The Murder Loop, page 10
Cass had travelled with the intention of surprising him, but now that she was here, found herself unsure, wondering what exactly she was hoping to achieve.
He tried but failed to stifle a yawn, and she wondered whether she had woken him, despite it being close to midday. She couldn’t help but think of her ex-husband, because in the later years, while she was at work, Hugh had frequently slept well into the afternoon. She wondered if Brady was the boozing type. He didn’t look it, though. Tired and drawn, yes, but not hungover.
‘Late night?’
‘Trouble sleeping once in a while.’
I can identify, she thought. And if I lived alone here, I’d have trouble sleeping too. ‘Well, this won’t take long. Just want to go back over a few details.’
‘Please, come inside. I’ll brew some coffee and give you the guided tour.’
Like an estate agent selling a property, she thought. It was then that an obvious question struck her: even before stepping across the threshold, it was clear this renovation had needed money. True, Brady had done much of the work himself, which would reduce labour costs, but even still, the materials would have cost a solid five-figure sum. That was on top of the purchase price for the property itself. Where had Brady sourced it?
She made a mental note to check how US military pay and pensions worked. Brady was still a young man, and so, at most she figured, would have clocked up about twenty years of service. In the Guards, generally speaking, early retirement meant going at fifty, and while twenty years of pension benefits were not to be sniffed at, most people in that situation would still expect to take up some other line of work to supplement their income. It wasn’t clear to Cass if Brady worked, and if so, what he did.
Maybe he’s just independently wealthy. But how many independently wealthy kids sign up for the military? And if he had that kind of cash, how do you explain the old car? He’d have something much fancier. Maybe he got a lump sum at some point. Or took out a mortgage. Or just managed his money better than I ever could…
Which wasn’t a fair reflection on herself. She’d managed her modest salary just fine, and Hugh had a modest trust fund, if that wasn’t an oxymoron, as he had come from proper money. They’d had savings, investments and a miniscule mortgage. But his family had gradually tired of his alcoholic antics and the trust fund had tired of the cost of it. And once Hugh had given up on work – or, more accurately, his employers had given up on him – their resources began to dwindle.
She took steps to safeguard their house, ensuring he couldn’t attempt to remortgage without her blessing. And when the end came, the house had been all that was left. She wasted no time in selling it. Tried to pass on the proceeds and failed. The money was just sitting in her account now, and Hugh was sitting in prison.
‘You coming in?’ Brady was still standing at the open door, a querying look on his face.
Cass returned to the present, nodded, and followed him inside.
The white vase had not been an aberration. She had expected the interior of the church to be somewhat dark and foreboding, but instead it could have been lifted from a magazine. Seeing the light-filled space she realised the gloomy and smashed stained glass she remembered had been replaced with clear windows. Additionally, a huge chunk of the rear-facing wall had been removed and replaced with sliding patio doors. A further neat trick – not visible from the roadside – was the large triangular skylight installed on the west-facing side of the roof to catch afternoon light. The interior walls were painted white, the old wooden floor had been replaced with subtle grey tiles, and the furniture was in pastel colours to offer contrast.
Again, there was something just a little off about it all – rather than reveal an individual identity, it looked like he’d simply replicated an IKEA showroom by buying its contents outright. But it was done well, nonetheless. The ground floor was now one large living space and kitchen, with the chancel partitioned off, presumably as a spare room or second bedroom. Cass guessed that the main bedroom and bathroom were upstairs on the balcony, which covered roughly a third of the floor area of the nave and where further partition walls subdivided the space.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’d make a much better place for a drinking party now.’
‘It gets a pass?’
‘It’s very impressive,’ Cass said, ‘and suspiciously tidy.’ I feel like I should remove my shoes rather than soil your pristine floor.
‘No roommates, no children, no pets – makes it easier.’
And no partner either? she wondered. There isn’t a single picture on display – not of parents, not of a loved one, not even a team photo of former military colleagues. Not a memento or hint of personality. Just some generic prints that could have been bought from a catalogue to match the furniture. Cass’s own apartment was utterly devoid of personality too, but she hadn’t spent months doing up her place. The church wasn’t perfect – the conservationists would no doubt be aghast – but it was pretty polished all the same. This place was all him and yet none of him at the same time. How could that be?
‘Bet there’s a queue of family and friends wanting to visit when they see what you’ve done with the place.’
‘Not so much. Like I said, I came to Ireland for some space. Figure out the next stage of my life. So it’s been pretty much me and the priest.’
She stared at him in mild disbelief.
‘Bad joke,’ he said quickly. ‘The realtor told me the story before we signed the papers. Didn’t want me finding out subsequently and complaining. Straight-up lady.’
Estate agent, thought Cass. No one says realtor around here. ‘It would have deterred a lot of people from buying this place.’
‘I’m of little interest to the living, let alone the dead.’ He cranked up an expensive-looking barista-style coffee machine and got cups, milk and sugar ready.
