The Doll's House (19 page)

‘Go on, Ozzie.’ Kate rubbed her hands together to keep out the cold.

‘She never wanted anything to do with him. As I said, we both got fucked over by folk.’

‘Ozzie, when Detective Lynch asked you a minute ago about the name of the benefactor, the guy who could have done this to Jimmy, you seemed very sure that you wouldn’t be worrying about him.’

‘Did I?’

‘That’s the impression I got.’

‘You’re very clever, Miss. Jimmy would have liked you. He always admired intelligence, did our Jimmy.’

‘So tell me, Ozzie, why wouldn’t you be worrying about that benefactor of his?’

‘Because it wasn’t his benefactor who did Jimmy in.’

‘No? How can you be so sure?’

Instead of looking at Kate, he rearranged the newspapers on his bench. Then, with his voice as flat as a pancake, he said, ‘Dead men can’t commit murder,’ looking coldly up at Lynch, ‘nor can murder be blamed on them either.’

With Lynch and Kate interviewing Ozzie Brennan on the quays, O’Connor was irked that things weren’t moving fast enough. They had another victim and were no closer to pulling in a suspect. Nothing conclusive had come in from the CCTV footage shown on television the previous night, and the lab results of what was under Jenkins’s fingernails had given Johnny Keegan his get-out-of-jail-free card. They had a test sample. What they needed now was a match.

Despite any number of motives and a shitload of information coming in from the public, the only thing mounting up was victims. The last incident-room meeting had felt like a momentous amalgamation of unanswered questions, and with Morrison dissecting another body, the house call O’Connor had planned for the Jenkins residence had been delayed long enough.

Nodding to both sets of police officers stationed outside the Jenkins home, the first car on the public road directly in front of the house, the second at the top of the long gravelled drive, O’Connor was in perfect form for talking to the family. The police presence was deemed to be secure, but low-key. Chief Superintendent Butler didn’t want the family upset, but at the same time he wanted his own arse protected should anything go awry.

O’Connor parked his car on the main street beside the unmarked police car and walked up the drive to one very impressive house. He could smell the sea air, and the whiff of seaweed tangled within it. A perfect setting, he thought, for a perfect celebrity home, one which jutted out from the landscape like a millstone wanting to be seen. His head ached, and the dazzling white lime-rendered walls forced him
to squint. The house was double-fronted, two-storeys high, with a flat roof linking to another part of the building, almost like a second house, to the rear. Both front and back buildings had apex-shaped roofs, each with a circular window in their top gable, like a large vessel out at sea.

There were several cars at the front. O’Connor leaned down to the driver’s window of the police car parked closest to the residence. ‘I see there’s a big crowd here today, guys.’

‘It’s been like that from the beginning, sir.’ The officer turned to his colleague in the passenger seat, mocking, ‘Archie here’s been taking notes. Tells me his wife reads all the glossy magazines so he can spot a celebrity from a mile off.’

‘Well done, guys.’ He gave them a reassuring look. ‘Keep your eyes on the others too, the non-celebrities, that is. Killers aren’t in the habit of wearing signs.’

O’Connor was surprised to find the front door open, but as he stepped into the hallway, half a dozen heads turned, everyone knowing instantly that he didn’t belong. It was the youngest of the group who addressed him first, a well-built teenager, whose voice sounded as if it had just broken. The guy had a mass of blond hair. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with
Cool
written in white across the front. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Detective Inspector O’Connor.’ He reached out to shake his hand. ‘And you are?’

‘Jay Jenkins.’ He had an unexpectedly strong grip for a teenager.

Opening a heavily panelled wooden door behind the main stairway, Jay Jenkins held it ajar as O’Connor walked inside. ‘I’ll get my grandmother for you. Just a second.’ He left the room before O’Connor could clarify that it was the boy’s mother, not his grandmother, whom he wanted to see.

‘Jaysus Christ,’ O’Connor muttered below his breath, ‘this investigation is starting to grate on my nerves.’

He didn’t have long to wait before Isabel Blennerhasset, Keith
Jenkins’s mother-in-law, introduced herself in the same courtly manner as her grandson. From the moment she made her entrance, wearing black from head to toe, except for her pearl necklace, O’Connor could tell she was a force to be reckoned with. If she was harbouring any anxiety about being the first to talk to the detective, she kept it well hidden. She entered the room like a woman who had places to go and things to do, but with no particular urgency about any of them.

