Deadly Intent (21 page)

Redmond had taken a close look at Marcus two nights earlier. He had decided to drive over to Carraig Álainn after his day's work, without telling Trevor O'Kelleher or anyone else. He could not say exactly why, but something had bothered him the day he saw Marcus walk out of his house, carrying the box he claimed to have thrown over the cliffside.

Redmond had found space to park outside Carraig Álainn's gates, and sat in darkness for a while, trying to invent a likely excuse to knock on Marcus's door. Eventually, he had walked in the gates and stood in a shadowy corner, watching the house and reproaching himself for indecision. The blinds were down in all three houses, but he could see a faint yellow glow from Marcus's living room, in the house closest to the sea.

He had not been there long when the front door was opened. Marcus came out, followed by a blonde woman. Redmond wondered whether she was Katya, the Slovakian mentioned by Marcus during his interview. He shrank into the trees as the pair spoke in low voices and then got into Marcus's car – not the large Toyota he drove for his taxi work, but a Mitsubishi Evo, a typical choice for a well-funded young man intent on fast driving.

Redmond tried to peer in the windows when they were gone, but could see nothing. His conscience was at him, in any case, as he had no authority to trespass on private land. He wished he could be like Conor Fitzmaurice, who would have no problem inviting himself in for a chat with Marcus.

On his way back to his car, he had stopped to look at the middle house. There were thick blinds on the windows, as in all the houses. But when he looked upwards at a Velux window in the roof, he noticed a glimmer along its edge. Marcus had left the lights on upstairs, for whatever reason.

Many of the congregation had formed a queue to receive communion. A woman was singing from the choir balcony – a contemporary song, as Redmond realised with surprise. He remembered the refusal of the senior priest at his parents' funeral to countenance a secular music, and his pronouncement that eulogies by relatives were no longer permitted inside the church. Perhaps it was one law for the rich and another for the rabble; or perhaps each bishop decided on the rules in his own diocese. It was a mystery to him, like so many aspects of other people's lives.

It filled him with amazement, for example, to see grown women and men take a sliver of papery bread in their hands, and put it in their mouths in the sincere belief that it was a piece of divine flesh. He wondered whether Oscar Malden had shared such a belief, or would have chosen a conventional religious funeral for himself. If half of the rumours of his casual sexual relationships were true, he had hardly been a faithful Roman Catholic. Then again, he might have repented everything the instant he felt the tug of a noose on his throat.

Redmond made his way to the back of the church, and saw Conor Fitzmaurice leaning by the door. He looked awkward in his Sunday suit, like a farmer who had just scrubbed grit from under his fingernails. The sergeant was studying his phone when Redmond reached him.

‘Well now, here's a surprising development.' Conor wrinkled his brow as he scrolled through a text. ‘What do you make of this now?'

Redmond was about to take the phone from him when they saw the crowd craning their necks to look towards the altar. Fergus Malden stood at the lectern, getting ready to speak about his father, and both gardai moved quickly to get a better view.

‘A lot has been said since his death … Every newspaper I open …' Fergus mumbled some of his words, eyes cast downwards. He referred to his father's great reputation, and how he had such determination to achieve his aims. As Fergus stuttered uncertainly, Redmond wondered whether the young man was genuinely praising his father or simply reciting a formula. Strength and ambition were not always praiseworthy traits and Fergus, who was so shy himself, may have disliked rather than admired them.

‘I would like to say … I have to speak now about … the terrible thing that happened.' Fergus lifted his head and looked out at the crowd. ‘But I understand I have to be careful about this.'

Total silence enveloped the church. Redmond felt his own breath seize in his throat. It was remarkable, really, that Fergus had taken on the task of speaking in public at such an occasion.

‘If the person who carried it out … If that person is listening, here in Ireland or wherever else …'

For a few seconds, Redmond was afraid that the young man's voice had deserted him. But then Fergus found a new wellspring of courage within himself and released a torrent of words all at once. ‘What I want to say is that death solves nothing. No matter why this murder took place, or what it was supposed to achieve, it has harmed us all terribly, and not just my father. It has left a stain on us that I think will go deeper over time. The right thing … The right thing must be done, but even so, we will never recover. That's all.'

