The Murder Loop, page 2
Cass was surprised Finnegan didn’t finish by asking her if she understood.
But Finnegan was already walking away.
Happy Christmas to you too.
And fuck my life for being stupid enough to come home to this bullshit.
CHAPTER FOUR
There were fresh tyre marks in the shape of eights where teenagers had spun handbrake turns on the narrow road through Killarney National Park. Mason Brady was amused if not quite impressed.
Even if the road twisted its way through the woodland, lakes and mountains, requiring drivers to slow to crawling pace at some points, the park was practically deserted at night. He knew the night-time emptiness first-hand – he’d explored its considerable terrain in the darkness enough times by now. From a quick glance, he could tell the drivers had picked the safer spots, away from the blind turns, where they would see the headlights of approaching cars with plenty of time to spare. So more teenage jinks than high-risk manoeuvres. Still though, they must have frightened the shit out of the deer.
Killarney town was a significant urban centre in comparison to Glencale, and only an hour’s scenic drive away. Mason had gone to Killarney because it had a well-stocked camping outlet store, although needless to say, it didn’t sell certain of the specialities he would have preferred, such as the military-grade knives to which he was long accustomed. But Brady didn’t want to draw Garda attention by being in possession of such specialities anyway, and instead made do with the lethal tools he could acquire through legal means – such as the array of construction knives he’d been using on the renovation project. He’d made one exception, acquiring an unlicensed shotgun as a last resort. The shotgun was well hidden, and Brady considered that it would be a signal failure if he had to use it, though of course he wouldn’t hesitate if the circumstances required it.
Killarney town had been busy, as shoppers purchased last-minute gifts and went for Christmas Eve drinks. The national park, by contrast, was devoid of the usual crowds of hikers, day-trippers and cyclists. The inclement weather was no doubt a factor: it had snowed overnight and despite it being mid-afternoon now, there were still pockets of black ice on the more sheltered parts of the route.
While the mountains in these parts were no more than hills compared to what he was used to, their snow-covered peaks looked splendid nonetheless. On a whim, Brady halted the car at one of the more popular viewing spots to savour the scene. He had the place to himself, and as he exited the car and felt the slap of freezing air across his face, he felt content. Alert to the risks he was running, but confident that he had managed them effectively to date.
From his vantage point, he could see clusters of yellow gorse rolling down the mountainside. There were no walking trails in this section, which veered steeply down to the lakes below. In his extensive research, Brady had read that the lakes were up to seventy-five metres deep in some places. Trained as he was to know such things, he understood such depth would work to his advantage. The volume and weight of the water would keep a lot of things hidden deep from view.
While he wouldn’t describe any region of the park as inhospitable – considering some of the environments he’d operated in – it struck him that this particular area was significantly less accessible than others.
It wouldn’t be the worst place to bury a body.
But he’d found much better.
CHAPTER FIVE
Over a number of weeks, Cass’s parents had repeatedly encouraged her to come over for Christmas lunch, without success. And so on Christmas morning, Cass was by choice alone in her rented apartment in a small estate on the edge of the town, consuming the case file.
Glencale was not without violent crime – there was plenty of it. Drunken brawls that got out of hand, domestic assault, sexual assault and more. Nor did the town’s distance from the major cities spare it from occasional drug-related violence. Cass knew her colleagues were currently hunting a marauding gang who had carried out a number of aggravated burglaries on isolated farms across the county over the last few months, terrorising and frequently beating their victims.
But for all that, murder was – thankfully – rare. Cass knew approximate figures without having to look them up. Ireland, in any given year, had about seventy to eighty murders. In a bad year, Kerry, being a rural county, with just a handful of large towns, might account for three or four of them. Glencale might see a murder every three to four years. Which explained the shock in the community when the body of Nabila Fathi had been discovered in woodland halfway up the mountains to the south-east of the town in an area known as the Hag’s Loop.
Cass knew instantly that the location of the body would have further troubled locals. For all the town’s tourist sheen and sophistication, tradition and superstition died hard. The Loop was named after the mythical crone who controlled the weather, determining the onset of winter and wreaking havoc on those who offended her. Sparsely populated, when the sun shone the Loop was pleasant ground for sightseers and hikers. But when the Hag was angry, the Loop turned eerie: shrouded in mist or bucketed in rain. One minute you could see for miles and a minute later, you’d struggle to make out the pathway in front of you.
Unsurprisingly, all manner of local lore had built up through the centuries – of ancient sacrifices and curses, of animals dying mysteriously, of trails that would swallow you in the mist, never to be seen again. The story went that the crone would wail shortly before the next victim disappeared, a regional version of the banshee tradition.
As a child, the Loop had spooked the hell out of Cass and most of her friends – they didn’t need the Bermuda Triangle and its like; the Hag was much more real, immediate and terrifying. And while she had long since left such fears behind, the same couldn’t be said for everybody. One section of the Loop was known as the trackway, where a series of indentations in a rock outcrop were said to be the crone’s footprints. Preposterous as it may seem, she knew there were farmers on the Loop who wouldn’t let their sheep graze anywhere near the trackway, for fear it would bring them bad luck.
