The Midnight Choir (22 page)

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Authors: Gene Kerrigan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural

BOOK: The Midnight Choir
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‘At that age?’
‘It happens. Footballers, kids at the peak of fitness – your guy, perhaps ischaemic heart disease but far more likely hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In the vast majority of cases involving young people the diagnosis happens at the autopsy.’
‘He was shot in the leg, about fifteen hours earlier.’
‘Trauma could be a factor.’
Ten minutes later Synnott was on the phone to the state pathologist’s office. ‘We need to know if there was cause and effect between the shooting and whatever caused the death.’ A direct causal effect was the difference between aggravated assault and a charge of murder.
*
The security man’s death had upgraded the case. Word came through that Chief Superintendent Malachy Hogg was now supervising, but the investigation would proceed much as before, with Harry Synnott directing daily tasks and initiatives. The major difference was an increase in available manpower and overtime resources. After a brief assessment meeting with Harry Synnott, Hogg endorsed Joshua Boyce as the most likely suspect.
Four CCTV cameras on Kellsboro’s main street had caught elements of the jewellery robbery. Technical had copied the relevant sections of the footage onto a single tape and already Synnott and Rose Cheney had watched it through four times. It had to be done, but it didn’t leave them any wiser. In one shot, the robber could be seen for a few seconds as he passed a garage on his way up the street towards the jewellery shop. In another, the roof and one side of the Accord were captured for less than a second as it drove away. The other two shots showed the robber in the distance, an indistinct figure walking away after the robbery. The footage from inside the jeweller’s shop and the images of what had happened in the car park, which Synnott was reviewing now, were all that were worth a damn. And then only to someone familiar with Boyce. With the robber’s features hidden by the anorak and the baseball hat, the tape was useless as evidence.
‘The security man, was he married?’ Rose Cheney said.
Synnott nodded. ‘One kid, another on the way.’
On the screen, two ambulance men were kneeling in the car park beside the security guard.
‘Do you think they’ll take this into account when I apply?’
Poor, sad bastard.
*
Dixie had met Mrs Dobbs several times during her visits with Christopher, always with a social worker. She’d never liked the woman, but she knew that wouldn’t look good so she was always overly polite.
She put a big grin on her face now. ‘Hiya, Mrs Dobbs, I was in the neighbourhood.’
Mrs Dobbs held the front door half open, her fat face caught between a weak smile and a grimace. ‘I don’t think—’
‘If I could just see him for a minute?’
‘I’m sorry, Dixie, you know—’
‘Please!’
Dixie’s smile was gone. She felt like she was begging, but she knew her voice was coming across as an aggressive croak. She tried the smile again, but she knew it didn’t sit right.
Whatever.
Just so the old cow understood this was important.
‘I have to see him. I
have
to see him.’
Mrs Dobbs looked for a moment as though she was about to give in. Then she said, ‘Dixie, love, the little fella’s fine, and Seamus and I, all we want is to help out until you’re—’
‘I’m not going away until you let me see him.’
‘Ah, Dixie—’ The door was closing.
‘I need to see him!’
‘I’ll call the police.’
Dixie was leaning on the door. Up close, she could see the little piece of skin that jutted up permanently from Mrs Dobbs’s left eyelid, sticking straight out like the handle of a tiny saucepan. Mrs Dobbs planted her substantial body behind the door. There was a tremble in her voice.
‘Seamus!’
Dixie used a shoulder to push against the door and Mrs Dobbs made a wet sound and moved back. Then her skinny little fucker of a husband was standing there, his mouth all pinched up, his eyes blazing and he was pushing back against the door. For someone who looked like he’d blow over in a stiff breeze, there was strength behind his shoulder and the door was moving towards Dixie like there was a bulldozer behind it. He was squawking at his wife, ‘The phone, Lucy, get the phone, get the police, Lucy, go
on!
’.
Dixie was halfway down the garden footpath when she turned back, ‘Look, I’m sorry.
Please!
’ The skinny little fucker was already shutting the door.
27
Standing at the top of the incident room, speaking to the eleven detectives squeezed into a space that usually accommodated six, Harry Synnott switched off the television and said, ‘I’d bet my pension on it.’ Technical had provided stills from the CCTV footage and three of them were pinned to the board behind him. Synnott tapped one of them,
‘Joshua Boyce. Careful, thorough. One job a year, two if it’s something very tasty.’
Officially, the robber had netted around sixty grand’s worth of jewellery and three grand in cash. As yet, the jeweller was keeping his mouth shut about what had been in the floor safe. Harry Synnott suspected the dodgy merchandise had to be worth a multiple of the legitimate stuff.
‘Joshua Boyce is in the frame, but that’s just my opinion. We don’t limit this investigation in any way. Chief Superintendent Hogg has already put the message out to every station in the city – all touts get their cages rattled over this weekend.’
Four of the team, including Rose Cheney, were from Macken Road. The rest had been brought in by Chief Superintendent Hogg.
Synnott introduced Cheney. ‘Detective Garda Cheney has a list of the fences who we believe could handle this kind of merchandise. If you know of anyone not on the list, give her the name. Every one of them gets a visit today – Cheney’s handing out assignments.’
Cheney said, ‘We tell them the man who was murdered was a security guard. He had lots of friends on the force – they don’t need to know any different –we tell them anyone who hides anything gets his balls in a wringer.’
‘The Super has a team doing a fingertip search of the car park this morning. The security man taking him by surprise, it’s just possible he left traces behind – though Boyce is a careful bugger. We go back to Kellsboro main street, we canvass every shop again in case the uniforms missed anything.’
