Thrown Down (2 page)

The day of her funeral had been a terrible and yet fitting affair for Rebecca the police officer. She’d been given full police honours even though she’d been acting on her own volition when she’d decided to confront a known sex offender. Jeff understood why she’d done it. The team had worked long and hard on an investigation that had been pulled from them when they got a little too close to official corruption and whilst Rebecca had been facing investigation for a blunder that yes, could’ve cost a young girl her life, but compared to what the team discovered had been covered up for years it just didn’t add up. She’d made her feelings clear to Jeff and everyone else on the team but none of them had envisaged she’d go out on a limb long enough to get herself bloody killed. The whole episode had led to a cooling of relations between Jeff and Chief Superintendent Geraldine Chambers. They’d been alright at the time and had managed to maintain the closeness of their relationship. But the more he’d thought about it the more he’d begun to think that if Chambers had been more fulsome in her support of Rebecca at the start of that previous investigation then the outcome might have been different. If Chambers had only stood up to whoever had been pulling her strings at the time then it might have all been so very different and Rebecca would still be alive. So much easy wisdom with the benefit of hindsight but still so many lessons to be learned as far as Jeff was concerned. But the fact remained that Rebecca was gone and none of all the crap that followed would bring her back into Jeff’s life which is where he’d belatedly realised she should’ve been.

Jeff entered through the front door of the conversion property and noted the collection of electricity meters, one for each of the five flats in the house. He had a cousin who rented out properties like this and he’d said that meters were the only way to keep the debt of fuel down to zero in rented out places. Jeff had been uncomfortable with the whole idea of a meter for electricity in this day and age but he nevertheless did take his cousin’s point. He didn’t know why he should though. His cousin was as rich as shit and didn’t have to work again so what difference did it make to him? He should hate the little bastard really.

DI Ollie Wright came down the stairs and gestured for Jeff to meet him outside at the front of the house.

‘I have to say, sir, that is one of the worst scenes of this kind I’ve ever come across’ Ollie declared as he breathed in and out to quell the nausea rising in him.

‘You’ve spared my feelings?’ Jeff quipped. ‘I find that touching, DI Wright’.

‘No, sir, I didn’t mean … ‘

‘ … I know what you meant, Ollie’ said Jeff, laughing and tapping Ollie’s arm reassuringly. ‘So do we know who the victim is?’

‘Oh yes, sir’.

‘Why do you say it like that, Ollie?’

‘Well this one, sir, is just a little bit special’.

‘In what way?’

‘His name is Padraig O’Connell’ Ollie revealed. ‘His wallet was in his pocket enabling us to do a quick ID and then I ran his name through the system. He was released five years ago from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland having served over thirty years for the murder of an RUC officer called James Carson back in nineteen seventy-six. Carson was attached to a special branch unit that had been charged with undermining IRA activity in the area’.

‘So O’Connell was IRA?’

‘Yes, sir’ Ollie answered. ‘He admitted to being an active member of the provisional IRA at the trial. When he was released he moved over here to Manchester because most of the rest of his family had done so in the years he’d been incarcerated’.

‘So we could be looking at a revenge attack?’

‘And if the attacker was someone who is or was a member of special branch, for argument’s sake, then they would’ve known how to get in and out of here without being noticed. Same goes for someone who still believes in the IRA’.

‘But why would someone from his own side, the IRA, want him dead after all this time?’ Jeff questioned. ‘Although some of the ways these organizations work are pretty baffling’. 

‘Well nobody has come forward to say that they saw anything but we will of course be starting house to house enquiries and setting up the mobile incident van with the local neighbourhood policing team’.

‘Good’ said Jeff who was mulling it all over in his mind. ‘Now let’s go upstairs’.

The design of the flat meant that the front door opened straight into the bedroom. The body of Padraig O’Connell was lying on his back in the space at the end of the double bed. To say there was blood everywhere would be to understate it. The walls, the wardrobe, the bed, the small window by the side of the bed, all of them were covered in blood and it made the whole scene look like a butcher’s back room. But before Jeff and Ollie could proceed they had to put on the protective plastic clothing that was necessary when entering a crime scene, especially one as small and as intimate as this. They did so on the landing just outside and then the pathologist June Hawkins looked up when she saw the two of them.

‘Dressed in your finest, gentlemen?’ she said. ‘Then come on in and don’t stand on ceremony’.

Jeff and Ollie bent down and went under the crime scene tapes. Jeff really had to take a deep breath after he’d looked down at the victim.

‘So what’s been happening here then, June?’ Jeff asked. 

‘A stabbing?’ she questioned with an all innocent voice.

‘You don’t say?’ Jeff replied, smiling.

‘There are thirty-seven stab wounds on him’ June declared. ‘Whoever attacked this poor bugger really wanted to make sure he was dead. It’s almost as if it was driven by some kind of madness’.

‘Any sign of a forced entry into the flat?’ Jeff asked.

‘No, sir’ said Ollie. ‘It looks like he opened the door willingly. Maybe he knew the person?’

‘I guess it’s too early for you to tell us anything else, June?’ said Jeff. ‘Like if there’s any trace of anyone else being in this room?’

‘Not until I get everything back, mate’ said June. ‘Then I’ll be able to look for any traces of someone else’s blood or DNA’.

‘Something else, sir?’ said Ollie. ‘O’Connell had just got back from a trip to Belfast this afternoon, barely three hours ago in fact. It was no secret why he was over there. About a year before he murdered the RUC officer James Carson, O’Connell was identified as one of an IRA gang who abducted a woman called Deirdre Murphy from her home in front of her children. She’d been accused by the local IRA masters of feeding information to the British about local IRA operations. She apparently screamed her denials at the time of her abduction and her family have protested her innocence to this day. She became one of the so-called disappeared, sir’.

