Close Ranks: A Garda West Novel (Garda West Crime Novels Book 2) Read online

  West shook his head, his eyes still taking in the sight of Kelly Johnson sitting there, his brain playing catch-up. Then, firmly putting her to one, ever-increasing, corner of his mind, he turned what was left back to face Peter Andrews.

  ‘We may not need to, Pete. After all it may not be a murder enquiry; he may have died of natural causes.’ West had never hoped for the outcome so much. A natural death would mean he was superfluous, he’d happily choose to be so, rather than have to face Kelly Johnson.

  Andrews looked obliquely at West who was once again glancing at the table where Kelly sat, and heaved a silent but weighty sigh. He had seen Sergeant West fall for this woman five months ago, and hadn’t approved then; falling for a witness in a case was bad, falling for a murder suspect was a catastrophe. Now here she was again, like a bad penny, at what could be another murder scene.

  Andrews coughed again, muttering a complaint about the plants. West turned and, with a tilt of his head, indicated they go back to the other room. ‘Let’s see what they’ve decided,’ he said leading the way.

  They arrived just as Niall Kennedy, the pathologist, was discarding his latex gloves and crime scene suit, usually a good indication that things had moved along and information might be forthcoming. Seeing the two detectives approach he raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hey, Mike and Peter, Batman and Robin, The Lone Ranger and Tonto.’

  ‘Just don’t get to Dumb and Dumber, please,’ West stopped him with a plea.

  The pathologist grinned. ‘Would I?’

  It would have been on the list, West knew, having been the recipient of the his wacky sense of humour on many occasions. Humour helped them keep afloat when they appeared to be drowning in a sea of grime and crime but sometimes, just sometimes, the cure was worse than the disease.

  West shook his head. ‘What have you got for us?’

  ‘A fifty five year old man who suddenly collapsed and died. You would suspect a heart attack, aneurysm or even a massive stroke, wouldn’t you?’ He waited, briefly, for an acknowledgement from the two men, before shaking his head with a smile and continuing. ‘Well, you would be wrong. None of these things, I am almost positive, killed our Gerard Roberts; well, except he did eventually die of a heart attack, I suppose, but cause of death was, almost certainly, poisoning.’

  ‘So Garda Hudson was correct,’ murmured Andrews, causing the pathologist to raise his eyebrows.

  ‘An unusually astute junior officer then, Garda Andrews,’ Dr Kennedy said, slightly peeved to be beaten to a provisional diagnosis. ‘Did he perchance tell you which poison to suspect?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but crooked a finger and said, ‘If you would come this way, gentlemen.’ Then he walked to the other side of the room.

  West and Andrews moved to stand beside him. From this angle, the peaceful scene that both men had noticed when they looked in the kitchen door, minutes before, changed radically. They were used to death, had seen their fare share over the years, but neither had developed the impermeable carapace that allowed them to examine the last death throes of Gerard Roberts without a twinge of sympathetic horror.

  Because Gerard Roberts had not died a comfortable death. His mouth was locked in a bloody rictus of agony and his staring eyes reflected terror. Hanging from his mouth, barely attached, was the mangled remains of his tongue. Looking at it, West decided he would never order coarse liver pâté with cranberry sauce again. The resemblance was stomach-churning.

  Kennedy spoke softly. ‘From the way his tongue has been bitten almost completely through, I’m assuming he had a seizure prior to death. Obviously, I can’t be sure until I have done tests, but I am ninety-nine point nine per cent sure it is cyanide poisoning.’

  Both men looked startled, West recovering his voice first. ‘Cyanide. But not cyanide gas?’

  ‘Correct, Sergeant West, had it been gas the whole family would be dead. I’d say he ingested it. Again, I am speculating,’ he said, holding his hands up, ‘which as a scientist I shouldn’t do. Anyway, I will be able to give you more a definitive answer when I have examined the stomach contents. But the signs are clear. See how red his face is?’

  West nodded and frowned, ‘Isn’t that an indicator of carbon monoxide poisoning?’

