Close Ranks Read online

  Close Ranks

  1

  The old house was set back off the road, down a long curved driveway lined with maple trees. Their autumn display, glorious the week before, had been blown to smithereens by a storm that had battered the Dublin suburb of Foxrock for two days. The wind had dropped in the early hours; and now fat, grey clouds sat waiting for their turn to wreak havoc. But the maple trees had already given in. Their autumn finery shed, they settled down to wait for the spring.

  The house had withstood its fair share of storms over its three hundred year history, losing a tile occasionally from the steeply gabled roof. During one such storm, the story still being told decades later, an octagonal brick chimney had fallen with a loud and menacing crash, smashing to fragments before the front door and missing, by a matter of seconds, the lady of the house. She, having lived in London during two world wars, was resiliently made and, glancing out through the door she had just entered, murmured a restrained, ‘Goodness!’ before moving on, leaving the speechless butler to deal with the matter.

  The era of butlers had long gone and normally one of the family greeted guests at the front door. But this was far from a normal day and a pale-faced young uniformed garda stood at the imposing doorway trying not to think of what he had seen inside. He straightened and stepped forward when he recognised the car pulling up on the semi-circled, gravelled area in front of the house.

  Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West and his partner Garda Peter Andrews were responding to a call from the uniformed gardai who themselves had responded to a 999 call earlier.

  Andrews had opened West’s office door with a knock and a nod. ‘Off we go, Mike. A suspicious body wants our attention.’

  They’d taken West’s car, a new Volvo that Andrews, not a car man, admired without envy and drove the two miles from the station to the house that lay on the outskirts of Foxrock. Neither man bothered to speculate on what they might find, they’d know soon enough. Time enough to begin the long round of speculation, investigation and if they were lucky, interrogation, when they’d decided it warranted it. Suspicious deaths didn’t always mean murder.

  ‘Nice,’ West murmured, navigating the entrance between two stone pillars and driving slowly up the gravel drive. He parked between a battered Renault and a white transit van, which before the current craze for CSI programmes was just that, a plain, usually dirty, white transit van. Now it was a dirty white transit van with cachet, its designation written in plain, black typeface across its side, Crime Scene Investigation. The cachet, didn’t however, make it look any less out of place in this upmarket area.

  West ignored the van, his eyes drawn to the beautiful house. Its classic lines and the warmth of the old stone, even on such a gloomy day, drew a sigh of appreciation. He stepped from the car and looked around with admiration verging on envy. The glass in the stone-mullioned windows reflected back what little light there was in a million different directions, each small piece seemingly independent of the rest but all with the same function, to provide light and clarity. Just like the Garda Siochana should be, West thought with unusual cynicism, and then put departmental hiccups to the back of his mind to admire the fine manor house before him. From the passenger seat, Detective Garda Andrews finished advising the station of their arrival and got out, ignoring the house but eyeing the ominous sky with distrustful interest.

  ‘It’s going to chuck down, look at that sky,’ he complained with a grumble to equal the distant sound of thunder.

  West looked across the roof of the car, his grey eyes narrowing in impatience. ‘You’re standing in front of an amazing piece of architecture and all you can do is to complain about the weather, you are a philistine, Pete.’

  ‘Joyce has organised a fifth birthday party for Petey,’ Andrews explained. ‘Saturday, twenty of his friends will be descending on our very small house. If this blasted, dreadful weather keeps up they will have to stay indoors. That’s not being a philistine that’s being a realist, or maybe...’ he added reconsidering, remembering the mayhem of the last party, ‘...a survivalist.’

  The two men, each with their own thoughts and concerns, headed up the worn, stone steps to the front door where the uniformed garda greeted them soberly and directed them to the hub of the much more immediate matter.