‘So, you want to see my daughter, Detective Inspector?’

It was the crisp business-like manner in which she asked the question that precipitated a less than sympathetic response from O’Connor: ‘That was the general idea.’

‘You’re in charge of this investigation, I understand.’ She beckoned him to sit down.

O’Connor obliged. ‘That is correct. I’m heading up the team.’

‘You’re working with Chief Superintendent Butler?’ She remained standing.

O’Connor caught the inflection in her tone: she wanted him to know she was well aware of who was ultimately in charge. Isabel Blennerhasset had done her research.

‘I’m here to help, Mrs Blennerhasset. It’s important for everyone concerned that we try to work out who might have done this wrong to your family.’

‘Indeed. Nothing but awful crime these days. Don’t you agree, Detective Inspector?’

O’Connor was taken aback by her distant remark. ‘Mrs Blennerhasset, no offence, but I came here today to talk with your daughter.’

‘And why would that be?’

For a moment O’Connor wondered if the woman was senile. ‘Your son-in-law has been murdered, Mrs Blennerhasset. I would consider that a very good reason.’

She gave O’Connor a wry smile. As he glanced from her stiff but focused expression to her walking stick, O’Connor wondered if she was capable of hiring a killer.

‘Do you mind if I sit down, Detective Inspector? The old legs aren’t what they used to be.’

‘Of course not.’ O’Connor took out his notebook, unsure how he was going to handle this one.

Sitting down opposite him, she showed the first sign of being human, rubbing what appeared to be an aching shin. ‘Don’t go feeling sorry for me, Detective Inspector. This is just a temporary affliction – boating accident on the Shannon. A darn table hit it.’ O’Connor held his silence while she repositioned herself on the couch, sitting upright like an aged goddess. He could see where her daughter had got her attractive features, and if the daughter was anything like the mother, this was going to be a long afternoon.

‘You can call me Isabel, Detective Inspector.’

‘Your daughter, Mrs Blennerhasset – I mean Isabel? I was hoping to talk to her.’

‘Now, Detective Inspector, I want you to understand something. This is a difficult time for all of us, especially my daughter.’

‘I understand that.’

‘I doubt that, Detective Inspector, unless you’re walking in our shoes, which obviously you are not.’

Looking at her holding her walking stick tightly, as if it was her most important prop, O’Connor decided he was beginning to like the old bag. He admired people with spirit, and, despite her advancing years, she had plenty of that. She oozed the kind of beautiful elegance that not many can. Her perfectly groomed grey hair, cut short, exposed her long neck, and with her shoulders held back, Isabel Blennerhasset’s posture had class.

‘Mrs Blennerhasset – Isabel, please …’

‘Don’t rush me, Detective Inspector, a little respect if you don’t mind.’

O’Connor let out a sigh. He checked his watch, deciding to give her five more minutes.

‘You see, Detective Inspector, young people, children, they’re
allowed to be silly. They can hide, get up to mischief, come home covered in muck, and nobody would think it strange. They have their own rules, sulk when they don’t get their own way and refuse to do as they’re told – although, by and large, they learn ultimately to toe the line. When they enter adulthood, everything changes. But when you get old, like I am now, it’s different again. If I were to run like a young girl, not that I can with this stick,’ she lifted it like a weapon, ‘my bones wouldn’t have the same agility. I might look awkward, like a lazy old mule, but I do gain something in old age. At my age, I’m allowed to be silly again. I’m allowed to be eccentric. I can even sulk if I want to. It’s all part of the advantage of being elderly. People accept my ill-mannered madness as endearing, humorous, even.’

O’Connor shifted on the couch.
Four minutes.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, Detective Inspector.’

‘Well, Isabel, I’m still hoping to speak to your daughter.’

‘In good time – my daughter is vulnerable right now. In spite of everything, she loved the bastard. Of course, she was far too young when she married him. Some men like younger girls. They find them less threatening.’

O’Connor shot her a glance of surprise.

