The Midnight Choir (30 page)
Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
Must have made an arrangement with the teacher.
Don’t interfere.
Chris and his mother were out of sight now.
Greta Flanagan’s mother stood there another full minute before she turned and went through the doorway and down the corridor towards her daughter’s classroom.
*
When Rose Cheney arrived at her desk at Macken Road, carrying her first coffee of the day, she found a message there from Teresa Hunt, asking her to call.
Cheney told Harry Synnott, ‘It may be she just needs to know if we intend to charge Max – some reassurance that we’re not slacking.’ Cheney knew that it wasn’t unusual for a rape victim to need comforting at this stage. Had the police taken her seriously? Why hadn’t she heard anything over the past five days?
Synnott made a gesture towards the papers and files on his desk.
‘The sooner I get this stuff done – do you really need me there?’
Rose Cheney said, ‘Boyce?’
‘If we’re taking him in today I want to be well grounded. You could do this one on your own, right?’
Cheney knew it made sense for Harry Synnott to concentrate on reviewing the files on the jewellery robbery before they arrested Joshua Boyce this afternoon. Material in a witness statement or the suspect file might well contradict something Boyce said in interrogation and there wouldn’t be much joy in discovering that afterwards. Anyway, chances were that a meeting with Teresa Hunt wasn’t going to lead to anything.
Cheney said, ‘Comforting rape victims. I always get the fun jobs.’
Synnott smiled. ‘Best if it’s a woman.’
Harry Synnott was photocopying pages from the jewellery robbery file when he got a phone call from an inspector at headquarters. ‘Deirdre Peyton? You know her?’
‘What’s she done now?’
‘She’s abducted a child.’
‘Her son?’
‘He’s in foster care – took him from school.’
Synnott used his shoulder to clamp the phone to his ear and reached for a stapler.
He said, ‘You need an address for her?’
‘We’ve been there. Nothing.’
Synnott hit the stapler with the heel of his hand and stapled the pages together.
‘She’s got a brother in England – London, I think – she may have ideas about that.’
‘Is she a danger to the kid?’
Synnott thought for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t say so.’
*
There were two middle-aged men on one side of the wide, long and very shiny table. They were seated side by side. Sitting a few feet to the left, Teresa Hunt looked inconspicuous. When Rose Cheney rang Teresa to agree a time and place Teresa asked her to come to the offices of one of Dublin’s larger legal firms. The room was in proportion to the table, wide and high-ceilinged. And probably in proportion to the firm’s fees and the expectations of its clients.
The younger of the two men, whose face seemed slightly familiar, rose and came to shake Cheney’s hand. He introduced himself as Teresa’s father. He introduced his companion, a solicitor, but Cheney didn’t catch the name. Introductions done, Teresa’s father returned to his seat and waved Cheney to a chair facing his across the table. ‘I’m told, sergeant, that there’s a Mr Synnott in charge of this case, a detective inspector.’
Rose Cheney put her face in neutral and waited.
The older of the two men had a voice with no edge to it. ‘This isn’t a question of gender, sergeant.’ He might have been explaining the tooth fairy to a four-year-old. ‘It’s a question of rank. There has been a serious development and my clients—’
Cheney felt as though she was sitting slightly below the eye level of everyone else in the room. It was as though they’d had someone saw a couple of inches off the legs of her ornate walnut chair.
‘My time is limited, I’m afraid,’ Cheney said. ‘Ms Hunt asked to speak to the police – I’m here to listen to what she has to say.’
Teresa looked to her father, who waited a few seconds, then nodded.
‘It’s nothing, really.’ Teresa seemed to have found a spot on the table that needed polishing. She rubbed at it with an index finger, glancing up at Cheney every few seconds. ‘A man came to see me, at Trinity. Friday afternoon. I was coming out of the Nassau Street exit, I was meeting a friend in Café En Seine, and this guy just came up to me.’
‘Friday,’ Cheney said. ‘That was three days ago.’
The father said, ‘She told her mother only yesterday.’
Cheney said to Teresa, ‘Describe him.’
‘Young, late twenties, wearing a suit, short dark hair – nothing special about him.’
‘He said something?’
‘He said he was a lawyer. He said it was terrible, what had happened to me, but he felt I ought to know what a criminal trial involved. A rape trial.’
She was looking now at her finger, rubbing the invisible spot on the table. She didn’t look up. ‘He mentioned two men, old boyfriends of mine. He knew their names. He said—’
Her father cut her off. ‘It’s intimidation. I know Hapgood – the father. These people think they can frighten—’
Cheney looked at Teresa. ‘Did this man give you a name?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He just—’
‘They want her to know,’ the father said, ‘that if she presses charges they’ll drag up every—’
Cheney spoke to the lawyer. ‘Have you a private room where I can talk with Teresa?’
The father took a deep breath and said, ‘Sergeant.’
It must take a lot of practice, Rose Cheney thought, to be able to inject so much contempt into two syllables.
Cheney kept her gaze on the lawyer. After a moment he said, ‘Perhaps it’s best.’
The lawyer took them to a private room and when he left Teresa said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Cheney said, ‘Your dad means well.’
‘In his world he lifts a finger, half a dozen vice-presidents are on their feet, telling him we’ve got that covered, J.P.’
J. P. Hunt.
That’s why he was familiar. Cheney had seen the face in newspaper photographs. Hunt. John Patrick Hunt. ‘My dad’s in property,’ Teresa had said at the hospital when Rose Cheney had asked about her parents. John Patrick Hunt was in property the way Microsoft was in software. Some of the best hotels and apartment blocks in Dublin, housing estates and superpubs throughout the country, half a dozen of the most imaginative property developments in London – if he didn’t own them outright he was a pivotal figure in the consortium that did.