  ‘Yes, but death from carbon monoxide poisoning is not normally preceded by a seizure. Plus, in a kitchen this size, it would be impossible to contain enough carbon monoxide to kill so quickly, and this man died within a few minutes. It’s less commonly known that cyanide poisoning also leaves it’s victims with a red face due, if you’re interested in the science bit, to cyanide-haemoglobin complexes.’

  West and Andrews looked around the kitchen, its assortment of jars, packets, boxes, and cupboards. Poison. The scene of crimes team, already alerted by Dr Kennedy, was in the process of taking samples from every container. The remnants of food on plates and pots were being scraped into labelled containers for examination back in the laboratory. If the poison were in anything the victim ate here, they would find it.

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’ West asked, delving into his limited knowledge of poisoning and finding next to nothing on cyanide.

  Dr Kennedy considered a moment. ‘I think it highly unlikely, Mike. I couldn’t imagine where you would get your hands on it, for one thing, but it’s not impossible. There are some vegetables that naturally contain the cyanogenic glycoside toxin. Cassava, for instance, a vegetable that’s poisonous when raw but can be safely eaten when cooked. Nevertheless, there are well documented cases of accidental cyanide poisoning, especially in parts of Africa where Cassava is widely eaten. It’s available in the UK too, of course, but I’ve never heard of an incident here. Apricot stones also contain the toxin but it’s unlikely that our friend here was chewing on many apricot stones.

  ‘So he ate something that contained this cyanogenic glycoside toxin. Accidently or not.’

  Dr Kennedy shrugged elaborately, never a man for doing something simply when it could be done with flourish. ‘Looks that way. The stomach contents should be able to tell us. If he drank it, I’ll be able to tell you the concentration in his body and that might also be an indicator of how he took it. The lethal dose of cyanide ranges from zero point five to three milligrams per kilogram body weight.’ He ran an experienced eye over the dead man and quickly calculated. ‘He’s a slightly built man, probably doesn’t weigh more than seventy kilograms, so you are looking at thirty five to two hundred and ten milligrams of cyanide.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem much,’ Andrews said, looking again at the dead body.

  ‘It doesn’t take much. A quick, effective killer, cyanide.’ With a final nod and wave, the pathologist departed, promising to let them know the results of the autopsy as soon as possible.

  West stood a moment considering the options. ‘Until we know otherwise, Pete, we’re going to have to treat this as a murder enquiry.

  Andrews agreed.

  One of the two connecting doors between the kitchen and conservatory opened with a squeak and both detectives turned as one. Kelly Johnson stood silhouetted against the dark greenery of the overlarge plants. She was dressed simply in tee shirt, trousers and jacket but the clothes were well-cut, expensive and the overall impression was one of restrained elegance. Her light brown hair was tied back in some kind of knot, tendrils escaping, deliberately or not, to caress her cheek and throat.

  West’s breath caught sharply. It might just as well have been five seconds. His feelings hadn’t changed. It was pointless to deny it. She had taken up residence in a part of his brain he kept tightly locked. Only in the early hours of the morning, that hour of wakefulness when everything seems impossible, when there is a need for succour, for something simply to hold on to and keep the screams at bay. Only then did he unlock that door and allow himself think about her.

  And in those wakeful moments, he rehearsed, over and over again, what he would say if he ever bumped into her. The scenario was always set in some shop, restaurant or theatre; some social setting whe
re they would meet as equals, two ordinary people who would exchange polite small talk, who would look at one another and think maybe. And he would, perhaps, suggest they meet for a drink. And of course she would smile and say yes.

  And it would be ordinary and delightful and, just maybe, a little romantic and magical.

  That was the way his dreams went. That’s how he hoped their next meeting would be, if it ever happened.

  Not at another damn crime scene.

  This wasn’t what he envisaged at all.

  This wasn’t ordinary.

  You couldn’t have polite small talk over a corpse.

  She was going to see him as a policeman.

  Again.

  Andrews moving to break the prolonged silence, walked toward her with hand outstretched while West, to his surprise, turned around and walked away. ‘Mrs Johnson,’ Andrews said, with a smile, ‘good to see you. You appear to have changed career.’

