No Easy Answer Read online

  ‘No, but we will,’ Edwards said. ‘If we all work on it, we should get through it quickly, it’s a narrow time frame.’

  ‘Good, get me something.’

  46

  West headed into his office. Andrews, surprised, trailed behind. ‘We’re not heading back to the interview room?’

  ‘Let them stew for a bit,’ West said, sitting and running a hand over his face. ‘If this case gets any more complicated…’

  ‘I’ll get us some coffee,’ Andrews said, heading away. He returned moments later and placed an overfilled mug on the desk in front of West. ‘Sorry, I was thinking. Not a good idea when you’re pouring coffee.’

  ‘I hope you thought of something solid.’

  ‘Not really, but I was wondering if we’d let our dislike of Darragh Checkley cloud our judgement.’

  West lifted the mug carefully, swigged a mouthful to lower the level, then sat back with it cupped in his hand. ‘Yes, we did, I suppose. But that Lynda woman, what a piece of work. She killed Muriel Hennessy–’

  ‘And I bet she killed Doris Whitaker too.’ Andrews held a hand up. ‘Yes, I know Kennedy said she probably had a heart attack, but he couldn’t be sure it was before or after she was put in the freezer, could he?’

  West held the mug to his lips, then put it down. ‘I wonder…’ he said and picked up the phone. ‘Maybe Maddison will be able to help us.’

  It was a few minutes before he managed to get through to the garda technical team manager. ‘David, sorry to bother you but this case is growing tentacles. We need to find the freezer where we think Doris Whitaker was kept. I know the house is a nightmare but could you make it a priority.’ He listened for a moment. ‘Yes, I know it’s a complex crime scene but we think that Doris may have been put into the freezer while she was still alive.’ He gave a quick laugh. ‘Yes, very Edgar Allen Poe indeed. You will? Much appreciated.’ He hung up. ‘He’s going to assign a couple of his team to search for the freezer.’

  ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ Andrews said. ‘I looked it up, something about a woman being buried alive in a tomb.’

  ‘Yes, she broke her fingernails trying to get out. If Doris was alive, maybe we’ll get lucky.’ He realised the implications of what he’d said and groaned. ‘Not that I’d have wanted her to die in that way.’

  ‘Wouldn’t matter, it’s unlikely anyway.’ Andrews was being his usual practical self. ‘The inside of those freezers are smooth. There’d be nowhere for her to break a nail on.’

  ‘A delightful thought.’ West drained his coffee. ‘Right, we’d better go and see what Checkley and his solicitor have cooked up between them.’

  Both Gallagher and Checkley looked up with set resigned expressions when they went back into the interview room.

  ‘Interview is resumed,’ West said. ‘Right, do you have anything more to say, Mr Checkley.’

  ‘I admit I went along with Lynda’s plan to have the will changed. I also admit that I panicked when we found those corpses and furthermore admit to having…’ he swallowed noisily, ‘…cut up four of the bodies we found and disposed of them in the rubbish bins in the recycling centre.’ He lifted his chin. ‘But I know nothing about the death of that woman, Muriel whatshername, or about the death of my cousin.’

  ‘If you didn’t kill Muriel Hennessy, who did?’

  To the detectives’ surprise, Darragh Checkley wasn’t hurrying to take the leap to blame his wife. ‘It was some unknown hit-and-run driver, wasn’t it?’

  Andrews wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. ‘Muriel Hennessy had mobility issues. She wouldn’t have been able to walk to where her body was found and identified by your wife as being Doris. Somebody brought her there… the same person is probably responsible for her death. Your wife insists that person is you, Mr Checkley. If it wasn’t you… it had to have been her.’

  Checkley looked at him without saying a word.

  ‘Okay, let me put it another way… do you think your wife is capable of murder?’

  Checkley grunted. ‘Up till now, I thought our marriage was okay. Good as most. Then I discover my wife is happily fitting me up for murder. I wouldn’t have thought she were capable of that… so how do I know what more she is capable of. All I can do, is repeat that I didn’t have anything to do with the death of that woman or the death of my cousin.’

