Can Anybody Help Me? (21 page)

‘No.'

Claire had allowed the silence to build to see if he'd wade in any further. But Bradley seemed determined to stay silent. Moments before she would have done so, Flynn jumped in.

‘So, you got advice off another fella and didn't like it, was that it?'

Claire glared at him – she had hoped silence would encourage Bradley to hang himself. But apparently good cop was the way to go. Or maybe it was a male bonding thing. Bradley visibly brightened and nodded his head furiously.

‘Well, yeah. I didn't get on with the first fella. So I decided to go with O'Mahony Thorpe.'

‘And he said he'd find you a tenant?'

‘That's right. Yeah.'

‘And where did you meet Mr Berry?'

She watched, fascinated, as his colour rose again, until the three of them jumped at the sound of a knock on the door. Siobhan O'Doheny came into the room and Claire glared at her, but the young guard was undeterred.

‘You're needed in the office …?'

Claire had grumpily emerged to be told that Cormac Berry
had been found. No criminal mastermind. His phone had tracked him to a base station in south Donegal and a local patrol car in Inishowen had spotted him at a filling station just twenty minutes after an alert had been issued. They'd allowed him to pay for his fuel and three Mars bars before informing him he was wanted to help the Gardaí with some inquiries.

‘Couldn't believe he'd been caught.'

Siobhan smiled as she recounted the message passed on by the Donegal guards, two of whom were at that moment speeding towards the capital, the young estate agent folded into the back of their car. Claire didn't doubt it. Her mental picture of Cormac Berry involved too many nights spent in front of a computer screen and, she reckoned, very little knowledge of the outside world. It was quite possible he'd imagined Co. Donegal was the far side of the moon. In the end it had taken less than three hours to find him.

He was expected in Dublin by 7 p.m. She relayed this information to Bradley back in the interview room and was rewarded by a sigh and the spilling of thick salty tears. It only took moments for the entire story to come spilling out like rice from a leaky bag.

Berry, when he had arrived, unshaven, shaken and hungry had confirmed every word of it.

O'Mahony Thorpe had seen its business flat-line after the bust, but the company thought they had a foolproof way to get it afloat again. Being a landlord was, these days, an expensive business. Putting a property on the market cost at least a thousand euro up front, between registration charges, a second-home charge, a total repaint and refit. And the bills kept coming. Maintenance fees. Property taxes. But O'Mahony,
or possibly Thorpe, had come up with a plan. The government couldn't get at your money if they knew it wasn't there in the first place. So the solution was simple. They were, Berry had explained, gloomily, something of a matchmaking service, uniting broke landlords and tenants who needed to live under the radar or were willing to do so for a reduction in rent. O'Mahony Thorpe took ten per cent off the top. The result? Happy landlords, happy tenants, and a government that didn't get a penny from the transaction.

It was that sentence that had finally brought forth a protest from Ella O'Mahony. She'd turned up minutes after Berry had arrived at Collins Street and had debriefed him after his questioning. But, at eight o'clock at night, the smart business suit had been replaced by jeans and a pink fleece jacket. Most of her authority had been left behind in her wardrobe with the Chanel. She had raised an eyebrow when Berry had mentioned the word ‘desperate', and a hand when the whole issue of tax evasion had come up.

‘Now, we're not taxation specialists, it's up to the individual owner to …'

But Claire, who was wearing one of her better-cut work jackets that day, had silenced her with a look. They could figure out the details later. There was no doubt the company had a loophole that would see them emerge on the right side of the law, probably leaving some eejit like Berry to carry the can for the damage. Frankly, she didn't give a crap what they'd been doing with their Monopoly board, she just wanted to know who had brought Miriam Twohy back to 123 Merview, when and why.

