Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
The Midnight Choir (32 page)
He could see that she didn’t have the spirit for that.
Her voice was thin. ‘Let me say goodbye to him properly?’
Garda Mickey Rynne nodded. He fingered the radio mike at his lapel, turning his head down and sideways as he pressed the transmit button and quietly asked for a patrol car and a female garda to look after the kid.
The woman was hunkered down now, speaking quietly to the boy, long pauses between short sentences, one finger gently stroking his cheek. Whatever she was saying, the boy looked relieved.
*
The mobile phone was a stolen Nokia and it came in a plastic case. The keys were visible through a little plastic window. Matty said to Lar Mackendrick, ‘You don’t make any calls on this, you just take them. Just to be on the safe side, don’t take it out of the case until we get rid of it. That way, no prints on the phone itself.’
As soon as it had served its purpose the phone would be chopped into a thousand pieces. No telecoms technician would ever link it to any call and there wouldn’t be the slightest trace of physical or electronic evidence connecting it to Lar Mackendrick.
‘What makes someone go like that?’ Lar said. He put the mobile on the table, beside his Ballygowan. They were in the back garden of his home in Howth. It was a large villa-style house on a couple of acres of Howth Head, surrounded by greenery and with a view of the harbour. Nearly ten years back it had been owned by an undistinguished local councillor who suddenly sold off an extensive property portfolio and moved his family to Spain. The area closest to the house was a patio, decorated with a Mediterranean touch by one of Dublin’s up-and-coming young designers. Lar had had a twenty-five-metre swimming pool installed, surrounded by decking. He swam there every afternoon, from early April to late September. He was wearing swimming togs under his fluffy yellow dressing gown.
‘First time I met Dixie, at the wedding, I said to Owen, Jesus, that’s some bird you’ve got. I mean, she was a knockout. They had it all. When Owen made a balls of a simple delivery job, ended up in a ditch, I could have said it’s not my problem. Instead, I did the right thing. When she came looking for another handout, and I knew it was for shit to stick in her arm, I asked myself what Owen would want and I said no.’
Lar opened a palm to Matty. ‘What makes someone betray someone who’s been nothing but a friend to her?’
‘Cunt,’ Matty said.
Down at the end of the garden, Todd was using a Flymo to trim the grass edging. Lar liked the buzzing noise. Summery kind of sound, though it would be a couple of months before the weather made sitting out here as pleasant as it ought to be.
‘You’ve put the number around?’
Matty nodded. ‘About a dozen people, should be enough to let it ripple out. Far as anyone knows, when they ring the mobile they’re ringing someone called Mr James. Anyone gets a sight of her, they ring Mr James. Two grand if she’s where they say she is.’
‘Owen was a nice boy. Bit of a dreamer, but a nice boy.’ Lar shook his head. ‘If he knew it had come to this.’
Matty said, ‘Owen knew how the world works, Lar. He’d know it was the right thing to do.’
*
Mid-afternoon, they went in two cars. Harry Synnott and Rose Cheney in one, Bob Tidey and a younger detective in the other. A patrol car from Clontarf garda station met them two streets away from Joshua Boyce’s house. A surveillance crew from the station had already reported that Boyce stayed home all weekend.
Tidey and his colleague probably wouldn’t need the pistols they carried but they rechecked them, anyway. Joshua Boyce was unlikely to be fool enough to have a weapon in the house, but since the case involved firearms it was best to be on the safe side.
Walking up the path to the front door, Synnott said, ‘What do you think of the aspect?’
Rose Cheney smiled. ‘Place like this, we’re talking maybe six hundred thousand. That’s Northside prices. Same place on the Southside, you could add another three hundred thousand, maybe four.’
Boyce’s wife answered the doorbell and when she saw Harry Synnott she said, ‘He did nothing.’
Harry Synnott arrested them both.
‘This is a stitch-up,’ Joshua Boyce said when Bob Tidey handcuffed him. Boyce turned to Harry Synnott. ‘You know that.’
Synnott told him that he had a right to remain silent. Rose Cheney took a number from Antoinette Boyce, then arranged for Antoinette’s sister to come and collect the Boyces’ daughter. Cheney then took Antoinette to the patrol car and had them drive her away. Cheney, Bob Tidey and his colleague gave the house a quick search and found nothing. Technical would arrive later to do a thorough job.
