Aftermath (12 page)

C
hris’s car
was quiet en route to the address Ted O’Donnell had specified.

They only had circumstantial evidence with which to bring Richard O’Donnell in for questioning, but it was enough.

Reilly was confident that once they found the guy and established his whereabouts at the time of the crime, that everything else should fall into place soon after.

A big giveaway would obviously be any tell-tale indications of a struggle on his person, whether or not his physical attributes coincided with any of their findings, and most pertinently, if any of his fingers had developed calluses in the two years he’d last been fingerprinted following the larceny arrest.

In the good old days, not two months ago, Reilly and Chris would have been bantering and quipping the whole way. Now it was all very awkward.

The car was stone silent. They couldn't even make eye contact.

After a while she said. "You don't have to act like this."

"Act like what?" he said. “I’m just thinking."

"Well, I can feel your thinking."

"Not the time, Reilly. I just want to focus, okay?"

"Okay," she said, sighing and so she turned her head to look out the window.

Accompanying them was Kennedy in another patrol car with a couple of uniforms she recognized. She had seen them working on the night shift generally and so she only came upon them once in a while. The night crew was always a bit sullen and a little too focused, but she supposed you would have to be to pull a shift like that.

They each parked a little way down from the address to avoid arousing suspicion. There was a chance this guy would try to run, so the cops wanted to mitigate that as much as possible.

Chris looked at the crew before proceeding, making sure each was alert and ready for anything. Then he rapped heavily on the door.

No answer.

Chris tried again. “Store Street Detective Unit, we have a few questions for Mr O’Donnell please."

There was something of a commotion inside, but no response.

“Open up please, or we will have no choice but to come inside.”

Still no answer.

Chris nodded to a uniform, who promptly kicked in the door.

Reilly heard a young woman scream in the bedroom before she saw her. She wore only a t-shirt and was curled up on a bed, horrified at the invasion.

The small flat had very few places to hide, and sure enough they saw the scampering figure of Richard O'Donnell, wearing only boxer briefs, as he bolted toward the back window. He wasn't fast enough. The uniform easily caught him and wrenched him back.

"Get off me, pig! I didn't do nothin!”

“That’ll be for the detectives to decide. Will you accompany us to the station for questioning please?”

But a single look at a near-naked Richard O’Donnell’s thin body, pitifully scrawny arms, and small sized feet, was enough to convince Reilly that this couldn't be their man.

"
A
major development
in the Morrison investigation broke last night, just days after a brutal knife attack put former Irish rugby captain Josh Morrison in intensive care.

Gardai arrested nearby neighbor and successful property developer, Ted O'Donnell on a charge of obstruction of justice, but in an unexpected turnaround, he was released in the early hours of this morning, accompanied by his legal team and some very strong words about the force.

‘This is not just an innocent mistake, it is a complete miscarriage of justice. The Gardai recklessly interfered with my life, tarnished my reputation, and attempted to pin a crime on me because of their complete inability to do their jobs. The arrest was nothing more than a publicity stunt and a waste of taxpayer money. And rest assured, these so-called detectives are no closer to finding Josh Morrison's assailant than they were from day one. My solicitor and I are discussing our options at the moment, one of which will certainly include legal retribution.

"Mr. O'Donnell! Mr. O'Donnell! Do you have anything to say to the victim and his family?"

"The Morrisons and I have always had a great neighborly relationship. I've known Josh and Annabel for almost two decades. I'm deeply, deeply sorry for what's occurred in our midst, in our locality, in their home. I pray for Josh’s speedy recovery. And I hope that the Gardai get their act together and attempt to catch the person who did this."

"Mr. O'Donnell, why were you released?"

"Because there was never any evidence. Our police are bumbling idiots, keystone cops, tripping over themselves to get any indictment they can. Make no mistake, this is not about justice, the authorities simply want to close this case and stop the media attention. And they want to do it at all costs. It's a complete failure of Irish law enforcement, not to mention a huge embarrassment.”

"Mr. O'Donnell! Why was your brother Richard also brought in for questioning? Is he a suspect too? Is it because of his nefarious background?”

“My brother might have made mistakes, but rest assured he is every bit as responsible for these stabbings as I am. Which is to say, not at all.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is all. My client has had a very long night, I'm sure you understand. Thank you for your interest."

R
eilly stood
in her kitchen in the early morning light, drinking her fourth coffee of the hour.

She'd skipped sleeping altogether, knowing her insomnia would prevent her anyway.

Since the release of the O'Donnell brothers, the force and courthouse had fallen into utter mayhem.

Phones rang off the hook, text messages flew around, accusations made, the top brass yelled, the whole place came unhinged.

Yet even O’Brien conceded there was probably little else they could have done differently.

That didn't change the court of public opinion, though. At some point, very soon, Inspector O’Brien would be forced to take the detectives off the case.

As it turned out Richard O’Donnell had an alibi - he was working at the nightclub on Friday night, but because he didn’t know what time Josh Morrison was stabbed, he’d taken off in case anyone would point the finger.

