You'll Get Yours, page 37
D’Arcy looked at him severely over the top of her glasses. “Mr. Duffy, surely you can dredge up from that lit—” another nudge from McLaughlin, “I’m struggling to believe you cannot recall where you were the night before last?”
She glanced at the kitchen bin overflowing with beer cans as if maybe that was a clue.
“Maggie?!”
They jumped as he roared over the noise of the hoover, calling to his wife as if she were a dog.
“Maggie!”
He dismounted his chair and stormed to the door to the front hall. “Turn off that bloody hoover and come in here now!”
He stamped back to the chair and flopped himself down.
“She’ll tell you,” he said, nodding at the door.
Maggie appeared, a sneer matching her husband’s as, to D’Arcy’s horror, she lit a cigarette and sucked down on it.
“What is it, DD?” Maggie asked, glaring at the coppers sullying her already filthy kitchen even more.
“Tell these peelers where I was last night.”
“Och, for the love of Jesus Christ our savior!” Maggie Duffy spat. “He finished his shift at 10 at night and was with me in front of the telly. We were watching Strictly.”
Declan threw back his head and laughed. “Got you there, didn’t I? Your man the footballer did the foxtrot. That Craig gave him a score of one. Aye, he’s one of those nancy boys, but they’re good for something at times. And your woman out of Eastenders did the pasodoble and got a perfect forty.”
McLaughlin saw his surprise mirrored on D’Arcy’s face, and he thought to himself, Never make assumptions...
Maggie nodded her head in agreement and perched herself on her husband’s lap.
“And they want to know where I was the night that cannon woman snuffed it and all, love,” he said, nibbling her earlobe.
D’Arcy shifted uncomfortably, McLaughlin too.
Maggie shrugged. “Sure, I’ve not a steel trap for a memory, so I don’t. What day was that, then?”
“It was the day before you picked me up,” D’Arcy said.
Maggie’s eyes shot to D’Arcy, glinting with suspicion. She took a puff and blew it into D’Arcy’s face. D’Arcy gagged and coughed, waving the smoke away.
“In his mini-cab, I mean,” D’Arcy clarified with a slight shudder.
“And how am I meant to know when that was?” Maggie asked.
“That was directed at Mr. Duffy,” D’Arcy said.
Maggie barked with nasty laughter.
“Mr. Duffy? Mr. Duffy?” she mimicked in a high-pitched voice, running her fingers playfully over Declan’s bald head while he grinned in a lewd manner. “What are you like?” Maggie snorted to D’Arcy.
McLaughlin grunted. He wanted to tell the woman to behave herself respectfully in front of the authorities during an interview, no matter how casual, but he knew only too well what the response would be, ‘Don’t tell me how to behave in my own house. Out! Out!’ So instead he said, “It was the night of April 13.”
Maggie waved her hand. “Haven’t a clue. Sure, can’t you ring KwikKabz and ask? He was probably working. We’re saving up for a conservatory and a hot tub. Works all the hours God sends, so my DD does.”
Cigarette aloft, she planted little kisses over his bald head, and McLaughlin wondered how suddenly the wife was answering all the questions for the husband. He could stand it no longer. There was the scrape of his chair on the linoleum as he stood up and motioned to D’Arcy.
“We’ll do that, then,” he said as D’Arcy gratefully made her way to the door. “Contact KwikKabz. But if you weren’t working at the time the murder was committed, Mr. Duffy, we’ll be back for DNA and fingerprints. And that interview will definitely be at the station.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Declan sneered.
Outside on the doorstep, gratefully breathing in the fresh air, McLaughlin said, “He has the hatred, the rage right enough to be in our sights.”
“Not the...finesse, but,” D’Arcy said. “I can’t see him—Oh, sir!” There was disappointment in her voice. “You’re not lighting up now, are you?”
“I need it after that palaver,” McLaughlin huffed. “I feel filthy.”
“Me too, sir. Perhaps more so than you.”
CHAPTER 42
ROISIN OBI GAVE A LITTLE gasp when she opened the door and seemed for a millisecond about to slam it shut in their faces, but she recovered quickly and affixed a questioning smile to her face. Her eyes struggled to meet theirs.
