The Murder Loop, page 19
‘Somewhere else you’d prefer to be, Devine? Back at the school maybe?’
His face contorted in anger. ‘No wonder your husband went off the rails, married to a bitch like you.’
She started towards him, ready to swing, only for Ryan to step between them. ‘Cop the fuck on, the pair of ye. Concentrate on your jobs, for fuck’s sake.’
Cass stood her ground. Devine stepped back, raised his hands in mock concession, and sniggered again. ‘Good man, Noel, keep that one in line. She needs a bit of handling.’
It took a superhuman effort not to take the bait. She thought longingly of the tasers carried by the armed support members, and wished she had one now. She’d willingly shoot fifty thousand volts into Devine. She’d aim low, too, for extra satisfaction.
As Devine got into the car and started it, Ryan said – loud enough for him to hear – ‘Never mind that ignorant fucker.’
‘I’ve better things to spend my time thinking about,’ Cass replied.
But Devine had struck a nerve: the operation had produced nothing. That was her abiding thought as she stuffed the last of her own gear into the boot, and slammed it shut.
Which was when she heard Bruton shouting in the distance. The new recruit was racing across the slurried field, oblivious in his excitement to the splatters of shit on his uniform.
He’d found the car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The slurry-spreader turned up at the station the following morning decidedly worse for wear. Wally White had been at a wedding the night before, he explained apologetically to Cass, which explained in turn his hangover and failure to return voice messages until a short time earlier. Cass had seen him arrive at the station in a hideous, red, seven-year-old BMW which, even if bought second-hand, must have still cost a fair packet for someone in his mid-twenties.
He’d been dumb enough to drive, despite clearly having drink in his system. And the stupidity wasn’t a one-off: Cass had seen his record – separate prosecutions for dangerous driving and possession of a small quantity of cannabis, escaping with fines both times. She decided to make him aware he was on perilous ground before pursuing his relationship with Akeem Issa.
‘You didn’t notice the missed calls last night, Wally?’
‘Sure, the wedding – the music was loud, like, and I was trying to enjoy myself.’
‘Whose wedding was it?’
‘Nathan Broderick – one of the lads from school.’
‘And you had a few drinks?’
‘A few pints, yeah, and a few rounds – you know the way.’
‘You still under the influence now, Wally?’
‘God no,’ he said, squirming as if his foolishness had only occurred to him. ‘Had the big fry-up for breakfast. And pints of coffee.’
‘You’d pass a breathalyser then for us, would you?’
Strike one. He looked queasy now, and Cass knew he wouldn’t be putting up much resistance.
‘Tell you what, let’s leave that aside for now. Tell us about Akeem Issa – how did you first meet him?’
‘I needed a few lads to do a few days’ work for me – Aki was one of them.’
‘Aki – not Akeem?’
‘That’s what I knew him as.’
‘And you hired him as casual labour?’
‘Yeah, stuff you’d need a few bodies for.’
‘How?’
‘Whatcha mean?’
‘How did you first meet him, get connected to him?’
‘A mate who works the boats knew a few lads always looking for a bit of work. Aki was one of them.’
‘How did you contact him?’
‘I got a mobile for him.’
‘Still have it?’
Wally flicked through his phone and called out a number. Cass recognised it as the number which Nabila Fathi had dialled several times in the run-up to and on the likely day of her death. She also knew the phone was a dead end, long since out of service, with no registered owner. None of which she’d be telling the idiot sitting across from her.
‘And all this was when exactly?’
‘Dunno – maybe a year ago, maybe a bit more.’
‘You’d have records you could check though, right? Payslips and the like?’
Strike two.
‘Well,’ he stammered, ‘it was casual labour, like, just a few odd jobs, so I paid the lads a day’s rate. A good day’s rate – fair, like.’
‘In cash, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not sure Revenue would be too impressed to hear that, Wally.’
‘I’m behind a bit at the moment, but I’ll sort it all.’
‘What caused you to fall behind?’
‘The farm’s a fucking bitc–’ He stopped and corrected himself. ‘The farm’s hard going. Should walk away from it and get a proper job.’
‘You inherited it from your father?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But Muckanish House and the land around it – that’s not yours?’
‘I lease that.’
‘But that’s all in cash too, right?’
Cass knew as much already, having spoken to the London couple who owned the property and who reluctantly admitted they weren’t registered as landlords because they had never declared the money. Cass had often thought the size of the black economy in rural Ireland was seriously underestimated, and this one small chain of events was reinforcing her view.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re a great man for the books, Wally.’
‘Always struggled with ’em in school.’
‘What was the deal with Akeem – Aki?’
‘He did a week’s work for me and then asked if I knew anywhere cheap he could stay. We struck a deal – he’d do a bit more work for me for free – a couple of days a week – and could have Muckanish as a roof over his head.’
‘So you got free labour and he got a shithole to sleep in?’
‘He was glad of it. He’d been sleeping in his car, like.’
‘Still though. Worked out grand for you.’
