Dramatic stuff, which is why I added a chapter break. The action is continuous, but Hayden’s bombshell is a lot to take in.
‘I did?’ said Brannigan. ‘I did? Are you demented entirely? That’s some accusation, mister. I’ll tell you something, and you can keep it to yourself or spread it round the world on social meejah if the fancy takes you, but next time I pour a pot of tea on your testicularities –’
The three aunts giggled as one woman.
‘So that explains the stain, Hayding. Only we were wondering.’
‘You know. Man of a certing age.’
‘Well that’s a blessèd relief anyway. You had us worried there on the continence front.’
‘Sorry, Constable. You were saying?’
‘Detective Inspector if it’s all the same to you. The term Constable left this particular megalopolis with the last vestiges of perfidious Albion.’ Brannigan’s mobile went. He answered it. ‘What? Well whaddya know. That’ll be the curse o’ God Popes. I’ll be straight over.’ He shoved his mobile into his pocket and relaxed back into himself. ‘Incident in darkest Coolock,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better show willing.’
He started at a leisurely pace for the door, but the three aunts weren’t having it.
‘Ah now, fair’s fair, Deputy.’
‘You’ve just been accused of murder.’
‘Exonerate yourself, or fess up and turn yourself in to the relevant autorities.’
‘To wit, yourself.’
They started giggling like peewits on helium. Lou Brannigan ignored them and turned to Hayden. ‘You have two minyutes. And it had better be good, because I’ll tell you for why. I’ve never killed Eddie McGlynn in my life.’
Hayden looked around. He was running out of suspects. It had to be Brannigan. Or Brannigan and Marina. Or Marina. Their story just didn’t make sense otherwise. He drew on all his skills as a performer, polished the nut absently on his jacket, and outlined his cast iron case. ‘It all started,’ he began, ‘with this.’
He walked over to the answering machine and pressed play. They waited. A husky female voice: ‘You haven’t settled up yet, Eddie. So call Marina. I really must insist.’ A short pause. The voice dropped a register. ‘Or else, my sweet. Or else.’
Hayden studied Brannigan and Marina closely while the message played.
‘This message was left several weeks ago, before the fatal incident. What was I to make of that? I wasn’t sure. Who was this Marina? What did she mean by settle up?’ He dropped his voice to a gravelly whisper. ‘“Or else, my sweet. Or else.”’
‘Questions questions questions, Hayding. And you wanted answers.’
‘Was it den you decided to become a sloot, was it Hayding?’
‘Sorry, Hayding. More questions.’
‘Good news about the trousers, dough. You had us worried there.’
‘But do carry on.’
Hayden carried on. ‘I checked with my old and trusted friend Bram. Did he know a Marina?’
‘Oh now, Hayding. Say no more.’
‘By which we mean pray continue.’
Hayden continued. ‘Bram, to my surprise, came over all coy.’ He looked accusingly at Marina. ‘And no wonder.’
‘He doesn’t look the type, Hayding. But I suppose it takes all sorts. On you go.’
‘“She lives across the road from Eddie’s,” said Bram. “The house with the rhododendrons. Big sign outside. Red coupé if the lady in question is in.” I strolled up from the Nautical Buoy and Marina arrived bang on cue. Introductions over, she ordered me upstairs for a quote double session’ – Trace gripped her bottle like a comfort blanket and blanched. She looked like someone who could use a stiff drink. Another couple of digits off her Twelve Point Plan? Hayden looked straight at Marina – ‘unquote.’
‘Did she indeed, Hayding?
‘Oh now. And what do you suppose she meant by that?’
‘I think we all know what she meant,’ said Hayden. ‘Marina, and I’m sure she’ll back me up on this, is a whore.’
‘Janey times tree, Hayding. We speak as one.’
‘A whore?’ said Brannigan menacingly. ‘Is that a factual fact?’
Marina smiled at Hayden. An enigmatic smile. ‘Do go on,’ she said. ‘You build a compelling case.’
‘Anyway, there I stood, stunned,’ continued Hayden. ‘Enter Detective Inspector Lou Brannigan. Cue an outrageously implausible red herring about missing cats.’
‘Cats and fish in the same sentence, Hayden,’ smiled Marina. ‘I’m impressed.’