“Detectives!” she greeted them, and she seemed to recall she was meant to be relieved. She ran her hand over her forehead in an exaggerated gesture of relief. “Phew! The police protection has been removed, I was told by the station today. That’s good, isn’t it? So our Lily...you must have found something out that...that...means Gerarda and myself are safe...?”
She was wearing a mid-thigh chunky cable-knit sweater dress with geometric patterns on it, paired with purple leggings. Large hoop earrings swung from her lobes. She eyed them there on the doorstep, took a step forward and closed the door behind her. They were a bit taken aback. She ran a hand nervously through her brown curls as she awaited their answer.
“May we come in?” McLaughlin asked.
“How did you find out where I lived?” she asked, then gave a little laugh and hit her forehead with the bottom of her hand. “Of course! You are the PSNI. You know everything.”
Another little laugh.
“I don’t know about that,” McLaughlin said. “But I do know I’m starving with cold out here.”
“Sorry,” Roisin said in a half-whisper, an apologetic grimace on her face. “Of course, I’d be delighted to invite you in, but it’s a wild bad time right now. My Ajani’s here, you see, and I don’t want him involved in any of this. My former life. I’m sure you understand.”
The detectives didn’t, shivering in the cold as they were, but weren’t about to demand entrance into the warmth. Not immediately, in any event.
“Yes,” D’Arcy said, shoulders hunched against the wind. “But I’m afraid to inform you we’ll be adding the police protection again. We’ve already put the call through, and a patrol car will be along shortly.”
“High level now, I’m afraid,” McLaughlin said.
Roisin’s surprise and anxiety were now genuine emotions.
“B-but...what does this mean?” she asked, gnawing on her lower lip. “I don’t want police protection. May I decline your offer? Is that a done thing? I feel watched, paranoid, my every action monitored like that. No freedom. Like I’m a suspect. Why are you here? Has something happened?”
McLaughlin raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling us you haven’t heard of the latest victim that was discovered yesterday morning? Margaret...” Snap, snap.
“McGuff,” D’Arcy said.
“Why, certainly, but—”
“Perhaps you know her better as Margaret O’Dowd.”
Their eyes were watching Roisin closely as the woman turned down the corners of her mouth and made a show of searching through her mind for any sign of such a name.
“A Margaret...O’Dowd...you say?” she asked as if stumped, curious as to why they would show up on her doorstep thinking she might know such a woman.
D’Arcy jumped as McLaughlin bellowed at Roisin through chattering teeth.
“Bless us and save us, woman! You went to secondary school with her! She was in your class. Four years, you spent with her, and you don’t know her? We’re freezing our arses off out here. For the love of God, let us in so we can have a proper conversation, or I’m hauling you down to the station and we can continue the interview there. We have radiators there, at least. Hear them often enough.”
Roisin’s eyes were round.
“B-but...my husband—”
“You can lock us in the bloody kitchen! You do have doors, don’t you?”
“Well! If you insist...”
“I do!”
Roisin reluctantly opened the door and led them down the front hall. They passed the living room, but nobody was there.
“He...must be upstairs,” Roisin said, hurrying them into the kitchen and softly closing the door behind them.
“Thank Christ!” McLaughlin said, rubbing his hands and plonking himself down on a chair at the table. “I can feel my fingers again.”
D’Arcy pulled up a chair and Roisin stood at the counter.
“Now that you’re here,” she said stiffly. “I feel I should offer you some tea.”
“We don’t want tea,” McLaughlin said, calming down. “We want answers. Please sit down.”
Roisin dragged herself to the chair opposite the detectives.
McLaughlin hoped this Ajani character wouldn’t come in and sit on your woman’s lap.
“Now that you mention it, aye,” Roisin decided to tell them. “I was at school with a Margaret O’Dowd. But that was years ago. Sure, it never even entered my head that I knew her when I read the name of the woman found at the bus stop. Why should I? As you both know, I’ve lived a lifetime since then. Those days were very, very long ago. The last thing I want to do is relive them. I want to forget where I came from and focus on where I’m going.”
