seventy-nine

Cecil Wallace wasn’t kidding when he said he’d use up his kids’ inheritance to pay for a posh rehabilitative facility. The smell of money permeated the place, from the leather chairs in the waiting areas to the hushed footsteps and low-key classical music to the scent of fresh roses. Danny and O’Neil were shown into the “aquatic centre.” Airy, moist, and chlorine-scented warmth greeted them.

“Hopefully we’ll get what we need out of the old fella,” O’Neil said.

Their escort pointed to the far end of the pool, where a physical therapist stabilized Cecil under his torso and ordered him to kick harder. Cecil looked comfortable enough with his head and arms resting on a flotation pillow. His voice rose over the splashes and murmurs of the other patients in the pool.

“I am kicking, you bloody fascist.” He shifted on the float pillow. “Detectives! Coming to arrest my hide for gross indecency?”

Cecil splashed and flailed his way to the side of the pool. The therapist helped him up the steps and wrapped him in a thick bathrobe. Cecil beckoned Danny to a cluster of cushioned loungers.

“Nice digs,” Danny said. “Did your kids throw wobblers at the expense like you predicted?”

“Throwing wobblers wasn’t the half of it. They about put holes in the roof with their bellows.” He cackled. “They’re back in Dublin now, and I won’t hear from them until the next time I land in a hospital.” He crossed himself.

“Your third child—the oldest—did he ever make an appearance?”

“Why would he?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You said he was the child who might have cared. Maybe he did care.”

Cecil untied the bathrobe cinch, snuggled the robe more tightly around himself, and retied the cinch. O’Neil sat a little apart with notebook in hand. At Danny’s behest, he remained in observation mode.

“After we found you,” Danny continued, “you said that you heard someone enter Elder Joe’s house. You used the term ‘sneaky.’ By any chance, did this sneaky person provide you with one of the glasses of water we saw by your bedside?”

“Sonny boy, you’re off your pills, you are.”

“So you haven’t seen your eldest son, the one you disowned?”

“What is it you want? Talk plainly, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know who killed Elder Joe now,” he said. “I’m here to update you.”

At Ballyhinch House, O’Neil had shown Danny the name inscribed on the nameplate of a copy of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. None other than feisty old Cecil Wallace.

Cecil fiddled with the cinch. “Do tell.”

“Cedric Gibson, or Sid as he’s known, turns out to be a loyal son, indeed. Granted, most sons wouldn’t resort to killing, but he did take care of the problem of Elder Joe’s fraudulent and neglectful behavior.”

“Elder abuse,” Cecil bellowed. “That’s what it’s called, and Elder Joe deserved what he got.”

“Now you scream ‘elder abuse’? When we spoke previously, you didn’t seem all that peeved by EJ’s lackluster caretaking skills or money grubbing. What changed?”

“My state of mind.” He huffed and settled back on his chair. “Whoever did him in did the world a favor.”

“If you can afford this place, it’s a wonder you stayed with EJ at all. You could have found a decent place and still had money left for your kids. Why stay with EJ?”

Cecil grumbled. Danny prompted him to speak up. “I said,” Cecil said, “maybe I didn’t want to go into a facility. Maybe I thought I’d never get out again. At least at EJ’s, I was in a home. I would have left eventually, but—”

But what? Danny thought. But your disturbed son thought you needed saving?

“You still haven’t told me what you want,” Cecil said. “Get on with you.”

“You can place Sid Gibson inside Elder Joe’s house. He was the sneaky one.”

Cecil’s expression settled into feisty-old-man obstinance. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t remember seeing anyone.”

So that was the way of it. Danny was pissing in the wind when it came to uncovering concrete evidence against Sid for Elder Joe’s death.

“I wouldn’t have thought Sid capable of loyalty or familial feeling,” Danny said.

“You think wrong,” Cecil said. “The thing about Sid is, if he likes you, he likes you—wouldn’t raise a finger to shake it at you.”

“But do not piss him off, is that it? Sociopaths aren’t known for—”

“He’s not a sociopath,” Cecil interrupted. “He acted one to get himself sent to Dundrum instead of prison.”

Danny sipped his orange juice. “What about the north-end kidnapping in Dublin—the diplomat’s daughter?”