  Not that there was anything pressing about a dead body, really. It wasn’t going to get any more dead. Wasn’t going to change its mind. There’s no going back from dead, no last minute reprieve. Catching the murderer was the immediate matter. The urgency in getting there, before the body was even cold, had West’s heart beating an anticipatory tattoo. The sooner they saw the body and the crime scene, the sooner they could find some clues, some evidence, the proof they needed to put whoever it was that ‘done it’ away.

  They’d pick up all the pieces, arrange them, struggle to get the pieces to fit and finally, with luck, hard-work and more luck, they’d have the jigsaw complete and would show the finished picture to the powers-that-be and the bad-guy would get banged up.

  Simple.

  If only, West thought. They followed the directions they were given, their footsteps loud on the wide oak floorboards of the entrance hall. A stunning, stone, cantilevered stairway dominating the hallway, made West pause and draw a breath in admiration.

  ‘Wow,’ he said almost reverently, looking up to where the stairway curved out of sight. ‘Isn’t that just amazing.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Andrews said sarcastically, raising his eyes to heaven when West continued to stand with his mouth open in awe of the architecture of a bygone era. He thumped his arm, none too gently and they moved on, West throwing a final glance of appreciation at the stairway before concentrating on the much less glamorous job of being a policeman.

  A clamour of voices became clearer as they approached, separating into individual voices. Some were familiar, some not; some calm and measured, some raised in the high tensile pain of those struggling to understand death’s unexpected arrival.

  The voices were coming from the back of the house where a maze of small rooms, their raison d’être gone the way of the butler, housekeeper and maids, had been knocked into two large, well proportioned rooms. A door led from the hallway into each room and, following the sound of voices he recognised, West headed through the door on the left which led into a bright, high-ceilinged, well appointed kitchen. Free standing, and obviously bespoke furniture, lined two out of the four walls; the third held two floor to ceiling windows overlooking the garden and the fourth held a connecting double-door into the other room which at the moment was shut, dividing the crime scene, if crime it was, from the loudly grieving family next door.

  Standing in the doorway, West and Andrews stood silently, observing the scene, taking mental photographs of the position of the body, the layout of the room. They would have a multitude of photographs, true, but both men found this initial evaluation to be a first critical step in what would be, more than likely, a long winding stairway. Or perhaps more like an escalator, Andrews mused, up a bit, down a bit and breakdown if they weren’t careful.

  Apart from the dead body, it wasn’t an obvious crime scene. There were no overturned chairs or broken dishes, no signs of struggle. In fact, if the room were not filled with crime scene personnel, it would look quite peaceful, West decided. The walls were a pale yellow and the colour, in tandem with the big windows, made the room bright even on this grey day. A big, old pine table with mismatched chairs took centre stage and at the head of the table a man was seated, leaning forward with his head resting on arms crossed in front of him. He could have been sleeping or having a well-deserved rest, his head turned as if to look through the windows and out across the garden.

  In fact he was very dead.

  Andrews muttered to himse
lf and then at a questioning glance from West he spoke aloud. ‘It doesn’t look suspicious, Mike. A heart attack or stroke, I’ll bet. It’s too quiet and orderly for a murder.’

  West silently agreed, but then smiled suddenly. ‘What is it you’re always saying about Petey when he’s quiet?’

  Remembering drew a grimace from Andrews who had spent the previous weekend repainting their lounge after Petey, unusually quiet, was found drawing on the walls with his crayons. He had succeeded in covering three walls before being discovered. When later questioned by an irate father, he had innocently said he was copying the cave painting Andrews had been enthusiastically showing him in a National Geographic magazine the previous week.

  Quiet, then, both men knew, didn’t necessarily mean innocent.

  West recognised the pathologist and gave a brief prayer of thanks for one who was not only quick and efficient, generous with information when it came and willing to offer speculative theory, if requested, but also one who knew when to shut up and butt out. A combination, in West’s opinion, that was rare if not unique among those he had known. The pathologist was busy, on his knees examining the man’s face. West, knowing that to interrupt would be to irritate, refrained from even a greeting and left him and the scene of crime personnel to do their job.

