Deadly Intent (31 page)

He lifted his head when he realised that someone was nearby, a woman who had her back to him. He rubbed his eyes quickly, in case it was obvious that he had been crying.

He was taken aback when she turned her head. Nessa McDermott stared at him with undisguised hostility.

‘Do you mind? I was hoping to sit.'

Redmond stood up awkwardly. He may as well be helpful. He was unlikely to meet her again.

She stepped towards the bench. ‘I'm sorry to bother you,' she said brusquely. ‘I don't have a lot of time right now.'

Redmond could not quite make sense of what she said. Perhaps his brain had stopped working. If she was in a hurry, why did she want to sit at all?

‘I'm surprised to meet you up here,' she said, in a politer tone. She was breathing hard, as if she had been running. ‘I imagine you must be very busy with the film crew.'

Redmond looked around distractedly. The crew could be on their way to Coomgarriff. If he went downhill, he was in danger of meeting them.

‘I thought …' She took a step closer to him. ‘Yes, I thought I heard Inspector O'Kelleher mention a briefing this afternoon, down at the hotel?' She looked at him as if he was an obstinate child. ‘Something about one of the scenes with Oscar, that's what I understood.'

Redmond tried to sound normal. ‘Which scene was that?'

‘I'm not sure. Down at the Briary, I think, after Oscar left Ambrose and got a phone call from someone in France or whatever it was.'

Redmond moved away, mumbling a reply. He could not tell her he was barred from the investigation. But she was behaving strangely. Was she just trying to get rid of him, going on about a briefing at the hotel? Conor had said the
cig
was going to Castletownbere for the afternoon, and there was definitely no mention of a briefing.

He turned to look back at her, his mind racing. She was on her hunkers at the back of the bench, searching for something.

‘Why did you say—?' He ran towards her. ‘Who told you that Oscar got a phone call from someone in France?'

She pulled herself up, eyes flashing annoyance. ‘What do you mean, who told me?'

‘Please, I'm not asking you lightly.' Redmond looked at her steadily, hoping to calm himself as well as Nessa. ‘I think you've said something that could be really important.'

She looked down at the bench, as if she wanted to begin searching again. ‘As far as I remember, it was Fergus Malden who told me. But you know all about that already, don't you? We were on our way to the pharmacy when he got a text from Oscar, saying he'd got a call from France and was changing his plans.'

‘Fergus got a text from his father's phone alright, but there was no mention of France in it. The link with France is that Oscar had received a mysterious call a while earlier that lunchtime, and we discovered that the phone in question was purchased in France. But information about the call was never released by the garda team, as far as I know.'

‘So why did Fergus say it? Perhaps it was just a mistake, unless—?'

Nessa and Redmond stared at each other, as hostility gave way to urgency. He was first to finish what she had begun to say.

‘Unless Fergus knew in advance that he was to receive a text from Oscar's phone, in which France was supposed to be mentioned. But if that happened—?'

‘If that happened,' Nessa interrupted, ‘Fergus must have been in on a plan to kill his father, and part of the plan was to create the impression of a business quarrel in France that led to his murder. But then Fergus said it to me even though it wasn't in the text.'

‘And the purpose of the text was for us all to believe that Oscar was still alive at a particular time.'

‘Instead of which, the text was sent from Oscar's phone by his murderer.'

Nessa took hold of Redmond's elbow and sat him down clumsily on the bench. They stared at each other again, before a stream of explanation poured from her.

‘I lied to you about a garda briefing, I couldn't think how to get rid of you and I had to find out … I had to look at this bench, you see. It seemed so silly when I thought of it first, but I had to find out if Fergus Malden had been hiding notes here for someone else to pick up. There had to be a split or a niche in the wood for that to be possible, so I wanted to look.'

‘And what made you think of that, or who …?'

‘It was my son, Ronan. He told me he'd spied on Fergus yesterday, and then I remembered something else he'd said ages ago, about hiding secret messages up here. But I thought at the time it was just a childish game he'd invented for himself.'

