“Ah, would you ever go fuck yourself,” I said.
The effect was, predictably, instantaneous: Sean Forde leapt up and came over the table at me, his astonished eyes burning with fury; I was on my feet when Dave flashed his great hand between us and brought Forde’s flight to an abrupt stop; he turned to me and yelled, “Sit down, Ed.”
Maybe if Dave had worn clothes that fit him, he wouldn’t always have looked like he was about to explode in some awesome fit of rage. But for reasons best known to himself, and even when he hadn’t been dragged out of bed, he invariably dressed like he had tonight, in a pale blue shirt straining at the chest with its flaps hanging over his belt, flat-fronted grey trousers skintight on his huge thighs and a fawn sports coat that barely covered his waist. Still, he was right to be angry. Forde may have been on my case, but he was only Reed’s monkey; the fact that Dave Donnelly and I were friends rankled with her, and I knew she gave Dave a hard time over it too. And I was tired, and wondering whether I had treated Tommy too harshly, and my blood felt like there wasn’t a drop of alcohol left in it. Still, none of that was any excuse for behaving like a gobshite.
“Don’t be acting the bollocks now,” Dave said to me. Was it my imagination or did I see a flicker of amusement in his eyes? I knew he couldn’t stand the sight of Forde. If there had been a flicker, it was gone in an instant, replaced by a heavy-browed glare. I glared right back. Go in like a gobshite, maintain like a gobshite.
Forde was up and inserting a videocassette into one of the VCRs and turning on a TV and pressing a remote control. I arranged my face so it looked expressionless, which wasn’t easy, as the tape was showing CC footage of the foyer of the Waterfront apartment complex and the time was lunchtime of the day just gone. You could see the estate agent with his stupid spiked fin haircut opening the door. And then you could see me walk in, wave my keys and head straight for the elevator. Sean Forde freeze-framed it on me as the elevator doors opened and I stepped inside; then he turned around and set his boiled-lobster face in a victory leer.
“Would you like to explain what you were doing there, Mr. Loy?” Dave said.
I looked blankly at him. Maybe they had footage inside the elevator, or in the corridor outside David Brady’s room, in which case lying now would be a bad move. On the other hand, if they had anything better than this, Dave wouldn’t have been on a date night with Carmel; he would have had uniforms outside my house.
“Me? Doing where?”
“The Waterfront apartments. Where David Brady’s body was found today.”
I nodded, then looked puzzled.
“You think that’s me?” I said.
The camera must have been positioned inside the door, facing the elevator. Because the only visible part of me throughout the shot was of the back of my head.
“That
I shrugged.
“It looks like a man in a dark coat. I know I look like a man in a dark coat too, but I’m not sure there aren’t a lot of us about. More and more as it gets into winter.”
“Your client, Shane Howard. Brady was his daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Did you find her?”
“I did.”
“Good for you. Now, what were you doing at the Waterfront apartments on the day he was murdered?”
I shook my head, as if there was nothing I could add to what I had already said. I was trying to work out whether the camera could have caught me in the corridor outside the apartment, or on my way down in the elevator. In theory, CCTV is an exact science, but in practice management companies install the equipment and then frequently skimp on running it properly by inserting tapes or discs only in random cameras, or by disabling the recording equipment altogether, in order to save money. Dave said nothing either. Silence wasn’t usually his interview technique of choice, but I got the feeling this interview was Fiona Reed’s setup; silence wasn’t often my favored option either, but after the day I’d had I was too wrecked to do much other than sit there. It might have helped if Sean Forde had something to offer. As it turned out, he had quite the opposite.
“The timing is twelve forty-five P.M.,” he announced excitedly. “Time of death has been confirmed as being no earlier than twelve fifty, and no later than one forty-five. This puts you securely in the frame for the murder, Loy. What do you have to say to that?” His voice had built to a shrill little toy-dog bark; his face was like a neon beet.
I looked at Dave, but he had found something of great interest to study on the floor by his chair. I could only assume Forde had dreamt this nonsense up himself, on the off chance half my brain had slipped out my ear at some point during the day.
“Is that all?” I said.
“You haven’t answered me,” Forde said.
“Of course I haven’t. A, I wasn’t there. B, if I had been, I wouldn’t have killed my client’s daughter’s boyfriend. C, even if I had, unless he was blown up, or shots or screams were heard, or the murderer broke the victim’s watch and you know for a fact he broke it in the act, you have no way of estimating time of death to that narrow a time slot-and no way of
Dave Donnelly rolled his eyes at Forde; it was quick, and easy to miss it, but I didn’t; neither did Sean Forde. It was hard to say whether he blushed or not, but he mopped his brow, and it wasn’t a hot night. He stood up and fumbled with the VCR and rewound the tape and played it from about an hour earlier that day. This time a large man with sandy-colored hair and an unmistakable lumbering gait plowed through the lobby. As if to ensure that there should be no doubt, when he reached the elevator doors, he turned around to see if anyone was following him. It was clear, even on the blurred CCTV image, that it was Shane Howard.
Someone once said about Hollywood that if you can fake sincerity there, you’ve got it made. I didn’t have to fake surprise after seeing the footage of Shane Howard on his way up to David Brady’s apartment; nor did I think anything other than that he could easily have been guilty-the body had been warm to the touch when I got there, no rigor, it all fitted. But what kind of day was he having, rushing out to murder David Brady, then dashing across town to kill his wife? What had possessed him? My brain wouldn’t process it. Dave Donnelly was saying something, but I didn’t hear what it was.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Can you help us with any of this?” he said.
“I cannot,” I said. “When I spoke to Shane Howard this morning, he identified his daughter splitting up with David Brady as one of the possible causes of what he saw as her personal decline. He seemed to hold Brady in high regard.”
“Maybe after you left, he got some news?”
“Maybe he did. After I spoke with him, I saw his wife for about an hour, then I came back up to his house to collect my car, and I saw him taking off at high speed. His receptionist said he didn’t come back all day.”
“You should have told us that before.” Dave stood up.
“I was busy with other things,” I said. It sounded lame, even to my ears. “Later on, I saw Shane Howard at his sister’s house. When he saw the news reports of David Brady’s murder, he was very upset.”
“Did he say where he had been in the interim?”
“He said he went for a walk, and had a few drinks in a pub. He said the stress of his daughter’s absence was getting to him.”
“Don’t talk to one of my officers like that again, Mr. Loy. Or things will get very complicated for you around here.”
“Are you-”
“We’re following a definite line of inquiry,” Dave said. “Sergeant Forde. Maybe best to employ language the man understands. Tell Mr. Loy to go and fuck himself.”
My car was parked on the street; I waited there in case Dave wanted to talk to me, or give me a full-scale bollocking; five minutes later I saw his car tearing out of the station at high speed. Maybe there’d been a third murder. Or maybe he was hoping Carmel might still be awake.
I had a brief phone conversation with Denis Finnegan. Shane was arrested under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, which entitled the Guards to hold him for six hours. They could extend this by another six hours before
