The Murder Loop, page 22
‘I will after tonight – I just want to prove to myself first that I’m not going all sorts of crazy.’
‘We’re all fucking crazy to do this job,’ he muttered. ‘So what exactly is your plan?’
‘I don’t have one yet… but I’d value having someone there in my corner.’
He shook his head, as if silently cursing the naivety of youth. ‘Where and when?’
‘Somewhere public, around eight. You’d be at a discreet distance, observing. Just in case anything goes wrong.’
‘And if it does?’
‘We’ll take him,’ she said.
‘You look at me and mistake me for GI Joe or something?’
Despite the stress, or maybe because of it, the absurdity of the reference made Cass laugh.
‘You’re not the crazy one,’ Ryan continued. ‘I’m the fucking mentaller to go along with this.’ But his thin lips had creased into the trace of a smile.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The rain started mid-afternoon, shortly after Cass had texted Brady with a time and place. Glencale House seemed an obvious venue. The appearance of privacy, sufficient nooks to allow Ryan to find a discreet spot and observe at a distance.
Brady texted back immediately:
Am stepping up in the world. Off 2 buy dinner jacket…
In the interests of pretending all was fine, she sent him a smiling face emoji.
Then she turned back to building her case against him. But it was difficult to swat away thoughts of the impending showdown. Would he have the balls to sit there and pretend nothing was wrong? Or would he, by any miniscule chance, have disregarded her behaviour that morning? Be oblivious to the fact that he was a suspect?
A peal of thunder, a squall of rain in response: serve, return. The timber windows in the old station rattled. It was dark outside by 5pm. As she had done a dozen times already that day, she considered sending off the DNA sample and seeking expedited processing. But again she held back, knowing it had potential to backfire.
Motive: Why did she keep asking herself about motive? Most of her colleagues considered motive utterly secondary in an investigation: gather what actual evidence was available first and see where it pointed. If it led to a suspect, and it was decisive, then motive barely mattered – until court at least, where the prosecution and the defence could argue about mens rea, intent or lack of it. So why did she keep returning to motive? Especially when, on the face of it, the motive was abundantly clear: murder to hide the source of illicit money, presumably a lot of it.
But why go to such lengths? Why not just leave the jurisdiction, and leave any investigators chasing straws in the wind? Was there something else she was missing? Drugs or other criminal activity besides the money itself?
Her attention was broken by a colleague landing a gear-bag on a desk as he arrived for the night-shift.
It made her think of Devine, and whether he would leave his personal things in the station until the anti-corruption investigation was finished, or sneak in some night – or stroll in bold as brass in daytime – to collect the stuff.
As she watched her colleague unzip the gear-bag and remove food containers to store in the fridge, it hit her.
The church in catalogue perfection.
Completely devoid of mementoes, of personality.
The packed bag in the spare room.
The estate agent’s photos taken as a precaution.
The deceptively fast car.
Brady was a man ready to run at a moment’s notice.
With dismay, she saw his calm demeanour that morning, and his subsequent text messages, for what they were: a sham.
He was already running – nothing surer.
Without a second’s hesitation, she grabbed Brady’s car keys from the desk and dashed for the door.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
An extendable baton and a can of pepper spray – it had seemed insufficient when hunting Akeem Issa and seemed even more insufficient now. But Cass pushed the concern to the back of her mind. She had to know.
She thought of Nabila’s lonely death in the Loop, and shivered. In her rush, she’d left behind her radio, meaning no ability to summon emergency assistance if required. But given the distance from the station to the old church, it wouldn’t arrive on time anyway. She dialled Ryan on her mobile. When it went to voicemail, she hung up and dialled him again. And got precisely the same result. She phoned the station and left a message for Ryan to contact her asap.
She threw Brady’s car into the corners and pushed it to its limits on the straights. The car shook in the wind as the storm took full hold.
Motive: if she hadn’t spent so much time futilely obsessing about motive, she might have seen through his deception sooner.
But that was just an excuse, she knew. Her real failure had been leaving the church when she should have arrested Brady on the spot. It was a failure borne from fear. She wouldn’t allow it to get in the way a second time.
The heat in the car was on full blast but as she took the familiar turn-off to climb towards the church, she shivered again. She would be entirely alone up there, disoriented by the dark, deafened by the storm.
Then she thought of the church bell pealing its haunting omen in her sleep, and she shivered a third time.
She pressed on the accelerator.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The car wheels crunched once more as she drove across the gravel, the headlights illuminating the seemingly deserted church.
He’s gone. Just as I thought…
So why am I shaking uncontrollably?
She pulled the car to a halt, rain drumming off the roof. She fished in his glove department for a torch and was relieved to find one. It meant she had to choose whether she held her steel baton or pepper spray in her free hand. The storm made the pepper spray redundant, she figured – the wind would blow it everywhere if she had to use it outdoors, maybe even back in her own face.
So the baton.
She exited slowly, acutely aware he would already have the upper hand if somewhere on the property.
