The address was Tritonville Road, Sandymount. The name was Anne Brady. Finney had found her. He had checked the list of the mourners at the funeral. And at last come up with someone other than her mother and her neighbour, who had known Margaret Mitchell, McKenna as she had been, when she was young.
McLoughlin drove slowly down the road checking the numbers. He stopped outside 186. It was Victorian, two-storey over basement, paved front garden with a boat trailer parked at an angle across it. There was a brass plate below the doorbell on the pale pink front door. Dr Anne Brady, General Practitioner.
She made him coffee, offered him slices of home-made ginger cake. They sat in the kitchen, the door to the garden open, so, she said, she could keep an eye on the children. There were three of them. All girls. Aged six, four and a year. The older two were having a doll’s tea party on the grass, while the youngest slept, face down in her playpen.
‘How do you find it,’ he asked, munching on the cake, ‘working and having such young children?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s made a big difference. I’ve really cut back on my hours. I take surgery here in the mornings, but I try to get everything done before the girls come home from school.’
‘And your husband, what does he do?’
‘He’s a surgeon. Orthopaedic. Does a lot of sports injuries. Cruciate ligaments, cartilage jobs.’
‘Big business, these days.’
‘And how. He spends as much time on his mobile phone as he does in theatre.’
‘And was it medicine that brought you together?’
She smiled. ‘You could say that. We were students at the same time. Barry was in the year ahead. I seem to remember borrowing a lot of his lecture notes.’
‘And Margaret? She was in the same class as you?’
‘Inspector,’ she leaned over and filled his cup again, ‘explain to me again exactly why you want to talk to me about someone I haven’t seen for years.’
There was more than one reason. He could tell her that it was customary in a murder investigation to try to learn as much as possible about the victim and the victim’s family. They usually did this by interviewing friends, neighbours, colleagues at work, school, college, wherever. But it was a bit difficult with the Mitchells. They hadn’t been living in Ireland. Their one close relative, Mrs Catherine McKenna, was extremely ill. So the guards had to try to build up a picture of Margaret and her daughter some other way.
That was what he would tell this pleasant-looking woman, with her short blonde hair, her neat pink shorts, and her spotless pine kitchen. The other reason he would keep to himself, like the contents of the file that had landed on his desk this morning. It was the log of the calls made to the Mitchell phone since Thursday, 10 August. Bertie Lynch had gone through them, checking off the numbers. Most were from the hospice, the doctor, the guards. A couple were from Nellie Walsh, the cleaning lady. Two or three from Father Lonergan in St Patrick’s in Monkstown. There were a number of calls from New Zealand. And then there were the rest. All made from public phones scattered around the city centre. She had told the guards of three that had been made to her. She hadn’t told them about the the tape of her daughter singing the nursery rhyme, and the bizarre onesided conversation that she had had. With whom? He couldn’t begin to understand what was going on in her head. When he showed the log to Finney his response had been brutal and immediate. ‘Bang her up in a cell, boss. We’ll soon find out what the fuck is going on.’ But that wasn’t his way. Better to wait and see. Watch and listen.
And then there was his own personal reason for being here, for sitting in the sun, drinking this woman’s good coffee and eating her even better cake. He knew the feeling of old. He’d had it before a number of times, but not recently. The desire to use and hear a particular name, to hold it in your mouth, on your tongue. A way of getting in touch, of knowing, of being close.
‘So, Margaret Mitchell, née McKenna. When did you first meet her?’
‘We went to school together. The Holy Child, Killiney. I can’t remember the first time I ever saw her. I must have been five and she’d have been just a little bit older. I got on the train at Blackrock and she got on at Seapoint.’
‘And what was she like?’
She rested her chin on her hand for a moment. ‘She was always quite something. Even as a very small girl.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Not just pretty. I think the word is charismatic. In its most powerful and awful sense.’
‘So you didn’t like her?’
She looked at him with surprise. ‘Oh, I did, I was mad about her. Or else I was mad with her. With Margaret it was either one extreme or the other.’
‘So she had friends and enemies?’
‘Not enemies as such. More like people who felt hurt, or left out, or neglected. Everyone wanted to be in Margaret’s orbit. And if you weren’t, well, you felt as if the sun had gone in.’
He pointed to the cake. ‘May I? It’s delicious.’
‘Of course.’ She cut him another slice. ‘It’s the fresh ginger. It makes a big difference.’
‘So she did well at school.’
‘Star pupil. Prizes all the way. Not just academically either. She was a great swimmer. I’m sure she could have been a champion, but she wasn’t interested. She played hockey too, like a demon.’
‘Oh?’
Dr Brady smiled, her mouth curving into an engaging half-moon. ‘She was wicked, ruthless. I remember saying to her once that her decision to become a doctor must have come from some sense of guilt for all the injuries she caused on the pitch. Actually, she didn’t deny it.’
‘And did she have boyfriends at school?’
‘No. None of us could understand it. She was absolutely gorgeous. Small, delicate-looking, lovely hair and eyes. But not a fella in sight.’
‘Until university?’
