The Midnight Choir (4 page)
Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
‘My father’s not here.’
‘Your mammy in?’
A ripple of annoyance crossed the kid’s features.
‘My mother’s not here at the moment.’
‘You’ll do. Can you confirm that you spent some time last evening with a young woman named Teresa Hunt?’
‘Max? Everything all right?’
She was there at the other end of the hall. Black dress, thin as a rake, dark hair pulled back tight on her head.
‘Mrs Hapgood?’
She didn’t reply. She was looking at her son. She could tell that Synnott and Cheney weren’t here to sell timeshares.
‘Garda Siochana, Mrs Hapgood. May we come in?’
‘Max?’ She was ignoring Synnott and Cheney. The kid was chewing rapidly again as though he’d just remembered he’d a mouthful of food and he urgently needed to dispose of it.
‘Detective Inspector Synnott, Mrs Hapgood. And Detective Garda Cheney. We have a few questions for your son. I think it might be better if we—’ Synnott gestured towards the street, implying the hazard of neighbourhood gossips. Mrs Hapgood waved an impatient hand.
‘Come in.’
She didn’t know why exactly the police had come for her son but it was all over her face –
Whatever this is about
,
he did it.
Whatever this is about
,
he did it.
‘Max?’
The kid looked from Synnott to his mother, then back, his face flaring. The stupidity of lying that his mother wasn’t home had stripped away any possibility of defiance. He said, ‘Please, I didn’t do anything.’
‘Then why don’t we sit down and clear this up, sir?’
The mother spat the words. ‘What’s this about?’
‘A young lady has made a complaint.’
The mother crossed to stand beside the kid. ‘I’m calling my husband. I don’t want you talking to Max until my husband gets here.’
*
The sergeant processing Dixie Peyton into a cell at Cooper Street garda station was grey-haired, with a grey face. After an initial glance at Dixie, he focused on the sheet in front of him, asking questions without looking up, filling in her details. Name, address, date of birth. Much of the sergeant’s workday consisted of tending what he had come to think of as a production line in the crime industry. Stand there, fiddle with the ratchets and cogwheels and watch the never-ending stream of product pass through on its way to prison. It was a living.
‘Any existing medical conditions?’
‘I want to make a phone call.’
‘Medical conditions?’
‘No, I want to make a phone call.’
‘Taking any medication?’
Dixie shook her head. She answered whatever he asked her and when the sergeant was finished he straightened up. Dixie watched him put down his pen, then she said, ‘I’m sorry, I really do need to make a phone call.’
He turned and took the form back into an inner office. Dixie turned to the garda who’d arrested her. Standing a few feet away, he was somewhere off in text heaven, staring at the screen of his Nokia, his thumb dancing on the buttons. After a minute, the sergeant came back from the inner office and said to her, ‘Do you need to make a phone call?’
Dixie was about to say something. Instead, she just nodded.
‘Number?’
‘Detective Inspector Harry Synnott. He’s at Turner’s Lane garda station.’
Dixie was taken through a doorway and down a corridor. She looked back and the arresting garda was still standing in the public area, his thumb tapping away at the Nokia. The sergeant opened a heavy metal door and led her through to the cells.
The sergeant went back to his desk and looked up the number for Turner’s Lane. A voice at the other end told him that he didn’t think Detective Inspector Synnott was here. As the sergeant hung up he saw another garda come through the door into receiving, leading a cuffed teenager with a bum-fluff moustache who was protesting loudly that he hadn’t done any fucking thing wrong, right? The sergeant pulled another form from a tray.
