Lenihan and Sadie were talking about Esther’s Mini when I turned around again.
‘It’s with the Technical Bureau,’ Lenihan said. ‘They’re going over it with a fine-tooth comb. We found it parked two streets away. We reckon Esther parked it in the garage when she got back first but that it was moved from there later, just in case.’
‘Either she was confident it’d never be traced,’ Sadie said. ‘Or she didn’t want to draw attention to it by burning or dumping it somewhere.’
‘Exactly,’ Lenihan said.
‘Are they under arrest?’ I asked.
‘Esther is,’ Lenihan said. ‘She’s at this station. Gill is too. Voluntarily. Boyband, as you call him, has disappeared. That’s why I got you up here. To see if you have any idea where he might be. Cos I fucking don’t.’
‘Is Esther saying anything? Is she admitting …?’ I asked.
‘She’s admitting very little. She’s claiming she was forced to drive him. That he had a carving knife as well as the screwdriver he used to kill Rhona. She says he looked and acted like he’d lost his mind, either drugs or a breakdown, she says. He came into her kitchen from his basement flat next door. She says the connecting door was never locked and that’s why they had to pull the dresser in front of it later, to keep him out, not to hide the connecting door. She says he left straight after the murder. That she was terrified, alone, vulnerable and that Gill was asleep up in bed all the time. He’s backing her up 100 per cent. He says he only found out about the murder afterwards and that all he’s guilty of is giving his poor old ma an alibi, he was just trying to keep her out of jail. He says she’s in poor health, and he was afraid she’d die in prison.’
‘He’s still an accessory after the fact,’ Sadie said.
‘Is he?’ I asked. ‘Would a jury convict him for trying to protect his mother? If they believe that Esther acted under duress, under the threat of being killed herself, she might be acquitted. And, if she’s acquitted, Gill might walk too.’
‘I agree,’ Lenihan said. ‘We need to concentrate on the primary––’
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said. ‘I have to make a call.’
I went out to the street for air, found Tiernan McDevitt’s number in my phone, and sent a text, asking if he was free to take a call. He replied ‘who this?’ which I took as a yes and rang him.
‘Hi, Tiernan, it’s Finn Fitzpatrick, we met last week in Cork Opera House.’
‘Yes, and you bought me lunch. It’s nice to talk to you again, I …’
‘Remember the blond guy you were talking to, you said he was Gill’s assistant?’
‘Well, yeah, I do, but …?’
‘Do you know his name?’
‘It’s Donnie. His last name is, um … let me think …’
‘Might it be O’Brien?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Tiernan said. ‘It could be something like that.’
‘How long has he worked for Gill?’
‘Years, like ten years, twelve years, probably more. He wasn’t involved when we were making the short film. But he was hanging around a lot when Jeremy went to the Oscars that first time.’
‘That was about six months after the short had been shown at Cork Film Festival the previous October?’
‘Yes. I was on the periphery by then, but I recall seeing him at a cast and crew celebration when Jeremy got back from Hollywood, some time, maybe around the end of March? I wasn’t talking to Donnie, but I couldn’t help seeing him. He acted like he was Jeremy’s devoted puppy. He looked a lot different back then, though. He was fatter, wore those Harry Potter glasses, and his hair––’
‘How did Donnie and Jeremy know each other?’
‘They were both working in Thomson AdGroup. At least, I assume that’s how they got to know each other. Maybe they were friends before that. Then Jeremy got super-successful, needed an assistant and Donnie got lucky. He and Jeremy are extremely close. Donnie’s a minder as much as an assistant. If Jeremy goes a little too far, like he did with me in the interview at the Opera House in Cork, good old Donnie swoops in to sort things out.’
‘Sort things out?’
‘He’s diplomatic, gets on with everyone. Jeremy rubs someone up the wrong way, Donnie makes everything okay again. It’s a job I wouldn’t want no matter how big the pay cheque was. But Donnie likes it, I presume, or he’d have left a long time ago.’
‘And he knows all about Jeremy for the last ten, twelve years, maybe longer?’
Tiernan gave a hollow laugh.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Donnie knows where the bodies are buried.’
I tried to process what I’d discovered. The former Film Festival education officer Daniel O’Brien was now calling himself ‘Donnie’ and had been working for Jeremy Gill for a decade plus. They might or might not have met for the first time in Cork, but somehow Donnie ended up working in the same ad company as Gill six months after the 1998 Film Festival. Maybe Gill got Donnie the job, or maybe he applied for it himself? And Daniel/Donnie had no presence on LinkedIn or any other social media because he didn’t need the profile, and there was probably a strict privacy condition under his contract of employment. But none of that mattered.
What did matter was that, according to Tiernan, Donnie cleaned up Gill’s messes.
And that Gill and his mother were saying that Donnie had forced Esther Gill to drive him to Rhona’s house where he had murdered her.
I thought it through. It was certainly plausible. From what Tiernan was saying, Donnie had to know about his boss’s sexual appetites. And it was highly likely that Pawel the security guard reported to Donnie rather than to Gill directly – Lenihan would need to check that to be sure of it. But assuming that’s how it had happened, Donnie could have heard from Pawel about me visiting Rhona. He could have seen the danger and taken the initiative. And killed Rhona. To protect his job, his position? To protect Gill? A jury might go for that story.
Then I remembered what Tiernan had said: ‘He wasn’t involved when we were making the short film.’ How would Donnie have known the significance of me visiting and talking to Rhona Macbride unless he had discussed it with Gill? He might have put it together eventually. But so fast? She was murdered barely twelve hours after I’d met her.
Gill, on the other hand, would have spotted the risk immediately. The three of them – Esther, Donnie and Jeremy – had to have planned Rhona’s murder together.
But how was I ever going to prove it?
When I went back inside, Lenihan and Sadie were still in the interview room. They’d been joined by two other members of the murder team that Lenihan didn’t waste time introducing.
‘Well, Fitzpatrick,’ he said. ‘Any idea where we might find Bryant?’
‘Bryant?’
‘Christ,’ Lenihan said. ‘Rhona Macbride’s murderer, remember him? Donnie Bryant. US citizen. Still in this fair land, for now at least, as far as we know.’
‘Why do you think he’s still in Ireland?’
‘Because we found his passport. One of ye lads show her, for fuck sake.’
The taller of the two detectives pulled a plastic evidence bag from his suit jacket and handed it to me. The bag contained a blue American passport issued to Donnie Bryant, date of birth 4th March 1978.
‘Is it real?’
‘First thing we checked. It’s real but …’ Lenihan said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then the date of birth could be real too. But he must have an Irish passport as well. Look at the place of birth: Ireland.’
‘That’s the second thing we checked. There’s no record of a Donnie or Donald or Donal Bryant born in Ireland on the 4th of March 1978. The passport’s real but he must have got it under an assumed name. We’ve put in a request and we’re waiting for info on him to come back from the American authorities. But I reckon he built up a false identity. He could have done it over years, maybe.’
‘It makes sense,’ I said. ‘He changed everything about himself. Of course he’d have changed his name too. But you need to be searching for him under his original name now. Donnie Bryant may have acquired US citizenship, but he’s not American. He’s Irish. He’s the ex-education officer of Cork Film Festival. And his real name is Daniel O’Brien.’