‘I’m smashed,’ he said, a forlorn note in his voice. ‘Between the farm, the fucking crypto thing I did, and the horses. Can barely keep up the payments on my car.’
Cass had to suppress the urge to laugh. Wally looked broken but she couldn’t find a trace of sympathy for him. Crypto and the bookies, for fuck’s sake. And then trying to take advantage of others to make up for his financial misadventures.
‘When did the arrangement start?’
‘Like I said, the week after I met him. About a year ago, something like that.’
‘And when did it stop?’
‘It didn’t. He just took off.’
‘When?’
‘A few months ago. He was there for the shearing – fucking handy too, he was – that was in May. And then the hay at the end of July. So some time after that – about August, I’d say.’
‘Did he tell you he was leaving?’
‘Not a word. Just took off.’
‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘Can’t remember – when we were finishing the hay, I suppose.’
‘You didn’t try ringing him when he left?’
‘Sure, the house was empty. Completely cleaned out. I just reckoned he’d moved on, like.’
‘Was he in any trouble that you were aware of? Anything he was running from?’
‘Nothing – honest.’
‘And you never had any trouble with him? The two of you never argued, fought?’
‘Christ no – not at all.’
‘But I’m sure you’d tell us if you knew anything important, right?’
‘For sure. One hundred per cent, like. What did he do anyway?’
‘We think he can help us with a case we’re investigating. We’d like to speak to him.’
‘The mobile maybe–’
‘Yes, we’ll try that. How come you didn’t report the car?’
‘The car?’
‘The car was abandoned and burned out in the forestry behind Muckanish. Why didn’t you report it?’
‘I never saw it,’ he said. ‘Swear to God – on my mother’s life – didn’t even realise the car was there.’
Even though the forestry was quite thin, she was inclined to believe him, for three reasons. Firstly, Akeem had made a decent job of hiding the car, driving it into a clearing that offered good cover from most angles. Secondly, no one around here gave smoke plumes in the fields and mountains a second thought – some farmer was always burning something, whether it was gorse or other green waste. Thirdly, it was clear to her that Wally wouldn’t have given the forest a second thought whenever he was at Muckanish, because the forestry was not part of the lease. Cute enough to look after his own interests, but utterly oblivious to the wider world around him. So she could accept his ignorance about the car. But there was something odd about it – the dumping of it, the timing – that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
The hypothesis was that Akeem Issa had, for whatever reason, decided to flee Glencale, and knowing the car was a forensic risk, burnt it out. Perhaps he had some reason to believe the police were about to catch up with him, although from Cass’s review of the case file, she couldn’t imagine what that could have been, given he hadn’t been on the radar of the original investigation team.
Additionally, Nabila had been killed in December and her body found in March. Yet if Wally was correct, Issa was still in Glencale in August. Why had he been seemingly relaxed enough to stay in Glencale immediately after Nabila’s murder, and again after her body had been found and the investigation launched, only to get rattled suddenly in August? There was nothing in the case file – absolutely nothing – to indicate anything of importance happening in the investigation that month.
Then again, perhaps Issa had been supremely confident that he had got away with murder, made his own decision to move on from Glencale, and simply abandoned the car where it was most convenient to do so, with no witnesses and as little forensic evidence as possible. Maybe it was that simple.
But she knew she was making one of the oldest mistakes in the book: assuming that a murderer acted logically at all times and looking for consistent reasoning. Erratic behaviour was much more likely in a case like this. So maybe there was no good explanation for Issa’s behaviour other than – for whatever reason – he had decided to leave.
But how to find him now?
And it was then she wondered if he was even still in Ireland. He’d found his way into the country illegally – what if he had exited the country in the same way? She’d be chasing a ghost.
She was still at her desk a little after 8pm, double-checking that they had initiated all possible search avenues, when Brady rang. Cass hadn’t given him a second thought all day, but was pleased nonetheless to see his name flash up.
‘Burger and a beer?’ he said.
‘That’s what I like about you – your foreplay.’
‘I know what a working girl needs.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s pejorative.’
‘I think I need a dictionary to keep up with you.’
‘You need more than a dictionary, my friend.’
‘I’m in town – I’ll pick you up.’
‘In your banger fit for a prince.’
‘Banger?’
‘Irish term – never mind,’ she said.
She wondered, briefly, whether she should stay at work. But the forensics on the car, even though being rushed to the top of the list, wouldn’t be available until the following day, and didn’t offer good prospects in any event. And she was certain that she and the team had triggered all the correct actions to try and locate the suspect.
Maybe a couple of drinks would help trigger some unconventional step she could take.
‘Give me fifteen minutes to change.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In the final years of her marriage, Cass had barely touched alcohol. It was hard not to think of that time now as she savoured a third glass of wine, knowing the man across the table would consume nothing more than a non-alcoholic beer, retain full control of his faculties, and look after her if the need arose. Not that it would. Cass couldn’t remember the last time she had lost control, and wasn’t going to start now. But still, it was comforting to think she maybe could, if she wished.
