Sean and June’s daughter opened the door and appeared relieved when she saw the inspector standing there.
‘Ah, Tom. Perfect timing. Take him for a walk and a few jars, will you? I’ve been trying to explain to him that there’s absolutely no point him being here when we are. He needs to take the respite when he can get it. Bloody stubborn git. Come in and sit with Mam while I get him.’
The inspector followed Mary into the sitting room at the front of the house. The blinds had been partially drawn to shade the room from the late afternoon sun.
June sat on a red-and-beige-striped sofa, staring absent-mindedly out the window while she picked at the stitching on the seam of one of the cushions.
‘Oh, Mam, will you stop worrying at that?’ Mary removed the cushion. ‘You’ll have all the stuffing out. Give me a minute, Tom. Dad’s on a call.’
The inspector sat at the other end of the sofa. June peered at him with vague curiosity. She didn’t seem to recognise him.
‘Hello, June,’ he said, loudly. ‘It’s me, Tom.’
The older woman blinked.
‘I know who you are. Why are you shouting at me like I’m some decrepit old bat? I’m losing my sanity, dear. Not my hearing.’
She gave him her most schoolmarmish glare.
Tom squirmed.
‘My apologies. I was being silly. And I’m sorry I forgot to bring you something. I came over in a rush.’
‘Were you meant to bring me something?’
‘No. I just mean flowers, or chocolates. That sort of thing.’
‘Oh, no,’ June straightened her pale cream skirt over her knees. ‘My mother wouldn’t like you bringing me favours. That’s not proper. Not when Sean is courting me.’
Tom opened and closed his mouth, not sure what to say next. It was just like Louise had said. One moment she was June, as he had always known her. The next, it was like the last forty years of her life had never happened.
‘Where’s my cushion?’ June sought around her for the familiar object, eventually retrieving it from the pile in the corner where Mary had placed it. She tutted.
‘Don’t have children, Tom. That Mary one, she’s always fussing around me. Telling me what I can and can’t eat. Saying I need fresh air. I don’t know who she thinks she is. I’m the mother. And why isn’t she in school? That’s what I want to know.’
June stopped fiddling with the stitching. She looked so desolate. Tom put his hand on her elbow. She snatched it away, but dropped her guard when she saw the hurt look in his eyes.
‘Oh. I’m sorry, Tom. I’ve so much on my mind at the moment. And I’ve such a terrible headache.’
The inspector felt a lump in his throat. He was going through a torrent of emotions, the overriding one being guilt. June was his old friend and her husband and family had to cope with this every day. The living death they called it, when the person you loved was still there but no longer themselves. And Tom was glad – yes, he was glad – that he would be out of this uncomfortable situation in a few minutes and not have to deal with the pain of it.
He hadn’t realised he could be so selfish.
‘Is there anything I can get you?’ he asked her. ‘Would you like a glass of water? It might be the heat giving you the headache.’ Tom spoke to her like everything was absolutely normal, in the fond, familiar voice he always used with June.
‘No,’ she replied, looking down. ‘It’s not the heat. It’s my head. It feels like it’s exploding inside. Maybe it’s better this way. The other way would have been so drawn out.’
‘What?’
June leaned across and grabbed his arm; her fingers gripped so tight it was painful. He tried not to react. Instead, he placed his hand over hers.
She stared at him, her gaze intense.
‘Promise me, Tom. Promise me you’ll look after him. He’s going to struggle when I’m gone. Everybody thinks he’s this big lump of a man, all brains and brawn and no heart. But he’s a big softie, my Sean. I mind him, not the other way round. This will break him, watching me go through this.’
Tom swallowed.
‘Of course I will, June. But you’re not going anywhere for a long time.’ He smiled reassuringly. She studied his face, then, after a long pause, smiled back.
‘Of course,’ she replied.
The door opened and Sean appeared.
‘Tom. Summoned to get me out of the house, were you? Fine, then. I give in. Come on, we’ll go for a walk down the seafront.’
The inspector kissed June on the cheek.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said. ‘We miss you.’
