Deadly Intent (28 page)

‘We have to believe it will be solved,' he said. ‘The gardai are under huge pressure to get the killer, and it's probably best that they move cautiously.'

‘What upsets me most …' Nessa allowed herself to breathe in deeply as Patrick stroked her skin with the tips of his fingers. ‘It's not just that I want it to be solved,' she said then. ‘That's only part of why I feel so chewed up. The other part is that I've begun to think that whoever killed Oscar did the right thing.'

Nessa turned as Patrick stopped his gentle massage. ‘Can't you understand that?' she asked. ‘I mean, the evidence that's coming out now tells us that he was a complete bastard.'

‘The latest accusation of rape, you mean?'

‘Yes, and I bet you there's more to come too. First, there was his housekeeper, and this week there's a young woman who got her first job in the marketing section of his company, saying she had to leave the job after he raped her. Oscar had threatened to blacken her name if she reported him, and then he and his admirers in the gossip columns spun the story as another of his broken-hearted conquests. The same thing may have happened to other women he claimed to have seduced.'

‘I agree with you that it's very nasty. But I suppose we rarely hear the unpleasant secrets of our guests.'

‘Jesus, I bloodywell hope we haven't harboured rapists here on a regular basis. It's all very well to be a charmer, as we took Oscar to be, but it makes me ill to remember how we kowtowed to him. In fact, Dominic was the only person who wasn't taken in by him, and that's not easy for me to admit.'

‘But you can't seriously say that Oscar deserved to be murdered? The justice system is there for people like him. Otherwise it's the law of the jungle.'

‘I know that, Patrick, but justice can't always be relied on, can it?' Nessa leaned back her head, closing her eyes to hold in her tears. She felt she understood for the first time how vicious life really was. Lying awake in the lonely hours before dawn, she could wish for the whole human race to be swept away, with all the infinite suffering and tortures that so many people inflicted on others, or tolerated in the world.

She had a few new leads in her researches on Oscar, but no clear answers. Mounting evidence of his cruelties was not the same as finding out who murdered him. She could not sit on her hands doing nothing, but uncovering a snake pit was taking its toll too.

Patrick held her head in his hands, stroking her temples slowly. The phone started to ring, but they ignored it. After a moment, the answering machine clicked into play, and they heard Trevor O'Kelleher's soft voice saying that he would like to call at the house that evening, to discuss a few matters relevant to the investigation.

‘I don't want to go tomorrow. It's going to be boring, I know it is.'

Ronan was seated on the stairs when Nessa left the office. She thought she could escape upstairs, to make a few phone calls before Trevor arrived. She put down her laptop and sat beside her son. She had enrolled him on a sea-kayaking course, to try to get him out among his own age-group more often.

‘Do you remember what we said the other day, when we talked about this?'

‘Not really. I didn't say for definite that I'd go.'

‘You said you'd try the course if you knew someone else who was doing it. So last night, I made a few calls—'

‘But it'll be too cold. And too wet. Anyway, you know I don't really like team things.'

Nessa sat with him for a while, cajoling and encouraging. In the end, Ronan agreed not to disappoint his school pal who had also enrolled on the course, and in return, Nessa promised to buy him a new Playstation game after the first two sessions. The bribery school of parenting, as she muttered to herself.

Up in her bedroom, she opened a file named ‘B-Z' on the laptop. It contained copies of the material Ben and Zoe had found nine days earlier, as well as follow-up information. Nessa re-read an email Zoe had sent at the start of the week.

Your idea of checking out arms brokers has paid off. Ben's told me all about these people who buy and sell weapons for their own grubby profit. He's found out that Oscar got into this in the 1990s, when his respectable operations were going through a bad patch. So much for his entrepreneurial genius!

I can't believe how easy a business it is. All Oscar had to do was buy a supply of hardware from one crowd, say in China or Kazakhstan, and then sell it on to someone else. He never got dirt under his shiny fingernails, of course, and he could do it nice and handy from Ireland in spite of our great claims of neutrality and suchlike. He was the middleman, you see, and once the internet came along, he could just watch the money pour in.

