‘Sergeant Fry, welcome to An Garda Siochana.’
He loaded her bag into his car and asked where she was staying. It was only a short drive from the airport at Swords to Coolock, which turned out to be an area of north Dublin, lying somewhere between the M1 urban motorway and the northern arc of Dublin Bay.
‘Croke Park is just down the road here,’ said Lenaghan. ‘We were all on duty at Croke, back in February. The rugby, you know? England versus Ireland. Your boys had never been allowed to play at Croke before, for obvious reasons.’
Fry frowned, thinking she was missing some arcane fact about the game of rugby.
‘Obvious?’
‘Because of the Black and Tans.’
After a few seconds, Lenaghan rightly interpreted her silence.
‘You do know about the Black and Tans? The massacre in 1920?’
‘Sorry.’
Lenaghan stared at her in amazement. In fact, he stared for so long that Fry started to worry about his car drifting dangerously across the carriageway.
‘Thirteen spectators and one player were killed during the match between Dublin and Tipperary. Shot by the Black and Tans. It was the original Bloody Sunday massacre. Surely they teach you about that at school in England, Sergeant?’
‘No. These Black and Tans — were they English, then?’
Lenaghan shook his head in despair. ‘Eight hundred years of suppression, and you just forget.’
They’d booked her a room in a place called the Flyover B amp;B, a place with pine dressers and cast-iron fireplaces. Its name exactly described its location, right under Junction 1 of the motorway, where it met the Upper Drumcondra Road.
Fry made arrangements to meet up with Lenaghan in the morning, and she unpacked in her room. Then she switched on the TV, more for some background noise than because she wanted to watch anything.
Finally, she got out her phone. It had switched automatically to a local service provider in Ireland, but there were no messages that she’d missed. She put it on the table by the bed. But for the rest of the evening, her phone did not ring.
Cooper was sitting in his flat in Welbeck Street. He was watching the news on the telly, with his cat Randy purring on his knee and his mobile phone pressed to his ear.
‘So what do you want to do tonight?’ he asked.
‘I want to go shopping,’ said Liz. ‘I’ve still got some last-minute stuff to buy.’
‘Really? I thought you were more organized than that. I imagined you were the sort of person who had everything put away months ago. Drawers full of carefully wrapped and labelled presents for everybody you could think of.’
‘Presents, yes. But there are a few other things I need to take home with me for Christmas Day.’
‘And you want to do it tonight?’
‘Yes, Ben.’
Cooper exchanged glances with his cat, Randy. He’d never understood the appeal of shopping, but shopping on a Monday night seemed downright perverse.
‘OK, then. Where do you want to go?’
‘Meadowhall. We can be there in half an hour or so, and it’s open until nine o’clock tonight.’
‘Meadowhall? A week before Christmas? You’re kidding. Think of the crowds — it’ll be bedlam.’
‘It’s all right if you don’t want to come, Ben.’
Cooper sighed. ‘No. I’m sure it’ll be an experience.’
David Palfreyman opened the cupboard and took out the bottle of whisky. Glenfiddich, and it was still half full. He smiled for the first time that day.
‘There is a God, after all.’
It had been quite a day, and he deserved a drink. The police asking him more questions, a visit from Mel. It had been quite a week, actually, with the news from Pity Wood Farm that had gone round the village like wildfire, and the murder of Tom Farnham. But he’d resisted the bottle until now, hadn’t even peeped in the cupboard. But a large whisky was called for. A
He poured a good-sized tumbler and held it up to the light, admiring the colour of the Glenfiddich. Peaty brown, with a hint of gold. Gorgeous. He could look at it for hours.
Palfreyman had done quite a lot of drinking when he was in the force. It was what had helped him relax when he came home at night, or in the early hours of the morning, whenever his shift ended. Sometimes he’d sat drinking on his own, when everyone else in the world was asleep, or just stumbling out of bed to get their breakfast, listening for the milkman whistling outside, turning on the radio to get the morning’s news. He’d drunk while the sun came up and the birds started singing. He’d drunk to ease the stress and dull the memories.
He’d only been eighteen months into the job when he was sent to a serious multiple fatal RTC. He’d been first on scene for that one. Over the years, he’d learned to handle the dead, but it had always been the living he’d had problems dealing with. He still had problems with them, even now. At that RTC, the poor woman whose husband had just died was so distressed that when he left her, he’d been close to bursting into tears himself. A big, strapping copper, left an emotional wreck. What a joke.
Later, he’d developed a sick sense of humour, pretty much like everyone else in those days. He’d viewed a fatal as a bonus. If the victim was dead, it meant one less statement to take. You had to be hard, didn’t you? You had to be thick skinned. You’d go mad if you weren’t.
He felt sorry for those in the job now. That detective sergeant — what was her name? Fry, of course. His memory wasn’t letting him down, not quite yet. And the other — her DC. Cooper, of course. No chance of forgetting that one.
These modern police officers had it worse than he did, no doubt about it. They couldn’t relieve the tension the same way he always had. No sick jokes — it wouldn’t be sensitive. Or, God help them, politically correct. And drinking was probably frowned on these days, too. Poor bastards.
Palfreyman took a sip of whisky, and found the glass was nearly empty. He wasn’t sure how that had happened. He mustn’t have been paying attention. He eased himself out of his chair and went back to the cupboard to top it up. There was plenty left in the bottle yet.
Some memories were very clear, even now. The first sudden death he went to. It had come over the radio just after he’d finished his supper. Chicken Korma, he could remember the taste of it. His stomach had knotted at the thought when they got the call. Most reports were false alarms, they’d told him. But he knew this one was going to be genuine. He knew it from the taste in his mouth. Chicken spiced with fear.
It had been a late winter’s evening, much like this one tonight. December, yes. A couple of weeks before Christmas. When they got to the house, there were no lights on and it was really cold. They’d shouted through the letter box, but got no reply. His partner had used a rammit on the door, and they’d gone in.
The occupant of the house was in the sitting room. He’d been a regular newspaper reader. They could judge how long he’d been there by the date on the newspaper he was holding. It had been about three weeks. Palfreyman remembered hearing the radio on in the background, some music playing, and the man lying on the sofa where he’d died holding his chest.
With a gesture of defiance, he finished the last of the whisky. It had been a few minutes before training kicked in on that occasion, but there was always duty to be done. Things to be sorted out.
Yes, even the dead demanded justice.
30
Garda Lenaghan took Fry first to Coolock garda station in Oscar Traynor Road and introduced her to his inspector. It was only when the garda took off his jacket in the office that she noticed he was armed.
‘Is that usual?’ she asked him.
