I take a tiny step towards Audrey Jones. Clarke jumps up and flails around, unsure of what to do. Mulligan is rooted to the spot. Her hair looks unwashed, her eyes puffy. I remember she’s just lost her husband and almost her child, and that she probably hasn’t slept at all since it happened.
I weigh my words carefully. I know this type of grief.
‘Come and sit down, Mrs Jones. Clarke, would you or Inspector Mulligan get Mrs Jones some tea or maybe some water?’
Mulligan practically races out of the room. I look Clarke in the eye. ‘A chair please, Casey.’
‘Thank you.’ Her voice is brittle. It catches in her throat.
‘How’s your daughter?’ I ask, supporting her as she sits. She glances around as if in a daze. The skin on her arms puckers with the cold and I pass her my jacket. She looks younger than the thirty-four that I read in the file. Audrey Jones looks down as if she’s only just noticed what she’s wearing.
‘I had been out for a run…’ She trails off. Then she tries again. ‘I’ve been in the hospital since… you know.’
‘Your daughter?’ I ask again gently. ‘How is Tori?’
‘She’s okay.’ Her voice is a whisper. ‘Sedated.’
‘I’m very sorry about your husband,’ Clarke says awkwardly, his private school accent enunciating every word. Audrey looks up and gives the flicker of a smile in thanks. She’s small, with dark hair pulled back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. Her unvarnished fingers tremble as she twists her hands together nervously.
The door opens and Mulligan returns, his giant fingers hooked around two tilted mugs that spill as he moves. He sets one down on the table in front of Audrey Jones and slides the other over to me. He takes a wad of tissues and white paper packets out of his pocket and dumps them in the middle of the table.
The pale liquid slops over the side, but I’m grateful for the thought. I tip a paper tube of sugar into my tea and roll the packet up tightly between my thumb and index finger.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to speak to us a little bit about what happened?’ I ask, and she nods, her hands now wrapped around her cup, gripping it tightly. Mulligan starts recording the audio, muttering the date and time as Audrey sits up a little straighter.
‘You said you were out for a run last night. What time was that?’
She looks alarmed, as if she’s afraid of making a mistake.
‘I left Tori at about half past eight,’ she says to the mug, rather than to me.
‘And was your husband awake at the time?’
Another panicked look.
‘He was minding Tori.’
An obvious lie.
You see, I know all the moves. We have to. Because when bad things happen, people always have a reason to lie. Her eyes dart from the mug to my face. She probably knows that we know she’s lying. She seems like an intelligent woman. I take a calm sip of my own tea, absorbing her demeanour, letting the quiet draw everything out.
‘Tell us about what happened before you left,’ I say eventually, asking the widest possible version of the question.
‘We had – we had… dinner.’ She sighs. ‘Then Eddie put on the TV. Tori was in her room on her iPad. Things were… normal.’
I think of the smashed plates. It was an unconvincing depiction of Audrey’s evening. She continues.
‘But this guy, this cop, just wouldn’t leave us alone.’ She looks pleadingly at me as if begging me to believe her. I imagine what’s she’s just come from. Bandages and splintered bones. Surgery, no doubt, casts and pins and months of physio, not to mention the trauma of what Tori Jones had been through in her effort to save her own life. I take in Audrey’s increasingly trembling hands. She sets the tea back onto the table; the ceramic base wobbles against the wood causing a gentle, clinking sound.
‘How do you know Garda Gerald Barrows?’ I ask softly. Her eyes meet mine again. Wide, grey and full of apprehension.
‘He’s a friend of someone I used to work with. I only met him once before, at the post office where I work.’ She glances at Clarke as if sensing he is the more empathetic of the group. Or the weakest link.
‘And why do you think he kept coming around recently?’ I press.
Clarke’s pen is poised. Mulligan has deferred to me completely. I think of the crude bundle of tea towels from the scene and feel a prickle of anxiety. Is it possible Audrey Jones had something to do with it? If Gerald Barrows, a trained police officer, had wanted to set a fire, the way he went about it was hardly sophisticated. Maybe she got tired of her drunk husband and wanted him out of the picture?
The mother shrugs.
‘He just kept ringing the bell,’ she says, rubbing her eyes again. ‘He wouldn’t stop. It was pissing Eddie off that he just wouldn’t leave us alone.’
‘Did you meet anyone when you were out for your run?’ I ask, trying to change tack. Maybe this Barrows guy had been interested in Audrey Jones romantically? I’d seen the fallout from unrequited love stories. Rejection makes people do unimaginable things.
Audrey shakes her head. She starts crying quietly again. No alibi either.
‘He just wouldn’t leave me alone.’ She flinches, still not looking at me.
Then she puts both hands over her face. ‘I’m sorry. Can we do this another time. It’s all a bit too much.’
Silence, except for the ticking of the clock on the lime-coloured wall.
‘Do you have anyone with you, Mrs Jones?’ Mulligan inquires politely.
‘My friend is still at the hospital with Tori. I took a taxi here alone.’
‘Can we drop you somewhere?’
A shake of her head.
She folds her arms across herself. ‘I’ll just head back to the hospital.’
‘Audrey?’
She looks directly at me for the first time since we sat down.
‘We will have to speak to Tori as soon as she’s well enough.’
She gives a little gasp.
‘I’m not sure.’ She picks at her fingernails. ‘I – don’t know.’
‘It’s not a request,’ I say firmly.
We won’t get any further this evening. I can feel my energy reserves are totally depleted. We agree we’ll see how the next day’s surgery goes, and one of the junior officers is tasked with driving Audrey back to the hospital. Things would be easier in the fresh light of day. Wasn’t that what my mother always said? I tell Audrey to hold onto my jacket and that we’ll chat again soon. Good cop and bad cop – I can be everything and anything it takes to get to the bottom of a case.
After Audrey Jones leaves, Mulligan, Clarke and I stare at each other. I take the ball of paper I’ve made from the sugar packet and flick it towards the bin but miss. I turn my phone over a few times as I think. ‘Sick leave or not, we need to talk to Gerald Barrows,’ I finally say to Mulligan. ‘And I need to know from Nancy Wills herself exactly what she thinks happened that night six years ago. How are these cases connected, other than Barrows?’
Clarke’s phone breaks into an exuberant pop-song ringtone. I roll my eyes. Taylor bloody Swift.
‘It’s the neighbour from the opposite-facing apartment block,’ he says to me, and hops up to take it.
‘Did you notice she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring?’ Mulligan says suddenly to me, standing up, scraping his chair against the cheap flooring. The baby flips and dips low in my pelvis.
To me, that was irrelevant.
What I really want to ask is if anyone noticed there were no tears when she’d cried.