People in Season (16 page)

‘Gone?’

‘Not in the archives. Deleted, completely irretrievable, replaced with zeroes.’

‘So you might be making it all up.’

‘That’s right. But let’s say I’m not. So Ava inserted herself into a riot across town. Is it a big deal? She obviously thinks it is. Joanne too. Agent Mullen? We’ll never know how serious an offense he thought it was.’

‘When did you tell you him?’

‘That afternoon.’

‘Email? A note? In person?’

Dylan is digging for evidence that the social agent actually received this report. Even a witness would do. Barry squelches his hopes.

‘On the phone.’

‘What time?’

‘Four or five?’

‘If I check I’ll find a call from you at that time?’ He’s already submitting a request for access to the phone records, tapping at buttons as he converses with the man.

‘It’ll be from a pub in Crumlin
.
’

‘Did anybody hear what you were saying?’

Barry chuckles, ‘Jerry? He’s the barman. I imagine he was privy to some interesting exchanges, but you won’t have much luck getting him involved, especially not on my account.’

The pub and barman’s name are jotted down anyway.

‘Do you think Ava murdered that man?’ Dylan asks, casual, like it’s just a game of football they’re mulling over.

‘That’s the million pound question, Wong. Ava? Why not? Joanne? Maybe. Me? I’m doing an alright job of setting them up, if I do say so myself. Well, there I go, not two minutes in and I’ve made myself a suspect.’ Barry addresses the detective frankly, ‘I don’t envy you, buddy. I don’t envy you at all. The last man I said that to is dead now.’

Raising an eyebrow to indicate that he’s not amused, Dylan says, ‘You think your editor is gone over the edge. She’s not usually this jumpy I take it. Are her and Ava close?’

Through the window, Joanne is mute as Ava offers her advice. Barry taps the glass to get their attention. When they look, he gives them the middle finger. ‘Close. Like snakes in a bag, my friend. Is there a murderer in the office? Yeah, I reckon so. I reckon every single one of us is the murderer.’

Dylan decides that that’s enough time spent with the village idiot for the day and flicks his contact details from his pad to the man’s phone.

The detective has never been in a newsroom. He isn’t used to investigating office environments. Most murders he’s dealt with were gang related, and the ones that weren’t, family or lover squabbles. Thinking about it now, he’d never come across one that was professionally motivated. The crowds he has known, working class kids, minds addled by drugs and violence, in his experience, react to cops in one of two ways, either in a chorus of overlapping voices trying to shout over one another to give information, or as a united unspoken front. An over simplification perhaps, but on the whole he could divide them into those two categories. This newsroom, this office, this collection of people dressed in passively coloured shirts and ties and business skirts, fall on the quiet side of the line. Stolen glances and dour responses, all of these barely noticeable things add up to the sense that something bad has happened and nobody wants the blame. In this climate, Dylan works his way through the series of interviews in the conference room, cross examining the employees in as efficient a manner as possible and suffering the social agent by his side all the while. Pressing Joanne about the possibility of publishing lies and what the consequences might be, agitated at the prospect, she describes it as career ending for whoever was involved.

‘The only hope of surviving would be ignorance,’ she remarks, languid.

On Ava’s go around, he probes her feelings on being accused of falsifying a story but she’s unruffled in assuring him of her innocence. When hoping to get her to point the finger at Barry, she doesn’t jump at the chance, only noncommittally agrees that it could easily be an attempt on his part to sabotage her career, but that she doesn’t know if he’d be capable of murder.

‘I don’t know who could do such a thing,’ she comments at the end of the process. ‘It’s a scary thought. Thank god the Gards are here now. I wouldn’t feel safe if it weren’t for you.’

Dylan would be lying to himself if he said the attention of beautiful women wasn’t a part of the job he enjoyed, too rare these days for not having the uniform to attract the interest of those who see security in it.

In the end, the picture he paints is a jumbled one, characters warped and showing sides that don’t line up, the background they’re set against all out of proportion. Good god, it’s a post-modernist nightmare. More details are needed. On discovering them, ideally, they will all lead to one focal point. As of now, any of these people could have done it.

‘I’ll be leaving for a while and taking Agent Myers with me,’ Dylan explains, pocketing his pad. ‘You all have my number. If anything relevant comes to mind, use it.’