She nodded. ‘Absolutely. Maybe we’ll have a dinner party? Oh, that would be lovely. Tell Louise not to worry about bringing anything. Just yourselves.’
Tom cast a final glance back into the sitting room as he and Sean were leaving and saw that June had already resumed staring out the window. It was like he hadn’t even been there.
‘I’m surprised you’ve the time to be calling out to babysit me,’ Sean said, as he strode purposefully down the quiet street. Never had a man moved so swiftly away from a situation he allegedly didn’t want to leave. ‘Not that I’m not grateful to get out. Our bloody family is using all this as the perfect opportunity to step in and take over our lives. June’s ill, not me. You know what I’ve realised in the last few months, Tom? I’m a misanthrope. I hate being around other people. Even my own kids.’
The inspector’s silence alerted something in his companion. Sean stopped abruptly and turned to study his friend’s face.
‘Nobody rang you, did they?
Tom shook his head.
‘You were coming to see me anyway … about the case?’
The inspector sighed.
Sean arched an eyebrow.
‘Ah. That’s the sound of a man dealing with unnecessary drama. You want to talk about my replacement.’
‘Eh … yeah.’
‘To hell with the seafront, then. It’ll be full of noisy families enjoying themselves. Let’s go somewhere we can be miserable in peace.’
They strolled on for another few streets, landing at Sean’s favourite watering hole. They took stools at the bar, increasing to five the grand total of customers scattered throughout the establishment.
‘Grape or grain?’ Sean asked.
‘I suppose I can have a wine. Willie is coming back for me.’
‘Good. I hate drinking alone. Derek, two glasses of the good Malbec you’ve got stashed under the counter.’
The old man behind the bar looked up from the betting slips he’d been checking and sighed, moving laboriously to fetch two wine glasses and the bottle.
‘Jesus, careful you don’t strain yourself there, now,’ Sean tutted impatiently, nosing over the counter at the racing dockets.
‘Haven’t missed you much,’ Derek grumbled. He placed the glasses in front of the two men, then scrunched up his betting dockets so Sean couldn’t see how much he’d lost. ‘Here, the wife made this up for your better half.’ He reached under the counter again and produced a small hamper of sweets, wrapped in cellophane with a long yellow ribbon curled around its neck.
‘Lovely. Don’t suppose the drink is on the house, no? Seeing as I don’t get out much these days?’
Derek held out his palm for the money, while Sean made a show of searching his pockets for his wallet.
‘Tight bastard,’ he said, as the other man limped down to the till at the far end of the counter. ‘Polio as a kid,’ Sean added, catching Tom’s eye. ‘Made him bitter.’
‘I see.’
‘So. Are you going to tell me what Joe Kennedy has done or do I have to get there through a series of guesses?’
‘It’s what he hasn’t done,’ Tom sighed. ‘Or won’t do, to be more accurate.’ He twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers. ‘I take it you know what we’re dealing with up in Glendalough?’
‘I have my sources. Can’t say I’m surprised. We’ve had too many women vanish into thin air over the years. It was either a massive coincidence or a serial killer at work. He had to slip up sometime.’
‘There’s something not right, though. I don’t know if we’d have ever discovered those bodies if one of them hadn’t been buried as shallow as she was. The rest were a good six feet down. Has he slipped up or is it intentional?’
‘You think he’s challenging you? Sick of the dozy, plodding coppers not knowing what he’s capable of?’
Tom shrugged.
‘We won’t know what his game is until we catch him, or until he communicates with us in some way. I’m petrified for that girl, Fiona Holland. You know she has a baby?’
Sean shook his head. This was new information, something even the media were unaware of.
‘Maybe he’s giving you and her a chance,’ he mused.
‘Maybe. Anyway, we met with the victims’ families. Most of the women seem to fit a profile. Single, outgoing, independent. That’s how I’d describe them. Others have used … different words.’
‘Ah.’ Sean sipped his drink. ‘Not prim and proper little girls, is that what you’re getting at?’