Fergus stopped short, his hands gripping the lectern. He looked paler and more drained than ever. Silence filled the church for several seconds, and then people began to clap. The sound of applause echoed up to the roof, as Fergus raised his eyes quickly to acknowledge it.

When he made his way outside, Redmond spotted Conor among the crowd, his arm on someone's shoulder, chatting and smiling. The sergeant had that natural ease and informality that was so common in Ireland, leaning in close with his head inclined to listen, giving a gentle nudge of his elbow to share a joke. He would work his way around the crowd, picking up succulent rumours and solid facts without ever asking a direct question.

Redmond envied his easy manners, but he no longer resented his colleague as he had done at first. Instead, he felt surprised and pleased that Conor was so friendly to himself. It crossed his mind that Trevor O'Kelleher had put a word in Conor's ear to do so, but he pushed the thought away quite quickly. Conor Fitzmaurice needed no guidance on how to get on with others.

Close to the hearse, people awaited their turn to express condolences to Oscar's family. Redmond watched them for a while. Fergus and his mother Louise stood stiffly side by side, a few words passing between them when Fergus introduced someone to her. As they greeted each person in line, their hands moved mechanically and their heads nodded like puppets unable to relate to an audience. Caitlín O'Donovan was making conversation with Louise, who seemed to stare right through her. Similarly, Darina O'Sullivan held Fergus's hand tightly and bent towards him to say something, but his eyes darted away in every direction. He was probably feeling utterly bewildered, doing his public duty with an empty, abandoned heart.

Redmond looked back at Louise and was startled to recognise the look in her eyes. She was a slim woman, with deeply tanned skin and a polished appearance, but there was something withered about her too. Her white teeth showed brightly when she affected a smile but her eyes did not quite focus properly, as if a veil shrouded her view of the world. Too often, Redmond had seen that same alcoholic veil droop over his father's eyes, and now he pictured Louise passing her days in Dubai, high up on the balcony of an expensive apartment, desperately clutching her glass under the white glare of the sun.

He gazed back at Fergus, who had been a young teenager when his parents had separated. Redmond felt a surge of sympathy for him, and wondered whether Fergus had ever been able to talk to anyone about his parents' separation, and his own loneliness, and the random cruelties of life.

He walked around the churchyard to find Conor. The television crews were packing up their gear, after completing their work for the evening news programmes. Near the side gate, he noticed Nessa McDermott in discussion with that young woman, Zoe. He felt sure they got on very well, outdoing each other in stubborn defiance of the world. Zoe reminded him of a girl who had been in his class at school – her mouth set in a cheeky pout that infuriated every teacher they had.

Jack Talbot approached the two women from behind, and put his arm around Nessa before greeting them. Redmond noticed with interest how she backed away from him and vociferously refused his offer of a microphone. She must have learned a hard lesson when his articles about her husband had appeared.

When Redmond caught up with Conor, the sergeant took out his phone and handed it to him without a word. The text message on the screen was full of venom:

Oscar Malden will be praised to the heavens today. Damn him to hell instead. Rotting in his coffin is too good for him. His own heart rotted long ago. He hurt women till they screamed. Torture was a game

Redmond read it a few times before he met his colleague's eyes. He felt a chill on his back, as if an icy gust of wind had hit him.

‘What do you make of it, in the name of God?' said Conor quietly. ‘It looks as if whoever wrote it had to stop suddenly.'

‘Who sent it to you? I know people post all sorts of poison on the internet, but this seems more personal than that.'

‘A friend of mine sent it on to me. She works at a local radio station, and it was texted to one of their numbers. The
cig
and the rest of our bosses know about it, of course, and I've a source in Bandon station who'll keep me updated on whatever they decide.'