*
Detective Garda Rose Cheney was thinking, not for the first time, that TV make-over programmes have a lot to answer for. Max Hapgood’s mother had taken the kid off to some other part of the house, where no doubt he was being grilled. The two detectives were left sitting at the dining-room table. Cheney reckoned that the room had endured the attentions of someone deeply influenced by a variety of celebrity designers. The house was big and old, with high ceilings and tall windows, and the dining room looked foolish dressed in the kind of minimalist style more suited to a tiny riverfront apartment. Dark brown vertical blinds, bold whites balanced against various shades of grey, and more chrome than was good for any room that wasn’t a works canteen. Cheney examined the artwork on the walls. She didn’t recognise any of the signatures, but none of it came from a car-boot sale. On top of the fortune it cost to buy one of these houses, a lot more had been spent tarting it up. With that kind of earning power, Hapgood Senior might be a lawyer, though the name didn’t ring any bells. Commercial law, maybe. The higher reaches of middle management in the Financial Services Centre, or perhaps a partner in one of the outfits that serviced the winners in the boom economy.
In the forty minutes it took the father to get home, Cheney exchanged maybe half a dozen sentences with Harry Synnott, all of them comments on the house. He made assenting noises, but offered no opinions. Probably that was because he didn’t have any. Synnott didn’t seem to have much to say about anything beyond the immediate matter at hand. His voice, measured and precise, with a soft Waterford accent, was at odds with his appearance. There were many gardai with his tall, wide build and large hands, and a few with the slight unevenness of his nose that was the legacy of a short-lived amateur boxing career. The stand-offish manner, however, was all his own. Maybe he had grown used to the cold shoulder and was out of the habit of making an effort. Unlike some in the force, Cheney had no problem working with the man. He wasn’t easy to talk to but you wouldn’t hang a man for that, and he hadn’t caused her any grief. He was a shit, that was a given. But in the day-to-day, he was more than just a competent copper. She figured it couldn’t hurt to work with someone whose name was attached to the Garda Sheelin murder case, as well as to the conviction of a serial rapist, to the Swanson Avenue murder and to two or three more of the force’s biggest cases over the past twenty years.
The first thing the father said when he came home was, ‘Sorry about the wait, Inspector. You don’t have a coffee. Perhaps—’
‘No, thanks, I—’
‘Tea? A soft drink? It’s no bother.’
Shirt-sleeved, he stood inside the door of the dining room, arms wide, palms up, as though he was ensuring that everyone was comfy before a meeting of the parish council.
‘I’d love a Coke,’ Rose Cheney said. She reckoned he wouldn’t let them get on with the job until his hospitality had been acknowledged. Max Hapgood Senior smiled warmly. ‘That’s the ticket.’ He turned to Synnott. ‘Just give me ten minutes with Max – is that OK?’
‘Of course, sir.’
The Coke arrived on a tray, in a glass with ice and lemon and with a little plastic sunflower gadget attached to the side of the glass. It was carried by a dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties. Rose Cheney smiled at the woman and said, ‘Romania? Latvia?’ The woman didn’t acknowledge the question. She put the tray on a side table, turned and left the room. Obedience was a job requirement, Cheney reckoned, but familiarity with the people she had to obey would be discouraged. She’d be on a third of the minimum wage, sending money home to her family, her work permit held by the Hapgoods. If she had any time left after serving the family and their guests, cooking, cleaning and looking after Max Junior, she’d be sent to weed the flower beds or eradicate stray individual dust molecules from the master bedroom.
Cheney left the Coke untouched.
Almost half an hour passed before Daddy Hapgood came back, a surly Max Junior by his side, the mammy bringing up the rear. ‘Now, Inspector, sorry to keep you waiting.’
Within minutes, it became clear that the shutters had come down. Across the dining-room table Max Junior found something in the middle distance to stare at, while his mother was making no effort to conceal her hostility to the gardai. Max Senior maintained an impeccably polite and patently skin-deep air of cooperation.
Harry Synnott glanced at his watch and made a note of the time. ‘As your son no doubt has told you, we’re here in connection with a complaint made by a young lady.’
Max Junior opened his mouth and got as far as ‘I—’ before his father placed one hand gently on his son’s arm.
‘I’ve been onto my solicitor’s office,’ Max Senior said. ‘He’s in a meeting at the moment, but I’ve left word that we need his urgent attention.’ He produced a small silver-coloured recorder, pressed a button and set the machine down on the table in front of Synnott. ‘Until then, I think it’s best if we just listen to what you have to say, and we’ll reserve comment until we’ve had legal advice.’