  Kelly Johnson returned the smile and shook his hand. ‘Hello, Garda Andrews. No, not a career change exactly. I do some volunteer work for Offer and happened to be in the station when the call came through.’ She indicated the room behind with a nod of her head. ‘Mrs Roberts was hysterical when I arrived. She’s calmer now but I don’t think it would take much to set her off again. I did ask if she wanted her doctor but she refused. Her daughter’s not much help, she appears to be in shock, and the son just keeps saying, he can’t be dead.’ She looked over his shoulders at the men who bustled about, intent on their work. ‘I thought, if you were finished in here, I could make the usual panacea,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t look as if you are.’

  Andrews looked puzzled.

  ‘Tea,’ she clarified, ‘I thought I could make some tea.’

  ‘Oh,’ Andrews smiled, and then looking over his shoulder wondered where West had gone, what he wanted him to say.

  West had stepped back to have a totally superfluous word with a member of the scene of crimes team. He turned and came back to where they stood, wearing, Andrews thought inwardly cringing, a totally unbelievable look of surprise when he saw Kelly standing beside him.

  ‘It’s...’ he hesitated deliberately, ‘...Mrs Johnson isn’t it?’ and stepped forward to shake her hand. Andrews wanted to arrest him for the worst acting he had ever seen. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Sergeant West, it’s been a while.’ Kelly said with a quick smile. ‘I was just explaining my role as volunteer victim support to Garda Andrews. Offer is a relatively new group, not everyone is aware of us as yet.’ She reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, the gesture easy, relaxed, poised.

  This wasn’t the anxious, distraught woman he had met before, West thought, and then realised with a start that he resented her poise. Why wasn’t she as disturbed at seeing him as he was at seeing her?

  ‘I’ve been sitting with Mrs Roberts.’ Kelly explained to him, with a nod back into the other room where the family still sat around the table.

  ‘Yes, Garda Hudson did say there was someone here,’ West said, dismissively, keeping his voice clipped and cool, an instinctive reaction to the heat this woman generated. ‘It is more usual to wait until we have interviewed the family, you know, in case something is said that might affect the outcome of our case, or in case you, inadvertently, say the wrong thing.’

  Kelly’s friendly smile froze at his tone and at the lack of recognition on his handsome face. Then it faded away completely, along with the slight frisson she had felt at seeing him again.

  At her lowest, abandoned in a remote cottage in Cornwall five months before, it was to this man she had turned and he had been there for her. The last time she had seen him was in Cork, where she had been hiding from the man who had murdered her husband. He’d gone to tell her it was all over. That she was safe. When it was all over, she thought he might keep in touch, ring her. But he hadn’t.

  The realisation that she had been stupid, came with a pang. He had just been doing his job. Why had she expected something more? She should have learned by now.

  She tossed her head slightly, the escaped tendrils of hair bouncing. She’d come through a hell of a lot. Abandoned, betrayed, molested. But she had come through it. The counsellor, this man had recommended, had really helped, and nowadays she felt good about herself. When she looked in the mirror in the morning, she could smile at the face that looked back.

  She had picked up the strings and ties of old friendships too; rang old girlfriends, apologised for not keeping in touch, arranged meetings for lunch, for coffee. She’d joined a gardening club and volunteered at a local charity shop enjoying a new found sense of community, getting to know people, faces to greet in the shops, on the street. And if she still felt lonely she didn’t feel quite so alone.

  She fixed Sergeant West with a glacier gaze. So he barely remembered who she was. Well, she could live with that. He had been there when she needed help, but she didn’t need help anymore. His or anyone else’s. And if there had been that little frisson when she saw him. It was definitely gone now. Pinning him with her gaze, she said firmly. ‘As far as I am aware, Sergeant West, Offer is the first victim support group to be available in this area, therefore there is no usual attached to the service. It is our policy, to immediately inform the person or persons we are here to support, that they must not discuss the case until given permission to do so by the gardai.