Redmond looked around the churchyard. The hearse had just driven away and the crowd was dwindling. ‘What about people here at the funeral? Have they heard about it?'

‘Oh, I've no doubt the word is spreading like a contagion, and the
cig
will tell the family about it as soon as the burial is over. But the first job is to establish whether it's a vile and malicious prank, or a genuine message from the perpetrator.'

‘But if it is genuine, what's the purpose of it? To send us off in the wrong direction, or to help us to understand why Oscar was murdered?'

On their way back to west Cork, Conor talked about his day-to-day life, constantly juggling work and family responsibilities – rushing here and there, he said, to collect one or other of his four children from dance classes, football training, dental appointments and an endless round of their friends' birthday parties. But he admitted that getting to know so many local parents was an advantage to the job, even if they did not necessarily see it that way.

‘I always spot the moment,' he laughed, ‘when their mouths stiffen in the middle of a friendly chat, because they're seized with anxiety about sharing secrets with a member of the constabulary!'

Redmond eventually took his turn to speak, and by the time they were halfway across County Cork, he had told Conor how his parents had died together. His companion responded gently, without betraying any of the condescending pity that Redmond always feared; and soon enough, to his surprise, he found himself describing feelings of anger and heartbreak that he had rarely voiced aloud. As a flood of words spilled out from him, he was enormously glad that he could gaze at the darkening road ahead and not meet the sergeant's eyes.

His story was finally interrupted by the jingle of Conor's phone. Redmond picked it up and read out a text from Bandon, reporting that the venomous message about Oscar had been sent from a mobile phone, whose signals located it in the same area of County Tipperary in which the funeral had taken place. Gardai would not publicise that information, of course, nor the fact that they had immediately recognised the number.

The phone was a pay-as-you-go mobile, purchased in France about eight months earlier. A message had been left on Oscar's phone from the same number on the day of his murder, and half an hour later, soon after 1.30 p.m., Oscar had called back and left his own message. Unfortunately, gardai had so far failed to find the owner of the phone or the device itself, and they had no idea what those fateful messages had been.

N
essa was on the move once again, after three days at home in Beara. She and Sal had returned to Cnoc Meala after Oscar's funeral the previous Saturday, and while life there could not be described as normal, Nessa felt able to draw her breath for the first time in a fortnight. She dealt with a backlog of business emails and contacted friends who had sent her messages of concern and sympathy. She drove Sal to school and encouraged her to work out a study timetable for the following month. She was in close contact with Patrick too, helping him to change his plane tickets as cheaply as possible. Then she set about tidying their bedroom with uncharacteristic thoroughness, and she put the finishing touches to it by filling a vase with late-flowering orange and red montbretia from the garden.

The best welcome home for him, however, would be a decisive breakthrough in the garda investigation. There was a constant feeling of tension in the area, a sense that dangerous animals had been let loose and could pounce again at any time. According to Caitlín, most people in Derryowen believed that Dominic's arrest was imminent, but while Jack Talbot and others tried to stoke the headlines, each day passed without a newsflash to announce any such development. Meanwhile, Nessa pursued her own contacts, including a business journalist friend who promised to look for possible links between the abandoned Russian ship and Oscar's companies. She did not quite agree with Zoe's scepticism about the garda investigation: they had probably gone through Oscar's office files in forensic detail already, and sent queries to police forces in several countries. Her own efforts were a long shot by comparison; but doing something felt better than doing nothing.

Now she was on a day trip to London, a plan she had hatched at the last minute. She was to meet Patrick at Heathrow airport in the late afternoon and make the last leg of the journey back to Ireland with him, rather than await him in the arrivals hall in Cork airport and risk attracting potentially hostile media attention there. Her journey had another purpose too. Zoe had been in London since Sunday, where she got going immediately on her researches. She phoned Nessa early on Tuesday and announced that she had a great new lead – but went on to say that she was afraid of discussing it on the phone for security reasons. She was so excited and yet so coy about her find that Nessa offered to meet her for an hour in London.