A detective was assigned to check any cars stolen in the past month that turned up abandoned anywhere in the city over the weekend. They’d found the stolen Accord at the Kellsboro Shopping Arcade and it was possible that Boyce had picked up another car close by.
One of the detectives leaned back in his chair. ‘I take it we’ll be paying Mr Boyce an official visit?’ He was an older man, a detective sergeant named Tidey, with whom Synnott had worked briefly on the Swanson Avenue murder.
Synnott said, ‘I’m expecting a search warrant any minute.’
*
The four uniforms and three detectives were going through the house room by room. It would take a while. It wasn’t likely that Joshua Boyce had the jewellery or the gun in his house, but the shooting might have rattled him and it was possible that he’d panicked and left something somewhere he shouldn’t have – the anorak, maybe, or the baseball hat. The searchers would take their time.
‘Where were you yesterday morning?’
‘Yesterday?’ Boyce looked at his wife.
‘Shopping,’ she said. She spoke to Synnott. ‘Shopping. I think.’
Boyce said, ‘Any particular time you were interested in?’
Synnott was writing in his notebook, recording the exchange.
‘Where did you do your shopping?’
Joshua Boyce smiled. ‘That’s a very personal question, Inspector.’
‘What time did you leave the house. To go shopping?’
Boyce said. ‘Is it important? I mean, what’s this about? Should I have a lawyer here?’
‘What time did you get to the shops?’
‘What time did this happen, whatever it was?’ Boyce was relaxed. He might have been asking about a television programme he’d missed. ‘What is it, someone nicked the Garda Commissioner’s poodle?’
‘What time did you leave here?’
‘I’d have to think about that. I wasn’t keeping track. Next time, maybe whoever did whatever they did, you could get them to let me know in advance. That way, I can keep a note.’ Boyce pressed a button on the mobile he was holding. When someone answered he said, ‘Joshua Boyce – tell Connie the boys in blue are all over the shop. I’d appreciate a little service.’
He waited and when someone spoke at the other end he said, ‘Hi, Connie, no big deal, but the shades are here, asking questions about the Garda Commissioner’s missing poodle.’ After a pause he said, ‘Yeah, they have a search warrant.’ Twice he answered ‘No’ to a question at the other end. Then he said, ‘Thanks a lot, Connie’ and ended the call.
‘Connie Wintour. He’s already revving up the paperwork. He says to tell you to search away, then arrest me or piss off.’
Synnott offered his notebook to Boyce. ‘Would you care to sign my note of our conversation?’
Boyce looked Synnott in the eye. ‘Take a hike.’
The search took two hours and they found nothing.
*
When the taxi came into the cul-de-sac Garda Joe Mills perked up. On duty at the front gate of the murder house at Bushy Park, he was three hours into the shift and bored witless standing alone outside a crime scene that was yesterday’s news. For two days the media had been all over Bushy Park, salivating about a juicy double murder and conjuring all sorts of theories as to why a man and a boy should end up butchered in a quiet Galway suburb. Had they known that police believed the killer might also have killed a woman, as yet unknown, the papers would have gone apeshit with delight.
Since Thursday, Mills had done two other shifts here, always with another garda for company. Mostly the work involved shooing away sightseers and nosy neighbours or standing up straight whenever photographers came within range. On the Thursday evening, after the discovery of the bodies, Joe Mills’s mother had called from Navan to say she’d seen him in RTE footage on the nine o’clock news. Today, two days since the discovery of the bodies, resources were stretched and Mills was here alone. Besides, nothing was likely to happen. It was like the murders were something that had happened on a television show that was already fading from memory. The neighbours had their Saturday shopping to do and the media had got all they needed from the scene. Reporters from the daily papers were off duty, those from the Sunday papers who were dealing with the murders were at their desks, busy cajoling garda contacts for last-minute information, of which there was very little.
The shrink was still trying to get Wayne Kemp to talk, but despite periods of lucidity he hadn’t said anything helpful since his arrest. Once Kemp had been identified, the Dublin police checked his flat in Ranelagh. Joe Mills expected to hear that they’d found blood-streaked walls and a decomposing female body. Instead, they reported back that Kemp’s flat was neurotically neat. Mills was tempted to conclude that Kemp had made up that stuff about hurting a woman.
The woman who got out of the taxi was plump, with dyed red hair. She stood, the taxi door open behind her, looking at Garda Mills as the driver heaved a suitcase out of the boot. The driver brought the suitcase around to the side of the taxi and stood beside the woman. Her face was pale. Her voice was fragile.
‘He said,’ she spoke to the garda and gestured to the driver, ‘he said there’d been—’
She went silent. Her breathing was fast and shallow.
Joe Mills crossed the pavement slowly and spoke gently. ‘Do you live here, Mrs—?’
‘Oh, Jesus, what has he done?’
*
It took more than an hour to walk from the old cow Dobbs’s place to Portmahon Terrace. As Dixie Peyton came around the corner she saw two men standing outside her front door. She stopped, turned and stepped back around the corner.
Matty.
She stood for a moment, her back to the wall of the corner house, then poked her head out to have a look. Matty and that little piece of shit with him. They were wearing dark overalls and baseball hats. Their car was parked a few feet away, the boot open. Matty had his finger on the doorbell. Dixie pulled her head in and leaned against the wall, trying to stop her legs from trembling.
It was a whole day since they’d come to the house and Dixie had fled. They couldn’t have stayed around all that time.
There was a shout of anger that turned into a yelp of fear. When she risked another look she saw that her front door was open and the two men were grappling with Brendan.
Matty had him in a headlock – Brendan’s arms were flailing. The other little shit punched him once, twice, in the kidneys, then Matty jerked Brendan off balance and dragged him around to the back of the car. Brendan yelled a string of obscenities as the other bastard grabbed his legs and they dumped him into the boot.

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