Meanwhile, the business journalist friend of Nessa's was looking for links between Oscar's investments and the Russian ship, but to no avail so far. One of Stella's contacts had confirmed Oscar's links with military and intelligence figures in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. Nessa had also decided to contact James, Patrick's friend in Bandon, to ask if he could find out anything about Oscar's investments in eastern Europe, via the organiser of Patrick's trip to Moscow. It was a delicate request, because she reckoned the recent publicity about the trip could have rekindled bad feelings among that group. So she had said nothing to Patrick about it. But her risky request had paid off, if information relayed to her that morning by James proved to be true.

She hesitated before she picked up the phone. Perhaps she should wait to find out if Inspector O'Kelleher had news of a breakthrough. On the other hand, Oscar's vile business dealings should be exposed, whether they had contributed to his murder or not. She decided to talk directly to Ben. Her difficulty with Zoe was that she did not fully trust her to keep her mouth shut, or to distinguish fact from feeling. Finding Oscar's killer seemed to be rather less important to her than denouncing a rich entrepreneur to the world and its mother.

Nessa noticed her own reflection in the darkened window – the auburn glow of youth in her hair disguising the grey underneath. She wanted to keep Zoe at arm's length, but she also envied her vigorous certainty about right and wrong, and her sense of life's endless possibilities. At the end of her email, Zoe mentioned that she would stay on in London for a while, to get to know Stella properly and to take up Ben's offer of regular volunteer work in his office.

‘I'm glad we've been able to help,' he said, when he answered the phone. ‘It's a pity we didn't learn about Oscar Malden while he was alive, but better late than never.'

‘You know that his products in Russia and Ukraine were described in the business media as “security systems”, which could cover a multitude of purposes. Well, I've heard this morning that he supplied equipment for use in prisons, including restraints that can deliver an electric shock to uncooperative prisoners.'

Nessa let out her breath as she awaited Ben's response. She had deliberately used the most neutral words she could think of, to allow him to interpret them on his own terms.

‘The word “restraints” certainly covers a multitude,' he said slowly. ‘It could mean a type of cable or chain to prevent a prisoner from moving around, or else something bigger, such as electric fences or gates protecting an exercise area.'

‘Not fences or gates, no. Whatever precisely his company makes is packed and exported in packages that are smaller than shoeboxes. Or so I've been told in relation to one of his factories in the Ukraine.'

‘Well, he could be making stun guns, Nessa. They're used all over the world as a defensive weapon in security situations, but unfortunately they've been known to cause very serious injuries. That's just a guess, though, and there is another possibility.'

Nessa braced herself. She remembered the photo of Oscar at the arms fair, next to the thin Englishman. Patrick's account of the sharp pains his aunt used to suffer had been on her mind all day.

‘Restraints that deliver an electric shock suggest torture to me,' said Ben. ‘There's a big market out there for such products, I'm sorry to say, considering that torture is used regularly in at least sixty countries around the world, and electro-shock devices are the most common method used. They include stun guns and they're made all over the world, the United States being the leading producer as far as I know, and certainly not associated with Ukraine in particular.'

Nessa had to stop herself screaming out loud. ‘Torture devices is just what I was afraid you'd suggest. But all I have at the moment is third-hand information, and the company involved is not registered directly in Oscar's name. It could take months to get proper details, including photos of these products, and a paper trail of documentation.'

‘Are you going to tell the Irish police about it? They must be asking some of these questions themselves by now.'

Nessa studied her reflection again in silence. Perhaps she was holding back out of pride, in case she became the laughing stock of Bantry station, scrabbling for crumbs of information about companies that Oscar had nothing to do with. Or perhaps she feared the glee with which Jack Talbot would rework his depiction of Patrick as a stooge of Russian gangsters, if she gave him half an excuse.

‘I'll give it another week before I tell them,' she said, surprising herself by saying it so firmly. ‘But if you've any more ideas …'

‘One possibility would be to check the patents for the products manufactured in the Ukraine, and elsewhere in eastern Europe. I know someone who's an expert at that kind of thing, and may be able to trace ownership of the patents.'