And it was a sobbing Berry who had finally admitted that
he hadn't a clue. Merview, he'd stuttered had been a particularly difficult block of apartments to rent. The half-finished exterior hadn't helped, nor had the management company's reputation of leaving CCTV cameras broken and the property unsecured. So when Berry had got a call from a man – that was the only description he could give, a man – offering the entire asking price if he could move in the following week, he hadn't argued. He was calling from abroad, the tenant had told him. He needed a central apartment on a short-term let while working in Dublin. His new job was cash-in-hand so the O'Mahony Thorpe ‘arrangements' – Claire could imagine Berry's manly chuckle at the word – suited him down to the ground. No he didn't need to see the place, he'd checked it out on the web and it suited him just fine. He'd call into the office to pick up the keys himself.

At this, Claire finally saw a glimmer of hope.

‘You met him then?'

But Berry had sunk even lower in his chair.

‘No. He said he couldn't call in during office hours … I left the keys at reception. The girls just said a man picked them up and left.'

‘And he didn't sign for them?'

‘No.'

Berry looked positively nauseous now.

‘He posted out the tenancy agreement, the one I showed you.'

Claire thought back to the unreadable squiggle, and sighed.

‘Have you CCTV in the office?'

‘No.'

For Jaysus' sake. Berry admitted he had asked the agency receptionist if she could remember the man who took the
keys, but all she could come up with was tallish, pleasant, with brown hair. Or maybe he'd been wearing a hat. She wasn't sure.

‘How do they know?'

Flynn's voice echoed around the room.

Berry sniffed loudly and wetly and Claire resisted the urge to hand him a hanky.

‘Know what?'

‘Know to contact you? How did he know that your agency were the crowd to go to if you wanted to be a little … lax with arrangements?'

Berry looked at his hands. Beside him Ella O'Mahony stiffened, and then sank her head into her hands.

‘Just tell her, Cormac.'

The young estate agent shifted in his chair.

‘We use the internet.'

‘To advertise?'

‘Not exactly.'

And haltingly, in a monologue punctuated by more tears, he had explained. He was a regular, he said, on discussion forums. Sites where people came together to give out about the State of the Nation and the property crash and the mess everyone was in. Claire had a vague idea of the sites he was talking about; Matt had used them quite a bit when they were buying their own home. Back then it had all been about releasing equity and homes abroad. Now they were full of wounded people.

Bradley's user name had been Desperate Landlord. Berry had read the post and sent him a private message, offering a quick and cheap solution to the mess he'd landed himself in. And when a poster calling himself ‘Short Term Let' had posted
a message looking for that very thing, he'd realised he had a match.

‘Can I be prosecuted for this?'

Claire could feel the blood in her temple pulsating. She had just spent seven hours dragging forth the information that he had taken part in a scam that allowed a murderer to rent a flat without anyone being able to identify him. A small, red-cheeked snot-nosed baby girl had been left without a mother. And all Cormac Berry was concerned about was his own skin.

She didn't say any of that, of course. Instead she had muttered something about files and DPP, and had walked away.

The baby kicked her hard in the ribs and she groaned. She had forgotten to eat again. Well, half forgotten and half been unable. Flynn had gone to the chipper at some stage during the evening, but greasy food wasn't her friend anymore and she'd already had two chocolate bars from the station vending machine that day. Her stomach turned over at the memory and she could feel bitterness rising up her throat. Pregnancy. The gift that kept on giving. She leaned over to check the glove compartment for a spare package of Rennie, and then sat up straight again as the bump got in the way.

Matt was staring straight at her.

She smiled, and then realised her husband couldn't see her. He was standing, fully clothed at their bedroom window, the blinds pulled back, the room backlit by a small glowing light that presumably came from his mobile phone. He would be able to see the car, and possibly her outline, but not the expression on her face. Mobile phone. Bollocks. She reached for her handbag and remembered that she'd switched hers to silent
during the interviews and had forgotten to turn the volume up again.

Bollocks. Eleven missed calls, three text messages. All from Matt. The first, a gentle, ‘how're things? Ring me.' The second, an hour later, ‘just let me know all is okay.' The third, sent at midnight, ‘Jesus, ring me, Claire. Am worried.' All unanswered. And then the succession of missed calls. There were voice messages too. She didn't have the energy to listen to them though.

Her husband moved away from the window. She could feel his anger radiate through the pane. There would be no cuddles this evening, so.

Do you ever hit your LOs?

THINGS GOT WORSE