Halfway down the driveway, his hands cuffed in front of him, Boyce turned and showed Harry Synnott a smile. ‘You losers don’t have a case. You’re chancing your arm.’
Synnott said, ‘You keep telling yourself that.’ He took out his notebook and scribbled a couple of lines.
Boyce said, ‘You’ve got no evidence against me. You’ve got no one in the frame, so you’re having a go at me.’
Bob Tidey arrived at Synnott’s elbow. ‘That’s it – ready to go?’
Harry Synnott finished writing. Then he held up his notebook. ‘Mr Boyce, I want you to sign my note of this conversation.’
Joshua Boyce’s smile was wide. ‘Go fuck yourself, loser,’ he said. ‘This really is a waste of time.’
Harry Synnott bit back a smart-arse remark. Anything he could say would only feed Boyce’s sense of superiority. He stood in the driveway and watched as Bob Tidey took Boyce to his car and locked him into the back seat. When Synnott got to the car he said to Bob Tidey, ‘I want you to make a note of exactly what you saw and heard since we arrived at the house, OK? Right up to this moment.’
‘Soon as we get to the station.’
Synnott shook his head. ‘Best you do it now. Anything you heard him say, put it in quotation marks.’
Tidey’s young colleague was coming down the driveway. Synnott said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Purcell, sir, detective garda.’
‘Get your notebook out, write down anything you saw or heard since you arrived at the house.’ Rose Cheney was locking the front door of the house. Synnott gave her the same instruction.
It took them around three minutes to scribble their notes. Synnott stood with his back to the car. Behind him, looking out from the back seat, Joshua Boyce was still smiling.
They were on the coast road, almost into Fairview, Rose Cheney driving, when Synnott’s mobile rang. It was a sergeant at Cooper Street station.
‘You know someone called Deirdre Peyton?’
‘This the child-abduction thing?’
‘We picked her up – the kid’s back with the foster-parents, no harm done.’
‘She ask to talk to me?’
‘She hasn’t asked for anyone, hasn’t said a word. I found your card in her pocket. Is there anything we should know?’
Synnott watched the car ahead, Tidey and Purcell up front. He could see the back of Joshua Boyce’s head. The thief was slouching, his head resting comfortably against the back of the seat.
‘She’s just a tout I used to know. No big deal.’
38
‘I honestly can’t remember.’
‘Bullshit.’
Joshua Boyce shook his head. ‘I’m a busy man.’
‘This is Monday,’ Harry Synnott said. ‘You’re being asked to remember what you were doing three days ago, Friday morning.’
‘Give me a minute.’
With a nervous suspect, Harry Synnott might display a sympathetic ear.
Get it off your chest. We know you didn’t mean to do it
Convince the suspect that he ought to explain how he’s basically a good guy and he didn’t mean to do whatever he did – let him stitch himself up. There were equivalent tactics for worming an incriminating statement out of loudmouths, smart-arses and mammies’ boys, but a Joshua Boyce wouldn’t fall for any of that. Boyce wouldn’t feel any need to unburden himself of his guilt. He didn’t need to boast or to explain himself. He knew it was his job to get into and out of Macken Road police station without giving the police a sliver of evidence to support their belief that he had committed a crime.
Get it off your chest. We know you didn’t mean to do it
Convince the suspect that he ought to explain how he’s basically a good guy and he didn’t mean to do whatever he did – let him stitch himself up. There were equivalent tactics for worming an incriminating statement out of loudmouths, smart-arses and mammies’ boys, but a Joshua Boyce wouldn’t fall for any of that. Boyce wouldn’t feel any need to unburden himself of his guilt. He didn’t need to boast or to explain himself. He knew it was his job to get into and out of Macken Road police station without giving the police a sliver of evidence to support their belief that he had committed a crime.
‘What am I supposed to have done?’
‘Friday – what time did you get up?’
‘Far as I know, I don’t have an alibi for whatever it was.’
‘Let’s take it step by step. You got up at?’
‘I always get up about seven-thirty. Friday was a school day – we got Ciara up and ready, I suppose.’