Hayden experienced an unbidden frisson at her use of his name. He sublimated and ploughed on. ‘DI Brannigan, to continue, also ordered me to do what the lady said.’
‘Go upstairs, you naughty Hayding.’
‘Divest yourself of your outer cloding fortwit.’
She didn’t say anything of the sort, but Hayden let the three aunts have their little moment. Which, as with everything else to do with the aunts, he would shortly live to regret.
‘It might have all been perfectly innocent, Hayding. The lovely lady might have wanted him to wash your trousers for you.’
‘As he was responsible for the stain in the first place.’
Hayden gave his aunts a cold look. ‘Point of information. The pot-of-tea-on-trousers scene came later. At this stage in the proceedings, there was no stain. Brannigan was covering for the “lovely lady”, for reason or reasons unknown.’ He glowered at Brannigan, then addressed a final summing up to the room. ‘Reason or reasons unknown.’ He paused to let the repetition sink in. ‘Or were they? I put it to you that the aforementioned Marina is a whore, that this alleged upholder of the law of the land is her pimp, that the answerphone message was a thinly-veiled threat, the result of which,’ – he lifted the empty urn from the table – ‘you see before you. I rest my case.’
Trace glanced over at Marina. She seemed, from her expression, to delight in Marina’s guilt. The three aunts, enraptured by Hayden’s rhetoric, were about to lead the applause, but Brannigan got in there first.
‘Persuasively argued,’ he said. He put a protective arm around Marina and spoke to her with uncharacteristic gentleness. ‘Will you demolish it, kiddo, or will I?’ Rhetorical question. Detective Inspector Lou Brannigan had the floor and he intended to keep it that way.
‘To understand the little scene outlined by our intrepid sleuth here,’ he began, ‘which, by the way, is incorrect in every particular, we need to take a trip back into the past. To the precise moment I found out I was adopted.’ Marina sighed but said nothing. ‘To that moment when I discovered a letter from my,’ – Brannigan choked with emotion – ‘a letter from my,’ – Marina squeezed his hand – ‘my mother, in the adoption papers. A letter I have since kept close to my tear-stained heart.’
Tear-stained heart? Steady on there. Nobody said this, of course. The moment was too raw. Too emotionally charged.
Lou Brannigan rooted in his breast pocket and took out his wallet. From the wallet he removed a folded piece of plastic and from the plastic he produced a faded sheet. He opened it out and held it with trembling hands.
‘“Dear Son,”’ he read, ‘“I’ve been a sinful woman, so I’m away off to England. When you get this letter in years to come, and I know you will, Son, I want you to find your little sister and look after her.”’ He glanced over at Marina with genuine adoration. ‘“She was born six minutes after you. Love, Mammy.”’ His eyes, which had long since shed any remaining seen-it-all cynicism, welled up. ‘“PS. I call you ‘son’, Son, because I’ll never know you or your sister’s names.”’
Trace turned away and sobbed into her sleeve. The three aunts looked distraught.
‘We’re twins too, Chief Inspector.’
‘I’m ninety-six, Dodie is ninety-four, and Dottie here is ninety-two.’
‘Florrie. You’re Dottie. The ting is dough, we feel your pain.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Brannigan, wiping away what he saw as an unmanly tear. ‘We stayed together till we were three weeks old. Totally inseparable. Then my little sister was adopted by the Courtneys of Westmeath.’
Hayden started. ‘The Courtneys?’
‘That’s what I said,’ continued Brannigan. ‘The stud farm folk. I, on the other hand, was raised by a family in West Cork. The Brannigans. Decent, God-fearing souls, but I always felt somehow different. As if I was missing an arm or something. Cut to the discovery’ – Lou Brannigan almost broke down here. This big, lumbering, wounded orphan who had worked his way to the top of his profession was now almost weeping openly – ‘the discovery of Mammy’s letter. I got straight onto Twins Reunited.’ He drew Marina close. Proudly. Protectively. ‘The result,’ he said, ‘you see before you here tonight. The missing arm turned out to be this... this adorable...’
The room was awash with empathy. The aunts applauded. Trace, overcome with the tragedy of it all, blew her nose. But Hayden was agitated.
