if I see the two of you spying on me, I promise you my solicitor will be onto the garda complaints outfit straightaway.'

‘Please think carefully about our questions, Dominic, for your own sake. We'll be happy to meet you again – here in Cork or in your own homeplace, whatever suits you when you're ready to talk.'

Redmond and Conor did not follow Dominic when he lumbered out of the lift. They took a quick look into the bar five minutes later, however, and saw him seated with a man who was dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, complete with canary yellow handkerchief in his top pocket. Jack Talbot, eyes glinting with anticipation, had a small recorder in his hand.

Redmond had a good view of the crowd as he stood inside the church, arms folded respectfully. He estimated that the seats held four hundred people, and many others were crowded at the back and along the pillared side aisles. Coughs and whispers broke out as they watched the local bishop walk solemnly to the lectern to deliver the funeral mass sermon.

Only a week had passed since the investigation into Oscar's murder had begun, but new forensic evidence pointing to Dominic's involvement could bring it to an end quite soon, Redmond thought. Two tiny shreds of wool had been found snagged on the front zip fastener of Oscar's jacket, and appeared to match the fibres in the multicoloured jersey worn by Dominic on the day of the murder. They would hardly be enough to convict him of the crime, but his failure to verify any contact with Oscar that day seemed to make his guilt more, rather than less, likely. However, further tests were taking place on all clothing samples taken by gardai – to check, for example, whether Dominic's jersey had left similar shreds on Maureen's clothing, a few of which might then have transferred from her to Oscar. Meanwhile, gardai were on full alert at the funeral, to watch for any gesture or conversational slip that could betray the murderer's presence in their midst.

‘We have heard the same phrase time and again in the past week,' said the bishop in a sonorous voice, ‘to describe Oscar Malden as we all knew him, before his soul departed to the heavenly reward we hope and pray he has now attained. The phrase on everybody's lips is that Oscar Malden was a gentleman; and we have also been reminded that he was a true patriot whose tireless efforts contributed greatly to the betterment of many lives, in this country and beyond our shores.'

A bishop, no less. Redmond counted five priests on the altar too, but it seemed that they alone would not suffice when a person of Oscar's status was to be buried. The country's big guns were well represented in the congregation, including cabinet ministers and politicians of every hue, leading industrialists and media personalities, along with embassy staff from countries in which Malden had operated. Artists and musicians who had enjoyed his patronage were also sprinkled among them. No doubt a bishop's presence added the necessary religious gravitas to the prestige of the occasion.

‘We understand only too well that our words are inadequate to express our heartfelt sympathy to Fergus Malden and to his mother Louise. The best we can do is to trust in our prayers and our faith.'

Redmond hated funerals. He accepted that they were a great social institution in Ireland, open to all who had ever known or cared about the bereaved. He knew many people who attended perhaps ten funerals a year, gladly proclaiming them to be part of the glue that bound communities together. He appreciated such genuine sentiments, and wished he could share them. But when he walked into the church in Tipperary, he knew that his eyes would be immediately drawn to the altar, and that he would see two coffins instead of the single one that was there.

Two coffins, his mother and father side by side. And himself, their only child not yet twenty years old, seated a little apart from his aunts in the front row and unable to draw consolation from the crowd gathered behind them. That was the memory that confronted him at every funeral he had to go to in the past twelve years: his parents in two wooden boxes, their cold lifeless bodies encased inside. They had been killed in a car crash and their injuries were so horrific that only Redmond and his aunts had been allowed to glimpse their bodies before the coffins had been closed.

Seeing Oscar Malden's ravaged body had been difficult, but it had been nothing compared to the shock and violent horror he had experienced then. And his parents' deaths had had a cruel poignancy of their own: on the night they were killed, they had been on their way home from their first ever marriage counselling session. His father had stopped drinking alcohol six weeks earlier, after half a lifetime of addiction and fractious quarrels at home. Fragile hope had fluttered briefly, only to be spattered with their bodies on the tarmac.