Agent Myers jumps to follow but they both turn around as they hear Ava call.

‘Agent Myers. You dropped this,’ she’s holding up a pen for him.

‘Ah,’ he grins, arms folded. A couple of steps away she stops, forcing him to move forward. Taking the pen, his teeth shine back at her, ‘Thank you, Ava.’

Playing witness to the exchange, Detective Dylan Wong finds a tinge of jealousy colouring his view of them, and now the two men watch Ava, her tight skirt hugging her legs close together as she walks away. Joanne has moved to her office and Ava skips to join her. Over the fashion columnist’s shoulder, Dylan catches a glimpse of the editor’s state of mind. She looks up at the detective, sitting there like a hostage for all the anxiety she shows. In his line of work, sympathy is something often forgotten, but as he connects with her for a fleeting second, he feels it for the woman. Murderer or not, Joanne Victoria is in a lot of pain. Luckily, Ava takes a place beside the woman, to console her no doubt, and help her through these turbulent events.

‘So how did you know he was murdered?’ the social agent inquires.

Having followed the trail of breadcrumbs, they’ve arrived at the Phoenix Park end of North Circular Road. There’s a line of tree stumps planted the length of the street. In the distance a crop of old trees remain, but there’s a work crew felling and chipping them now. Soon they’ll be back with a digger for the roots and not long after, another crew will arrive to plant saplings in their place. Dylan heard on the audio feed that one of the larger trees had collapsed onto a car and that this project to replace them was the result. At one time they were taller than the townhouses they guarded, bright green pom-poms in summer, stark broken branches in the winter. Now they’re gone and the stumps are gravestones for what they were. Across the way a bearded drunk is soaked, his shelter from the rain gone. By the stunned appearance of his swollen face you’d think that the trees had been uprooted around him as he stood pissing on a trunk.

Leaning on the roof of his car, Dylan talks through the shower. ‘There were two glasses on the coffee table.’

‘Two glasses?’

‘One was full,’ he holds up a finger, ‘the other was empty.’

‘And that made you think he was murdered?’

‘No,’ Dylan twinkles sadly, ‘it made me think it was worth looking into more closely. I’ve been wrong plenty of times. I shouldn’t have requested the extra bloods. When a hunch doesn’t pay off it comes out of the department budget. But that’s counter-productive thinking. Discovery, science, detective work, the law,’ Dylan postulates, ‘it’s all trial and error isn’t it? Process of elimination. I wouldn’t let the chief hear me saying that-mind.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem dumb enough to be a cop.’

It’s not that Dylan’s colleagues are stupid, there are much better detectives in the world than him, in his department even, but their inquiring minds stop inquiring at why they do what they do. It’s a trait that gives the police force its Alsatian image. The average detective can happily go about his or her work with commitment bias’ and negative profiling they accumulate over years of experience, working from assumptions and stereotypes, questioning doggedly by compulsion without wondering where their gut instinct comes from and that much better at their job for it. Dylan isn’t so lucky. There are occasions though, rare as they are, when his nose finds a trail that another’s wouldn’t have. It’s small consolation for the times it leads him down a wrong path. Consulting the canvas report on his pad, he compiles a list of houses that weren’t interviewed, whether because the occupants weren’t at home or because they just didn’t want to talk to the Gards. Today they’ll be tackling those.

‘So do you want to split up and do this? It’ll go a lot quicker,’ Agent Myers suggests.

‘If I trusted someone else to do it we wouldn’t be here at all. Let’s start in Mullen’s flat. I want to check it out again.’

Two rooms, not including the bathroom, though that was also an important one, made up Francis Mullen’s life. He lived and died in the box that Dylan and Myers stand in now. Dreary at the best of times, it is now an utterly miserable pigsty that seems to be the only evidence he was once alive. Careful not to disrupt the clutter which before was just a mess and now stands as a monument to the man, Dylan rests his gaze on the armchair where the body had been found. He brings up the photo on his pad, cursing the angle the photographer chose. The corpse of Francis is reclined, his hands on the arms of the chair, his throat exposed like a lambs for the knife. Whatever killed the man did it from the inside. That poison. On the coffee table, the two glasses remain undisturbed. Dylan snoops at the couch where the other drinker would have been sat and half expects to see a groove in the cushion. The ghost who killed the social agent, the phrase tiptoes through his mind.