‘That would be really great. I know you've a million other things to do …'

Ben laughed, and his tone became a lot warmer. ‘I've a new volunteer to call on, you know. Do you mind if I tell her about this? It may also be useful to talk to her sister, Stella, with her enviable network of contacts.'

‘I'd really prefer to keep it quiet for now.' Nessa tried to choose her words carefully. ‘I don't know Zoe or Stella well, and I hardly know you at all, Ben, but at least you've worked on these issues for several years. I feel I'm stumbling around in a minefield, and there are other allegations.'

‘That's OK,' he said quietly. ‘Zoe has already filled me in on the rape stories, and if Oscar Malden was as truly evil as we now suspect, we'll get the full story out eventually.'

When Patrick showed their visitors into the sitting room, Nessa was glad to see that Inspector O'Kelleher was accompanied by Sergeant Fitzmaurice and not Garda Joyce. She did not feel able for the younger garda's supercilious airs. Caitlín had told her he had not been in Derryowen all week, so perhaps he had been taken off the team.

‘The first reason for coming to see you both,' said O'Kelleher, ‘is to update you on those matters that affect you personally.' He smiled as if to apologise for speaking in officialese, and turned to Patrick. ‘I'm referring to our inquiries into your movements on Thursday 17th September last, and indeed your own statements about your meeting with the deceased man, Oscar Malden.'

Nessa glanced at Conor Fitzmaurice to check his demeanour. Unlike the inspector, he was a familiar and friendly presence in the area. But he stood with hands clasped on the navy cap he had removed at the door, shoulders straight and eyes to the floor. She began to feel nervous of what was to come.

‘We've found two pieces of evidence to verify what you told us,' said O'Kelleher. ‘Your mobile phone signals on that day place you in the Bantry area by one o'clock, so while we cannot confirm every minute of your journey, you certainly do not seem to have delayed en route, or had time to engage in any unexplained activity. In addition, we have a CCTV recording of your presence in Bantry town, where you stopped off to buy a bottle of water in a shop.'

‘I'd forgotten about that, inspector,' said Patrick. ‘I should have included it in my statement, but my aunt's death was so much on my mind.'

O'Kelleher smiled gently, and said he'd prefer to be called by his first name. Nessa relaxed a fraction. ‘It's not a problem,' he said. ‘Most people forget large chunks of their day-to-day activities, unless they live by a very fixed routine.'

Fitzmaurice looked from Nessa to Patrick, hardly a glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes. ‘If I may put in a word here,' he said, ‘what the
cig
has given you is the good news. But unfortunately, it doesn't amount to conclusive proof that you were in Bantry before Oscar felt the smooth pull of a cord on his neck. It's still not impossible, you see, that he went off in your car and you managed to kill him and hide his body somewhere between Derryowen and Bantry. In other words, it's very hard to prove a negative in this situation.'

‘What you mean,' said Patrick drily, ‘is that it's a pity I didn't pick up a hitchhiker at Scannive Strand and have him watch me while I put his rucksack into the boot of the car. Then he could swear in court that I hadn't hidden a trussed-up body under my own luggage.'

‘That's about the size of it,' said O'Kelleher. He lapsed into silence, as if he was pondering how to continue. Both he and Fitzmaurice were more soft cop than hard cop, Nessa thought to herself, but there was still an air of wariness in the room. Their message was that while Patrick was not a lead suspect, they could not yet say so in plain words.

She broke the silence by offering them something to drink. After a few rounds of refusals, Fitzmaurice agreed to tea and O'Kelleher conceded a fresh apple juice. When she returned from the kitchen, both men were sitting upright on a sofa, making polite small talk with Patrick. The inspector resumed business fairly quickly.

‘We've another reason for calling in this evening,' he said. ‘We'd like to ask for your assistance with some filming for television, for the
Crime Scene
programme. We've asked to do a reconstruction of Oscar's murder.'