The murder of Nabila Fathi would have frightened many in its own right; that her body had been found in the Loop would, no doubt, have added another frisson of fear for some.
Had that been intentional? From the file, Cass got the impression that the original investigation team hadn’t given it any thought. In itself, this was not massively surprising given that investigators focused on cold, hard fact.
She read on. As per procedure, a murder incident team had been appointed, headed by a detective inspector from the wider region and drawing on specialist expertise from the Garda criminal investigation and technical bureaux, as well as other units.
In the early days of the investigation, the specialist expertise dominated – members of the technical bureau oversaw crime-scene management, ballistics, mapping, fingerprints and photography; members of the criminal investigation bureau shaped the wider investigation, advising on which leads to follow.
The specialist teams then withdrew either as the technical work was completed or the investigative expertise was required elsewhere, leaving the case in the hands of the local officers. At all times, the detective inspector, as senior investigating officer or SIO, retained responsibility for deciding where to take the investigation. Cass knew the Guards had a good record of detecting murder cases; she also knew the force wasn’t perfect, and that there were sometimes major gaps in unsolved cases, where local officers had been too slow to call in national expertise, where crime scenes were badly managed or leads poorly progressed.
But if the investigation team hadn’t had time for local superstition, she could see they had clearly been competent and thorough. There was nothing in the job book to suggest otherwise – it had thousands of entries outlining, in the standard chronological order, the tasks undertaken and the leads followed in a bid to solve the case. It and every aspect of the case file pointed to a methodical investigation. The only thing missing was the identity of the killer.
The identity of the victim, by contrast, had taken very little time. Nabila had been reported missing three months before the body was found and officers knew it was her from items found at the scene, before DNA analysis later confirmed as much. A Coptic Christian, Nabila had fled religious persecution in her native Egypt at the age of nineteen, seeking asylum in Ireland. Under the Irish system, she had then spent more than four years in a direct provision centre – whereby the state provided basic accommodation, food and a miniscule weekly payment – until her application was decided upon.
Four fucking years, Cass thought. She was more than familiar with the slow grind of bureaucracy – the Guards had their own shitty version of it – but this system was perverse, a deliberate attempt to discourage others from coming. The state typically contracted out the running of the system to private enterprise – the direct provision centre in Glencale, as well as several others, was run by an investment fund no doubt enjoying excellent returns. The state had finally granted Nabila asylum close to her twenty-fourth birthday. Four months later, just as her world was blossoming, she was dead.
Cass was startled by the buzz of her mobile phone. Work, she supposed, as her parents had already rung earlier, and she wasn’t expecting other well-wishers. But when she looked at the screen, she saw a familiar Dublin number: the prison. She treated the call in precisely the same way she had treated all her ex-husband’s other attempts to contact her over the previous months – by ignoring it.
All calls to and from the prison, other than ones to a solicitor or counsellor, were recorded, and Cass didn’t want recordings of her speaking to Hugh Moran. More than that, she had no desire to speak to him. He had also written repeatedly to her, and again, she knew the chances were the letters had been reviewed by the prison authorities before being posted. In his first such letter, he had pleaded with Cass to use her contacts in the justice system to seek clemency for him. She had saved every letter since, to ensure she had a record in case any trouble arose, but hadn’t opened a single one. Cass had no interest in what they said.
Adult prisoners generally got just one call a week. Cass didn’t know if the authorities granted any more leeway on Christmas Day, but in any event, she knew Hugh would have tried her first. And she knew what the call meant. He was suffering, crushed mentally by the burden of what he had done, and seized permanently with fear in a hostile and nerve-shredding environment. He needed to hear her voice. To hear that she forgave him, that she understood what he was going through, that it would be all right. That he could – would – make it through.
He can go to hell if he thinks I’m speaking to him today.
Unlike her, Hugh had always needed people, had always needed to be recognised, embraced, applauded, loved. Mere connections wouldn’t do; he needed to be bathed in human warmth. There wouldn’t be much of that to go around where he was residing for the next seven years. But Cass had no interest in being his saviour.
She recalled another of those times her father had counselled her against joining the Guards. She was more liberal than he was, more prone to seeing the world in grey rather than black and white. Tough on crime – him. Tough on the causes of crime – her.
‘Most people in life deserve a second chance,’ she’d said.
‘Give a second chance to the people I come across on a daily basis and you quickly come to regret it,’ her father had replied. ‘You’ve too much empathy, Kate. Keep it for family and friends – it’s a lousy attribute in a police officer.’
She had disagreed – of course she had – and by the time she qualified, empathy was in fashion. Which was good at least as far as victims of crime were concerned, because this traditionally had never been the Guards’ strong point and slowly it was improving. But she could no longer completely disagree with her father: Cass’s years on the force had hardened her, as much as she wished to cling to her core values.