‘I wasn’t expecting any more Gards. I was told I could clean up the place, go through his things,’ the landlord speaks from the door.

‘Have you?’ Dylan asks, anxious at the thought of clues lost to the wind.

‘I’m not a maid,’ the landlord says.

Dylan and Agent Myers steal glances at one another, registering the petulant attitude.

‘His family will get around to it when they’re ready. I said they can take as much time as they need,’ the old man’s teeth jostle around his mouth as he makes the comment. ‘Mind you, I should have given them a deadline, I’ll be wanting a new tenant soon. Bills to pay. Always bills to pay.’

Agent Myers, one arm folded across his chest, does little to hide his contempt for the landlord. Dylan walks away from the pair to examine the shelves, piles of clothes by the bed, dishes left in the sink. There’s a familiar pair of shoes, the same size as the detectives, except the sole of one is worn almost to nothing. Beside them, a Bobblehead Barry calls for the detective, suggesting with its silence that it knows something that it won’t tell. Dylan doesn’t think much of its presence. The English journalist tried pushing one on him earlier too. Some items have been moved since his initial inspection of the flat. Little things. He calls up the original scene photos to confirm it. He remembers a dish cloth being on the sink but now it’s on the back of a chair and sure enough, the record matches up with his memory. A coaster that was on the floor has been picked up. The whole flat has the feeling of little elves having been there, rummaging about for tiny
prizes. Besides that, he doesn’t find anything he hasn’t seen already, but hoping that something will leap out at him, he scans the room a second time. Nothing does. There are books laying in convenient places, easy to grab from wherever you sit. He liked magic, Francis, that’s what Dylan has learned.

‘Check his laptop,’ Dylan instructs the social agent.

The air is stale from lack of cleaning. There’s an assortment of pictures on the walls. Postcards and movie memorabilia. A young girl. His niece? There’s a gap in her teeth where a baby one has fallen out. It’s not hung up, just leaning against the fridge. He wasn’t planting any roots, that’s for sure. These pieces of life only built up around him without his notice. Just another lonely person in the city. Dylan thinks of his own well run home – I can’t end up like this. I’ll sort out my marriage.

‘He didn’t get out much,’ he says, expecting the landlord to confirm it.

‘How should I know?’

Dylan cocks his head to elicit a conciliatory smirk.

‘No, I don’t suppose he did. Sometimes I thought I was his only friend. Sorry state of affairs when you can say that about a man.’ The landlord has found an open box of chocolates and takes one, and another, greedily shoving them into his mouth. ‘These were his favourite.’

‘He was poisoned you know,’ Agent Myers grins.

The old man stops chewing, but makes a point of swallowing the sweet anyway.

‘You knew him well? Did he have any enemies? Old rivalries?’

The old man ignores the social agent and addresses Dylan. ‘He was a good lad. I can’t imagine anybody would have had anything against him. Nobody normal anyway. There’s always those untouched people he was hunting, isn’t there? They sound like a despicable bunch to me.’

‘Was there anybody like that hanging around?’ asks Agent Myers.

Again the old man ignores him, peculiarly intent on addressing Dylan. ‘Are we done here? I don’t like being around all of this,’ the landlord gestures to nothing in particular, disgusted by the presence of death maybe, an insult to his ego.

Dylan tells the man to meet them outside and waits for him to leave.

‘Find anything on the computer?’ he asks Agent Myers.

‘No reports,’ he says in a hushed voice. ‘That’s no daily reports on what he was doing, no notes on the interview process, no forms filled in, nothing except a one line document he created in the ChatterFive folder.’

‘Oh?’ Dylan’s curiosity is piqued.

‘I don’t know what it could mean. All it says is – But she set off the fire alarm.’

A car goes by the window, the sound of its wheels travelling the road like it’s pushing up a river. When it’s gone the pelting rain comes to the fore again.

‘Who did? What alarm?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Chewing his lip, Dylan asks, ‘Was he not writing reports or were his reports deleted?’

‘My pad didn't recover any deleted documents. The hard drive is pretty clogged with other files so any missing items would have been overwritten. Hard to say whether or not it was an intentional attempt to zero the drive, either way there's nothing to be retrieved.’

