The Midnight Choir (5 page)

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Authors: Gene Kerrigan

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

BOOK: The Midnight Choir
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*
The garda who took the call at Turner’s Lane was young, blonde and blue-eyed, just five weeks out of Templemore. She mentally shuffled the faces of the detectives.
Harry Synnott. The one with the bockety nose. Forty-somethingish. He just transferred out of here, right?
‘Listen, hold on, I’ll get someone.’
She’d seen Synnott twice in the days after she came here, then he’d transferred across the city to – where? – somewhere on the Southside.
There were three other uniformed gardai within earshot, and she chose to ask Sergeant Ferry. He’d been patient and helpful from the first day. Took her on a tour of the place, introduced her to everyone, showed her where everything was. When he told her, ‘You’re a right pain in the arse’ he had a mock-irritable look on his face, then he patiently explained for the second time the back-office filing system. End of her first week at Turner’s Lane, when the young garda was using her day off to paint away some of her new flat’s shabbiness, Sergeant Ferry turned up at her door with a stack of pizzas, along with his wife and his thirteen-year-old daughter, and the three of them spent the evening helping her to decorate.
Now, when she asked if he knew where Inspector Synnott had transferred, Sergeant Ferry hesitated for a moment. Then he said, ‘I’ll take it.’
Into the phone, he said, ‘Who wants to know?’
The sergeant at Cooper Street station repeated what he’d told the young garda – a prisoner, in on a mugging charge, needed to speak to Synnott. ‘She seems a bit desperate. Probably an informer. Is Synnott around?’
Sergeant Ferry said, ‘Never heard of the man,’ and put down the phone.
The young garda watched as Sergeant Ferry turned and walked away.
5
‘Trevor!’
Max Hapgood Senior spoke into his mobile as though welcoming the Seventh Cavalry coming over the hill.
‘Thanks for ringing so promptly. We’ve got a slight problem here – I’m at home – it’s Max, we—’
He was standing now. ‘You’ll excuse me, Inspector – solicitor.’ He clicked off his little voice recorder and put it in his pocket. Moving towards the kitchen, he put the mobile to his ear, then turned back to his son.
‘Not a word.’
With the father gone, and the mother upstairs with Detective Garda Cheney, collecting the clothes that Max Junior had worn the previous evening, Harry Synnott was alone with the younger Hapgood.
A couple of minutes, tops, before one or the other comes back.
‘Daddy’s right, you know. If you did what the girl says you did, the best course is to keep your mouth shut and hope you get a break from the jury.’
The kid’s eyes widened. Synnott could see that his casual-seeming remark had delivered an almost physical blow. The kid was suddenly seeing himself standing in a courtroom in his best suit, watching a jury come back.
After half a minute, he said, ‘What is she saying?’
‘I think maybe you know that.’
‘I didn’t force her.’
As if he’d just remembered something, Synnott picked up his pen and scribbled in his notebook. He didn’t look at the kid, just said, ‘That means you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.’
Max shrugged. ‘I mean, it wasn’t like she was a virgin.’
Synnott wrote that down, too.
‘Did she say I hit her? I didn’t hurt her. I swear, nothing like that. It was just sex. When we started, she wanted it as much as I did.’ He leaned forward. ‘I mean, you know what that’s like – you can’t turn it on and off like a fucking tap. I did nothing wrong.’
The kitchen door opened and the father was back, mobile in hand. ‘Trevor’s on his way,’ he said to his son. To Synnott he said, ‘My lawyer thinks it’s best if you wait in your car until—’
Synnott had finished writing. He held out his notebook to the kid. ‘You want to sign my note of our conversation?’
The kid looked from Synnott to his father. The man regarded his son with a mixture of surprise and contempt.
‘What did I tell you?’
Max Junior looked like he might cry. ‘I didn’t tell him anything.’
The father turned to Synnott. ‘What did he say?’
Synnott ignored him. He took his time writing down the exchange between the father and the son. Then he again pushed his notebook towards the son and said, ‘It’s normal, in these circumstances, to carefully read and then sign a police officer’s notes of remarks made in—’
‘He’s signing nothing.’ The father stood over Synnott. ‘I know people, my friend. You screw with my family, you’ll be lucky to end up waving your arms at traffic on the Aran Islands.’
The son, his face red from hairline to neck, pushed the notebook away. ‘I said nothing.’
‘Fair enough.’ Synnott wrote some more, then looked at his watch and scribbled the time in his notebook. He stood up.
‘And now, sir,’ he said to the younger Max, ‘I must ask you to come to the station with—’
‘Like fuck!’ The father’s ostentatious charm was in shreds.
Garda Cheney came into the room, carrying a bundled evidence sack. The mother stood beside her, looking from the son to the father.
‘What’s wrong?’ the mother said.
Synnott spoke to the kid. ‘Mr Hapgood, I’m arresting you under Section Four of the—’
The father held up his mobile like it was evidence of something. ‘My solicitor—’
‘Tell him to go directly to Macken Road garda station and ask for Detective Inspector Harry Synnott.’
‘You can’t question – you have to wait until my solicitor—’
‘No, we don’t.’
Max Junior looked like he might throw up all over the shiny wooden floor. Harry Synnott told him that he had a right to remain silent.
Garda Cheney had her cuffs out, which was a cue for the mother to unloose a stream of obscenities. The cuffs were necessary. The kid seemed cowed, but he was a big lad and there was no telling what kind of panic-inducing effect the inside of a police car might have on him.
Max Senior was leaning towards Synnott and was speaking fast in a low, angry voice.
‘The trouble with people like you – we give you power, and you’re supposed to useitto protect decent people. Not to throw your weight around.’
