There were secretaries and there were secretaries, Chris thought, and he’d make an educated guess that shorthand wasn’t among Kirsty Malone’s key skills.
Tony Coffey’s assistant was the type of woman the most trusting of wives would worry about spending time with her husband. Chris guessed she was in her mid- to late thirties, but today she was dressed far younger, in a short denim skirt and tight-fitting red sweater, with highlighted blond hair and too much make-up. Not his type, but nice to look at, all the same.
Kirsty had agreed to meet them at the journalist’s office, where she had some corrections to make to Coffey’s final piece before sending it through for tomorrow’s edition. The decision to run the column on the week of the journalist’s untimely dead was bound to be controversial, but from what Chris had already learned about Coffey he figured that the man wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
The office was situated in an extension of the main Coffey residence, and was a large airy room, the walls lined with books, files, and stacks of magazines. There was an oak desk on the far side, in front of a bay window, a couch, and two comfortable chairs arranged beside the fireplace. A fire crackled in the grate, flooding the room with a faint orange glow.
Kirsty was perched on a chair, displaying entirely too much perma-tanned thigh. She dabbed at her eyes, which were red-rimmed apparently from crying. When the detectives entered the room she stood up and offered them a gentle handshake.
‘Miss Malone,’ Chris asked, ‘we need to ask you a few questions about Mr Coffey. Do you think you’re up to it?’
Kennedy always let him take the lead in interviewing women. Chris had a way about him, particularly with attractive ones, seeming at first to be besotted, taken in by their charms, while in reality he was very much in control, using flattery to disarm.
Kirsty nodded. ‘Of course.’
He waved her back into her chair, and she obligingly sat down once more, crossed her legs, and gripped her notepad like a security blanket. He gazed out of a nearby window to avoid staring at her.
‘Where was Mr Coffey supposed to be this week?’
Kirsty sniffed. ‘At a conference in Limerick. He left on Monday ... Monday morning, early.’
‘And you hadn’t spoken to him since?’
She shook her head.
‘Was that unusual?’
Kirsty looked up at Kennedy – he was standing much closer to her than Chris was – invading her space almost, forcing her to look upwards. ‘A little, but he’d just got a new mobile – one of those iPhones – and he was really struggling to figure it out. Technology wasn’t his thing.’
Chris smiled sympathetically. ‘I know what you mean. Sometimes it’s hard to learn how to make a simple phone call on these newfangled machines. So did you try to get in touch with him while he was away?’
‘Several times – and I sent him a couple of texts. But he didn’t reply.’
‘Weren’t you concerned? I’d imagine you two were quite close.’
Kirsty gave him a sideways glance, unsure what he was implying, but Chris’s open face was the picture of innocence.
‘I was a bit bothered,’ she admitted. ‘We usually talked most days when he was away, but you know what a journalist’s life is like. I just thought he was busy, had a few late nights boozing, or he’d let the phone run out of battery or something. He never kept up with things like that.’
Chris continued to nod sympathetically. ‘Did you talk to Mrs Coffey about your concerns?’
Kirsty shot him another look, peering up through her thick black eyelashes. ‘Me and Mrs Coffey, we don’t exactly ... see eye to eye on everything.’
‘Like her husband?’ As usual, there was no treading softly where Kennedy was concerned.
Kirsty averted her gaze and fiddled nervously with the notepad in her lap, rolling the corners of the pages up and down, up and down. Suddenly she looked up. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
Chris nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
She stood quickly, and picked up a small gold purse from the desk, before taking out a packet of Malboro and a lighter. Her hands shook as she lit the cigarette, and it took her three attempts to get it alight.
‘Got one to spare?’
She looked up and met Chris’s smile. ‘You too, huh?’ She strode across the thick carpet and offered him the packet, while Chris prepared to use a well-worn feint, employed to put witnesses like her at ease.
That Kennedy was a smoker was obvious from the broken veins on his face and the giveaway persistent cough, but most people found it unexpected in the clean-shaven picture of health that was Chris Delaney, and he figured it was a decent leveler of sorts.
Kirsty stood and inhaled deeply from the cigarette, visibly unwinding. ‘Tony loved to smoke too, but had to keep it from the missus. Old witch doesn’t like smoking in the house,’ she continued.
Chris immediately picked up on the reference to Sandra Coffey. Definitely no love lost between those two.
He lit up, and nodded sympathetically, his eyes never leaving hers, but he said nothing.
Kennedy was on the far side of the room checking out a wall of photos. Tony Coffey featured in most of them, along with a selection of local celebrities and politicians. He had obviously enjoyed mixing with the rich and infamous, and had an oily smile on his face whenever he was up close with a well-known personality. Chris looked at the pictures then back at Kirsty, wondering what on earth someone like her saw in the squat and decidedly unattractive man.
‘What was he like?’ Kennedy asked suddenly. He was still gazing at the photos, and had picked up one of Tony pictured at some bash with a woman who was neither Sandra Coffey nor Kirsty Malone. His companion was in a glamorous black dress that barely contained her ample cleavage, and Tony had his arm around her waist as he beamed at the camera.
Kirsty turned to look at him. ‘Tony?’ A little smile played across her face. ‘He was funny. Could always make me laugh.’