She insisted on his place when they finished their food, and so, he sat behind the wheel of his ‘banger’ – she’d eventually explained what it meant – and drove them out of Glencale, towards his temporary home.
He was glad he had reached out to her earlier – not least because it put an end to his own anxiety as to why she had cancelled on him two nights previously and what she’d been up to in the interim.
He now knew she had simply been working a case – nothing she would discuss with him, but clearly nothing to do with him either. His worries had been overplayed; his temporary home could remain home for a while longer. He drove contented in that knowledge. Cass, too, seemed contented. They had, he thought, reached this stage at astonishing speed, and if pushed to explain why, he wasn’t sure he’d have an answer.
She had never been one for drifting off to sleep in someone’s warm embrace. She didn’t need to be held after sex, preferring her own side of the bed, unencumbered by unnecessary contact. Brady had been around the block enough to get this instantly.
Still, she found herself touched that, despite the fact he never slept at night, he would wait for her to drift off before he rose from the bed. There was something sweet in the gesture from a man who, in different circumstances, would be capable of lethal violence.
She didn’t know what to make of his irregular sleeping habit: she sensed he had witnessed – or suffered – greater trauma in his military career than he had so far been prepared to detail. She doubted whether he actually got sufficient sleep in the mornings to make up for the loss at nights. The constant shadow under his eyes was a giveaway in that respect. And yet he functioned, and he endured. A part of her yearned to help him, but she hadn’t been able to help Hugh, and didn’t know where to start with Brady.
He didn’t want her – didn’t want anybody – to witness the effects. Roaring himself awake from the nightmare, momentarily petrified by the dark, sensing the steel-wool-like scraping of the hood against his face, tasting the bile and vomit in his mouth, hearing the crack of the gun.
Or waking in silent tears, tortured in a different way, because Pitch had come to him in his sleep, pleading for help to be rescued from Hades.
There was no chance Brady would allow Cass to hear his screams or see his tears. It was his agony to deal with, and his alone, no matter their companionable silences, their frenzied coupling, the sense that beneath their casual fling, something deeper was forming. Perhaps because they were both suffering, even if they worked not to show it. He feared the night, when sleep would unleash a flood of subconscious horrors.
Whereas her nightmares came during the day, when a random sight or sound could trigger shaming memories of the devastation wreaked by her husband.
Day or night, peace was an abstract concept for both of them.
A distant alarm, a spectre, somewhere in the recess of her mind. Hard to reach, to comprehend, but persistent; an omen. A ticking clock, counting down to catastrophe. No, not a clock. A bell. The fucking bell, swinging softly in the wind again and sounding its ominous warning.
She woke with a start, her heart pounding. No bell, because there wasn’t one. She closed her eyes and took a moment to settle herself, taking deep and steady breaths. And then realised, to her absolute astonishment, she could actually hear something else, something closer and decidedly less supernatural: the gentle and steady breathing of Brady, lying next to her, solidly asleep.
CHAPTER FORTY
She lay still for a few minutes, not wanting to wake him. The bell she had already dismissed to the back of her mind; instead, she felt oddly settled, as if someone somehow had applied salve to the raw and twisted knot she’d been carrying around in her stomach for so long. She found herself smiling at the syncopated beat of his sleep – each bar of gentle breathing interrupted by the off-beat of a single snore. It felt as if, after a long winter in which she had feared the freezing sea, she had finally plucked up the courage to plunge in again and surprised herself by how quickly her body and mind adjusted. Equilibrium, or something like it.
She sensed it was close to daybreak, and satisfied that he was still out cold, risked reaching for her phone on the bedside table to check the time: 5.45am, which might as well have been midnight in the tundra for all the light on offer. The room was pitch black, and in the Loop’s winter solitude, there would be no hint of daybreak for another couple of hours yet.
Cass slipped out of bed, pulled on his T-shirt, and padded as silently as she could across the wooden floor, gently pulling out the door behind her. Now, she could safely flick on the torch function on her phone, slip across the balcony and down the stairs.
It was a misnomer to think the countryside offered true silence at night: the metallic bark of a fallow deer or curse-like scream of a fox was enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone unfamiliar with the orchestral range of rural life. But Brady, she knew, would be hardwired to be alert for human threats: a creaking floorboard, wheels on gravel, the tinkle of smashing glass. Hence, she took care on the stairs to minimise creaks. When she got to the ground floor, she heard nothing but silence from the balcony.
She felt like coffee but knew the machine would be too loud. There was a distinct chill in the air – Brady had an oil-fired heating system but, rather than use the timer, simply clicked it on whenever he wanted heat. Much like the coffee, turning it on wasn’t an option, as the system produced a loud initial clanking when powering up that would wake him for sure. So she grabbed a herringbone throw from the sofa and went to the chair where Brady usually sat at night, staring out at the trees beyond, perhaps waiting for his own shadow, his own spectre – whatever it was that haunted his dreams – to emerge.