“That’s grand and lovely,” McLaughlin said a bit shortly. “Why would that be, but?”
D’Arcy leaned forward, going in for the kill. “Perhaps it’s because you, Lily and this Margaret were part of a gang when you were schoolgirls, and embarked on a protracted campaign of bullying, of tormenting your fellow students? That would be something I’d want to forget.”
Roisin made a show of reeling with shock.
“I-I’ve never heard of such a thing! Where in the name of all that’s sacred have you come up with this...fantasy? This fairy tale? Who would tell you such a thing? That’s libel, so it is!”
“No, it isn’t,” McLaughlin said sternly. “It’s slander.”
“Libel,” D’Arcy intoned, “is written. Slander is spoken.”
“And it’s not slander when it’s true,” McLaughlin added.
Roisin shook her head vehemently as her hands strangled a dishrag.
“We have it on good authority—” D’Arcy began.
“Who? Who told you such lies?” Roisin demanded to know, her voice rising in panic.
“Careful, you’ll wake your man,” McLaughlin said. “If he really is upstairs.”
“Why...! I...! In all my days...” The color had risen in Roisin’s cheeks. A flash of anger glinted in her eyes. “If someone is spreading malicious gossip about me, I have the right to know. Sure, you’re the police, not flimmin journalists, protecting their sources.”
“The headmistress of your school, Mrs. Heffernan,” McLaughlin revealed.
Roisin seemed frozen for a split second, her eyes shooting around wildly, then a mask of scorn fell across her face. McLaughlin wondered why terrible liars always thought they were pros. “Oh, that old woman. She’s demented, from what I’ve heard. Isn’t she locked away in that Gentle Breezes? How could you take the word of one in her dotage to accuse me of such outrageous things?”
D’Arcy was fuming, as was McLaughlin. “Mrs. Heffernan suffers from mild dementia, and she isn’t ‘locked away,’ as you so charmingly put it. The woman, the quite wonderful woman, lives there. And she was quite lucid when she spoke to us. Her memory’s still intact. I believe you and your entourage even, er, subjected one of your classmates to a, er, an inappropriate act involving water and a...sanitation fixture.”
Roisin stared at D’Arcy, as did McLaughlin a bit.
“You’re mad, you,” Roisin scoffed, pushing away from the table.
“Unfortunately,” McLaughlin said, “two of your partners-in-crime, Lily Feagins and Margaret McGuff, that’s her name now, have been murdered in a most brutal fashion.”
“And as horrible as the strangulation must have been,” D’Arcy added, “what the killer did to them after they were dead is just as horrible.”
Roisin screwed her face up in disdain. “I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know anything about anything. This has nothing to do with me.”
“I don’t think you understand the position you’re in, Ms. Obi,” McLaughlin said. “Have you some sort of death wish? We’re of the opinion that this murderer is targeting those who have done him harm. His motivation seems to be to get revenge for some offense that was done to him in the past. We have that on the one hand. And on the other, we have a group of girls, a gang of girls, who regularly committed offenses against others, two of which are now dead. And if you are the third, the likelihood is that he will come after you next.”
“Or the fourth girl,” D’Arcy said. “We know there were four of you.”
“The police are on their way now to protect you, Ms. Obi,” McLaughlin said in a harsh voice. “But we have no way of protecting the fourth girl, the fourth woman, if we don’t know who she is.”
“You seem to think being under police protection is a punishment of sorts,” D’Arcy said. “I can’t understand that. Any normal person would be relieved to have some protection. Yes, we might be wrong, we’ve been wrong before. But if we’re not...then you are most certainly a credible next target for the killer. Don’t you want to help protect this fourth girl? Who knows what the relationship between the two of you is like now, but regardless of that, if you had the chance to save someone from being killed in a most heinous way, why wouldn’t you do that? No matter what unflattering light it might shine on you?”
“Tell us,” McLaughlin said, more softly now, “who is the fourth girl?”
They heard a leaky tap drip. They heard the windows shuddering from the wind they knew was cold.