Chris’s tone was level. ‘Mrs Coffey doesn’t look like she laughs much.’
Kirsty gave a snort of derision. ‘You got that right – oul wagon’s face might crack if she smiled.’ She inhaled deeply, and breathed the smoke out hard; it formed a shroud around her face. ‘Don’t miss much, do you?’ she added, meeting his gaze square on.
He shrugged. ‘It’s my job.’
Kirsty walked over to Kennedy, and looked at the photo he was holding. ‘Journalists’Association dinner last year,’ she informed him. ‘That’s Tony and our features editor. Bit of a drunken bash, but we had a laugh.’
‘Tony didn’t take his wife to events like that?’
Kirsty raised her eyebrows. ‘Given the choice, would you? No, Sandra prefers not to get down and dirty with the gutter press,’ she said. ‘Too high and mighty for us, although that didn’t stop her from marrying Tony. Could never quite understand what he saw in her.’
Chris looked around the large room and outside to the neat little country estate, and reckoned he could figure out exactly what.
‘Doesn’t seem like the happiest of marriages,’ Kennedy commented.
Kirsty looked at another photo of Tony and gazed at it wistfully. She shrugged. ‘I guess she learned not to ask too many questions. For the most part Tony kept this life ...’ she paused slightly, as if talking about something other than his work, ‘... completely separate from his home life with her and the country crowd.’
‘I’m guessing they didn’t mix all that well?’ Chris ventured.
Kirsty gave a bitter laugh. ‘Tony was an out-and-out socialist. He was forever banging on about how his dad had worked on the railways for forty years, salt of the earth, real working man, all that stuff.’ She followed Chris’s gaze, and settled on a portrait of Tony and his wife behind his desk. ‘The whole country set thing? He hated it, hated the dinner parties, the crusty formality of it all. Bunch of old fakes in tweed and twinsets, he called them.’
Kennedy had been listening carefully, waiting for his opportunity. Having worked so long together both he and Chris knew instinctively when to press, when to pull back, when each had set the other up with an opening. Now was the time.
‘So what was the attraction, Kirsty?’ he said, deciding not to tiptoe around the obvious reality. ‘You’re an intelligent, attractive woman. He was married and must have been, what, twenty years older than you?’
Kirsty carefully set the photo down, and turned to face Kennedy. She took a drag on her cigarette, and sent a cloud of smoke up towards the high ceiling.
‘I don’t know, hard to put a finger on it really. I suppose he had a way of making me feel needed.’ She paused, teary-eyed once again. ‘We all want to be needed, don’t we?’
Chris looked briefly at Kennedy – their eyes met, a faint nod. The door had opened, now was the time to push through.
‘You weren’t the first, were you, Kirsty?’ Chris probed softly.
She gave a bitter smile. ‘His first assistant or first affair?’
‘You tell me. Were they one and the same thing?’
Kirsty gave him a sharp look, but said nothing. She walked slowly across the room, and sat down on the sofa.
An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Chris let it sit. It was easy to talk too much, to fire one question after another at people. The trick was not to say anything, to let the pauses and the silences do their work. Let Kirsty think about what she’d said, wonder if she’d said too much, worry what they might be thinking of her ...
Kennedy was now standing by the desk, checking it over as if he was no longer interested in what was being said. Chris looked slowly back and forth between the photo collection and Kirsty. She was obviously uncomfortable, flicking nervously at her cigarette while repeatedly glancing towards the detectives waiting for one or other of them to say something. The only sound in the room was the hum from Tony Coffey’s computer screen.
‘Any idea who would want Tony dead?’ Chris asked finally. ‘Want him to suffer by stuffing him alive in a septic tank, buried in his own filth and left to die?’
Kirsty shot Chris a look of utter horror. ‘What? He was alive when they ...’ She hugged her arms close to her chest. ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting ... it’s sick!’
‘It is,’ Chris agreed quietly, going to stand in front of her. ‘That’s why we want to catch the bastard who did it.’
Kirsty fiddled again with her cigarette and looked down at her brightly painted nails, studiously avoiding Chris’s piercing gaze. ‘Look, I’m not suggesting in a million years that something like that was justified, but Tony was a hard man to like. He was harsh in his opinions, said exactly what he thought, even though a lot of people thought he was full of ... Oh God!’ she said, putting a hand to her face. ‘Is that what this was all about? Someone trying to imply he was full of shit? But why? Who?’
‘You’re saying he had a lot of enemies?’ Kennedy asked quickly, unwilling to let her become distracted.
She took a last hard drag on her cigarette, before stubbing it out roughly in a cut-glass ashtray nearby. ‘You name it, he’d pissed someone off over it. You only have to read last week’s column to know what he’s all about.’
Chris had; it was a nasty, sneering piece about same-sex marriage and what he called ‘the gay abomination’.
He glanced again at Kennedy, then turned his focus back on Kirsty. ‘So from what you’ve said, we should be looking at anyone from an angry husband to an irate fox hunter to a pissed-off homosexual?’
‘That’s Tony.’ Kirsty gave a sad laugh. ‘To know him was to hate him.’
And Chris thought, frustrated, it seemed there were many who did just that.