No bishop had offered to speak at his parents' funeral. In the eyes of the wide world, their deaths were sad and regrettable, but nevertheless just one of the humdrum tragedies piled on the roadsides each year. His mother and father were ordinary people, who had never looked for attention beyond their own small circles, and two priests had been considered quite sufficient for them. His relatives and neighbours had done everything possible to help Redmond through those nightmare days, and the local priest had been considerate too; but Redmond could never forget how the second priest got his mother's name wrong when he shook his hand after the funeral.

People meant well, he understood that alright, but he could make no sense of their attempts to console him. It's the will of God, many had said, as if he was supposed to think that was a good thing, and that having his parents chanting prayers for him in some faraway invisible ether was somehow better than having their company at home at the kitchen table. Others said sagely that when your number was up, that was that – which meant, to Redmond's mind, that the speeding driver who had ended two people's lives had no responsibility for his actions.

Because that's what a belief in either blind fate or God's will implied, as far as he could make out. If everything was predetermined, and his parents had to die that day, then the offending driver had no choice but to hurtle along a small country road at eighty miles an hour. In which case rapists, abusers and murderers also had no choice but to carry out their vicious crimes in order to bring about predetermined outcomes. Fate and free will could not co exist, nor could people pick and choose which particular tragedies were part of God's greater plan.

Redmond had eventually decided that it was futile to seek explanations. All he could do was endure the fact that it had happened, just as millions of other humans suffered for no good reason from random earthquakes, wars, fatal diseases and myriad injustices. The car crash should not have happened, but it had. And if he could prevent even a few other people from committing crimes, or at the very least, help to bring them to justice, perhaps life would become worth the effort.

‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us take this opportunity to give each other the sign of peace.'

Redmond realised that people around him were shuffling and turning to each other. A woman offered him her hand in symbolic peace and friendship, just as hundreds of others did the same to those around them. Redmond's lower lip was quivering and he was unable to look her in the eye. She probably thought he was upset about Oscar Malden's death. He forced himself to smile, trying to concentrate once more on the ceremony. Otherwise he might cry out and bawl from the pit of his stomach.

When he examined the crowd, he noticed Nessa McDermott quite close to him. A lock of reddish-brown hair falling on her forehead, and her mouth set defiantly. He blushed as he remembered the dream he had had early that morning. He had seen his mother in the dream, walking away from him as happened so often in the desolate years following her death. Sometimes, she would stop and look back at him, and then speak soundlessly so that he could not hear what she said to him.

In his dream that morning, she had turned to look back as before, but instead of his mother, he found himself staring at Nessa McDermott. Her eyes wide open and her expression closed. He felt angry at her for invading his private world, and then he felt angry at himself too. Nessa McDermott was no mother figure reaching out to him, he was absolutely certain of that, and if she had wormed her way into his sleeping mind, it was because he had allowed himself to become obsessed with her.

Since the incident at the bridge, he had trawled the internet for references to her. He read through many of her newspaper articles – stories on planning scandals, dubious business deals and much else. He wondered why she had cut short such a media career to settle in a quiet place like Beara and he pored over Cnoc Meala's own website as well as reviews of it on tourist forums. He found it described as a model of ecotourism, boasting solar panels and all the latest insulation and heating systems, plus – the usual story – making use of the freshest local ingredients in its highly praised cuisine. Redmond had little interest in such issues, but he read every scrap anyway, no matter that it told him damn all about Oscar Malden.

It was the same old pattern every time a work task got a grip on him. First of all, he became excited at the challenge in hand, but soon enough, his work craving took over. During his years in the computer industry, he used to find himself staring at screens late into the night, unable to let go. And then his father's face would appear, flushed with alcohol, a reminder to Redmond of how readily he too might slip into its tempting embrace.

He tried to focus on the funeral ceremony once again. Nessa McDermott's daughter was seated beside her, fussing with her bag, probably texting Marcus O'Sullivan. Redmond had heard his colleagues discuss their rumoured relationship during the week. They had all agreed that they would happily interview her into the small hours. A good hard interview, one of them said, to make her sweat to my heart's content. She might be idle one of these nights, another garda added, while loverboy Marcus is off making music elsewhere.