‘Don’t suppose. You got up at seven-thirty, you got the kids ready for school.’
‘Peter’s working. Antoinette got Ciara dressed, I made breakfast – we were out of the house by quarter to nine. I drove Ciara to school, same as usual. Peter – Friday, he got a bus into town. Sometimes I give him a lift.’ Boyce clicked his fingers. ‘Friday – I remember – the bed.’
Synnott couldn’t resist pursing his lips.
Here we go.
‘What bed?’
‘The missus wanted a new bed. I told her the old one was OK, but you know how it is.’ This last was addressed to Rose Cheney, sitting beside Harry Synnott. She didn’t acknowledge the remark.
Synnott said, ‘You went shopping?’
‘Perry Logan’s, the superstore. Beyond the airport.’
‘What time?’
‘No idea. It was morning – maybe ten, more like eleven, whenever.’
‘What did you do at Perry Logan’s?’
‘The wife’s been looking to get a new bed since Christmas. Missed the January sales. I wouldn’t let her pick it out herself – I mean, it’s the kind of thing you’d want to have a say in, right?’
‘You bought a bed?’
‘It wouldn’t have been my first choice – a bit too stately. But she liked it and I checked it was comfortable to lie on, so that was that.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Some bedding, sheets, pillowcases – figured we might as well push the boat out.’
‘Then you left the store?’
‘Yes, more or less. First we had a look around the furniture section – there was a sofa she liked, but it’s only three, four years since we got the leather suite, so I said give me a break. That was it.’
‘Then you left? This took what, an hour?’
‘An hour, maybe more. It was – before we left, I forgot, we spent a bit of time in the electronics department, Antoinette wanted to check out the television sets. She’s thinking of getting a little flat-screen set for the kitchen.’
‘You bought one?’
‘No, but when I got in there I spent a while looking at the computer stuff, came away with a photoprinter. Been meaning to get one for ages. Thing is, with a digital camera, it’s not the same – looking at them on the screen, is it?’
‘You have receipts?’
‘Me? No. The missus usually holds on to stuff like that.’ He turned to Rose Cheney. ‘Bet it’s the same in your house, right?’
Synnott turned to Cheney. ‘Sergeant, I think it’s about time for some coffee.’
Boyce gave Cheney a big smile. ‘That’d be great. Black, no sugar.’
When she left the interrogation room Rose Cheney checked with Bob Tidey, who was questioning Antoinette Boyce. The suspect’s wife said that they’d arrived at Perry Logan’s sometime after ten-thirty. Which was around the time the jewellery shop was being held up.
Cheney found a number for the Perry Logan superstore on the airport road. An assistant manager used up some time admitting that he knew nothing about the CCTV set-up, and even if he did know anything about it he didn’t have the authority to discuss company matters with outside agencies. No, there was no one more senior on the premises and they’d be closing up soon. Cheney bit back a comment and used a sweet voice to get him to phone a senior manager. Five minutes later the security director rang Macken Road and asked for Detective Garda Cheney.
Unless something dramatic happened, he said, a hold-up or someone caught shoplifting, the CCTV tapes at Perry Logan’s were reused. It was more than forty-eight hours since the robbery, so there wasn’t much chance that Friday’s images had survived.
‘There’s always a possibility, but—’
Cheney had an image of a tape being at that moment erased.
‘Please, check it right now.’
When Rose Cheney got back to the interrogation room she put on a big smile. Boyce smiled back.
‘The coffee?’
Cheney raised her gaze to the ceiling, then smiled even more warmly. ‘Silly me. Black, no sugar, right?’
*
The traffic was heavy on Infirmary Road and Joe Mills endured a final few minutes of sports chatter from the sergeant. When they parked the Primera inside Garda Headquarters the sergeant said, ‘Welcome to the Heart of Darkness.’ He headed off to the canteen and Joe Mills waited at reception until a superintendent arrived and took him across the courtyard towards the centre door in a long stone-clad building. They went down a couple of corridors and into a large room where the superintendent introduced Mills to Assistant Commissioner Colin O’Keefe. The Assistant Commissioner came around his desk, his hand out. ‘Thanks for making the trip, Garda Mills. It’s important that there’s no mistake about this.’
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