The Rage (25 page)

When the judge’s clerk beckoned them into the office they found the judge sitting at his desk, swallowing what was left of a cup of coffee, then wiping his lips with a napkin. He lacked the bloated look that barristers and judges inevitably acquired as their careers advanced. Off to the left, a young woman sat behind a stenographer’s machine mounted on a collapsible table.

‘This won’t take long,’ Daddley said. He tapped the file on the desk and said, ‘Anyone leave anything important out of their statements?’

To say yes was to invite a reprimand for wasting the court’s time. No one said anything.

‘Having examined the submissions, I think I understand the facts and the issues.’ He looked up, from one lawyer to the other. ‘Unless anyone has a burning desire to clarify anything that passeth my understanding?’

The lawyers for each side took maybe three seconds to decide if they wished to piss off the judge by suggesting he mightn’t have a full grasp of the issues.

‘In that case – which is Detective Sergeant Tidey?’

Bob Tidey raised a finger.

‘Nice try, Sergeant, and I can’t blame you. I wouldn’t mind knowing myself why an officer of the court would deny receiving a call, when there seems to be evidence that such a call was made to his phone. Perhaps there’s a simple explanation.’

He looked towards Connie Wintour, who kept his mouth shut and his expression blank.

‘However, the facts are plain. The police are entitled to ask anyone whether they got a phone call. The person being questioned – any person, but in this case a lawyer – is entitled to privacy. The explanation might be that someone else answered the phone, even that it was a wrong number. It doesn’t matter. Suppose you were allowed to check Mr Wintour’s phone to see what calls he received that day – suppose the late Mr Sweetman’s number shows up – Mr Wintour might merely say he answered a wrong number. If his phone contained conclusive evidence of anything illegal, the circumstances might be different. Beyond that—’ He opened the file, tapped the top page, Bob Tidey’s statement of evidence. ‘If the courts approve a police officer seizing a lawyer’s phone on the basis of a need to confirm he got a call, where would it end? There’s the issue of personal privacy, and there’s also the issue of professional confidentiality, not to mention client confidentiality. In short, I’m far from convinced that the evidential value of the seizure trumps the intrusion into the rights of the applicant.’

Before leaving the judge’s office, Bob Tidey handed over the envelope containing Connie Wintour’s phone. Wintour’s lawyer passed it to his client and Connie favoured Tidey with an unctuous smile.

‘Bollocks to that,’ Detective Superintendent Hogg said, leading the way out through the main doors. Standing on the steps of the Criminal Courts building, he faced Bob Tidey and Rose Cheney. ‘Off the record – give me the scenario, tell me how you see this. I take it you used the opportunity to have a sneaky look at what’s on Wintour’s phone?’

Tidey said, ‘I wish I had, sir, but it never occurred to me.’

‘How do you see this?’

‘What I’m thinking, sir – Sweetman and Connie, what if they had a stroke going, a property deal? What if Connie was fronting for someone else? When things started unravelling, all sorts of people got into bed with each other. Then, when Sweetman started making deals with the Revenue, making statements, he became a danger to someone.’

Rose Cheney said, ‘In Sweetman’s world, the worst thing you expect is a lawsuit. Connie knows a lot of people who do things another way.’

Hogg nodded. ‘It’s worth a whirl. See if you can follow it anywhere.’

After Hogg left for Castlepoint station, Tidey and Cheney walked down to Ryan’s pub. When they’d been served two soups, Cheney said, ‘Show me what you found on Wintour’s phone.’

‘It’s on my laptop.’

‘You can’t do this officially. You run those numbers through the usual channels it will leave a trail.’

‘So?’

‘I’ve got a contact. Used to work together, long time ago.’ She took out her mobile and began tapping.

Maura Coady said, ‘At first, to be honest, I thought it might have been you. Apart from a couple of the sisters, I’ve never talked to anyone else about any of that.’

‘Maura, I—’

‘I know, I realised – I just had to ask myself, why would you?’