‘Of course, sir, that’s a reasonable stance. In the meantime, it might help clear this matter up if we could establish some basic facts – for instance—’ Synnottt turned to Max. ‘You’re acquainted with the young lady involved, is that right?’
Max Senior smiled. ‘Inspector, I appreciate you have a job to—’
‘Is this what the police force has come to?’ There was contempt in the woman’s voice.
Max Senior said, ‘Please, Maeve—’
Max Junior said, ‘Mum—’
Harry Synnott said, ‘Why do you say that, Mrs Hapgood?’
‘You come to my home, on the word of a silly bitch who has trouble keeping her legs closed, to accuse—’
‘It might indeed help, Mrs Hapgood, if you have anything that might help explain—’
‘Maeve—’ Max Senior’s voice carried a touch of annoyance.
Mrs Hapgood turned her head away, as though the very sight of Synnott was offensive.
Rose Cheney had her legs crossed, her notebook resting casually against one knee, her pen moving . . .
silly bitch who has . . . to accuse . . .
silly bitch who has . . . to accuse . . .
Harry Synnott said, ‘I appreciate your decision to await legal advice before making a formal statement – and, incidentally, I agree that that’s what you should do – but there are certain technicalities we ought to get out of the way while we’re waiting.’
‘Such as?’ Max Senior said.
‘We’ll need the clothes that young Max was wearing last night.’
‘No chance.’
‘I know it’s an imposition, but I’m afraid it’s necessary. And we’d rather do it quietly – no need to have hordes of uniformed members arriving in squad cars, all the hullabaloo of a formal search.’
Mrs Hapgood stared at Synnott. ‘This is outrageous.’
‘And perhaps, since it’s an obvious matter of interest to us, young Max could explain where he got those scratches on his forehead?’
Max Senior shook his head. ‘That has to—’
‘He was drunk.’ Mrs Hapgood said. ‘It happens with young men. He was drunk, he tripped on his way in last night, he scratched his face on the bushes outside the front door. OK?’
Harry Synnott said, ‘That’s indeed a help, Mrs Hapgood. It’s just that we have to clear things up, and if there’s a reasonable explanation—’
Rose Cheney was scribbling away.
‘As you can see, Inspector, my wife is upset. I really think, until my solicitor—’
Synnott said to Max Junior, ‘Might I see the letter?’
Max Senior said, ‘What letter?’
‘This young woman, we understand, wrote to you recently.’
The parents were looking at young Max. ‘It was just a note, last week. I binned it.’ He shrugged. ‘No big deal. Just a note. She’s like, will I give her a ring, that’s all.’
Synnott could hear the scratching of Cheney’s biro. Teresa’s letter wouldn’t be a problem.
*
There was a different sergeant on the desk at Cooper Street when they took Dixie Peyton out into the yard of the garda station to board the bus to court. ‘What about my phone call – the other sergeant was making a call for me?’ The sergeant ignored her.
‘You can call from Mountjoy,’ a young garda said. There were three other prisoners ahead of Dixie, all of them women caught shoplifting. She stopped at the door of the Mercedes minibus and turned to the garda. ‘He should have been here by now. Mr Synnott should have been here.’ She looked back and through the doorway she saw the original desk sergeant passing behind the counter in the public office. He was wearing an overcoat. She said to the garda at the minibus, ‘Look, I need—’ He took her by the elbow and guided her firmly through the open door of the bus. ‘Off you go, love.’
The sergeant saw the door of the bus close behind Dixie Peyton and he swore silently.
Memory like a bloody sieve. Meant to call Turner’s Lane again.
He was tired, his back hurt, he resented having to use his lunch break to go to a bookshop to buy a study guide for his son who didn’t fancy a trip into town because the traffic was shite. As the bus pulled away, he went back behind the counter and picked up the phone. He couldn’t remember the number of Turner’s Lane and he was about to say the hell with it. Instead, he swore and began thumbing through the station directory.
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