  West got to his feet. ‘Interview suspended. Sit tight,’ he said, and he and Andrews left the room again.

  ‘I’m not going into the wife without something to pin her down,’ West said as they walked back into the main detective office. ‘It would sink to a game of he said, she said and drive us crazy.’

  The team were all glued to computer screens. Eureka moments rarely happened when they needed them.

  There was nothing they could do except sit, go over everything again and wait for a breakthrough.

  The first came twenty minutes later. ‘I have her,’ Gemma Ryan yelled, and punched the air in her excitement.

  Within seconds, everyone else was crowded around. ‘With everyone checking the traffic cameras, I thought I’d try something else,’ she said, trying hard to sound calm. ‘After the murder in St Monica’s, I knew they’d beefed up their CCTV so I rang the sacristan and he was more than happy to send over the footage. Have a look.’ She hit a key on her keyboard and the screen came to life. ‘Just… there.’ She pointed to Lynda Checkley’s Volvo as it indicated to turn onto Kill Lane from Beech Park Road where Muriel Hennessy had lived.

  With the time frame narrowed down to minutes, it was easy then for the team to track Lynda’s journey to Torquay Road. ‘Well done, everyone,’ West said a few minutes later. ‘And good thinking, Gemma. It’s not proof but it’s a hell of a lot closer and might give us the leverage we need.’

  Back in the Other One, Lynda Checkley looked bored but relaxed. Xavier Bradshaw had obviously used up his store of polite chit-chat. He had a small laptop out, his fingers flying with speed across the keys. It wasn’t until West said, ‘Interview resumed,’ that he stopped and shut it.

  West rested his arms on the table and joined his hands together. ‘We’ve had a long conversation with your husband, Mrs Checkley.’

  ‘I’m sure that was informative. I hope he told you the truth.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve learned over the years that he tends to be a little shy about that.’

  Just as West had expected, a nasty game of he said, she said. ‘On the day of the hit-and-run where were you beforehand?’

  She gave the question some thought. ‘At home. I work from home Wednesday to Friday.’

  ‘And your route to Torquay Road?’

  ‘Straightforward. Up Stillorgan Road, down Westminster Road and onto Torquay Road.’

  ‘Sounds very straightforward,’ West agreed. ‘You didn’t need to make any detours?’

  Lynda’s eyes narrowed. It was a full minute before she answered and when she did she proved herself to be a worthy opponent. ‘Not a detour, as such, but I did call into St Monica’s. I often do, to say a prayer and light a candle.’

  West had to give her credit. She was good. And believable. He could feel his advantage slipping away. ‘You parked in the church car park?’

  ‘Lord no, it’s a nightmare to get out of there,’ she said, sure of herself again. ‘I’m certain it annoys the residents, but I parked on Beech Park Road.’

  West felt a dart of anger mixed with frustration. She was too damn clever.

  The door opened behind him. ‘Sorry,’ Allen said, peering around the edge of the door and meeting West’s eye. ‘Can I have a quick word?’

  It was several minutes before West returned. He gave a slight nod to Andrews who was sitting silently with his arms folded.

  ‘My apologies,’ West said, taking his seat. He put a slim folder on the desk in front of him. ‘Now, as I said, we’ve had a long conversation with your husband. He seems, unfortunately, to have no recollection of you ringing him to say his cousin had died. In fact, he was under t
he impression that the hit-and-run victim was his cousin.’

  Lynda laughed as if he’d made a joke, the sound fading quickly. ‘You’re serious?’ She looked to her solicitor, a hand reaching towards him… pleading. ‘Oh God, Xavier, Darragh is trying to pin it all on me!’

  Ignoring the dramatics, West said, ‘You stated, Mrs Checkley, that Doris was dead when you found her.’

  ‘Yes, she was. It was a terrible shock.’

  ‘And that was why you rang your husband rather than an ambulance.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was your husband’s idea to put his cousin into the freezer.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘After she was dead.’

  Lynda looked to her solicitor with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘I think my client has already explained that Mrs Whitaker was dead, Sergeant West, so perhaps we could get to the point.’