‘What are the other files?’

Bewildered, the social agent informs Dylan, ‘Quite a big stash of porn.’

Looking at the screen, the detective sees a towering list of movies.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Do him a favour and delete those. No point letting his family find them.’

Clicking them out of existence, Myers goes on, ‘Anyway, unless he has another laptop we don’t know about, my guess is he wasn’t keeping any records.’

‘You’re not exactly helping us here,’ Dylan says to the vacant armchair.

As they leave the room and close the door behind them, the landlord is waiting outside. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ he says to Dylan. ‘Your friend can stay down here.’

‘What?’ the social agent balks.

‘You heard the man.’

‘I guess I’ll wait in the car,’ Myers says, exasperated.

‘It’s locked,’ Dylan winks.

At the landlord’s apartment, they stall for a minute as he goes through the latches, and opening the door a wedge, he reluctantly allows the detective entry ahead of himself. Inside, he hunches over the door once more and locks it three times.

‘Lot of break-ins around here?’

‘Can’t be too careful,’ the old man’s lips wrinkle. He doesn’t often let people in and doesn’t appreciate smart comments from those he does. Walking into the kitchen and pouring water into the kettle, he switches it on and leans against the counter as he measures Dylan up and down. Only when he’s approved of the detective’s demeanour does he decide to say what’s on his mind. ‘There was a woman at the apartment.’

‘Oh?’ With a vague sense of irritation in his voice, Dylan asks, ‘You didn’t mention this to the guys canvassing the street?’

Still, he’s quite happy that he decided to come back himself. Vindication like this doesn’t come often.

‘Ah,’ the old man sucks on his teeth, seemingly having difficulty telling Dylan what he has to say. ‘I don’t think she had anything to do with it. I hate having to get the cops involved in someone’s life when there’s no need. Once you’re on a list, you know, you have to go through a grinder to get out the other side.’

‘That may well be the case, but a man is dead and we’re the ones looking for justice. Any information you have might lead to something useful,’ Dylan feels a lecture coming on but cuts it off when the old man’s creased forehead bends in contempt. ‘You said it was a woman...’

‘She showed up at his apartment door one night. Made a bit of racket. Didn’t seem like the kind of person who can stand being ignored. I poked my head out you see, got a good view of her from the landing. She didn’t notice me watching. Mad on getting Francis to listen. Only, he must have been out, because he couldn’t have slept through the noise she was making. Banging so hard the whole road would have been shook awake. She was drunk, that’s for sure. Slurring profanities. Crying one minute, angry the next. Some woman.’

All of Dylan’s senses heighten at the hope of a lead. ‘This is the night he died?’

‘A day before.’

‘Damn...’

‘Mm,’ the old man agrees. ‘I was going to call the Gards, but around about the time I got fed up, she stumbled outside, found herself a taxi-cab to fall into and that was the last I saw of her.’

‘Do you know what she wanted?’

‘Haven’t a notion.’

‘What she was screaming about?’

‘Gibberish.’

‘Could you describe her?’

‘Beautiful actually, a real looker for her age. I suppose she was in her fifties. Blonde. Big gold earrings. Posh accent. Dressed to the nines. High heels she could barely steady herself in. Walked like Bambi going out the door.’

The picture of the blonde woman forms all too easily. Dylan considers showing the old man a photo of Joanne Victoria, but decides against it, not yet wanting to alert him to the high profile status of the person he might have seen. Instead he says, ‘You could pick her out in a line up.’

‘I never forget a face...’ The old man stops to tongue his upper gum. ‘But I don’t think she had anything to do with it.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah, how can I say it? You hear more in a person’s voice if you can’t see them. I was laying down on the couch when she’d started wailing. It was full of desperation.’

‘Desperate people murder.’

‘Maybe,’ he concedes, ‘but you’re looking for someone untouched, and eh, they sound a lot more empty when they wail.’

‘I’m looking for a killer,’ Dylan corrects him. ‘They’re not the same thing.’

The landlord shrugs and makes a cup of tea. The spoon clangs against the side of the mug as it’s stirred. Dylan thinks about leaving but remembers the locks and realises that he’s the old man’s captive audience.