Wind whipped against the trees and drove a deluge of rain into her face, forcing her to scrunch up her eyes. Her fist locked on the baton, her heart hammering, she took a couple of steps cautiously across the drive, scanning from side to side with the torch.
And then she shrieked as the drive was suddenly bathed in light.
The fucking sensor light; she had forgotten.
She remained stationary, allowing her heart to settle, watching for any signs of motion.
Nothing.
She resumed her approach, cautious as before, reaching the front door and trying the handle. Locked. Using the torch, she scanned the front windows. All shut. Still no sign of movement.
She felt a touch more certain that she was alone. But the eeriness of this place in the storm, its murderous history, the bell clanging furiously in her mind, wouldn’t allow her settle.
She walked to the rear of the property, and shivered again as her torch swept across the small graveyard. How Brady had spent his nights awake here was beyond her. But then, perhaps that spoke to a psychopathic tendency he had hidden effectively.
She ran the torchlight over the rear windows and sliding doors: same result. All locked, no sign of life. She had no desire to step into the church, but knew her search was incomplete if she didn’t.
She swung her baton hard against one of the doors, but it had little impact against the tempered glass. She scanned the ground for something more effective and saw a loose brick by the graveyard gate. It took three attempts, but eventually the brick shattered the glass and triggered a house alarm. Gingerly, she stepped into the church, wet boots scrunching on broken glass.
She found a switch to flick on the light. The open-plan kitchen and living area were empty as she already knew. The door of the spare room was closed. She walked slowly towards it, imagining Brady leaping from somewhere at any second, the noise of the alarm doing nothing to settle her nerves.
As she grasped the handle, the wind died down for a brief moment. It was just enough to hear the sound of an approaching car.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Cass ran out of the church and took cover behind the gable wall furthest from the drive, enabling her to observe the imminent arrival. It couldn’t be a random visitor, not up here, in this weather, on this night. Brady must have access to a second vehicle, would see his own car parked outside, and would know she was somewhere on the property. Her fist white from gripping the baton, she concentrated on steadying her breathing and preparing for the violence that was sure to come…
And then, to her astonishment, she heard the short wail of a siren, a warning shot to those who needed it to cease and desist.
Relief flooded through her veins. The sensor light flicked on again as Cass ran back across the drive to greet Finnegan and Ryan.
‘You’re okay?’ Ryan had to shout to be heard above the wind.
‘Fine,’ Cass said, ‘but he’s not here.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Let’s make it certain.’
Finnegan first radioed base and gave instructions to deal with the alarm company. Then the three of them conducted a proper sweep of the church and graveyard, during which the alarm stopped squalling. The sweep yielded nothing.
They returned to the squad car, and Finnegan signalled Cass to get into the back.
‘Now,’ she said, a distinct edge evident in her voice, ‘would you care to tell me what the fuck is going on?’
It felt oddly fitting to Cass that she was sitting where a suspect normally would. She had a case to answer, after all, and the time for silence was gone.
She positioned herself in the middle of the back seat, to have eye contact with Finnegan who had turned sideways in hers to glare at Cass. Ryan sat looking straight ahead, watching the rain beat against the windows; he would play no part in the inquisition. But before she answered Finnegan’s first question, she had one of her own.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Noel got your message to call him and guessed where you’d gone,’ Finnegan said. ‘He came to me – as you should have done – and said he was worried you were about to do something stupid.’
‘“Dangerous”,’ Ryan interjected. ‘“Something dangerous” is what I said.’
‘Same bloody thing,’ Finnegan snapped. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Some of this you already know. Bear with me on the repetition and on the gaps,’ Cass began.
‘In 2017, during the Libyan Civil War, about 160 million euro was lifted clean from a branch of the central bank by one of the factions involved. Other currencies were also taken – Libyan dinar, US dollars – but for our purposes, the euro are what matters.
‘Mason Brady served with the US military in Benghazi around this time – doing what, I don’t know. But he was there – that much, I’ve confirmed,’ she continued.
‘The euro notes were damaged by flooding in the bank vault. The faction who lifted the notes later attempted to use a cleaning agent to undo the damage, but only made it worse. This made the notes difficult to offload, difficult to use in everyday transactions, because businesses would be reluctant to take them. And it created a second problem: it made the notes very recognisable when people tried to exchange them for new notes in central banks across Europe.
‘In 2016, a year before the bank raid, Nabila Fathi arrived in Ireland from Egypt seeking asylum. While her application was being considered, she was housed in the direct provision centre here in Glencale.
‘At some point in more recent years, a Libyan, Akeem Issa, made his way into this country, but this time illegally. We have no record of his entry or exit, and he was never captured in the European system.
‘In December 2020, CCTV captured Nabila trying to exchange some of the Libyan notes in the Currency Comptroller in Dublin. Separate CCTV footage showed her getting into a car nearby the Comptroller’s offices driven by Issa.