The force was embarrassed and scorned, and the powers that be in the Phoenix Park would soon look to apply their own agenda and interrupt the system.

They had to turn this around.

Chris and Kennedy had both gone home for a couple hours’ rest before starting afresh and taking another look at alternative avenues of investigation.

The GFU team was asleep, so now it was just Reilly, and a very large pot of coffee.

She was stumped, looking at the Morrison crime scene photos again. She'd envisaged the scene over and over. They’d been over every inch of that house. Worked on the evidence. Analyzed the injuries, the blood spill, the shoe impressions, prints …

There was something they were missing--there had to be.

And once again she returned to her instinct, her gut feeling that the attack wasn't a robbery gone wrong - it was a crime of passion.

That sort of crime - an unintentional one - always yielded mistakes, didn't it?

The doer isn’t prepared for what he’s going to do. So he’s messy.

He leaves prints on surfaces before the incident, trace transfer on the victim, shoe impressions as he escapes, maybe injures himself in the process….

She'd already finished another mental walk-through, studied some more photos, rechecked the trace analysis.

Waited, thought. Drank more coffee.

Drank coffee…

Tea,
she remembered. Josh was making tea when it happened.

When it happened.

Plugging into the GFU database via her laptop, she sought out the recording of the 999 call Annabel had placed at 2:39 am and listened carefully.

"Oh God, Oh God--he's been stabbed! Josh… I think he's dying, there’s so much blood… please God somebody come here now. Hurry!"

The sound of the handset dropping as the dispatcher tried and failed to get further information from her.

Reilly stopped the recording. There towards the end, was something - another sound - in the background, behind Annabel’s voice. Sort of like a child crying or keening.

What was it? Had Annabel lied about her twelve year old daughter being at friend’s house? Had Lottie been there the whole time and - heaven forbid - witnessed the attack on her father?

Reilly checked the time. 7am. She and wondered if Rory was at the lab yet. If not, he would be soon.

"Rory, hi,” she said, when he answered his mobile. “Glad you're up."

"I am now,” he replied groggily.

"Are you at home?"

"Yeah, they still let me go back there sometimes."

"Do you happen to have any of your sound software there?"

“Well, obviously nothing as good as at work, but I've got some music apps I use. Basic stuff though, why?”

“Can you pull up the 999 call on the Morrison thing? Maybe try to tune out Annabel's voice? There's a sort of …high-pitched sound in the background I'm trying to focus on."

Rory grunted and said, "Okay, hold on a sec."

Reilly could hear his laptop powering up, and after a moment of keying, he fiddled around with files until she once again heard the 999 call play on his side.

"Okay, I'm importing it into a minimizer. This will isolate the various frequencies. Stand by.”

Reilly paced the floor of her living room, waiting impatiently for him to do his thing.

A few more minutes passed until he came back on the line.

“Just listened back. Sending the file to you now. You have three guesses on what the mystery background sound is, but the last two don't count."

When the audio file popped into her inbox, she quickly clicked on it and turned up the sound.

It took less than a second. “Kettle whistling.”

She breathed out, immediately relieved that it hadn't been a young girl crying.

“Yeah, but it only starts about two-thirds of the way through the call. Before that is just the sound of the water getting ready to boil.”

“You’re right.”

They’d already suspected that Josh Morrison had been about to make himself a pot of tea right before he was attacked, which was why his back had been turned.

Now they knew he’d gone so far as to start up the gas hob.

So, Reilly realized now, the attack had happened throughout the time it took for the Morrison kettle to boil.

L
ater at the lab
, having taken a brief detour to Brown Thomas department store on the way, Reilly set up the GFU’s brand new Alessi kettle for its dummy run.

She knew that it usually only took a couple of minutes for a typical electric kettle with an in-built element to reach boiling point when full.

But for this, they needed to be more precise.

Checking the information they’d recorded from the corresponding model at the Morrison house, she filled the kettle to the exact same water level, then took it to a gas burner and switched it on.

It actually took longer than expected for the designer kettle to boil, likely down to the absence of an inbuilt electrical element.

Two whole minutes and 45 seconds before the little plastic bird on the spout started to whistle, announcing that it had reached boiling point.

As it was safe enough to deduce that Annabel Morrison hadn’t come in, found her husband bleeding out on the floor, and decided to make a nice cuppa before phoning 999, it seemed they now had a very firm idea of the time the attack began.

About two minutes before the 999 call.

They would need that audio file analyzed further with equipment considerably more sophisticated than Rory’s home kit, but still, it was now pretty obvious that the kettle had reached boiling point, while Annabel was making that call.

The call …

Immediately her thoughts segued to the phone, and she called across to Rory.

“What was the time on Josh’s iPhone message wipe again?"

“2.45."

That was six minutes
after
the 999 call.

A number of new scenarios were presenting themselves now: Annabel had in fact committed the attack, called it in and deleted Josh’s messages afterwards because of incriminating data--such as a marital fight, accusations of infidelity ….whatever.

Or she was completely innocent of the attack, and had deleted the data on the phone after calling in the incident, because she realized there could be data on there that could incriminate her in
something
.