They were in some kind of conference room, long and narrow. The centre of the room was taken up by a long table and six chairs. There was just a single small window in the room, on the wall furthest from the door.
‘You were coming out of the Nassau Street exit? Was there anyone with you?’
‘I was on my own.’
If this creep had spent time hanging around, waiting to catch Teresa alone, perhaps he’d got in the way of a CCTV camera. It happened Friday – wouldn’t they have reused the tape by now? Maybe not.
‘He was wearing a suit?’
‘He looked like a businessman – maybe he was a lawyer like he said. He was well-spoken.’
Cheney asked enough questions to get as complete a description as Teresa could give. She knew it was too vague to be of use.
Teresa said, ‘Do they still do that, try to smear rape victims?’
‘There won’t be anything in the media – they’re not allowed to report the victim’s name. But, yes, the defence can try to use your sexual history to influence the jury. Mind you, they have to be careful. Juries aren’t dumb, and they can react against that kind of thing.’
‘Then—’
‘I won’t hide it, Teresa. These things are not pleasant. Even if you’re giving innocuous evidence in a routine case, it can be intimidating. Sitting up in front of everyone in a courtroom, in a rape trial, being asked intimate questions by a smarmy lawyer who smiles and suggests that you offered to suck his client’s cock – it’s not a nice way to spend a morning. And what this bully is up to is letting you know that they’ll make it as unpleasant as possible.’
‘Would a lawyer – I mean—’
‘Lawyers are supposed to try to get their clients off, using whatever material their clients provide them with. That’s what they’ll do in court. But I doubt if the man who approached you was really a lawyer. Just a thug for hire.’
Teresa was nodding. She moved her chair back and went to the window at the end of the room. Cheney sat where she was. Give the girl space. After a minute, Teresa said, ‘One way or the other, I can expect a going-over.’
Cheney joined her by the window. There was a plaza six floors below – thin trees and a piece of bronze sculpture. Outside the entrance to the building across the way, three smokers were getting their fix.
Cheney kept her voice matter-of-fact. ‘It helps Max Junior to portray you as the sexual predator, him as the innocent at large, accused of something he’d never dream of doing.’
‘Are they allowed to – things I might have – what if they can prove I’ve had an active sex life?’
‘This isn’t about sex, Teresa, it’s about beating you into submission. It’s what rape is about and it’s what Max and his yob friends are trying now. They might have got away with it in the old days, these days there’s nothing that you or anyone else does in bed that a jury will see as justifying rape.’
Not strictly true. Cheney had seen juries do strange things after being fed the information that the alleged victim had a less than virginal history. A lawyer could employ no end of legal nods and winks in an effort to mine some reasonable doubt from a jury.
‘These two men, the old boyfriends, don’t contact them. We’ll do that, to see if Max or his thug has been in touch. This may be no more than a wild swing by one of Max’s friends.’
Or, given that Max had a history in which at least one other rape allegation was dropped, it could be something more serious.
‘How are you holding up?’
‘I’m fine.’
No, you’re not.
Teresa’s father was graciousness itself as he accompanied Rose Cheney down to the lobby.
‘You have kids, sergeant?’
‘Two.’
‘Much younger than Teresa, of course, but you’ll know how something like this affects a parent, so I’m sorry if—’
‘Not at all, sir, it’s the protective instinct.’
‘Quite.’
In the lobby, J.P. Hunt held Cheney by one elbow and led her off to one side. They stood fifty feet from the reception desk, no one else around, beneath a twenty-foot-high painting that reminded Cheney of the pattern on her mother’s dining-room curtains. Hunt leaned close. ‘I want to make just one thing crystal clear, sergeant. Whatever happens with the police, I’m going after that little shit. Legally. I’ll spend whatever it takes, I’ll mount a private prosecution.’ He couldn’t help the changing pitch of his voice. ‘I know the Hapgoods’ business and I know what needs to be done so that anyone who chooses to employ Max Hapgood or anyone associated with him knows that they’re making an enemy of me.’
He made a visible effort to bring his voice down a tone. ‘And, sergeant, I am not a pleasant man to have as an enemy. I want you to know – and I want your superiors to know – that my lawyers will be keeping a scrupulous record of the police progress on this case.’ He held Cheney’s gaze. ‘Anyone slips up, there’ll be a shit-storm of motions and injunctions and plain old damages claims heading your way.’ He let go of Cheney’s elbow and stood back. ‘I want to thank you, sergeant, for your personal attention to my daughter. I know you’ll do your best for us.’
36
Dixie bought sausages and chips for Christopher. She got a cup of coffee for herself. They were in a café in Mary Street, a busy place tucked away behind a cake shop.
‘Do you remember the time we were in here before?’
Christopher shook his head.
‘You had soup. You said it was the best soup you ever tasted.’
‘Aunt Lucy makes lovely soup.’
Aunt Lucy Dobbs.
Ah, Christopher.
He ate the chips first and the ketchup went fast. He went alone to the counter to ask for more ketchup. He came back proudly clutching two sachets.
When Dixie asked her son how he was getting on at school he said he was doing OK. She reminded him that he was supposed to have a sleepover at his friend Willie’s home and Christopher said he did, but he cried and Willie’s mammy rang Auntie Lucy and she came and picked him up and brought him home.
‘Are things OK now, mammy?’
‘Of course they are, love – what do you mean?’
‘Auntie Lucy says by and by things will be OK. She calls me chicken.’
‘Does she?’
‘She says just wait, chicken. Your mammy will be back when things are OK. Are things OK now, mammy?’
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