Alice

‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’

‘What?’

‘I just told you,’ Alice tutted, exasperated. ‘Letting them talk to each other. Carney and Julie McNamara.’

Gallagher shrugged. Doherty had just wiped him and half the station out at cards again and he had no coins left for the chocolate machine on the landing. He thumped it, in the hope a bar might just fall out, but nothing happened.

‘Have you got two quid on you?’ he asked.

‘Of course. I’m always flush. It’s the incredibly generous wages.’

Gallagher inserted the coin and selected a KitKat. While his blushing bride-to-be seemed intent on starving herself into a size-too-small wedding dress, he was going to the other extreme. It was probably being around Moody all the time. She never stopped stuffing herself. Obesity was contagious. He’d read that somewhere.

‘Here,’ he said, breaking the KitKat in half and giving her two fingers. ‘So. Your question. It’s not a bad idea. Victim/perp reconciliation and all that palaver. Where’s the harm in it?’

Alice sighed, taking the chocolate.

‘I suppose what’s pissing me off is that I can’t listen in on the exchange. They’ll be on their own.’

‘Is that safe?’

‘Hospital security will be there, obviously. And he won’t be allowed any golf clubs.’

‘Ha! You reckon he’s going to confess or something when he sees her? Tell her that he had a motive?’

Alice shrugged.

‘To be honest, I’m curious as to why Julie wants to go see him. I think that’s what she believes – that he’ll tell her why he did it. She doesn’t realize that’s absolutely no use to us, if he tells her but won’t repeat it for the record. I have a feeling she could be opening a Pandora’s box, going in there. She might learn something that, ultimately, comes to nothing but tortures her. She’s raw. It’s only six weeks since it happened and hardly any time since her husband died. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘Yeah, but you can’t do anything about it.’

‘Hmm. Thanks for the chocolate. How’s your wedding diet going, Sarge? Did you buy a suit that was too big or something?’

‘Fuck off. Haven’t you work to be getting on with?’

‘Just trying to be helpful. Yeah, they found a poor soul dead in a bedsit in Dún Laoghaire. Working girl, overdose. Arsehole pimp probably gave her dodgy gear. Toxicology want to have a chat.’

‘Well, hop to it, then. I’m sure Julie McNamara will ring you if Carney decides to spill his guts. At least then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing.’

Alice raised an eyebrow.

‘There is that, yeah. Oh, before I do bury the file on this though, there’s one other thing I want to follow up on.’

Gallagher got the distinct impression she’d thrown that in to sound like it was an aside, when really it was the purpose of their whole conversation.

‘What’s that, then?’

‘I stopped waiting for our colleagues in the Met to send us something and did a search on Carney’s history in England. You were right. I shouldn’t have left it to Doherty. He is a useless shit. Anyway, I looked myself into Carney’s early days, when his folks were together. There’s something he didn’t tell us.’

‘Brilliant. So you’re telling me you cocked up, and to fix it you conducted an unauthorized investigation in a separate jurisdiction on a closed file. I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt us at all. What did you find out?’

‘Carney wasn’t always our boy’s name. Prior to 2006 he was John Paul Andrews – he used the father’s surname. I spoke to an old neighbour of theirs when they lived in London – Rose something. She kept referring to him as the Andrews boy. So I checked in with the High Courts, and he lodged a deed poll with them a few years back. The neighbour said there was a sister too. Charlie. Said JP doted on her.’

‘How the fuck did we miss that? But what’s his bloody sister got to do with anything?’

‘Well, where is she? Why hasn’t she come to see him?’

‘Maybe she doesn’t talk to him any more. Or she’s dead. Besides, if Julie McNamara knew of a Charlie Carney, she’d have said something.’

‘Maybe.’ Alice shrugged. ‘But doesn’t it seem unusual that JP wouldn’t have mentioned her at all, especially if he was fond of her? Anyway, I’ll look into it. Doherty searched for Carney siblings but it never dawned on him to check for siblings under Andrews, and there’s nothing to say Charlie went back to her mother’s surname too.’ Alice winced at the look on her boss’s face. ‘I’m sure he’d have got there eventually. There’s no need to fire him, or anything. I have his balls in my pocket. He’s suffered enough, Sarge.’

‘What’s your point, Moody? Carney didn’t tell us he’d a sister. He didn’t tell us anything. We had to find out everything. I’m not sure I see where you’re going.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. I checked through the system this morning for a Charlie Andrews but got nothing in the preliminary search on our files. She’s no criminal record, anyway.’

‘Hm.’ Gallagher scratched his beard. ‘The name does seem familiar. I don’t know why. Charlie is unusual for a girl. Try Charlotte, or Charlene maybe. Charlie’s probably not her birth name. What are you telling me for, anyway? Isn’t your MO to just do whatever the hell you want?’

‘I thought you were gung-ho to be involved in this investigation. Are we not the new Starsky and Hutch?’

‘I wouldn’t go using that line, Alice. Our lot will very quickly turn that into Starsky and Butch.’

‘Aren’t you very funny. I just need you to give me a little breathing space and not mention any higher up that I’m still pursuing the McNamara stuff. Maybe if I put the word out that JP Carney is John Paul Andrews, somebody will come forward. You know, Harry could have had his wicked way with JP’s sister and dumped her with a sprog something like that. He did have a way with the ladies, by all accounts. Maybe that’s what drove JP to batter him.’

‘That would be one possessive big brother. And the girl in Dún Laoghaire?’

‘I’ll throw my eye over the case and put somebody on it.’

‘Jaysus, Alice. You’re relentless.’

‘Thanks, Sarge. Stay off those bars now, won’t you? I won’t always be here to lighten your calorie load, ya big fat bastard.’

Gallagher stared down at his midsection, which was straining unhealthily against the seams of his trousers, as Alice plodded off. All those unkind thoughts he’d had about Moody’s weight. Karma was giving him a big kick in the arse.

He dropped the remains of the bar into the bin and trudged back to his office.