‘Pretty much. Some of our colleagues didn’t exactly rush to launch investigations into the disappearances at the time. They presumed the women had just run off. The families’ concerns were dismissed.’
‘You raised this with Kennedy and he didn’t react as you would have expected.’
It wasn’t a question.
Tom nodded, shifting in his seat to get a better look at his friend.
‘You say that like you’re not surprised,’ he said.
‘The only thing that surprises me is your reaction.’
‘And what’s wrong with that? I mean, we’re grown-ups. We know this sort of thing happens. But I thought that a man like Joe Kennedy, who spends his life wondering what the media will think, would be horrified at the prospect of families coming forward to complain about how they were treated by the guards. If we acknowledge their grievances now and are seen to be doing something, initiating some sort of internal inquiry – then at least we’re ahead of the curve. That’s how I thought he’d react. Cynical, but appropriate.’
Sean shook his head dismissively.
‘You give him far too much credit – considering what you know, not to mention what you don’t.’
‘Say again?’
‘Well, let’s start with what you’ve established about Joe Kennedy’s character to date. You’re dead right about his press-savviness. But, of course, you’re several logical steps ahead of him. Kennedy will handle the press effectively if the families come forward with horror stories about the guards. But in his mind, his job is to stop this ever becoming a news item, even if it means protecting guards who did wrong. You want him to pre-empt and prepare for the worst – which is why you would have made a better chief.’
Tom bristled, but knew he had no grounds to rebut his mentor.
‘Kennedy doesn’t think like you. His fear is that any action on his part could actually throw a spotlight on the issue. More importantly, there’s his own background to consider. This is where you’ve made the fatal error. You were so happy, Tom, to see somebody, anybody but you, taking the job of chief superintendent that you didn’t do your homework on who was getting it. If you had, you wouldn’t have dreamt of going to him with these particular concerns.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tom asked.
‘Joe Kennedy’s father, man. Christ, I’ve sweat patches under my arms. Here, let’s take these drinks out the back. Would it kill you, Derek, to run a bit of cool air through this place?’
‘Keeps your girly wine at a nice temperature, doesn’t it?’ The bartender had moved on to the crossword and didn’t even look up as Sean reached over the counter and retrieved the bottle. He topped up his glass and offered Tom the same.
‘Two words, six and seven letters, begin with R and B. Robin Hood’s evil brother,’ Derek called up from the page. ‘Ah, I’ve got it. Robbin’ Bastard.’
Sean strolled nonchalantly out through the back door of the pub, Tom in tow.
‘I’m surprised you’re not barred,’ the inspector said, as they seated themselves at a table in the yard.
Sean peered at him quizzically.
‘What in God’s name are you talking about? I have a share in this pub.’
Tom’s eyes widened. This afternoon was full of surprises.
‘Well,’ he rejoined. ‘No clichés there. A guard owning a pub. You’ll tell me next you own a rake of rental properties.’
Sean raised his glass and drank deep, silence his answer.
‘Shit, Sean. Maybe I should have taken your job. Now, talk to me about Joe Kennedy’s father. The suspense is killing me.’
‘Got any cigars on you?’
The inspector reached for his jacket and then cursed. He’d left it in Willie’s car.
‘How can a man who visits Cuba and comes back sporting Fidel Castro’s beard not have cigars on him?’ Sean clicked his tongue.
‘For crying out loud, will you ever just tell me what the scéal is on Kennedy?’
‘Keep your shirt on. I can’t believe you’re not aware of it already. Joe’s father was a detective.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I rest my case. And he wasn’t just any detective. He was notorious. One of the Special Eight.’
Tom’s eyes widened. The Special Eight were infamous – corrupt gardaí, the absolute antithesis of what it meant to be an officer these days.
A gang of eight detectives, the men were renowned for dodgy policing practices in the early seventies that led to numerous unsafe convictions. They’d acted pretty much with impunity for most of that decade, despite whispered rumours of beatings, threats and falsification of evidence. By the mid-nineties, however, a number of the convictions they had secured had been quashed and a tribunal of inquiry focusing on several of their cases was established.