  ‘The point, ah yes, good idea.’ West looked at Lynda. ‘Tell me, Mrs Checkley… how did a dead woman write her name in the ice inside the freezer?’

  47

  West sat back and folded his arms, not bothering to hide his satisfaction. Lynda Checkley was good, he gave her credit for being one of the more clever, devious and manipulative women he’d met. She was good… but they were better and there was a lot of pride to be had in that.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Lynda said with a sneer. ‘I know this is a set-up. She was dead when I arrived. Stone-cold dead. Dead when we put her in the freezer.’

  ‘We,’ West said. ‘Interesting, the only fingerprints found on the freezer, apart from Mrs Whitaker’s, were yours.’

  ‘Darragh was wearing gloves,’ Lynda said quickly. ‘He always wears gloves when he’s driving and hadn’t taken them off.’

  West was almost impressed. ‘Think carefully, Mrs Checkley… could it have been that Doris was merely unconscious and the shock of being put into the freezer brought her around?’ He watched her carefully, could almost see the cogs and wheels rolling before she came to the decision to stick with her story.

  ‘Absolutely not. Honestly, her skin was ice-cold. I think she’d been dead for a long while by the time I’d found her.’ She turned to Bradshaw. ‘They’re trying to set me up but there’s no way Doris was alive. And absolutely no way they could have found anything scratched into the ice since I defrosted the freezer after we moved her body. There didn’t seem to be any point in leaving it on.’

  ‘You heard my client, sergeant,’ the solicitor said. ‘So, unless you have proof of any of these allegations…’

  West opened the file on the desk, took out a photograph and looked at it before putting it on the desk and sliding it across. ‘You wanted proof. It’s not the best resolution, but we wanted to show you as soon as we could. This is a photograph of the name scratched into the ice of the freezer in Doris Whitaker’s home. It was taken by the garda technical team less than an hour ago.’ He reached over and followed the line of the letters with his fingers. ‘They’re roughly done but then she was probably in a certain amount of shock having been tipped into a freezer. I think she may have been trying to write the date after her name.’ He pointed to a few squiggles after the jaggedly-written Doris. ‘Her fingers were probably too cold to do any more. Then, of course, she had the heart attack that finally killed her.’

  Lynda snorted. ‘This has to be a fake.’ She turned to her solicitor. ‘They’re trying to stitch me up here. There would have been no ice. The freezer was unplugged.’

  West opened the file again for another photograph. ‘Yes, you unplugged it here.’ The photocopy showed a single socket, the plug lying on the floor nearby.

  ‘Exactly. I had to reach behind a pile of junk to get access.’

  ‘Yes, your fingerprint was found on this plug.’ West put the photo back into the file and took out the final one, a photograph of a plug in a socket. ‘It wasn’t, however, found on this one. And this one, is the plug for the freezer. What you unplugged was a vacuum cleaner hidden behind some clutter.’

  He almost laughed at her shocked expression of disbelief. ‘You really should have checked to make sure. If you had, you’d have seen the evidence.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s always the little details that catch people out.’

  West tapped the photograph of Doris’s name in the ice. ‘It looks like she managed to get her revenge even after her death.’ He looked at Bradshaw. ‘Among other things, we’ll be requesting that the Director of Public Prosecutions charge your client with the premeditated murder of Doris Whitaker.’

  48

  The hard work was done. Now it was a matter of presenting the book of evidence to the DPP and letting her decide what charges to bring. West had met the current director and knew her to be an intelligent, clever woman who would handle the complexities of this case the way she did every other. He thought of the headless corpses sitting around the table and hoped she wasn’t squeamish.

  ‘We did good,’ Andrews said as they went back to the main office where the rest of the team were already back-slapping and congratulating one another.

  ‘We certainly did.’ West looked around the room. ‘We did very well indeed to tie up three messy, complicated cases into one incredibly complex one. They’ll be talking about this for a while.’

  ‘I rang Jarvis,’ Baxter said. ‘He’s bummed that he missed it all.’

  ‘It won’t be our last complicated case,’ Edwards said with a laugh. ‘We do seem to attract them.’