Redmond nodded, looking around at the bench. ‘Whereas leaving paper messages would be a very useful way to avoid mobile phone contact or emails. Any electronic communication leaves a permanent record that can be examined by gardai.'

‘In that case, the whole thing was planned in detail, down to finding the right place to hide the messages.'

‘But who was the accomplice? The person who exchanged messages with Fergus?'

Nessa did not reply immediately. Her brain felt like a battlefield, flashes of fire and confusion all at once. She took her phone out of her pocket and stared at it, as if willing it to speak to her.

‘Ronan said something else today,' she said then. ‘He told me that my daughter Sal went out last night, and saw Fergus and Darina together. They seemed to be intimate, or that was the impression she got.'

‘You mean, they were together as a couple?'

‘Yes, but I was deaf to what that meant. I didn't think it through right away, because I'd a different notion, one about Zoe and Stella, and how they might be the guilty ones.'

She got up and pointed down the hill. Redmond saw terror in her eyes. ‘Sal went down to the Barn this afternoon,' she said, ‘hoping to find out where Marcus is. I tried to phone her but she hasn't—'

‘Do you think Sal will ask Darina if she's involved with Fergus?'

‘Yes, she might. That's what frightens me now.'

‘Because you think Fergus and Darina were in it together?'

‘I can't make sense of it any other way, Redmond. And that's why I'm so frightened. Because if Sal tells Darina that she saw her with Fergus, what will happen? Will Darina say yes, and admit that she conspired with Fergus to do terrible things, or will she ensure that Sal can't tell anyone else about the two of them?'

N
essa tried Sal's phone again while Redmond examined the wooden bench. He found a gap between one of the vertical supports and a decorative post on top of it. After poking in it for a few moments with a sharp stick, he extracted a small scrap of paper and showed it to Nessa.

‘It's hard to be certain,' he said, holding it carefully. He wished he had a proper plastic evidence bag to keep it safe. ‘This could have got snagged on the wood when the rest of the piece of paper was pulled out. I think there was something written on it, but it's damp, which doesn't help.'

They both examined the scrap of paper, which was barely the size of Nessa's thumb.

‘That could be Darina's writing,' she said. ‘I can make out the letter “Y”, and even though it's written as a capital, there's a kind of flourish to it. The word could be “y-o-u”, couldn't it?'

‘Did your son actually see Fergus leaving notes here in September? Could you phone him now and ask him?'

‘No, he's out in a kayak right now. And really, the whole thing seems unbelievable. But all the same, I have to go to Darina's now.'

‘I'll go with you. It might be best not to be on your own.' Redmond felt as if he had been given a blood transfusion, filling him with energy. ‘I'm not … I'm actually not on duty this afternoon.'

Nessa nodded absently as they set off. She still felt wary in his company but that was irrelevant now. All that mattered was to make sure that Sal was safe.

Redmond hurried to keep up with her. ‘Had you any inkling of a relationship between Fergus and Darina?' he asked. ‘Weeks ago, I mean, while Fergus was on holiday at Cnoc Meala.'

‘No idea whatsoever. And the only inkling I have now is thirdhand, so it's hardly reliable.'

‘I remember that Darina told us in her witness statements that she had a short conversation with Oscar on the Thursday morning, outside the shop in Derryowen. Her line was that Oscar was interested in calling to her studio at midday, but that he never arrived. There seemed to be no reason to disbelieve her, but of course, if he did in fact call in to the studio …'

‘But surely your garda colleagues questioned her about how she spent the day? She told us she was sick and tired of being questioned, that's one thing I remember very well.'

Redmond ignored her barbed tone. He had been too quick to take offence in the past, and to cloak his insecurities with a veneer of pride.

‘Yes, of course,' he said evenly. ‘We interviewed her twice and she came across as a very helpful witness. She told us in detail what time she called in to Ambrose with his eggs, for example, and who else she called to before she went for a swim near the hotel.'

‘So can you work out …? Can you say now whether she could have, you know, carried it out?'