The gang had operated more or less before Tom’s time, but he’d always been aware of them as an unpleasant footnote in garda history.
He ran through their names in his head now.
‘There was no Kennedy in the Special Eight,’ he said.
‘Joe’s dad was Malachy Sutton. Kennedy is his mother’s maiden name.’
Sean flicked a fruit fly from the side of his glass as Tom gaped at him.
‘Holy crap!’
‘Indeed.’
‘He was the one who went after …’
‘Susan Harte, yes. That’s the one.’
Tom took a gulp of wine. How had he not known this?
The tragic case of Susan Harte was one of those that the tribunal into the Special Eight’s activities was originally set up to probe. Harte had accused several men in her town of gang-raping her one night in 1976. The medical evidence in support of her claim had been overwhelming – one of the assailants had abused her with a beer bottle. The men’s story was that Harte was an unstable woman who had consented to group intercourse and cited her affair with a local married man as proof of her loose morals.
But Susan was determined to see the men prosecuted. In a biography years later, she’d claimed that throughout the trauma that followed, not one senior guard had shown her compassion. She was warned that her sexual history would be printed in every newspaper if she pursued the case.
The Special Eight became involved when, a few weeks after the attack, one of Harte’s rapists was beaten to a pulp with a baseball bat outside the garage he owned. He died within days. The tribunal established that the man had been fencing stolen cars for a criminal gang and was pulling a fast one with the profits. Because the man was related to a junior minister, Malachy Sutton was brought in to investigate, but chose to ignore the car fencing as a probable cause. He assumed that the recent rape allegations against the man were too much of a coincidence and concluded that Susan and her brother had beaten the man. This was despite her still recovering from the vicious attack she had suffered and her brother having an alibi.
The conviction was sealed when her brother confessed to a crime he hadn’t committed. He insisted from the outset that he’d been tortured into making a false confession but he was tried and sentenced.
The tribunal would later vindicate him. Malachy Sutton came out of the investigation very badly.
‘You can see why Kennedy doesn’t use the father’s name,’ Sean said.
‘It’s amazing he’s come so far,’ Tom replied. ‘Do many people know who he’s related to?’
Sean shrugged.
‘Top brass do. Nobody would be shouting it from the rooftops, mind. Who wants to rake over the past? But you should always bear in mind, Tom – the Special Eight didn’t operate in a vacuum. The seventies and eighties were a mad time, especially with the war in the North at its height. The Garda Síochána was only fifty years old and finding its feet. Many believed the force had to be results-driven and that the end justified the means. Garda attitudes towards the Special Eight generally ranged from active encouragement to tacit approval. Even those opposed to them didn’t want to wash our dirty linen in public.
‘I’ve spoken to you before about political policing – well, that was it on acid – and the people who oversaw it haven’t all retired or died. Yes, these days the Special Eight is considered a stain on our record, but not by everybody. In any case, nobody is going to blame the son for the sins of the father. Joe Kennedy has worked very hard over the years to get where he is and he’s gone out of his way to distance himself from his father’s reputation. But blood ties run deep. He’ll be extremely sensitive to the kind of accusations you’re making. Not that he won’t deal with them if the media gets hold of the story. Jesus, he’ll be after those guards like the hounds of hell, just to make a point. Behind closed doors is another story, though. He never fell out with his father. Which would make you wonder.’
‘Christ.’ Tom took a sip of his drink. ‘Kennedy didn’t really say anything that I could pin down as supporting those guards’ attitudes, but he certainly left me feeling like I was the problem, not them. And it infuriates me. How did you cope back then, Sean?’
‘Behave. I’m only a decade older than you, man.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Sean shrugged.