  ‘Good,’ Gemma Ryan said, her eyes gleaming. ‘Who wants a straightforward murder?’

  Allen shook his head. ‘It scrambles my brain working here, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.’

  ‘And I’ll second that.’ Inspector Morrison stood in the doorway. ‘I wanted to come and offer my congratulations to you all. This,’ he shook his head, ‘has to have been the weirdest case I’ve seen in all my years. As Garda Allen has put it so eloquently, it scrambles my brain sometimes but I’m never bored.’ He looked at West. ‘Job very well done, Mike. Very well done indeed.’

  It took another few hours’ work to get the loose ends tied up and the book of evidence sent to the DPP.

  Darragh Checkley was released on bail but a grim-faced, silent Lynda was led away to spend that night and many nights to come in Mountjoy jail.

  ‘She won’t be bothering us for a few years,’ Andrews said. He was sitting in West’s office with yet another mug of coffee in his hand.

  West laced his fingers behind his head. It had been a long and exhausting day. ‘What we have on her for Muriel Hennessy’s death is circumstantial but Dr Kennedy is revisiting the post-mortem results. He might have something we can use.’

  ‘She’ll be put away for Doris anyway.’

  ‘Doris Whitaker. I’ll never look at a little old lady in the same way again.’ West dropped his hands to the desk. ‘Monday, we’ll start trying to find who her victims were. I’ve asked them to rush the DNA.’

  ‘We’ll get there,’ Andrews said. He got to his feet and checked his watch. ‘This day feels like it’s gone on forever.’

  West glanced at the time on the corner of his computer screen. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realised it was so late.’ He shut down his computer and jumped to his feet.

  ‘7pm.’ Andrews stood aside as West grabbed his jacket from the back of the door. ‘I thought we’d go for a pint to celebrate.’

  West smacked him on the shoulder. ‘Not tonight, have to fly. Monday. We’ll celebrate then.’

  He was gone before Andrews could answer. Sergeant Blunt looked as if he were going to stop West for a chat but he stopped him with a raised hand. ‘Fill you in on Monday, have to dash.’

  Then he was in the car and swerving out onto the road, his eyes flicking to the time, swearing softly under his breath as he was stopped at every traffic light on the way. Usually a careful driver, he sped through amber lights and broke the speed limit most of the way home. Despite this, it was still 7.30pm as he pulled up outside
his house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pushing open the front door.

  Edel came from the kitchen. She was wearing a tight-fitting black dress he didn’t remember seeing before, her feet bare, hair loose around her shoulders. ‘Bad day?’

  ‘A long day,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’

  Her smile melted all the stress of the day away. ‘We don’t need to go out. There’s pizza in the freezer, we could have that.’

  ‘No, we’re going out,’ West insisted. He pulled off his tie and hung it over the bannisters. ‘There, casual gear, I’m ready to go.’

  It drew a chuckle from her. ‘Right, let me put on shoes and grab my coat.’

  ‘We’ll drive,’ West said. ‘We can leave the car in the car park and get a taxi home. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t mind not drinking,’ Edel said. Dropping her shoes to the floor, she slipped her feet in. ‘Ready.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said and opened the front door.

  ‘How is the investigation going?’ Edel asked as he drove the short distance to the restaurant.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it over dinner,’ he said. ‘It had Peter talking about Edgar Allen Poe, put it that way.’

  ‘Quoting Arthur Conan Doyle and now talking about Poe! What have you done with the Peter Andrews I know and love?’

  The restaurant car park was busy but West squeezed his car into a tight spot in the corner. ‘Here we go,’ he said, putting an arm around Edel’s shoulder. ‘We’re only twenty minutes late.’

  ‘I hope we get the table in the window.’

  ‘Oh, that’s been organised.’

  ‘Really?’ Edel squeezed his arm. ‘Clever man. I never remember to ask.’

  In fact, not only did they have a table at the large bay window overlooking the marina but theirs was the only one there. Edel sat on the chair the waiter pulled out for her and looked around in surprise. ‘I wonder why they moved the other table away.’