Can Anybody Help Me? (28 page)

The gatekeeper's rings jangled as she tapped on her computer keyboard, making a big show of not noticing them until they were right beside her. Then she leafed through a large appointments book while murmuring darkly about ‘squeezing them in'. Squeeze, me arse. Flynn knew he could flash his card at any moment and insist on an immediate meeting. But just as he was about to yield to temptation, she sighed and pressed a button under her desk. A door to the left slid open.

‘Go on through,' she ordered, in an accent that owed more to LA than Dublin.

‘Mary will meet you on the other side.'

‘This is more like it.'

Flynn ignored O'Doheny's whisper but admitted to himself that, again, she had a point. The far side of the doors led them to yet another world, this time far closer to the atmosphere he'd been expecting. A large overhead sign proclaimed they were in the ‘newsroom', but he'd have guessed that anyway given the noise blaring from five competing television screens, the number of people, all of whom seemed to be talking at full volume and the frantic clatter of fingers on computer keyboards.

A small, bleached-blonde woman approached them and smiled vaguely at Flynn.

‘You wanted a word with Eamonn?'

Within seconds, they were being ushered to a glass cubicle at the other end of the room. The young woman, Mary, Flynn
assumed, closed the door and nodded at the man sitting behind a brown laminate desk which was overflowing with newspapers, coffee cups, two mobile phones, several chargers and any number of pens.

Eamonn Teevan was smaller than he looked on TV. And harder, somehow. He'd been on the phone when they arrived and looked like he was trying very hard not to argue with someone, the words ‘with respect' forming most of his end of the conversation. He gestured to them to sit down and Mary brushed a pile of newspapers from the nearest chairs onto the floor.

But as the phone conversation drew to a close, Flynn could see the man on the other side of the desk swallow his irritation. Within seconds, he had morphed into Eamonn Teevan the TV star, drawing his hands through his short, perfectly cut hair and unleashing a full hundred-watt smile.

‘Detectives! Good to meet you both! How may I help you?'

Fair play to O'Doheny, she didn't flinch, didn't give any indication that she was in the presence of anyone other than the usual muppets they got to interview. If anything, it was Flynn himself who was slightly thrown by the dramatic change in tone and it took him a moment to get his thoughts together and explain the reason for their visit.

Teevan linked his hands behind his head, flopped back in his chair and balanced his feet on the edge of the desk in one smooth movement. Flynn suppressed the urge to give him a swift shove in the solar plexus and instead rearranged his features into as stern a look as possible before tuning into Teevan's fluid, accentless drawl.

‘Look, I remember the name, but that's all. Black hair, hadn't
she? I think she dated a guy I knew, O'Doherty. Well, when I say I knew him, we were all in the same drama society. It's not like we hung out all the time. I don't know if I ever had a conversation with her. I mean, I saw the news story when she died, obviously, but it took me a while to make the connection.'

‘You didn't go to the funeral?'

O'Doheny's cool stare was a match for Teevan's and the presenter stared at her in surprise.

‘Christ, no!'

‘Can I ask why not?'

O'Doheny began to take neat notes in the notebook she'd balanced on her knee.

Teevan raised his eyebrows.

‘I just didn't know her well enough, that's the truth of it! And I figured, well the last thing her family would have wanted was … Well, you know yourself.'

He glanced at Flynn in a manner clearly designed to be matey, or to convey the awkwardness of being a celebrity at an Irish funeral Mass. Flynn cleared his throat.

‘So, what can you remember about her? Anything at all would be helpful.'

Teevan removed his feet from the table, bringing them back down onto the floor with a bang. Flynn jumped, but didn't say anything. The journalist's voice remained smooth, but there was a hard edge to it this time and he punctuated his observations with frequent glances at his watch.

‘Sweet feck all, if you excuse the French. I probably saw her a few times in the student bar. She was dating O'Doherty who was a bit of a knob, as far as I can remember, and I'm not even sure if we ever had a conversation. Pretty young one, as far as I
can remember. But that's about the size of it. And now, unless you have anything else …?'

He raised his eyebrows.

Flynn hated being dismissed, but couldn't think of anything else to say. Boyle was so sure that the victim's college life was central to her murder. He missed her and wished she were there. He fell back on an old reliable.

‘If there's anything you remember, anything at all …'

He reached into his pocket and put his card down on the table, then picked it up again and scribbled his mobile number on the back.

‘Sure.'

Teevan threw it on the desk without looking at it.

‘I'll get Mary to show you out, yeah?'

Meeting over, he stood up and unleashed the full TV-star grin again.

‘Great to meet you, anyway!' He shook Flynn's hand and then grasped O'Doheny's, holding it for a full seven seconds, staring into her eyes before letting go. She held his gaze coolly.

Flynn felt himself relax for the first time that day. The visit had been feck all use to them. But she wasn't a bad cop, O'Doheny. Not bad at all.

Public or Private?

No, you cannot. Claire put the iPhone down on her stomach. ‘What's that, love?'

