Close Ranks Page 5

  Their identification as the gardai didn’t change his manner and he immediately asked what he could do for them with a surprising lack of curiosity as if, Andrews said later, the gardai arriving at his shop was a daily occurrence. Flags went up in both men’s minds almost at the same time; someone this free and easy with the guards usually had had dealings with them. Someone this willing to be of help usually had something to hide.

  Their instincts heightened, they proceeded to question the owner whose name, they discovered to Andrews’ amusement, was Bernard Beans.

  ‘Mr Beans,’ West started, ignoring the snuffled snort from Andrews, ‘do you know a Gerard Roberts?’

  A mild curiosity swam into Mr Beans’ colourless face. ‘Certainly, Sergeant. He was here, in fact, just this morning.’ He had a peculiar habit of screwing up his nose as he spoke making him look like an inquisitive rabbit. ‘He is a regular customer, one of our best.’

  ‘What did he buy this morning?’

  A frown drew Mr Beans’ eyebrows together and he screwed his nose up again as he listed the vegetables the late Gerard Roberts had purchased. ‘Carrots, broccoli, red onions, mushrooms, green beans, figs, a cantaloupe, or was it two?’ He considered, ‘No, just one. And he also bought some manihot esculenta and a bunch of parsley. He liked to stop here on the start of his cycle, he said the extra weight made him burn more calories.’

  Both men had been listening for cassava but since they didn’t hear it they fixed on the one item they didn’t know. ‘What was that second last one?’ Andrews asked.

  ‘Manihot esculenta,’ Mr Beans repeated cautiously. ‘At least, I think that’s how it’s pronounced.’ He gave a little titter.

  ‘Can we see some, please?’ West asked.

  Mr Beans rubbed his hands together and tittered again, the sound irritatingly unattractive. ‘Well, of course. If we have any left that is. We didn’t get an awful lot of it in.’ He led them to a corner of the shop, to an area supporting smaller baskets holding fewer items. ‘This is where we keep, what I like to call the exotic products, and as you can see, I’m afraid we are all out of manihot esculenta.’ He indicated a small and obviously empty basket.

  West made a tch sound of annoyance. ‘Can you describe it then, please?’

  ‘Describe it? Well I can try. It comes in roots,’ Bernard Beans said, using long bony fingers to draw the shape in the air, the fingers fluttering to a halt, giving neither man a clearer picture of the shape. Seeing their blank looks, the man tried to elaborate, ‘It’s a bit like a parsnip but the same colour as a potato. It has a hard rind that is peeled away and then it is cooked much like potato.’

  ‘Is it the same as cassava?’ West asked bluntly, recognising that description of the vegetable as the one they heard earlier.

  The little man squirmed. ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve sold cassava the odd time and it has been much thinner and shorter. Maybe it’s a different variety? I really don’t know I’m afraid. It was sold to me as manihot esculenta, so that’s what I sold it as. It was the name that appealed, actually, that’s why I bought it. My customers, at least some of them, like to try the exotic and unusual, you know, a bit of variety. But the appearance let it down. Didn’t look the least bit exotic. To be honest, I didn’t think it would sell at all.’

  ‘Who is your supplier, Mr Beans? Perhaps we can get more information about this vegetable from them.’

  The squirming increased, accompanied now by a shiftiness of expression. ‘Supplier? Well, you know I’m not too sure...you’ll have to come back when I can...I use a number of different sources and...’

  West interrupted his ramblings. ‘The name of your supplier or suppliers, Mr Beans. Or do I really need to go and get a court order?’

  A heavy sigh deflated the already thin man so that he seemed to be half the size he was. ‘I don’t always get my supplies from the usual source, you see. Sometimes, especially with the more unusual items I have to go to other sources...’

  Reaching the end of his patience, West interrupted again. ‘Mr Beans, I want to know where you got that manihot escu-whatever?’

  ‘Manihot esculenta.’ Mr Beans repeated with a sniff. ‘I got it from a woman who brought it back with her, when she returned from a holiday in her homeland. Her family had given it to her, and she hadn’t the heart to tell them she hated the sight of the stuff.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Guyana.’