In either case, and just like Reilly had suspected from the outset, Annabel Morrison wasn't telling the whole truth.

W
andering around the lab
, deep in thought, she mulled over everything in her mind before deciding to consult the detectives about the discrepancies regarding the timing.

After what had just happened with O’Donnell, she knew she couldn't go off all guns blazing, and especially not with Chris, since he’d already accused her of having some kind of beef with Annabel Morrison from the get-go.

“Do we still have those accounts from the first responders?” she asked Lucy.

“Should be in the file. What are you thinking Reilly?”

“I’m not sure. The wife, she was just in from a night out, wasn’t she? So it’s likely she was wearing high heeled shoes…”

“Yep, very nice ones too. Prada.”

Reilly very quickly realized that she didn't need the police report for information on what the wife was wearing, not when they had an Annabel Morrison fan-girl right here in the lab.

“But those bigger tread impressions around the island clearly aren't women’s Prada heels…”

“No,” Lucy confirmed. “Understandably enough, there were lots of Annabel’s footprints immediately around the dining room table, where she found him…”

Reilly thought hard again. They’d already established that it was highly unlikely the wife could be the attacker.

"What are you thinking?" Gary asked.

“I'm wondering if maybe the attacker wasn't alone," she said vaguely.

"Two robbers? How'd you arrive at that?"

"Not two robbers. An attacker
and
Annabel.”

He gave a low whistle.

“Better be pretty sure about that one, boss. If you get it wrong, the media will have your guts for garters. No one pisses off Queen Annabel.”

She bit her lip, thinking hard. “I know.”

She looked again at the kettle on the gas hob, trying to play various scenarios out in her head.

But maybe it shouldn't be in her head at all, maybe they needed to play this possibility out - for real.

“Get a dummy, and that glass coffee table from reception,” she told Gary.

“What?”

Lucy smiled, understanding immediately. “Play time.”

J
ulius went
to fetch the GFU’s hapless dummy, and by the time Gary was back with a glass table, the kettle had been refilled and set up afresh on the hob.

Cross-checking with the crime scene photos and iSPI’s 3D visualization, he went about setting up the table in a corresponding position the correct distance away from the hob.

"Lucy, you record this and time it. Gary, stand in front of the hob and go through the motions of making tea. I'm the perp.”

He sighed. “Of course you are.”

They took their positions. Lucy set up the shot, filming from a tripod and Gary mimicked filling the kettle with water and setting it on the hob.

Just as he switched on the flame, Reilly came up behind him, and using a ruler as a ‘knife’, feigned a slash corresponding to Josh Morrison’s shoulder injury. Gary dropped (dramatically) to his knees at first, and as Reilly stood over him and tried to control him while down, he then stood up and tried to shield himself, grabbing onto the ruler with his fingers.

The two struggled for a bit, around the countertop, until Reilly went in for the kill and made a final thrust at Gary’s stomach. He stumbled backwards a little before Julius rushed in with the stuntman dummy, and let it crash back against the table.

Lucy stopped the timer.

“Minute and a half.” The kettle was still only halfway to boiling point.

More than enough time for the wife to come home, spook the attacker and make the call. Assuming everything had played out much the same as they’d envisaged it.

“Okay. Take two.”

This time they constructed an alternate possibility in which Josh managed to fight back for longer, and even get a hold on his attacker.

They went through the incident five times altogether, each attempt using different scenarios and reactions that could be expected from a man being surprised and injured in such a way, yet in accordance with the existing crime scene reconstruction.

Each and every attack situation - even one that was implausibly slowed down, took less than the time it took for the kettle to whistle.

“Looks like the perp could easily have come and gone, not only before the kettle boiled, but even before the wife arrived back and made the call,” Gary said. “Nothing to say that Annabel Morrison was there when the attack happened. Her story checks out.”

Except for the part that she left the pub at two am, Reilly thought, when the barman insisted it was just after one. So where had she been in the meantime?

And did that single inconsistency in her story necessarily have anything to do with the attack on her husband?

But then why the deleted phone messages…

If they were in agreement that the attacker had taken off when Annabel arrived, and there was nobody else in the house at the time, then it stood to reason that she was the one who had deleted the messages in the ten minutes or so it took for the paramedics to arrive.

Ten minutes would surely feel like a lifetime when your injured husband is bleeding out on the floor. While she had made an attempt to stem the blood, surely Josh’s phone would have been the last thing on Annabel’s mind?

What was so important about the information on the phone that, in the midst of so much trauma, she’d go to the trouble of seeking it out?

Unless whatever was on the phone was directly related to the attack and as Reilly suspected there was no robbery at all, and the person who’d attack Josh was someone they both knew.

What (or perhaps who?) was Annabel trying to hide?

While she was more convinced than ever that there was more to this than meets the eye, Reilly couldn't officially cast suspicion on the woman until she had something more solid.

Not after the O’Donnell fiasco.

And certainly not while the entire country - including the Irish police force - were so firmly positioned up Annabel Morrison’s butt.