Any second now he’ll pull some freshly baked sourdough out of the oven and confuse me even more. I can’t get a straight read on this guy at all. Home improvements or all-action hero?
Thankfully, though, he didn’t – just served Cass her coffee and beckoned for her to take a seat on the first of three stools at the kitchen counter. He took the third, leaving a stool between them as a safe space.
‘So is this formal?’ he asked. ‘Not that it makes a difference – just not sure how these things work with you guys.’
‘Routine. Like I said, just wanted to go back over your statement; make sure we missed nothing that might be important later.’
‘Are my two fellow countrymen officially suspects now?’
‘They’re persons of interest, meaning we would like to speak with them.’
‘But you haven’t found them yet?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Airports, ports, that kind of thing?’
‘As I said–’
‘Got you. There’s only so much you can tell me.’
‘That I could tell anyone,’ she corrected, ‘regardless of the assistance they may have provided.’
‘Understood. Please, go right ahead.’
She did so, going back over the statement and silently searching for any inconsistencies. There was none. So she decided to widen the search a little.
‘Well, that’s it for the official questions. Tell me,’ she said, as casually as she could muster, ‘you mentioned figuring out what’s next for you. What do you think that is?’
‘Too late to make the NFL,’ he said, ‘though I’m not sure any man ever gives up on the dream–’
Hugh gave up on his dreams. Drowned them at the bottom of a bottle.
‘–I’m looking into college options. Law, maybe. That sound crazy at my age?’
‘Not really. They reckon most people will average five or six careers these days.’
‘That you too?’
‘I’m busy enough,’ she replied. ‘Haven’t really given it much thought. You intend returning to the States to study then?’
‘I was thinking of staying here. Maybe rent this place for a little while and go to one of your universities. I really like the look of Trinity College. That Long Room is quite something. Featured in a movie, didn’t it?’
Film, she thought. And I have no earthly idea. ‘Not much of a film buff,’ she replied.
This was getting nowhere. Brady was open and hospitable on the surface, and she was incapable of probing beneath it. He clearly liked his privacy: his choice of property emphasised as much.
Loner meet loner, she thought. ‘Well, best of luck with the life decisions, and thank you for the coffee. Congratulations on what you’ve done here. It’s very nice.’
He returned the thanks and walked her out in polite silence. Cass was at the door of the police car when she heard him call after her.
‘Say… now that the official part is over, how would you feel about continuing the conversation unofficially sometime?’
Full of surprises, this guy. Admittedly, there was enough to like. Rugged, capable, clearly a bit creative; self-sufficient and self-contained; seemingly normal. So definitely not my type. Not half fucked up or needy enough. I attract the bloody misfits and miscreants, with the world’s misanthropes thrown in for good measure.
‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t really be appropriate,’ she said. ‘In the middle of an investigation and everything – I’m sure you understand.’
He held his hands up in mock surrender and smiled again. ‘There I go again: still thinking I can make the NFL.’
Corny or not, she couldn’t help but smile as she got into the car.
A mile down the road, her mobile beeped a couple of times to indicate she had missed calls or messages. There were several parts of the Loop that were mobile black spots, and she realised she could add Brady’s property to them.
She stopped the car and saw missed calls from the station and a text message from Devine. It was short and sweet. The two Americans had been stopped and detained at Shannon Airport.
Cass’s first thought was that they had the break they needed.
Her second was that, if they wrapped up the case quickly, maybe continuing the conversation with Brady might be an option after all…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tiredness could get you killed – it had been drilled into Brady since his first week in basic training. That’s why go-pills – the military slang for the amphetamine Dexedrine – were so readily available in his old life. They were effective in combatting fatigue and therefore an ally in battle. But once no longer in active service, he’d switched to no-go pills instead to knock him out at night: Ambien or anything stronger he could get his hands on.
But after a while, he realised that nothing would work, because sleeping per se wasn’t his problem – it was what happened when he slept: the flashbacks, the nightmares, the dread of being surrounded. The scratching sensation on his face, as if steel wool were being dragged across it. Waking up drenched in sweat and, like a child, finding the darkness even worse. The cursed half-second of coming to and being convinced a malign presence was in the room. It was always the fleetest of impressions but shook him for minutes every time, heart hammering and pain shooting up his arms.
He knew his time in the military had left him with PTSD, and guessed that the shooting pains were psychosomatic. But he’d tried and abandoned counselling – not for him. Especially when there were targets to pursue. And so he focused on doing what he could to cope by himself. To avoid the night terrors, he’d come up with the simplest solution he could find: stay awake until dawn and then drift off. It worked, up to a point. And so when the patrol car crunched over the gravel, he’d been asleep, and caught completely off guard by Kate Cassidy. For a second time.
He’d desperately sought to fight back the exhaustion and stay focused during the interview, but it had been tough. Now, he replayed the discussion in his head, probing for any inadvertent slips he may have made. Tiredness could get you killed.