  ‘You do know it is illegal to import raw vegetables from abroad without a licence, don’t you Mr Beans?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I didn’t import them I was just doing the woman a favour.’

  West looked at the man sternly. ‘You knew they were illegally brought in, Mr Beans, and you sold them to the public, and now one of the public you sold them to is dead.’

  If the man had been pale before now every notion of colour drained from his face and he grasped the table behind him in shock. ‘Dead? Gerard Roberts is dead?’

  ‘And the last thing he ate was the vegetables he bought here. In your shop. So it is time to be very, very helpful Mr Beans. So tell me how much of this stuff you bought and how much Mr Roberts bought and where the rest went.’

  Pale, but galvanised by fear, Mr Beans went to the till and pulled a ledger from a cupboard underneath. ‘I have it written down, Sergeant. See here, this is the amount of manihot esculenta I bought from Louisa Leps, the lady from Guyana. Ten roots.’ He closed the ledger. ‘Mr Roberts, he bought just one piece. I don’t know who bought the rest. After I served Mr Roberts I left for a meeting leaving my assistant Pat in charge. She must have sold the rest.’

  ‘Is she still here?’

  ‘Just having a cup of tea, I’ll call her.’ With a look of relief, Bernard Beans went to the doorway and shouted hoarsely for his assistant.

  She came with no haste, a big-boned, well padded girl/woman of uncertain years, who looked blankly at the two detectives when they asked her about the exotic vegetable.

  ‘You know the brown one like a cross between a turnip and a potato.’ Mr Beans said simplifying the matter. Then, with an eye-roll to whatever gods had made him employ a woman he always referred to as his sister’s daughter rather than his niece as if, somehow, it kept the connection more distant, he tried again. ‘The one you said looked like a turd, Pat, remember?’

  There was a sigh of relief as the men heard the penny drop with a loud reverberating dong. ‘Oh aye, them things. I remember them.’

  ‘What happened to them, Pat, can you remember?’ West asked, keeping his voice gentle in the face of her vacuous half-smile.

  ‘A woman, she bought all o’them.’

  ‘All of them? All nine roots?’

  Her face, which would cause more wrinkles than it would ever earn, took on a slightly puzzled air. ‘I didn’t count ‘em.’

  More used to the vagaries of Pat’s thought processes than the detectives, Mr Beans gave her elbow a prod with a skeletal finger and asked bluntly, ‘Did anybody buy one before that lady?’

  She shook her head, her plump cheeks wobbling slightly with the effort.

  ‘Do you know who she was?’ Andrews asked hopefully, but the woman shook her head again without replying.

  ‘What time was it, can you remember?’ West tried, needing to pin the time down at least, but was rewarded with a shrug of her big shoulders. He looked to Mr Beans for help. ‘Do you have any way of finding out who bought them?’ but wasn’t surprised when he, in turn, shook his head.

  ‘People generally pay cash, Sergeant,’ Mr Beans added in self defence. ‘You’re talking about a few euro mostly, sometimes cents.’

  Pat stood silently while the men spoke; she was used to being ignored and sidelined and wasn’t insulted by their unthinking dismissal. Being big and broad, people had tended to avoid her rather than denigrate, thus she had missed the worst that people frequently offered those who were in any way different; she had no expectation of cruelty or abuse and took people as she found them. She
was slow, but in no way stupid, managing to run the shop fairly well during her uncle’s many absences. Most of the transactions were, as her uncle had admitted, for euro and cents, and people generally needed little help, picking and packing their own fruit and vegetables from the trays, so she put the money they gave her into the till and never worried whether it was right or not. Truth was, Mr Beans admitted, the till was rarely wrong. Pat was, he had decided, an ‘honesty box’ in human form; people were too embarrassed to cheat her.

  She stood and waited, as was her way, her eyes flicking backward and forward between the men, until a space opened up for her to speak. It didn’t come until the two detectives were taking their leave with an admonition to Mr Beans that they would have further questions for him, and that there may be charges brought. His speechless shock gave Pat the gap she was waiting for.