‘I got my first promotion in the eighties. I remember the boss pulling me in to have a word about how things were done behind closed doors – after I’d officially been given the title of detective. “It’s us and them, son,” he said. “It’s our job to nail the scumbags and sometimes you need to bend the rules. Just remember, go with your gut and if it’s telling you he’s guilty, he’s guilty. The people are relying on us to get the job done. Show no weakness. No judge will worry about the odd black eye.” It gave me a shock, I can tell you. I’m no soft-soaper, you know that, but I’d never gone beyond a bit of pushing and shoving with any suspect.’
‘Did you see suspects being strong-armed?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘What did you do?’
‘The first time – I pulled the detective off the chap. He was being done for a house burglary. He’d taken a telly and some cash and my co-interrogator was ready to put him on life support. Nothing was said to me by upstairs, but the lads treated me differently after that. They’d offer me a coffee and spit in it, schoolboy stuff. It didn’t stop me protesting when somebody was going overboard. So they stopped bringing me in for questioning. Tried to put me on desk work, that sort of thing.’
The inspector frowned. It was hard to imagine anybody bullying this hulk of a man.
‘Hell, Sean. You were a regular Serpico. How did you deal with it?’
Sean exhaled heavily.
‘June got me through it. I wanted to leave the force but she sat me down and gave me a good talking-to. “Why don’t you stop waiting for somebody to do something about all this?” she said. “And be that somebody. You fix it. Make them change and bring some honour to your profession. Beat those idiots with sheer stamina, you great big oaf.” She was right, of course. And I did. I kept at my job and became so good at it that they were forced to promote me and eventually I, and others, began to push the changes through.’
They both smiled at the thought of June’s intervention. The inspector could imagine her saying those words, her tone sharp and soft all at once.
‘Did you support Kennedy’s appointment?’ Tom asked the question that had been burning inside him since Sean had stepped down.
His friend scoffed. ‘What do you take me for? You know I wanted you. When I accepted you weren’t going for it, I recommended Natasha McCarthy, that cailín in charge of the sexual assault unit. She hadn’t a hope, though. Too female and too black. They’ve already got Bronwyn Maher in the second highest top job. Sure, you couldn’t go scaring the horses putting too many girls in charge.’
Tom rested his chin in his palm. The situation was a mess.
Sean had harassed him to the point of them almost falling out when he’d refused to go for the chief superintendent’s job. But no wonder. He wanted to protect his legacy in the department and look at whom they’d replaced him with. The inspector had been dismissive of Joe Kennedy, thinking that the man was a lightweight. He had assumed that the worst he could expect from his new boss was inexperience. He hadn’t considered that the incoming chief might be an impediment.
‘Do you think he’ll last?’ he asked his former boss.
Sean swilled wine around his mouth and swallowed, looking thoughtful.
‘No. No, I don’t think so. He’s a filler candidate. They’re still waiting for you, Tom. Kennedy knows it and I think you do too. You just need to say the word and he’ll be moved sideways – if you get in before he beds down. Joe is dying to be the architect of his own demise. He’s too friendly with the media. His ego will be his downfall. Eventually he’ll make a balls of something and then his buddies in the press will rehash the whole saga about his father. Top brass will shift him beforehand, if they get a chance. Will you give it to them?’
Tom studied the wooden table, mulling the possibilities. To stay in the job he was familiar and comfortable with, but have Kennedy or some other unknown quantity in charge, or to take on the responsibility of leadership? Ray was almost ready to move up to Detective Inspector and he’d be leading a great team. Laura, too, could be put in charge, young as she was. But Tom would miss being this close to investigations and he’d hate dealing with the media and the internal politics.
‘I think Natasha would have made a great choice,’ he said, not looking up. ‘And I’m up to my tonsils with this case. It’s hard to think beyond that right now.’
‘Hmm.’
The inspector didn’t want to see the disappointment in Sean’s eyes. And he didn’t want to say that what he really wanted was Sean back in his old job and everything to return to the way it was.
‘Right, so,’ Sean said. ‘The case. Fill me in and I’ll tell you where you’ve been going wrong. Then I’d better get back. June keeps forgetting we’re married and yet she hasn’t lost the ability to smell booze on my breath and give me a talking to. Some things never change, huh?’