Roisin flung her arms around her chest and jutted out her chin.
“I don’t have a clue what you’re on about. And now, unless I’m under arrest, I want you to leave my home. Immediately.”
D’Arcy shook her head incredulously. McLaughlin hauled himself off the chair and leaned over the table.
“If you don’t want to save yourself,” he said evenly, “do the other woman the greatest favor of her life and at least warn her.”
Roisin’s eyes bored into his and she curled her upper lip at him, a petulant gesture he took to mean, ‘the hell I will!’
“Ridiculous woman!” D’Arcy grumbled as they made their way in the chill to their cars. “I ask you, sir, what could have been so egregious that she and the others did to make her risk her own life to avoid it coming out?”
McLaughlin took the cigarette out of his mouth to reply.
“That, my dear—er, my...D’Arcy, is what we must find out.”
CHAPTER 43
“TEN POUND FIFTY-FIVE,” Johanna said.
“The prices you charge here!” the man muttered, digging into his wallet and throwing a twenty on the counter. “Daylight robbery, so it is.”
“You’re always free to take your custom elsewhere,” Johanna said with a shrug, snatching the bill and shoving it in the till, scrabbling at the change and handing it over.
The man grabbed at the suit jacket in its plastic wrap and left the dry cleaners without another word.
“Have a pleasant day, love,” Johanna called out after the door slammed.
She collapsed into the cheap plastic chair behind the counter and glanced nervously up at the clock. Darkness had fallen, it was threatening to rain again, and she had seven minutes left to her shift. Seven tense minutes of being in the same city as the man who was after her and Roisin.
She focused on the second hand, slowly inching its way around the face of the clock. Too slowly for Johanna’s comfort. Six minutes and fifty seconds left until she could get the hell out of Derry and into the safety, if not comfort, of her mother-in-law’s home in Letterkenny.
Rose Codd had been surprised at Johanna ringing her the night before, Johanna knew that. They didn’t really get along. But she had told the woman there was a problem with the water pipes, and with Donal still in Birmingham and not expected back for five days, could she possibly come and stay. Rose had reluctantly agreed, and Johanna had answered the woman’s unasked question by explaining her own mammy and daddy were having their house renovated, so she couldn’t go there.
The moment Johanna had left the gallery after the bust-up with Roisin, she’d been dead set on racing to Letterkenny that very moment. She’d called Zoë Riddell and asked the woman if she could take an emergency holiday. She’d won a trip to Glasgow, she explained, and would be gone five days at the least. In the back of her mind, Johanna was giving the police five days to find the killer. If they hadn’t by then, she’d think of something else.
Zoë had said she could get one of the girls from the agency to fill in for the five days, but that Johanna would have to ask the other employee to work the next day’s shift. Zoë’s hands were tied. She wanted Johanna to enjoy herself and Glasgow was a marvelous city, but one day’s notice just wasn’t enough.
That horrid Flood woman, who Johanna alternated shifts with at Final Spinz, had refused to take over the shift, no matter how much Johanna had pleaded, cajoled and begged. She had even offered the woman twenty quid. But the Flood woman had refused, especially, as she said, she had to work Johanna’s next shift for her and the one after that. Then the woman had called Johanna a vulgar name as she’d hung up, just for good measure.
Johanna realized the longer she stayed in Derry, the more at risk she was of having the life snuffed out of her. But Margaret had only been killed two days ago. Surely he’d wait a bit longer between murders? From the crime shows she’d seen on the telly, it took them a few days for the, she didn’t know what it was, the thrill of the kill or what have you, to wear off. They rode a wave of satisfaction in their having acted on their perverse pleasures, watching the life slowly ebb from their victim’s eyes, turning them from living beings into cold lifeless things. But that satisfaction only lasted a few days. Johanna didn’t want to burn her bridges, leave her boss in the lurch, when your man wasn’t even looking to target her or Roisin for a few more days, at least. And Zoë had been kind to her throughout the years. She couldn’t let the woman down. Especially as Johanna had been using Zoë during those years to pad her own bank account.