Cecil set aside his orange juice and frowned down at his hands. “He was younger then, less impulse control. The poor girl’s death was an accident.”

“But you disowned him for it, didn’t you?”

Cecil grumbled a yes.

“So, accidental death in the commission of a crime is not allowed, but killing out of loyalty is dandy?”

Cecil glared at him. “If he killed Elder Joe, Detective. I taught him his lessons. He understands right and wrong. He knows, and he’ll always improve himself.”

Danny sat back, amazed. And, yes, that was the word for it because his wonder knew no bounds—wonder at the talent people had for self-deception, for rationalization, for sheer obstinate refusal to accept reality.

He ought to add himself to the list. He understood Father Dooley’s question now, when he’d asked what Danny would really be doing if he let Ellen go. What he’d be doing was accepting reality. He loved her, yes, but as the mother of his children. He’d have to accept that he’d fallen out of love with her years ago, that he’d abandoned her—left her lonely—long before he’d moved out of the house. He’d have to accept that he couldn’t redeem himself for putting her through so much misery. Better to have cut the cord cleanly, let her move on with her life.

“Fecking hell,” he said.

He stood to leave, but Cecil tugged him back down by his belt loop. “Sit your arse down, sonny boy, and quit with the fecking language. This is a genteel sort of place.”

“You bloody old turd. I’ve seen the light of day, and it has nothing to do with your son.” Danny gulped down more juice. “When Sid was a lad, how did you talk to him to teach him his lessons?”

Cecil frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. I talked like I talk.”

“You mean blunt to the point of harsh?”

“Honest, man, honest. You have kids, I take it? Yeah? Right then, when it comes to the tough stuff, talk to them how you’d talk to an adult. Straightforward but soften some of the vocabulary. Tell them what needs to be told and get on with the business of living. And an ice cream cone never hurts either.” He cast Danny a furtive glance, gauging him. “Sid was a troubled lad from the beginning. He’s my son from my first wife, who abandoned us and ended up dying of a drug overdose. Gibson was her family name. When he was sixteen, he decided he was more Gibson than Wallace. He changed his name and I said good riddance. Still, I fancy my influence shaped him into a better man than he would have been otherwise.” He raised a hand. “I know, don’t say it, but there’s worse out there.”

“That’s comforting.” Danny stood. “Well, you old geezer, you were no help at all.”

“The hell I wasn’t.”

“I’m talking about the case.”

Cecil raised an arm and Danny obliged him by helping him to his feet. “One of life’s greatest lessons: You can’t have everything, so take your comfort where you can.”

They left Cecil hobbling on the arm of his physical therapist, subdued and grimacing at the ground.

“We still have enough on Sid to charge him?” O’Neil said.

“Not likely. The DPP will want more, seeing as how he’s an expert at playing the system.”

At the reception desk, Danny asked to see the visitors’ log. He scanned backwards until he found Sid’s name. Sid had visited three times. His status had risen to that of favored son.

Maybe they could still nab him for Annie Belden’s death.

 

Back at the station twenty minutes later, Superintendent Clarkson informed Danny that Sid Gibson was off limits. “He’s bargaining for his freedom.”

“With what chips?” Danny said. “There’s enough against him to at least—”

“It’s beyond our watering hole,” Clarkson growled.

Danny pushed past Clarkson and entered the interview room, where Sid lounged with his usual bland smile, looking relaxed and benign with his ill-fitting sport jacket and tummy pudge. His solicitor shot out of his chair, already bristling. The man sported a fake tan and white teeth. He looked like a bloody American news anchor.

“I told you you’d need me,” Sid said.

“Need you for what?”

“We can talk all about it after the legal system sorts me out. Perhaps we can meet for a drink.”

Clarkson pulled Danny out of the room and shoved him in the direction of the parking lot. “Fecking hell, Ahern. I said it was out of our watering hole. Find someone who saw Sid Gibson with the sleán. That might help us.”

But they’d already ventured down that track, and no one had seen the sleán go missing. How had Dr. Browne described Sid? A mad genius. Now Danny understood what she meant, even if he hadn’t a bloody clue what Sid was playing at. Yet.

“We still have Annie Belden,” he said. “I’m getting that journal.”