  Instead, he and Andrews retreated back into the hallway and followed the other voices into the adjoining room. This was a very different style with lots of glass and pale wood. It seemed to serve a dual purpose of dining room and conservatory. Huge exotic plants, many taller than the two detectives, had been cleverly positioned by some well-meaning, if incredibly optimistic, designer to provide shade from the sun; today, in the gloom of the stormy sky, the room was more like the lower reaches of a tropical jungle. But without the heat, West thought with a shiver as he greeted the first-on-the scene garda. The large plants also served to divide the room into a number of smaller seating areas and he walked with him to one of these discrete, shady but decidedly cool areas.

  Garda Hudson, nineteen years old and recently moved from Waterford, was still adjusting to Dublin ways. He stood uncomfortably and cursed his luck in being available to take the call-out, when he had only five minutes left on his shift and a football match to play. But he was a conscientious officer, his ambition equalled by an intelligence that had his new colleagues undecided whether he was a smart-arse or a valuable addition to a team that was at times a bit lightweight.

  ‘Well, fill us in.’ West said, without preamble.

  Hudson gave his report in clear concise terms, avoiding elaboration, exaggeration or extraneous details, determined to make his mark, to be remembered by these men when the time came for the promotion he craved. ‘Garda Doyle and I answered a nine-nine-nine call at thirteen hundred hours. We arrived at the same time as the ambulance. The paramedics ascertained immediately that the victim, a Gerard Roberts, was deceased. Garda Doyle and I considered the circumstances to be suspicious...’

  West interrupted the smooth flow abruptly. ‘Why?’

  Hudson, intent on getting his report out without hiccup was momentarily nonplussed by the question. ‘W...why?’ he stuttered to his eternal mortification, only grateful that Garda Doyle wasn’t there to witness it. He’d never have lived it down.

  Andrews, seeing his confusion took pity. ‘Why did you think it was suspicious?’

  Hudson, sweat prickling his brow, took a deep breath, refocused and knowing he was on firm footing continued, ‘I looked at the dead man’s face, sir. There was blood around his mouth. I thought maybe he had been poisoned.’ He drew a breath and, since neither man spoke, he continued. ‘Present at the time of our arrival was his wife, Jennifer, his daughter Sophia, and son David. We asked them to stay in this room and they have been here since. Shortly after the pathologist and scene of crimes team arrived, a lady came from the victim support group Offer, and she is now with Mrs Roberts.’

  Garda Hudson closed and pocketed his notebook and relaxed a little, thinking, with relief, that he had acquitted himself quite well; apart from the stutter, he amended, with a resurgence of embarrassment. He could feel a little trickle of sweat running down between his shoulder blades but the prickle of sweat on his forehead had stayed just that, didn’t run down in rivulets to embarrass him further in front of the two men who stood, he considered, cool and suave before him.

  Peter Andrews, in his Dunnes’ suit, would have been more than amused to have been put in the same category as Detective Sergeant West, he of the Hugo Boss suits and Burberry raincoat. He wasn’t amused, however, to have a stranger descending on their crime scene without say-so and with a frown queried the last sentence.

  ‘A lady from where?’

  ‘From Offer,’ Hudson said nervously, his voice quavering at the sharp tone in Andrews’ voice. ‘You know? The new victim support group that started up recently?’

  ‘How’d she get to hear of this so quickly?’ West queried suspiciously. ‘She was here before us.’

  ‘I think she was in the station when I rang back,’ Hudson tried to explain, conscious of Andrews eye on him.

  ‘You rang back after you spoke to us?’ West asked.

  The young garda nodded, took a breath and continued his explanation. ‘The lady, Mrs Roberts, I mean, was hysterical. I asked them to send a female garda,’ he blushed, ‘I thought it would be better, you know...a woman...but there were none available so they asked if a victim support person would be of assistance.’ Hudson blushed slightly, ‘Mrs Robert’s was shrieking, Sergeant West. I didn’t know what to do with her, and the ambulance people were busy with Mr Roberts, so I said yes. She arrived only a minute before you.’ He looked worried. ‘I thought it was ok to let her be with the family.’