  ‘She was talking to that man outside,’ she put in with no inflection in her voice.

  Andrews heard her first and turned with curiosity. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘She was taking to that man outside,’ she repeated in the same tone.

  West returned to Andrews’ side. ‘What man?’

  ‘The man with the bike. She was talking to him outside.’

  The two men exchanged surprised glances and moved closer to the woman who backed away in alarm, frightened, not of their size, but of the sudden intensity of their gaze.

  ‘What man?’ Andrews asked, fighting to keep his tone gentle.

  She looked at him patiently and repeated slowly for his benefit. ‘The man with the bike.’

  And then, to general relief, she elaborated. ‘The man with the bike who bought all them vegetables off him this morning.’ She pointed at Mr Beans.

  It took fifteen minutes, and more patience than either man realised they possessed, to prise the remainder of the information from the assistant. Finally, they were left with the bones of the tale. Gerard Roberts had bought one piece of manioc esculenta, but before cycling away he had spent a few minutes speaking to a lady who had then come into the shop and bought the remainder of the vegetable. Although most of their customers were local, this woman was not known to the assistant.

  ‘And you didn’t see her?’ West asked the shop owner, puzzled. ‘But you served Mr Roberts so it can’t have been too long later.’

  Bernard Beans shook his head. ‘I was already late for my meeting. As soon as Mr Roberts left, I headed off.’ He pointed through the door at the back of the shop. ‘We have a back exit, it leads into a small car-park which has an exit onto The Hedgerows,’ he explained, referring to the narrow laneway that would take him back onto the road. ‘I was heading to Stillorgan, so I didn’t go past the front of the shop. I never saw her.

  West, frustrated, turned back to Pat and asked her to describe the woman.

  ‘Just a woman,’ Pat replied.

  Mr Beans shoved her, none too gently, ‘They want to know what she looked like.’

  ‘Just like an ordinary woman,’ Pat said, struggling to say more.

  Andrews, used to prising information from his small son, asked her a series of questions relating the description to the people around her. Thus they learned the woman was taller than her, taller than Mr Beans but smaller than the two detectives; her hair was the same colour as Sergeant West’s; she was fatter than Mr Beans but slimmer than either of the two detectives and, said with a slight quiver of lip, she was pretty. Pat added that the lady ‘talked funny’ but none of their many and varied questions could figure out why she thought so or what she meant by funny.

  ‘Did you see her leave?’ West asked.

  Pat nodded and smiled.

  ‘Did she walk away or have a car?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Which?’ West asked, frustration leaking into his voice.

  Pat didn’t notice. She beamed. ‘She had a car. Parked across the road.’ Her smile switched off and was replaced by a serious frown. ‘She’s not supposed to do that.’

  Do you know what kind of car it was?’ West asked, knowing it was a waste of time but also knowing that sometimes people knew the strangest things.

  Not this time.

  ‘A small one,’ Pat said smiling again.

  ‘What colour was it? Andrews asked, seeing West biting his lip in frustration.

  Pat made an effort to concentrate, screwed her eyes shut, took a breath and held it and then just as she looked to be going blue, she let a breath out and said, ‘Black,’ in a loud voice. Then before anyone could ask another question she said doubtfully, ‘Or green. Or maybe blue.’

  ‘Back in their car, a few minutes later, Sergeant West dropped his head back against the head rest with a groan. ‘A blonde, good-looking lady around five six who drives a small car that may be green, blue or black? No problem then, we’ll find her easily enough.’ He grinned suddenly, ‘I know about eight women who fit that description, Peter.’

  ‘I doubt if many of the blondes you know, would know one end of a manihot doo-daa from the other, Mike,’ Andrews retorted.

  West grinned wickedly again before putting memories of former girlfriends, blonde and otherwise, firmly to the back of his mind. ‘Seriously though,’ he said, ‘there are too many if’s, but’s and maybe’s here for my liking. We’ll have to get confirmation, first of all, that this manihot esculenta is cassava. If it is, is that how Roberts died? Our unknown blonde. She bought nine of them, is she lying dead somewhere?’ He rubbed a hand over his face, thinking.