‘This is all very well,’ he declaimed loudly, bringing all eyes back to him, ‘but it doesn’t explain’ – he pointed an accusing finger at the telephone – ‘this.’
‘No, Hayden,’ said Marina, ‘but perhaps this does.’
She crossed the room to where a stack of Eddie’s paintings leaned against the wall and motioned to a speedily recovering Brannigan.
‘Would you?’
Brannigan wiped his eyes with a jacket sleeve and beamed at her. He riffled through the stack, removed an unframed painting, and held it aloft with his huge Garda hands. It depicted Mary Magdalene draped seductively across a divan with Christ, one hand on a motel doorknob, the other held up in a gesture of denial: ‘I Must Be About My Father’s Business’, read Marina. ‘Eddie McGlynn. Oil on Canvas.’
Hayden was floored.
‘I was very fond of Eddie,’ said Marina, ‘but he never looked after himself. Sometimes he went days without eating. So I agreed to sit for him on one condition: payment was dinner at my restaurant of choice. I was looking forward to it, so I left a message. It was meant to be playful, Hayden. Mischievous.’ She sighed at the memory. ‘Eddie, you see, was such a wonderful – oh, what’s the term?’
Hayden tried the bullish approach. ‘Client?’
‘Life force,’ said Marina. ‘Sadly, he never got the message.’
‘So perhaps,’ said Brannigan, ‘you’d like to reconsider your original verdict. I seem to recall the word ‘pimp’ being bandied about.’
Marina placed her hand on Brannigan’s arm. A soothing gesture. She turned to Hayden. ‘I’m a Jungian psychoanalyst, Hayden. Specialising in the mother complex.’ She gazed fondly up at Brannigan. ‘You see, Lou –’
Brannigan gave her a pained look. ‘Please.’
Marina smiled professionally and said nothing. The confidentiality of the couch.
Hayden was stunned. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Tell you what. Take five. Back in a tick.’
He went to the front door, swung it open, and marched briskly down the drive. He crossed the road, walked up to Marina’s gate and yanked the rhododendron bush away from the sign.
Marina : Courtney
He didn’t bother reading on. Courtesan. Courtney. Bloody rhododendrons. And the colon? Not a colon at all, but a couple of rusty screws fastening the board to a stake. But hold on. His mind was in overdrive. This wasn’t over yet. He strode back to Eddie’s, went in and closed the front door dramatically. He repositioned himself in the centre of the room.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. You’re a psychoanalyst, so what was all that about the oldest profession on the phone? You can hardly deny it.’ The three aunts were about to burst into a fresh fit of giggles, but Hayden wasn’t having it. ‘I think you’ll find, ladies, that the oldest profession is prostitution. First recorded over four thousand years ago, apparently. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’ You were probably there at the time. He didn’t say the last bit, but he kept it in reserve.
‘Not so, Hayding. We mean, work it out for yourself.’
‘There’s Adam, crunching into a Granny Smit, when he tinks, hold on, tings are getting a bit predictable around here. I wonder should I visit a whore?’
‘Then he tinks, no, I’m a one-woman man.’
‘Which is just as well when you tink about it.’
‘As our American cousins say, Hayding, do the mat.’
‘But that leads him to a further tought.’
‘I wonder who the mammy was?’
‘He tinks, Janey, the only woman in the whole world is my own lovely wife Eve. Am I after knowing my own mammy?’
‘In the biblical sense, Hayding.’
‘Put it another way. Am I after propagating the species incestually?’
‘He tries to sublimate this tought. No use. His oul sex drive is shot. He takes to the bottle.’
‘Only it’s not a bottle in those days, Hayding. Let’s call it a gourd.’
‘Well whatever it is, Hayding, it’s a cry for help.’
‘He works it trew.’
‘Eureka moment.’
‘“I’m after sleeping wit my own beloved mammy! Anyone know a good psychoanalyst?”’
‘Enter Eve. “Lie back on that grass hillock there, Adam. Now, what seems to be the problem?”’
‘And there you have it. Psychoanalysis, the oldest profession.’
‘Invented, mark you, by a female lady.’
‘One-nil to the early feminist movement.’
‘We rest our case.’
They may have stopped there, but it didn’t matter. Hayden wasn’t listening. He was studying the floorboards, totally deflated. He’d made a complete idiot of himself and he was nowhere nearer locating the killer.