‘Don’t look so shocked. I may be old but I’m not stupid. I know all about my late son-in-law’s reputation. The reason I’m talking frankly with you, Detective Inspector, is so you can gain an understanding of how our family deals with things. We live in a wicked world, and for all the trappings of wealth, which, no doubt, you have already observed, we have our own torments, even if we hide them well.’

‘Torments?’

‘Yes. Torments. Our world is full of subterfuge. Take this dress, for example.’

‘Your dress?’

‘Yes, my dress. Detective Inspector, please try to keep up.’ If Isabel Blennerhasset heard his next grunt, she paid no heed. ‘Just before I
came in here, one of them out there,’ she pointed to the door to the hall, ‘said she loved me in it. Do you know what that means?’

‘That she loved you in the dress?’

‘No, Detective Inspector. The very opposite. What she meant was that I have worn this dress far too often.’

‘I see. At least I think I see.’
Three minutes.

‘What I’m trying to explain to you is that our kind lives by a different language. I know this because I wasn’t born into it. People, our people, they talk in riddles. I never trusted Keith Jenkins but, because of my daughter, I tolerated him. Much like my overly worn black dress is tolerated by that gang out there. The house has been full of wannabe celebrities since my late son-in-law’s demise.’ Isabel made no attempt to hide her bitterness.

‘So I take it, Isabel, you’re not like them.’ O’Connor sat forward. ‘You’re a straight talker.’

‘I’m the queen of straight talkers, Detective Inspector.’

‘So if I was to ask you about your son-in-law’s business interests or friends you would tell me what you know?’

‘I know enough not to trust them. I swear if he’s messed things up for my daughter financially, even if he is dead, I’ll kill him all over again.’

‘Did you know a Jimmy Gahan?’

‘The name is familiar. Keith was friends with him from a long time back.’

O’Connor stopped counting the minutes. ‘And how do you know that? It doesn’t sound as if you and your late son-in-law got on particularly well.’

‘I’d be worried about your observational skills if you hadn’t picked that one up, Detective Inspector.’ Again the wry smile. ‘My daughter told me about him. She and Keith met him recently. In Temple Bar, I think.’

‘And why did your daughter share this story with you?’

‘She was quite taken aback. You don’t expect to meet an old friend of your husband and for him to be a vagrant.’

‘And you’re sure it was Jimmy Gahan?’

‘I’m excellent on names. In our world names matter a great deal.’

‘You say they knew each other from years back?’

‘Jimmy Gahan completed the same business degree at Trinity as Keith. Keith would have been a number of years younger. I think Jimmy got Keith a summer internship at one point.’

O’Connor remembered Kate’s remark about older connections. ‘Are there any other names you’d like to throw into the hat from back then, Isabel?’

‘A couple, but one does come to mind, considering how my son-in-law died.’

‘Go on.’

‘Adrian Hamilton.’

The name Hamilton spiked O’Connor’s interest, the same name as Jenkins’s investment company. ‘What about Adrian Hamilton?’

‘It’s of no relevance, really. The man has been dead for at least thirty years.’

‘Yet his name is the first that came to your mind?’

‘I understand from my daughter that my son-in-law, that Jimmy Gahan fellow and Adrian Hamilton had been good friends at one point. Jimmy and Adrian Hamilton met at Trinity. I understand they were also business partners. I guess my son-in-law thought both of them would be useful to know for future career development. He was right, as it turned out. When Keith’s career took a very different direction, it was Adrian Hamilton who got him his first break into television. RTÉ was a very closed shop back then. It still is to some extent. It was all very tragic, really.’

‘What was?’

‘Adrian Hamilton’s death – a dreadful accident.’

‘What happened?’ O’Connor locked eyes with Isabel Blennerhasset.

‘As I said, it was a very long time back. But it’s the reason he came instantly to mind. The man drowned. Some said it was suicide, but people say a lot of things. Either way, he left a young wife and two
children. I knew Lavinia, Adrian Hamilton’s widow. She was a member of the tennis club in Rathmines. My daughter’s on the committee. In truth it was a double tragedy.’

‘Double?’

‘Lavinia lost a baby that year too. A little girl, I understand. She was never the same afterwards, but, like many, she hid it well.’

‘You say Adrian Hamilton’s death was a possible suicide? Was there an inquest?’

‘There was an investigation, but I heard little about it, other than the rumours. They tend to be very loud and far-reaching, Detective Inspector.’