Matt stuck his head through the double doors, the smell of fresh pasta sauce wafting in after him.

‘Nothing!'

Claire gave a cheery smile. In fairness, he deserved it. He'd come home as promised at four, laden down with Tesco bags and was now cooking dinner, pausing only to tell her not to
move a muscle. God bless him, he was trying his best. And when he'd asked her how she'd spent her day she hadn't lied, exactly. Waved vaguely in the direction of the remote control and mentioned something about a nap. It was all true. She HAD drifted off during
Murder She Wrote
. She had only turned it on, however, after a twenty-five-minute Murder He Explained conversation with Flynn which had brought her up to speed with his trip to Ireland 24. There didn't seem to have been much in it. But at least she felt she was still involved.

And after hanging up on Flynn, she'd found her finger wandering, once again to the Netmammy app. She felt like she was getting to know some of the women now. Crazy, really. But, earlier that evening, when she'd heaved herself up off the sofa – again – to go to the toilet, she found herself thinking of something witty one of them had said about all night widdling. And had laughed to herself in the downstairs loo. Luckily Matt hadn't been around. He'd have thought she was insane for sure. But it was mad, how you got to know them. Or thought you did.

Some of them though were awfully naïve. She turned back to the conversation she'd been following. Sure enough three others had responded with the names of the hospitals they'd attended, times and dates and in one case the name of a midwife who'd particularly impressed her. Seriously? These women were making themselves totally identifiable.

‘I'll be another while … might make fruit salad for dessert.'

The chef peered through the double doors that separated the kitchen from the living room and Claire fluttered her fingers without looking up.

‘Grand, grand.'

He'd left sandwiches for her lunch and a packet of chocolate biscuits by her side that morning, so she wasn't in imminent danger of expiration if she didn't get fed straight away.

They were foolish women.

To prove her point, she went back into the site and clicked on one site member's name at random. Morethanahairdo had over five hundred posts. Definitely a SAHM, Claire surmised and then marvelled at the speed with which she'd picked up the lingo. She dipped into a few of them. Dropping bottles? Not much there. Dodi disaster? No. And then a third. ‘Anyone know where to get probiotics in Tallaght? I live near the Square.'

Her fingers stabbing, Claire read through another post, and another. Within five minutes, she had picked up the infor mation that Morethanahairdo lived in Tallaght, had a seven-month-old daughter and had worked as a teacher but was considering not going back after maternity leave. Her husband, she'd said in answer to a post about the economy, worked as a civil servant and had taken several pay cuts, but was happy to be still employed. Claire kept clicking. They had been to Majorca last year on holiday. Were considering going back with baby in tow. They had built an extension on to their house and were worried about the repayments. And then – bingo! Her surname started with an O. Morethanahairdo had posted this months ago, way back in the early days of pregnancy when she was trying to decide on names. She was wondering if she could pick a name ending with a vowel, given that their name started with an O. Rebecca O'? Hugo O'? Claire said a couple of names out loud and then shook her head. Couldn't see the problem herself. But it was another clue.

Fingers flying now, Claire did a quick Google search.
Planning decisions for the south Dublin co. council region. She had them in less than a minute. T. O'Reilly, F. O'Brien and R. O'Dowd had all applied for planning permission in or around the relevant time. She typed the first name into Google, added Tallaght to the search query. Nothing, just a link back to the planning permission page. And then the second. O'Brien, Tallaght. Added ‘teacher'. And struck gold. A photo from a local newspaper showed a young woman, pregnancy bump clearly showing, standing beside her class of first communion students. Sarah Cullen O'Brien, the caption read before naming a Tallaght school. It was almost certainly Morethanahairdo. And five minutes work had given Claire her name, her husband's name, home address and place of work. These women thought they were anonymous? They weren't, not at all.

But the whole bloody thing was addictive. Claire shifted on the sofa and went back to the Netmammy home page. MammyNo1 was back. It was impossible to ignore her posts now, like a constantly updated soap opera. All of the other Netmammies felt the same, judging from the number of views the post had stacked up.

Ouch. Claire paused, wondered how best to phrase it and then tapped a quick reply.

She paused for a moment and then pressed send. She knew this because she was a guard, no need to let the poster know that though. It was just a bit of friendly advice.

Claire sighed. She'd heard that one before. Had dealt with enough domestic violence cases in her career – and they weren't all in working-class Dublin either. She'd had one nasty case in Donegal where the woman had turned up at the Garda station at midnight, three terrified kids in the back of the car. He'd been a prosperous farmer; she was still living in a B & B as far as Claire knew. Life could be pretty shitty sometimes.

She refreshed the page again. Still more posts on MammyNo1's thread. In fairness to the Netmammies, they were like a swarm of bees when they decided to bestow sympathy. But Claire couldn't help wondering if some of them were taking vicarious pleasure in the story, patting MammyNo1 on the head while secretly thanking their lucky stars that they weren't in
the same situation. It made their own lives seem better by comparison.