‘Shortly after her return to Glencale, Nabila was murdered and her body dumped. But her killer made a mistake. She had tucked a couple of the euro notes into a hidden compartment in her rucksack, maybe as payment, maybe as security, and the killer didn’t realise this. He was concerned only about her phone, thinking that was the only item that would tie him to Nabila. But the notes were what enabled us to trace her movements to the Currency Comptroller, and subsequently to the footage of her getting in the car with Issa.’
Now the next part of the chronological sequence is January 2021, when my husband gets into a car drunk and ploughs through a pedestrian crossing, killing a mother and injuring her child. But let’s sail right past that one.
‘Finally, Mason Brady arrived in Ireland. He bought this place with cash in Glencale and started renovating it. Records show he arrived after Nabila’s death but before the discovery of her body. But I think he may have been in the country longer – somehow had a route to get in and out.
‘Nabila’s body is found in March 2021. Meanwhile, Issa is keeping a very low profile. He has an arrangement to stay in a ramshackle farmhouse a few miles outside the town – and then disappears completely sometime in the summer. We find his burnt-out car – the car Nabila had last been seen in – but not him.
‘And then Brady. He restores this place. He also keeps a low profile, but seems to be liked by those who encounter him. Courteous, helpful.
‘We get to this year. Bridge Bannon is murdered a couple of miles down the road from here. Brady voluntarily comes to the station, and gives a witness statement about his two fellow compatriots. You know that part of the story.’
Now the awkward bit.
‘At an appropriate point when it was clear Brady had no involvement in the Bannon murder, he and I… begin seeing each other.’
And grow increasingly fond of each other, or so I thought. But I’ll omit that too.
‘Last night, I stayed here. I didn’t sleep well, and in the early hours of the morning, went looking for an extra blanket in the spare room when I saw something. Brady had pinned to a dartboard in the spare room one of the damaged banknotes: the same notes that Nabila had in her rucksack, the same notes lifted from the central bank in Benghazi.
‘That’s everything I know. The rest is conjecture. But it looks to me like Mason Brady killed Nabila Fathi and then killed Akeem Issa.’
‘Why?’ Finnegan asked.
‘The money. I thought originally that Issa must have been the source of the damaged notes, smuggling them with him into Europe, and onto Ireland. I thought it was probably a small amount, maybe a few thousand. But now I think Brady was the one who smuggled out the money – maybe a lot of it. It would have been easy for him to do so. He finishes his tour of duty, he’s honourably discharged from the military, allows some time to pass to avoid suspicion, and then lands in Ireland with some kind of plan to start changing the notes. But it’s not as straightforward as it seemed originally. So he somehow makes contact with Issa and Nabila. The December run to the Currency Comptroller was a trial, I think. And when it didn’t work out, Brady realised he had a series of problems – illicit money that he couldn’t launder, and two people who could trace that money back to him.’
‘But this heist in Libya – it was by one of the tribal factions, right? So how did Brady come across the money?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cass said. ‘Maybe his team conducted a raid at some point, discovered a quantity of the notes, and kept it to themselves – I can only guess.’
‘Forensics on Issa’s car?’
‘Working on them as we speak but I wouldn’t hold my breath.’
‘And if we conducted a forensic sweep on this place,’ Finnegan said, waving her hand in the direction of the church, ‘we’re going to find your DNA everywhere, right?’
‘Yes,’ Cass said, with a twinge of embarrassment, recognising – despite their dysfunctional relationship – the extent to which she was silently seeking Finnegan’s approval.
‘Tell me exactly what happened here overnight.’
‘When I saw the note, I got scared. I left the house, taking Brady’s car. But before I left, I took a kitchen fork with his DNA on it. At some point, he saw me in the kitchen, maybe even bagging the fork. Either way, he knew I was acting strangely. But he pretended to ignore it, and let me leave. So I fled.
‘He then sent me a message saying hold onto the car and that he would meet me in Glencale tonight. I was wobbling already, wondering if I was seeing things that weren’t there. And I fell for the ruse. It gave him time to escape. He was on permanent standby to evacuate at a moment’s notice – but I was blind to it. And when it eventually dawned on me this evening, I knew I had to get out here.’
Finnegan sucked her teeth, the by now familiar tic when she was contemplating something. ‘Why did he kill them so far apart?’ she asked. ‘Nabila in December but Issa months later? Why stay here so long after killing them? And why keep the note on display?’
‘It would have been stupid to commit two murders in a short period of time – he spaced them out to ensure less chance of detection. For all we know, he and Issa may have agreed that Nabila had to die, but Issa may not have expected anything to happen to him. As for time, I think Brady stayed here precisely to ensure he wasn’t under suspicion, and when no one came knocking on his door, maybe figured he was out of the woods and decided to stay a bit longer. That’s my best guess. As for the note – he had no way of knowing we had found identical notes among Nabila’s possessions. That information was kept from the media and never leaked. So Brady had no way of knowing we had linked Nabila’s murder to the notes… What do you think?’
‘I think you’re reading a lot into a single banknote pinned to a dartboard.’