He used his index finger a lot. He had it permanently cocked, and repeatedly used it to emphasise the importance of what he was saying.
‘We’re the public, smart boy. And you’re a public servant.’
Synnott watched the finger jabbing a few inches away from his face and was tempted to take hold of it and give it a twist, just to watch the surprise on Max Senior’s face.
‘You know there’s no case against my son – you
know
that – but you push your way into this house, you drag him away on the word of some little tramp.’
‘You’re not a robot, are you?’ The mother didn’t point her finger like her husband did, but her voice was louder. ‘Have you
no
human feeling? Max did
nothing
, but mud
sticks
– this kind of thing could—’
In the hall, Rose Cheney draped the kid’s blue jacket over the cuffs and when she opened the front door the mother’s howling stopped. Synnott reckoned she feared attracting the attention of the neighbours.
Cheney led the kid down the garden path to the car, one hand on his elbow.
*
The one other time she’d been in the Joy, the screw with the bushy eyebrows had told Dixie his name but she couldn’t remember it now. ‘You OK?’ he said. ‘Jesus, Dixie, you look bloody awful.’
‘You’re looking fresh and well yourself.’
‘What’ve you done?’
‘Nothing.’
He nodded. She said, ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’
An hour later he came to see her and said, ‘Your blood, was it, Dixie – in the syringe?’
She didn’t answer.
‘You’re not HIV, are you?’
She shook her head.
‘That poor woman – she must have got an awful fright.’
Dixie said, ‘What woman?’
‘The woman you stuck.’
‘I stuck no one. Yank bastard knocked it out of my hand.’ ‘Jesus, Dixie.’
*
First thing Harry Synnott did when he came into the interview room was tell Max Junior to stand up. Max had been sitting on the far side of a scarred metal table that was pushed almost up against one wall, with Rose Cheney facing him. Synnott pulled Max’s chair into the centre of the room. He pointed at the chair and Max sat down. Synnott pulled a second chair into the centre of the room and sat down facing Max, a bare two feet away. Tell the subject what to do – doesn’t matter what – for Synnott it was a way of emphasising the relationship between himself and the subject.
For a long time he had followed the standard practice of sitting across a table from the subject, but a few years back – the Swanson Avenue killing – he’d decided that there was a benefit in doing away with the table barrier. Subjects had nowhere to rest their arms, nothing stable to hold on to. It made them uneasy and they didn’t know why. Getting closer, getting into the subject’s personal space, unsettled them further. When Ned Callaghan, the man who had murdered his wife at their home on Swanson Avenue, moved his chair back a few inches, he wasn’t even aware that he was displaying anxiety.
Synnott waited a minute or two before he moved his own chair forward towards Max. Trapped in his own unease, the subject makes mistakes.
Away from his parents, Max Hapgood Junior was so easy to open up that he might as well have had a dotted line marked across his forehead.
The dirty beige walls and the worn-out linoleum on the floor, the lack of pictures, calendars or anything else on the walls, the single naked bulb dangling from the centre of the ceiling, all were purposeful elements in creating distraction-free surroundings, to allow suspects to marinate in their own guilt.
Synnott sat silently for over two minutes, reading the notes he’d made at the Hapgood house. Max folded his arms. Synnott found a blank page and clicked his biro.
‘Well, Max, you know what happened, and you now know that I know what happened. And we both know you’re not a bad person – so what we have to do, we have to work out
why
this happened.’
Max stared.
Synnott said, ‘I’d better do this formally– you have a right to remain—’
‘You told me all that, I understand all that.’
‘It’s in your own interest, son. It might be you want to sit there with your mouth shut, leave it up to others to decide what happened. You have a right to do that. I just want to be sure you know.’
‘I did nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever that silly bitch is saying – look, bottom line, this is a squabble between me anda bird I shagged. I don’t know what it has to do with the police.’
Every few seconds as he spoke, Max’s right hand flicked open in a throwaway gesture. Watching it, Synnott could see how a hand that size, backed up by the power of a shoulder to match, could hold down a slender, frightened woman.
‘Teresa Hunt has a different view.’
Max made a dismissive noise.
Synnott leaned forward. Rose Cheney could still hear every word, but Synnott’s voice was lower and his closeness to Max Junior suggested an intimacy that excluded the female. ‘A lad like you, solid background – you don’t do what you did unless you’ve got some kind of justification. I’m finding it hard, Max, to see you as some kind of mindless brute.’
‘There was nothing wrong with what I did.’ Max’s voice, too, was quieter, though loud enough for Cheney to continue taking notes.
‘I’m still not clear exactly what you did – from your point of view.’
‘I did nothing.’
‘When it comes to trial, she’ll say different.’
Mention of a trial got Max animated. He cocked an index finger and poked it at Synnott, just like his dad had done. ‘Explain this, then. Afterwards, how come she didn’t make a fuss? How come she didn’t think up an accusation until next morning? How come we chatted, we said goodbye, it was –
how come
?’
Synnott took a moment to nod.
She was scared shitless of you, you thick fuck.
Synnott said, ‘That’s a fair point, maybe. How do
you
explain it?’
‘She wanted it. She got it, but maybe she was expecting more.’ Max paused, his voice lowered again, like he was considering letting Synnott in on a secret. ‘You know what this is about? It’s about my big mouth. You know what I said to her? I said,
Thanks, doll, maybe we can do this again sometime.
’ Max folded his arms. ‘Maybe it was the way I said it. That’s just the way it is – it’s the way we talk, me and my friends. Maybe she got the message that it was no big deal to me and maybe it was more of a deal to her – who knows?’

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