  Neither West nor Andrews thought it was ok. If Gerard Roberts were murdered, and they had yet to establish that fact, there was a statistically high chance that it had been done by someone he knew.

  His wife, son, daughter would all be under suspicion. This soon after the murder, if murder it was, in these first moments of weakness, guilt could be seen in the shiftiness of eyes, a nervous garrulousness, a tremor, an uncertain laugh, a reticence, all the nuances and signs that experienced detectives would be looking for.

  But what they didn’t need, were for those first signs to be diluted and adulterated by an outsider who would be unaware of them. Someone who would console, offer a shoulder to cry on. Who would listen without hearing at all.

  Both men, annoyed, looked through the fronds of some overlarge plant to where the family sat around the table, the mother still weeping quietly and the son and daughter sitting, each with an arm around her. Opposite and speaking quietly, holding their attention was the aforementioned victim support person.

  Except she wasn’t, West thought, with what Andrews described to his wife later as a cartoon-like step backwards. She wasn’t a victim support person, he knew her, or rather he had known her in the course of a case, what was it, five months ago? He remembered her name without hesitation, Kelly Johnson.

  Five months. Five months since he watched her stepping into the lift in the International Hotel in Cork, his eyes never leaving her as the door closed, praying for it to open again. He’d waited, staring at the door for a ridiculous amount of time, before admitting defeat and walking away.

  He hadn’t seen her since, had lost count of the times he’d picked up the phone, a casual just checking to see if you are ok on the tip of his tongue. Each time pulling his hand away, biting his tongue, swallowing words he knew were pointless.

  Five months.

  He had dragged his reluctant body around Dublin’s social scene, renewing old acquaintances, remembering quickly why he had dropped out, but persevering, jumping in and out of several intensely sexual but ultimately unsatisfying entanglements only to wake every morning knowing he had failed yet again. But he continued the sequence, determined to convince himself that his attraction for Kelly was due to the simple fact of propinquity; they were thrown together
by circumstances not of their making, nothing more.

  Five months...they may as well have been five seconds.

  2

  West straightened his shoulders, tried to remember where his backbone was, and straightened that. This wasn’t the time or place. His focus should be on the dead man slumped over the table. Fixing that thought in his mind, he turned back to the young garda who still looked worried, unconsciously shuffling from one foot to the other.

  ‘At least Mrs Robert’s not hysterical anymore,’ West said firmly, ‘but in future, keep everyone away till we get here and that includes victim support workers, ok?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hudson replied promptly glad to be escaping lightly.

  ‘Ok, you go and join Garda Doyle. The press might descend on us yet, keep them at bay.’

  West listened to the soft murmur of voices from the table for a moment, unable to make out the conversation. His gaze swept lightly over the bereft family and lingered on the speaker as she stretched a hand across the table to lay it gently on the still-weeping woman’s arm. Her words may not have been audible but West could see that whatever she was saying had a calming effect on the family; they watched her intently, grasping her reassurance, a lifebuoy in a choppy sea.

  She had put on some weight since he’d seen her last, a healthy glow replacing the pallor he remembered. She looked...he took a deep breath...she looked stunning.

  A gravelly harrumph from beside him brought his gaze quickly around to Andrews, who was doing innocuous as only he could.

  ‘You wanted to say something, Peter?’ West asked, a note of warning in his voice.

  ‘Nothing, Mike, just clearing my throat. Must be all these plants,’ Andrews observed innocently. He sniffed, eyeing the overgrown greenery licking their shoulders with disfavour. ‘Do you want to start interviewing the family?’ he continued, since the sergeant’s attention was still firmly focused in the direction of the table.