  ‘Should we issue an alert?’ Andrews said worriedly. ‘She bought them this morning but she may not eat them till tonight, tomorrow, even the day after. She may be going to feed a family, a dinner party.’

  ‘We’ve no way of contacting her directly. We haven’t, as yet, any proof that this manihot stuff is what killed Roberts. We’ll get back to the station. Maybe they’ll have some results for us. Go from there.’

  As they drove in silence back to the station the same thought occupied both men. If the manihot esculenta was so poisonous that Roberts died from eating one, they could have nine more dead bodies on their hands before the day was out.

  5

  The pathologist’s legendary good humour withstood being asked for the results of the autopsy before he could possibly have finished. He was used to being asked the impossible and he spoke now into the overhead microphone without any lessening of his good spirits.

  ‘Go away, Sergeant West,’ he said succinctly.

  West’s frustration bounced off the pathologist and returned to aggravate him ten-fold. ‘So when will we know?’ he asked, gritting his teeth, knowing that unless the answer was straight away he was going to have to make a difficult decision.

  ‘I’ll be finished the autopsy in about an hour,’ Niall Kennedy replied. ‘Barring further interruptions, of course,’ he added smoothly. ‘But based on my gross examination, I don’t expect to find anything else of interest. You may get some results from forensics; I sent the stomach contents over an hour ago. The lab should be able to give you cyanide levels tomorrow but the remaining toxicology will take a little longer.’

  West banged the phone down, and then, glancing at the clock on the wall, picked it up again and rang the inspector. He summarised the situation quickly and then added, ‘I may have more information once I have spoken to forensics, sir. But I am concerned that time is pushing on. This unknown lady may use this vegetable for an evening meal. And if it is the cause of Gerard Roberts’ death, well...’ He left the sentence hanging.

  ‘We are still speculating, Sergeant West,’ Inspector Morrison said. ‘We can’t issue an alert based on speculation, you know that as well as I do. Your priority now is to confirm facts. Keep me informed, I’ll stay here in my office until I hear from you.’

  West hung up with a sigh and headed back into the general office where Andrews sat writing up reports. ‘Leave that Pete,’ he said, ‘Mother Morrison says we are to confirm facts and not keep speculating. So let’s get over to the Park and see what we ca
n find out.’

  The Phoenix Park, one of Europe’s largest walled parks with almost three square miles of parkland, contains the headquarters of An Garda Siochana and the Garda Forensic Laboratory. It also contains the official residence of the Irish president.

  And Dublin Zoo.

  Needless to say, both West and Andrews had heard all the jokes about the interchangeability of the inmates of each.

  West drove again, using his siren to cut through the usual after-school rush, strobe lights flashing on front and back windows. Luck was with them and traffic on the M50 was surprisingly light. They turned in the Main gate of the Park and arrived at the forensic lab car-park just as administrative staff were closing the front doors for the day.

  ‘Lucky them.’ Andrews quipped, checking his watch, ‘five on the dot and off they go.’

  ‘You’d hate a nine-to-five job Pete. Stuck in an office all day.’

  ‘Weekends off, evenings off, time for the kids, time for the wife.’

  West looked at him saw he was joking and smiled to himself as they got out of the car and headed to the entrance. Administration staff having gone for the day a small notice asked them to use the intercom to gain admission.

  A faint voice asked who they wanted to see.

  ‘Sean Keane,’ West said loudly, hoping he wasn’t deafening whoever was on the other side of the faintly heard voice.

  ‘Who?’ the answer came, putting his mind to rest.

  He moved his mouth closer to the intercom. ‘Sean Keane,’ he repeated loudly.

  Several frustrating minutes of silence followed, both men shuffling restlessly. West was just about to press the intercom button again when the sound of locks being turned alerted them to the arrival of somebody. The door opened inwardly, Sean Keane nodded a greeting and waved them inside. ‘Hope you’re not here looking for results,’ he said tiredly, ‘we’ve barely got started. Have you any idea of the amount of stuff we brought back?’