  ‘As to my, inadvertently, saying something wrong, sergeant, you will be relieved to know that the most dangerous statement I made, was to encourage Mrs Roberts to take deep breaths to control her hysteria. When I arrived she would have been incapable of answering even the most harmless of questions; you should be grateful that she is now completely coherent and calm. Unless, of course, you prefer to question your witnesses when they are shrieking their misery?’

  Andrews, taken aback at the sergeant’s attitude to Kelly, looked on in admiration as she gave him a large and pointed piece of her mind. What a change from the stressed out woman he remembered. He risked a glance at the sergeant, amused to see a tide of red creeping up his handsome face. Aha, he thought, at last I’ve seen him speechless.

  He underestimated the sergeant, however, and wondered later if the tide of red had been embarrassment or anger.

  ‘I am aware, Mrs Johnson, that you have experience both as a witness and,’ West reminded her acidly, ‘as a suspect. However you are not a member of the gardai. If Mrs Roberts, in the middle of her hysteria, had confessed to murdering her husband, what would you have done? Told her to take a deep breath? To think again? The fact that she appeared to have said nothing is lucky for you.

  ‘Now, we need to interview the family. We are going to do so, one by one. You may wait with the other members of the family, and continue your inoffensive consolation, or come with the person being interviewed, but, I caution you, if you come to the interview you don’t open your mouth. Understood?’

  Standoff, Andrews thought, enjoying the little drama being enacted before him. He preferred this version of Kelly Johnson to the wan, pathetic victim who had hidden out in the Cork hotel. He didn’t know, but West could have told him had he asked, the wan pathetic look was hung on a rod of steel.

  There was certainly steel in her stance now as she faced up to the sergeant and a sharp platinum edge to her voice as she replied succinctly, ‘Perfectly, Garda Sergeant West,’ before turning on her heels and returning to sit with the grieving widow.

  Andrews coughed. ‘Well, that went well, didn’t it Mike?’

  ‘You know I was right.’ West said, in a voice that was tightly controlled and laced with justification. ‘Mrs Roberts could have confessed to poisoning her husband. Hell, any of them could have confessed. And what would she have done. Eh?’

  ‘Of course you were right, Mike,’ Andrews agreed soothingly, ‘perhaps you needn’t have been quite so obnoxiously so, though.’

  Closing his eyes momentarily, West sighed. Obnoxious? Yes, he supposed he had been. Attempting to avoid the
fall from the tightrope of emotional complications, he had opted, he saw now, for the safety net of officialdom and dogma. He rubbed a weary hand over his eyes wishing for a rewind button. If it were only that easy.

  But it wasn’t, he knew, and settling the mantle of Garda Siochana firmly on his shoulders he concentrated on the job he was paid to do.

  3

  It was easier, in the end, to interview the softly sobbing Mrs Roberts where she sat at the conservatory room table. The siblings, Sophia and David, were brought to another downstairs room, accompanied by Garda Hudson who stayed with them as they sat stoically on either end of a large sofa.

  Mrs Roberts was a little woman, no more than five feet tall and slightly built. Small hands rested on the arm of the chair, the nails neatly manicured but unpolished. Small, ornate gold earrings and a diamond engagement ring next to a narrow band of gold on her ring-finger were her only adornments. Her clothes were unremarkable but well-cut and obviously expensive. All in all, she would usually be described as a neat, pretty woman. Today wasn’t usual, however, and her face was harried and grey; eyes, that normally viewed the world through mocha coloured lids, were attempting to make sense of things through lids that had become puffy and swollen with tears. The mocha eye-shadow and attendant mascara had long since washed off onto the countless tissues that littered the floor around her chair. She reached, mechanically, for a new tissue as the two detectives sat opposite her and blew her nose gently.

  The two men introduced themselves and made the standard expressions of sympathy. She looked at them, her brown tear-sodden eyes as wide as her swollen lids would allow, and whimpered, ‘I don’t understand! What happened to Gerard? How can he possibly be dead?’

  ‘That’s what we are going to find out Mrs Roberts,’ West replied gently. ‘We need you to tell us exactly what happened this morning. Everything you can remember, no matter how irrelevant it may seem to you, ok?’