Nessa could not bring herself to say aloud the stark word that pierced her every thought. She still hoped for another explanation, one that would not point unremittingly to the conclusion that Darina had murdered Oscar.

Redmond also found it difficult to speak directly. Instead he tried to make his bland reassurance sound kind. ‘It's OK, it must be really difficult for you. But we'll be at the Barn in a few minutes, five or six at the most.'

She nodded again and Redmond continued. ‘If she was involved, she must have set out to confuse us about timings on the day. She would've had access to Oscar's phone once he was dead, to send a text to it from a phone she had purchased in France, and then to send another message from Oscar's phone to Fergus.'

‘It wasn't unusual for her to come and go from the Barn at irregular times. What's more, she made sure that Ambrose saw her, which probably made her own statements more credible.'

‘I could never understand how Oscar had been swallowed up by the hills soon after leaving Ambrose and meeting your husband at midday.' Redmond and Nessa had reached the bottom of the hill, close to the old man's house and the small road leading to the Barn. ‘But if Oscar went off to Darina's house, how come he wasn't spotted by Ambrose, who was still standing guard at his gate?'

Her own experience of dodging over walls with Ronan came into Nessa's mind. ‘It wouldn't be impossible. He'd spoken to Darina earlier at the shop, and she could have suggested a shortcut across a few fields.'

Nessa stopped, short of breath. She would like to be silent, alone with her thoughts. Against the clear sky, every familiar detail of the landscape stood out in sharp relief. Any minute now, Sal would appear on the roadway. She and Darina would saunter along, chatting on their way to meet the TV crew.

‘Are you OK? Things could be dangerous with Darina, so perhaps we should wait and get help.' Redmond wished he could explain his situation to Nessa, but he was afraid she would just walk off without him if she understood that he had no garda authority. He paused long enough to send a quick text to Conor, to say he had new information about Fergus and Darina, and would text again soon.

‘No, let's go ahead. Better just the two of us than a squad in uniform. Once I know Sal is OK …'

Nessa stopped again to open a new text on her phone. It was from Caitlín, telling her that she had probed Zoe about her family. She had learned that Stella's father was a Catholic priest who had a feverish affair with their mother while at home on holidays from missionary work in Africa. He was back in Zambia when the pregnancy was confirmed, and was told nothing about it, and he had died by the time Stella and Zoe started asking questions about him. It had been a farfetched idea, Nessa reproached herself, that Oscar might have been Stella's father and that the two sisters had set out to expose his business secrets after killing him. If she had only grasped the truth earlier, her daughter would be safe.

‘Is it possible,' Redmond asked suddenly, ‘that Darina hadn't planned to kill Oscar? Suppose he went to her studio and attacked her there, just as he attacked other women, and she acted in self-defence?'

‘I wish I could believe that. But if Fergus was involved in advance, it had to be planned before they ever arrived in Beara.'

‘Yes, you're right. Perhaps Darina had met Oscar at an art event in Cork or somewhere else, and he promised her his patronage but attacked her instead? And somehow she persuaded Fergus to help her?'

‘It's plausible but we don't know, do we? We know so little, that's the bloody problem.'

They stopped at Darina's gate, and Nessa was tempted to phone Patrick or Caitlín or Trevor O'Kelleher – someone she could trust to make the right decisions in a crisis. But she could not risk more delays, so she steeled her nerves and stepped past the handpainted sign advertising portraits, drawings and small sculptural pieces to visitors.

‘Darina gave a card to Fergus,' she said quietly. ‘She spoke to him about it in our kitchen that Thursday night, making out it was a drawing she'd done for Oscar.'

‘What kind of card? Did you see it yourself?'

‘I saw it the next evening. She'd done an impression of Oscar's face on one side, which I thought was a sketch for his portrait. And on the other side, she drew a view of Beara, with a standing stone in the foreground. I just took it as a touristy image, but now …' Nessa's voice hardened. ‘You see, a standing stone could be an image of death, like a headstone.'

‘You mean it was a message? Once she'd done the job, she didn't bother with notes hidden in the bench, and gave Fergus a message openly, in front of other people?'