Not Pascal.
Not Frankie Pope.
Not Brannigan and Marina.
Who next? Trace? Trace was a stalker and patently unstable, but did that make her a killer? She was clearly obsessed with Hayden, her alcohol fixation a possible manifestation of her warped desire to control him – which might just involve the ultimate control: murder. But Eddie? She’d never even met Eddie. Besides, she was probably in London at the time of his death. Bit of a long shot.
Which left the three aunts, and there was no way they could have done it.
Or was there?
Hayden sized them up. Tiny. Well into their nineties. Possibly older. Didn’t women always lie about their age? He replayed in his mind their various meetings over the past few days. The slinking, the scurrying, the scuttling. The furtive glances and shifty eyes. All signs of possible guilt. And then it came back to him. The tiny feet at dawn. The missing tape. Hardly proof of fratricide; on the other hand it must have been them, mainly because it wasn’t anyone else. Hayden decided to tackle them head on. Apart from anything, it would put him back in control of proceedings – or so he thought. This was one valuable lesson he learned from the whole sorry business: in dealing with his three dearly beloved but inscrutable aunts, it doesn’t pay to think.
‘We finally come,’ he said, ‘to my three venerated, not to say sainted, aunts. Step forward, ladies. Now. I first had my suspicions when you started behaving strangely about me staying at Eddie’s. You were desperate to stop me staying overnight. Why?’
‘Well, Hayding –’
‘The question is rhetorical. I’ll answer it myself in due course. You also seemed perturbed when I claimed to have solved the case, only to brighten visibly when it became apparent that I hadn’t. Why? And then I hear intruders at five o’clock in the morning, rooting surreptitiously, as I now have reason to believe, through Eddie’s tapes. Why? I put it to you that the answer to all three questions is one and the same. You have something to hide. And this brings us back to that bizarre incident at the funeral. You deleted the photo of Eddie. Why? I put it to you that you wanted to maintain the fiction that Eddie died of natural causes. Why?’ He grabbed a lapel with his nut-free hand and paused to let the question resonate. ‘Because, I put it to you one last and final time, you killed him!’
The three aunts were mightily impressed.
‘Oh, very good, Hayding.’
‘Hayding McGlynn, King of the Sloots.’
‘Il sloot di tooty sloot.’
‘And not unreminiscent of the Ancient Greek orator Cicero in his finest hour.’
Florrie blushed.
‘I take it you’re referring to the time we –’
‘No, Dottie. I’m not. I’m referring to his finest oratorical hour. Pro Archia Poeta.’
Florrie bridled.
‘No oratoricals when I was around, I can assure you.’
A momentary pause while they composed themselves. Spat over, they turned their attention back to Hayden.
‘But what’s our motivation?’
‘Maybe we just didn’t like the cut of Eddie’s jib.’
‘What’s a jib?’
‘I tink it’s in the Bible. If the cut of thy jib offend thee, pluck it out.’
‘That’s thy right eyeball, silly. If thy right –’
‘Silence!’ barked Hayden. He felt he was losing control, possibly because he was, and Brannigan was the first to break ranks.
‘Get a grip of yourself, man,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘I’ve known these ladies since they were in their late sixties and I’ll tell you one thing. There’s not a blemish on their characters. Good, upstanding, God-fearing spinsters of this parish. Mass every morning. Confession twice daily. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
And with a last look to check that Hayden was, indeed, ashamed of himself, he was gone.
Marina hesitated before leaving too. She slipped over to Hayden and put a hand on his arm. A subtle erotic charge, intentional or not, passed from hand to arm. ‘Erwin Schrödinger,’ she smiled. ‘Who’d have thought?’ She squeezed him gently. ‘Anything I can do for you in return,’ she continued. ‘Any time.’ She smiled her enigmatic smile. ‘Double session. No need to book.’
With that she freed his arm, unplugging, if you will, the erotic charge, and she too was gone. Hayden sighed an involuntary, lovelorn sigh and so, in perfect synchronicity, did Trace; the sigh, in her case, concealing a wild, internal, cry of pain. She screwed the top off a bottle of sparkling water, poured it tremblingly, tearfully, down the sink, and followed the others out.