‘People who were taken off by the IRA for interrogation and never seen again’ said Jeff.

‘That’s right, sir’ Ollie confirmed. ‘Now her family had been pressing O’Connell into telling them where their mother was buried and eventually a few weeks ago he agreed, hence the trip to Northern Ireland. However, he took them to a beach in county Antrim where he said she was buried but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. Apparently her family were pretty angry about it as you can imagine and O’Connell was rushed back here because they were ready to lynch him’.

‘Do we know where her family live, Ollie?’

‘According to the PSNI they all moved over to the Greater Manchester area, sir, and live at several locations across the city and into Cheshire’.

‘And did they all make the trip back to Northern Ireland this week?’

‘That’s what I’m going to investigate next, sir’.

‘Good work, Ollie, thanks’

‘He certainly doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet’ said June Hawkins as she stood with Jeff watching Ollie Wright run down the stairs. ‘He was on the phone constantly before you arrived’.

‘He’s a good lad, alright’ said Jeff. ‘But then I’d always known that which is why I’d wanted him promoted’.

‘How’s it going without Rebecca?’

‘Well as far as the team is concerned we’ll be fine’ said Jeff, optimistically. ‘Although Adrian Bradshaw being promoted to DS has put Joe Alexander’s nose out of joint after it came down to a choice between the two of them. We won’t be having a new DC starting for a while yet if at all because of all the financial cutbacks they’re throwing at us’.

‘I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for poor old Joe’ said June.

‘I feel sorry for him too, June. He’s had a lot of bad luck in the last few years. But like we all do he’s got to pick up and carry on however hard it is’.

‘And what about you and the woman that was Rebecca and not the police colleague?’

‘I hesitated and I lost’ Jeff admitted. ‘We might’ve been good together but I didn’t give it a chance. Then I lost. So put it this way I won’t be making that same mistake again if someone else comes along’.      

Jeff decided to have a quick look round the flat before going downstairs. He’d seen so many flats like this that looked like they’d been put together to satisfy the needs of life’s accidents. From the garishly patterned carpet to the curtains so thin you could probably see through them at night. These kind of flats were intended for people who no longer had any pride in their surroundings and didn’t care much beyond making it through each day. Jeff thought it must’ve been perfect for Padraig O’Connell who could sit here of an evening and be anonymous in a neighbourhood of anonymous people living in put together flats. There wasn’t much to distinguish this one from any of the others. A stack of newspapers showed that he liked to take the Independent as well as the Irish times. There were no books or pictures. He clearly hadn’t been sentimental in that way.

‘Jeff!’ June called out. ‘DI Wright wants you downstairs!’

‘Okay, I’m coming!’ Jeff called back. Why wait? Jeff wondered as he took a last look around. Why wait five years before you try and put the Murphy family out of their misery? Why did you wait until you were no doubt pushed and coerced into doing it? And who would kill you with such ferocity that you probably wouldn’t have known anything after the second stab. So why does the killer carry on many more times digging their knife into you? Why did they want to make sure you were well and truly dead over and over again? What was driving all that fury and hatred? There were scores of former IRA terrorists and murderers now living freely in the community. They didn’t end up dead in the way Padraig O’Connell had done.

‘Of course it might not have anything to do with his past’ said June as if she’d been reading Jeff’s thoughts. ‘It might’ve been something to do with his more recent life after he came out of prison?’

Jeff paused. ‘You could be right, June’ he said. ‘We shall have to wait and see’.

‘DI Wright is calling for you again’.

Jeff went downstairs and joined DI Wright who was talking to a visibly shocked and shaken looking woman of clearly advancing years in a bright red skirt, white t-shirt and leather jacket. Her hair was a mass of long peroxide blond curls, her make-up was thick and unyielding and her finger nails were painted in a deep, dark red.

‘Sir, this is Carol Anderson’ said DI Wright. ‘She says she was O’Connell’s girlfriend’.

THROWN DOWN TWO

Melbourne, Australia.

It was the morning after the night before and Patricia Knight managed to drag herself out towards the end of the afternoon and drive to the shopping mall at Ferntree Gully to pick up a couple of last minute supplies. Last night she’d celebrated her sixtieth birthday with a party thrown by her darling husband Dennis down at their local pub at which all their friends were there plus their three kids, two grandkids, and various members of Dennis’s family. It had been an absolutely wonderful night but rather a lot of champagne and wine had been drunk that had given Patricia the pounding headache she’d woken up with and was only just starting to go away. She kept her sunglasses on all the way and hoped she didn’t bump into anybody she knew because she must look bloody awful. She was looking forward to tonight though. . It was just going to be her and Dennis and he was going to cook her favourite meal which is a nicely tender piece of sirloin steak followed by a pavlova with strawberries and fresh cream. She’d never had a pavlova until she went to Australia but now she adored them. She was starting to feel hungry now. She hadn’t been able to manage more than half a slice of toast all day.

It had been sort of food related when she and Dennis had first got together just a couple of months after she’d arrived in Australia nearly forty years ago. She’d flown across to the other side of the world like a bird that was wondering where to go for the summer. She had no qualifications for anything that could be put onto a job application but she’d placed her faith in making a new start that would take her away from everything. She felt so alone and out on a limb in those first few weeks but despite that she knew it was right to have broken herself off from the rest of her family back home. How on earth would she ever explain to her Mammy how complicated life had become for her and those around her? There would be nothing gained from stepping backwards and in any case the reason for her migration to the other side of the world was to wipe herself clean. She flushed her past down the toilet and literally started her life all over.