Had it been a mistake to invite her in? It would have seemed antisocial to leave her standing outside. Besides, what was there for her to see? He’d kept one souvenir, that was safely out of sight, and nobody would recognise the significance of it anyway. As for the unlicensed shotgun, that was safely hidden. A sterile site, to the uninitiated. There was nothing on view that would even hint at what he had done, at what he was.
She’d mentioned visitors, and he’d changed the subject, but not so quickly as to be obvious. He’d set this place up as cover, not as a holiday home, and already had too many visitors as it was – a few locals driving by, curious about the church renovation, and the occasional hiker. It had been a mistake to buy it, in retrospect. In the States, you could buy a derelict property in an isolated spot, fix it up, and nobody would care.
He’d failed to realise how truly small and intimate Ireland was in that respect. In the hardware stores in Glencale, they’d ask him how the project was going. A local journalist, not having a phone number or email address for Brady, had posted him her business card, requesting to do a feature about the renovation. He’d ignored it but had to accept the privacy he thought he was buying was heavily qualified. He didn’t want anybody seeing the church from the valley and deciding on a whim to drive up. It was one of the reasons he’d kept the screen of trees.
Why had she asked about visitors anyway? Was she trying to form a picture of his habits and contacts? And if so, to what end? Did they doubt his story in some way? Was he, too, a person of interest? She’d hardly tell him if so. But the questions – the official ones at least – had seemed gently probing rather than hostile. She was tough to read and, Brady guessed, tough to shake. That he could admire.
And his answer about why he’d come to Ireland? Largely truthful, again because it was the safest course. He’d come to Glencale for three reasons: he had a target to hunt; he wanted to get his head right; and if he managed both those things, he wanted to figure out what was next. He’d touched on two of the three objectives in his answer, omitting his criminal activity. So that seemed okay.
But the quip about the ghost had been dumb. He had made her recoil and couldn’t recover quickly enough. He didn’t want to appear weird. But still, probably nothing fatal.
His questions to her about the farmer’s murder may have been more of a risk, but he’d needed to try and establish the precise purpose of her visit – and what the cops now knew. He’d made sure to back off as soon as she put up the barriers.
Then her unofficial questions – and his bullshit about Trinity College. It was rehearsed bullshit, though. Dublin was about four hours’ drive from Glencale, so an eight-hour return journey. Doable with ease in a single day, but a lot of people would opt for an overnight. So if he told a few people he was thinking of studying there, and he was suddenly absent from Glencale one day, they might think he’d gone to Dublin, exploring his study options. If nothing else, it might give him a head start should he have to flee.
Nothing in her demeanour suggested he’d have to consider such a drastic option anytime soon. But still, best to remain prepared.
So what craziness had momentarily overtaken him in trying to hook up with her?
Better to try and understand why she came up here to see me.
Better to stay close to the investigation.
Better to figure out what action might need to be taken.
Now he realised he was being partially truthful with himself, too.
Because for twenty seconds, he’d let his interest in her show, and in the process, potentially put everything at risk. A moment of weakness, stemming from tiredness.
I’m so fucking tired.
And tiredness could get you killed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Six hours for starters,’ Cass murmured to herself. Then six further hours if authorised by a superintendent. A further twelve if authorised by a chief superintendent. And that was it. Under law, the Guards had twenty-fours in total to question the two Americans before either releasing them or bringing them before court.
When Cass first heard the news that the pair had been located and detained, she envisaged that her colleagues would need every minute of the twenty-four hours to crack them.
She was wrong.
In the event, they needed less than five hours – because in that time, it became abundantly clear the Americans were not Bridge Bannon’s killers.
Plenty of investigations had a punch-in-the-gut moment, knocking the air temporarily out of the case team. The trick was to refocus swiftly rather than re-interrogating missteps. The after-action reviews could wait for when the case was solved.
Anyway, Cass didn’t think the team had actually taken a misstep: they had simply followed their most promising lead, which they were duty-bound to do. It was just bad luck, rather than poor detective work, that the lead had run into the ground. In any event, Kearney, the SIO, had been careful not to dedicate all his resources to the Americans alone; he had split the investigation team to follow up other aspects of the case at the same time. So the hunt for the burglary gang had continued without interruption, albeit with a smaller number of officers working on that angle than if they had been the chief suspects. Now, given the Americans were out of the picture, the bulk of the team would fall in behind them, and they would seek to make up for valuable lost time.
The news was delivered at the morning murder conference, where the SIO relayed a summary of the previous night’s interview. Kearney was meticulous, and so had travelled to Shannon Garda Station himself to ensure that procedure was followed to the letter in interviewing the pair. He had made clear from the first meeting of the investigation team that he wasn’t interested in a successful detection, only in a successful conviction.
It wasn’t an artificial distinction: in their annual reports, the Guards cited the number of cases they were satisfied they had detected. But detected meant only that the Guards were satisfied they had correctly identified the killer. It didn’t necessarily mean the Director of Public Prosecutions would agree there was sufficient evidence against the suspect to launch a prosecution. And even if the director’s office did agree, it didn’t mean a court of law would convict the accused.
