Alice

‘There’s something’s not right about this whole thing,’ Alice said.

‘There’s something absolutely not bloody right,’ Gallagher grumbled. ‘I haven’t been home in thirty-six hours.’

‘Aside from your human rights being infringed, Sarge.’

Alice took the seat across from her boss and drummed her fingers on the desk. Carney had just been transferred from the holding cell to a nearby detention centre. She’d watched him go, wondering how many days – or would it be only hours? – he’d spend in an actual prison. Everything was moving at lightning speed in this investigation, including the scheduling of a series of psychological assessments to determine responsibility. Harry McNamara was too famous. All eyes were on the justice system, and its wheels were spinning faster than a Formula One car.

‘I wonder what, if any, Julie McNamara’s involvement is in all this.’

‘You mean the blonde with the big tits who appeared with him as the Good Wife on his first day in court?’

‘I thought you said people filtered out the news clips of infamous bankers?’

‘Yeah, they’d be looking beyond his face to her tits, Moody. What do you not like about her?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it yet. She was in shock when I spoke to her, obviously, but there was something off. She was cold. She hadn’t told her relatives what had happened and wouldn’t answer the phone to her own mother.’

‘You gave her phone back to her?’

‘Of course. I want to see who she rings. The phone company are monitoring it for us. Anyway, at the start I could barely get a coherent sentence out of her, but you should have heard the detail she gave me when I asked for her version of events. She stopped short of telling me how much garlic she’d used cooking the dinner. And she was well able to tell me that her husband had left the back door open for Carney to walk in. She was insistent it was him, not her. It’s not like we can check, is it?’

‘Well, there’s logic to how Carney got in, and she’s trying to find something that makes sense in all this madness. What’s wrong with that? Alice, I hope you weren’t treating the victim’s wife like a suspect. At her husband’s bedside, of all places.’

‘Of course I wasn’t. I’m offended you’d even think that. I am full of compassion when I want to be. But … what if it was her who left the door open? She did absolutely nothing, you know, to stop Carney. Would you just sit there if somebody walked into your house and started beating the crap out of your Angela?’

Gallagher shrugged.

‘Stop it, Sarge.’

‘I’m messing. So what if it was her who left the door open? Maybe she feels guilty about it. About that, and about not jumping in. But from what I remember, she’s tiny, right? Aside from boobs. What sort of defence would she have been able to put up?’

‘She might have left the door open on purpose and she might be feeling guilty for a reason,’ Alice said.

Gallagher leaned back in his chair.

‘Where are you going with this?’

It was her turn to shrug.

‘Why did she take so long to raise the alarm?’ she said. ‘At least twenty minutes passed between Carney leaving and her ringing. And do you know what’s even stranger? First Response told me the washing machine was on when they arrived. As in, the initial stage of the wash cycle.’

‘People do funny things when they’re in shock, Moody. You know that. I had a wife go up to wash and blow-dry her hair before coming in the car to identify her husband’s remains. I just can’t see what your point is about Julie McNamara, other than her reacting strangely to something that wasn’t exactly normal in any case. What did she say about the washing machine?’

‘She claims she doesn’t remember turning it on. Forensics took everything out and looked through the clothes but nothing was stained with blood, which it would hve been if she’d helped her husband at all. And another thing. She didn’t tell me about that alleged whisper until right at the end. She’d all this detail but forgot that and only remembered to mention it when I told her how important premeditation is. Let’s say Carney was hired to do McNamara in. You know as well as I do that it’s more than likely somebody close to him who ordered the hit.’

‘True,’ Gallagher said. ‘But what possible reason could Julie have for wanting to have her husband murdered, Alice? They’re the golden couple, aren’t they? She’s stood by him through everything. If you’re going down that avenue, you’ll need to find a chink in their relationship that they’ve kept very well hidden.’

‘Yeah. Well, I’m going to concentrate on Carney for now anyway. Try to figure out what makes him tick. Where he comes from, what his background is.’

‘Do that. I think you’re mad considering the wife. Because anyway, if she hired Carney to do it, why tell us in such detail what he did? It’s enough to turn any jury’s stomach.’

‘No, Sarge. The more interesting question is, why has he handed himself in?’