Monsters did exist, and even if they were a small minority, they deserved no mercy. They needed to be gutted – she had no reluctance in saying that. The single worst thing about work was not the bureaucracy, or the draining caseload, or the lack of resources. It was seeing the most twisted offenders serve their time and be released to kill, rape or assault another innocent victim. The case files were littered with such savagery, and society was foolish to believe its practitioners could be rehabilitated.
It wasn’t contradictory in Cass’s mind to hold that view and still believe the majority of people were inherently decent, tried to do the right thing, and sometimes failed.
She knew what camp Hugh fell into, and it wasn’t the minority one. He was the softest of men, a teddy bear. She knew he couldn’t live with what he’d done, she knew he was likely to be in the cruellest condition imaginable, she knew what a word of tolerance or forgiveness would mean to him.
Most people in life deserve a second chance…
He’ll get it – when he’s done his time.
Not now, not from me.
Outside the apartment, a handful of children were whizzing around on new bikes they’d got for Christmas. Inside, Cass concluded her study of the case file with a second examination of the crime-scene photographs. Once done, she sighed and rose from the table to sling a frozen pizza and garlic bread in the oven.
She couldn’t help but be reminded by this desultory fare of the handful of Christmases when she’d been off duty, and the feasts which Hugh, a gastronome and gifted cook, had conjured up. Multiple courses, and he’d put equal, if not more, effort into the Christmas drinks menu. Champagne for breakfast, claret throughout the day, cocktails to finish off the night. Sugar and spice and all things nice… What had seemed so life-affirming to begin with should have been a warning. But she’d gone fully along with it in those early years, not realising the path he was on.
She glanced at her phone again, knowing he had left a voicemail. Like his letters, she would save it but not listen to it. She didn’t doubt the pain he was in; she just had too much of her own to listen to him. Raw, toxic, consuming grief, spreading like an infection through her body, with no antidote she could think of.
Cursing silently, she switched off the oven. As much as she was comfortable with her own company, she wasn’t going to allow Hugh to dominate her thoughts for the remainder of the day.
The offerings and atmosphere at her parents’ house were an immeasurable improvement, and mid-afternoon, she and her father took a long walk to work off some of the calories. There was a pleasant chill in the air as they strolled along the country lanes surrounding the Cassidy homestead.
Cass hadn’t sought her father’s counsel when moving back to Glencale, nor had she asked him for an advance briefing on Finnegan or her team; if she was going to make mistakes with career choices or colleagues, she wanted them to be her own mistakes.
But she had no difficulty seeking his opinion on cases she was handling, and never had: Ted Cassidy had been a troubleshooter, sent in by senior management to lead the most challenging cases or sharpen up underperforming districts. It was how he had come to police his home county: being put in charge of operations in Kerry at a time in the mid-eighties when the force’s reputation there had taken a battering because of its handling of a number of contentious cases.
He was the most experienced officer Cass knew personally, even if he was now retired. His retirement hobbies consisted of hiking the local mountains or re-examining long forgotten unsolved cases – both of which he preferred to the golf course. Hence, he listened keenly as Cass filled him in on Finnegan’s request to revisit Nabila Fathi’s murder and the details of the file. She was mildly surprised that he knew relatively little of the case, other than what had been in the news.
‘Once you’re gone, you’re gone,’ he said. ‘The way it should be. The only cases I ever look at are the ancient ones – no longer under active investigation by anybody.’
‘I’ll bring you up to speed then.’
‘Start at the start – every detail.’
So Cass did, explaining that Nabila’s body had been found in one of the most isolated parts of the Loop. A farmer had been training an energetic Border collie which had plunged into the pine forest and stayed there, barking ferociously and resisting all orders to heel. The farmer was forced to follow and would spend many years afterwards wishing he hadn’t.
‘Everything after was by the book. The crime scene was swiftly preserved and a crime-scene coordinator appointed. Incident room was established and the job book opened. A canvass coordinator directed the door-to-doors, although there were obviously few enough houses at which to make inquiries. Friends and acquaintances of Nabila were interviewed – mostly from the direct provision centre and a few from the supermarket where she began working after finally being granted asylum.
‘She had no family in Ireland, and there was no suggestion of a partner. Her friends offered little in the way of useful information. They described her as shy, affectionate and loyal – popular without ever seeming to realise as much. They couldn’t think of anybody who would have wanted her dead.’
‘Her movements?’
‘She was a near-daily attendee at the cathedral – I believe on the basis that it was acceptable to attend a Catholic church if there was none of her own faith nearby. That seemed to be the most regular thing in her life. Nothing else notable, no sudden breaks from the norm.’
‘Conflicts at the centre – anything that friends feared to mention?’
‘The original team interviewed the management of the centre at length. No conflicts, no trouble, nothing worthy of further pursuit.’
‘And at the supermarket?’
‘Staff there hadn’t known her as long or as well, but said much the same things. Nabila had been excited to have her first job and independence after so many years waiting. She had spoken about doing a night course in accountancy. She hadn’t clashed with anybody at work, and no one could think why anybody would have targeted her.’