‘For the record, I didn’t, I wouldn’t.’

‘I know that reporter spoke to Phil, across the road, and Phil and Jacinta know I was in the convent. They’re good people, but Phil loves chatter. And, on the day of the shooting, I think I told Phil it was me who called the police – that it was my fault, what happened.’

‘Maura—’

‘But I’ve never spoken to them about the other stuff.’

Tidey said, ‘The way the newspapers work – I guess once the reporter found out you were a nun, and that you’d called the police, he decided he had a story. “Hero nun catches armed robbers.” These days, the way things have gone, whenever a bishop or a priest or a nun pops up in a story – the reports are public records, and they’ve got everything on computer – Ferns, Ryan, Murphy, volumes of them.’

Maura’s smile was grim. ‘No end to the scandals.’

‘Even where the reports use pseudonyms, these guys have sources they can tap.’

Maura was sitting across the kitchen table from Tidey, her forearms resting in front of her. ‘I spent half an hour cleaning the eggs from my front door this afternoon. Someone – some person who believed they were avenging the victims of the clergy – they threw two or three eggs at the door. First thing this morning, that newspaper was stuffed through the letter box – with obscenities written on it, in thick red marker. Later, twice, there was loud banging on the door and when I went out there was no one there.’

‘Kids—’

‘The kids are at school. That will start tonight or tomorrow, when someone tells them about the witch living on their street. Today, those were adults.’

‘It won’t last.’

‘It will last – once the witch is identified, there’ll be no going back from it. I’ll always be the neighbourhood child abuser.’

‘I’ll have a word with the local station.’

‘Thanks – but I’m sure those policemen have more important things to do with their time.’ She shook her head. ‘This is no more than a nuisance. Believe me, I can put up with it – it’ll calm down, maybe I’ll move somewhere else, it isn’t important.’

‘All the same—’

‘Really – thanks for coming, thanks for comforting me, but in the grand scale of things—’

‘You did the right thing, Maura. You stepped in when thugs with guns put people’s lives at risk. And you shouldn’t pay a price for that. I promise, I’ll do whatever I can to make this OK.’

Maura’s smile was lighter this time. ‘A few hours ago, after I saw that newspaper headline, I cursed you.’

Tidey smiled. ‘Oh ye of little faith.’

Vincent Naylor was tempted to order something stronger, but it was best to stick with coffee. When the man he was waiting for came into the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel Vincent stood up and they shook hands. The man said he’d have a Ballygowan and Vincent told the waiter.

Vincent assumed that by now the coppers in charge of the Protectica robbery had circulated his photo. The Westbury had suited the look he was counting on for camouflage, the young business nerd, but it was best to leave after the trouble in Stephen’s Green – too risky, hanging around the same area. He felt a little less at ease in the Four Seasons – the suits were more expensive, the bellies bigger and the faces redder. But it was even less likely that a passing cop, with Vincent’s photo in his head, would make the connection between an armed robber and a suit in a Ballsbridge hotel.

After the Ballygowan was served, they talked about people they knew in common, avoiding specifics. The man sympathised about Noel and Vincent just nodded. After a while, Vincent indicated a folded copy of the
Irish Independent
on the table, and the man said, yeah. Vincent said the passport photos were with the money. He asked how long and the man said it wasn’t a big job. ‘It’s just a matter of stripping in the details.’

‘Terrific.’

The man took a set of car keys from a pocket and left them on the table. ‘Blue Renault, third level of the Ilac – the bay number is 332.’ He put a card on the table, with the reg number. Vincent nodded.

When the man stood up, they shook hands again, then the man left with the folded copy of the
Irish Independent
under his arm.

In his room, Vincent sat at a table. His neat list now had scribbling down at the bottom. He tore the paper in two, took a sheet of Four Seasons stationery and wrote the names again.

No matter how much you frighten a guy, there’s always a chance he can’t keep his mouth shut. Maybe it was the nun – the paper said the nosy bitch had called the police about the getaway car, but Vincent doubted that was all the police had to go on. Shay Harrison had to have blabbed.

It wasn’t about settling scores before he left the country. Vincent saw it like there was an old-style weighing scales in his head, with Noel on one side, and a lot of stuff on the other. It was about getting the balance right. It was something he’d tried to explain to Michelle, but no one else could understand it. Vincent wouldn’t be all right with Noel until that balance felt right.

The restaurant in the Four Seasons wasn’t his kind of place. He decided to order room service and get an early night. Big day tomorrow.

Bob Tidey’s text to his ex-wife said
Hi
and Holly’s reply said
Out and about
, so that was that for the evening. He went to an Italian restaurant close to Grafton Street and they brought him something with a cream sauce – he was sure he’d ordered something with a tomato sauce, but not sure enough to bother making an issue of it. He was sipping coffee when he got a call from Rose Cheney’s home number.

‘My contact came through – I just got an email.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘He kept it to the calls made or received by Wintour on the day of the murder and on the two days either side of it.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Both times that Wintour got a call from Sweetman, he called another number within minutes. Belongs to someone called Stephen Hill. Ring any bells?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Me neither – maybe something will pop up when we run the name.’

In no hurry to go home to his apartment, Tidey went to a pub, which was a mistake. The taste of the cream sauce lingered and he didn’t enjoy his whiskey. He was in a taxi ten minutes from home when his phone buzzed. The text from Holly said
Home
. Tidey gave the driver the change of destination.

‘First of all,’ Detective Chief Superintendent Malachy Hogg said, ‘congratulations to all of you on the work you’ve done on this case – it’s no more than I expected, but it’s been a pleasure to work with such a professional squad.’ The members of the Sweetman murder inquiry team were gathered in the conference room at Castlepoint Garda Station.

It’s
been
?

Bob Tidey glanced across the room at Rose Cheney. She arched an eyebrow. Until now, there was no hint that this was anything other than a routine morning conference.

‘The good news is that we’ve come to a conclusion on the case. Last night, at HQ, along with Assistant Commissioner Colin O’Keefe and several senior officers, we reviewed the files and put together some final details – had a look at the entire picture. We met again this morning and some more pieces fell into place.’

Bob Tidey felt the relief that comes with knowing a case isn’t going to end in an open file. Only a fraction of the country’s gun killings resulted in a trial – too many ended in files that were as thick as they were inconclusive. He also felt puzzled. Usually, a case moves towards a conclusion when there’s a strong lead. It gets the resources necessary to confirm the team is on the right track, the evidence is tested until it’s persuasive – no surprises. He’d never seen a case jump upstairs, to be assessed at brass level, without going through the staging points.

‘The breakthrough – it came in a statement by one Marisa Cosgrave,’ Hogg said. ‘She was the girlfriend of the late Justin Kennedy – businessman, lawyer, property speculator, suicide victim. Mr Kennedy, as some of you will be aware, was involved in a number of questionable property schemes with Emmet Sweetman. According to Ms Cosgrave, in recent times this led to some enmity between Sweetman and Kennedy. There were threats – each threatened the other – and we have confirmation from the Revenue that a week before his murder Sweetman made a preliminary statement naming a number of people, including Kennedy, as participants in a tax fraud. He was due to make a further, detailed, statement outlining the specifics of the fraud – his murder prevented that.’

‘Kennedy killed Sweetman, then killed himself?’ Rose Cheney couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice.

‘Obviously it’s not possible to link an individual shotgun to a specific shooting – lead pellets can’t be matched to a weapon. But it was the same type of ammunition that killed Sweetman and that Kennedy used to kill himself – RC twenty-gauge, thirty-two-gram semi-magnum. We’ve consulted Kennedy’s diary and that of Ms Cosgrave and there’s nothing to account for his movements on the night of the murder.’