‘Not even then. No one special anyway. She’d go out with the gang, drinking, dancing. And, needless to say, there were always loads of guys around her, but no one in particular. Except the lovely Joe Macken.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, I’d forgotten about him. He had a huge crush on her. They used to spend quite a lot of time together, but I don’t really think she was interested in that way. If you know what I mean.’
McLoughlin took out his notebook. ‘Joe Macken, did you say?’
‘Yeah, but he doesn’t live here any longer. He’s in the States, Los Angeles, I think. Plastic surgeon, making a fortune.’
‘And how did she do at college?’
Again the smile, and the slight shake of the head. ‘Need you ask? Top of the class again. All the lecturers were mad about her and, of course, when we started going into hospital she got on brilliantly there too.’
‘Any area in particular?’
‘Well, we all thought she’d go for surgery. She had that fantastic concentration, that ability to shut everything else out. Wonderful hands. And, of course, you don’t need many, what they call, “interpersonal” skills.’
‘Her weak point?’
‘Weaker I’d say. She could be wonderfully charming, thoughtful, kind, if she felt like it.’
‘And still no romance, no lover?’
‘Well, if you’re asking me, did she have a sex life? Is that what you’re asking?’
Of course, of course he wanted to know. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘I’m sure she did. We all did. It was in the days before you had to be worried about safe sex, you know. The Pill generation. Sex, drugs and rock and roll.’ She giggled. A pretty sound. ‘Hard to believe now, isn’t it? We’re all so bloody respectable.’
‘Tell me about her parents. Did you know them?’
‘Not well. They were older than the others in our class. She was very close to her father. I met him a few times. He was a lovely man. Very handsome, charming, bright. He always came to any of the dos in school. I remember the Reverend Mother fluttering around him, bringing him extra cups of tea, that sort of thing.’
‘And her mother, what about her?’
‘She was very good-looking too. My mother always used to comment on her clothes. Handmade suits. Always wore very high heels and lots of makeup. I don’t think they got on that well. Margaret didn’t really talk about her.’
‘So you must have all been surprised when she disappeared to New Zealand?’
‘Not the going away. I never thought she’d stay here. But what did surprise me, really amazed me, was that she went into psychiatry. Of all people. She could have had her pick of the plum areas.’
‘And is psychiatry not one of them?’
She looked at him, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘Psychiatry? Bloody bottom of the barrel. Messy, difficult, unscientific, hard to quantify results, long-term care, badly funded. Just the kind of thing ambitious young doctors hate.’
‘I see.’
‘But then I heard. A friend had been over there on a visiting lectureship. Obs and gynae, six-month job. And he came back and told us that she’d become something of a media star. Now, that didn’t surprise me. Not one bit. Here, look. I got it out when I heard you were coming.’ And she stood up from the table and picked up a newspaper cutting, which had been lying folded on the counter top.
He’d seen it before. It was in one of the pile of faxes that the Auckland police had sent last week. A profile from the New Zealand Herald. All about how attitudes to mental health, in particular women’s mental health, had changed because of her pioneering work. There was a photograph. Head and shoulders. Smiling, efficient. The perfect embodiment of the successful woman.
‘Now,’ Dr Brady continued, ‘that’s more like it. Still the star of the show.’
‘And your friend, did he get to see her when he was there?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He said he tried a couple of times. She was working for television at the time. Doing a series on women’s health. He said he phoned her at work, and eventually got through to her. She was polite, just about, he said. But that was it.’
‘Were you surprised?’
‘No. Not really. Margaret was always very focused. If you were part of the picture she’d be focused on you too. But if you weren’t . . .’ She raised her hands in a gesture of resignation.
‘And have you seen her,’ he asked, ‘since all this happened?’
‘Only at the funeral. Of course I tried to speak to her when I heard about Mary. I phoned. But she was abrupt to the point of rudeness. She said she didn’t want any visitors. So I wrote to her. I’ll wait a week or so, then I’ll try again.’
‘And you never met her daughter?’
‘No. I didn’t know she was home until this happened. What was she like? Oh.’ She paused, embarrassed. ‘Of course. You didn’t know her either.’
But it didn’t seem like that to him. It was a funny thing, the policeman’s intimacy with the victim. He had seen Mary’s body from every angle. He knew her physically inside and out. If he’d seen her walking down the street he wouldn’t have been surprised. She was alive to him, as much alive as her mother. And she would stay like that until the case was over. That was what made it so difficult when a murder was unsolved. The dead were never buried. Not properly.
He stood and thanked her. The baby had woken and was pulling herself up, reaching over the top of the playpen, her face red and streaked with tears. Her mother bent and picked her up, soothing her, kissing her, making her happy again. She walked him to the front door. He stood for a couple of minutes, talking to the little girl in her mother’s arms, tickling her under the chin, playing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ up and down her pink towelling suit.
‘You’re good with children, Inspector McLoughlin. You must have had practice.’
He stepped back, smoothing down his tie. ‘No. I don’t have any of my own, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah.’ She was embarrassed. And a bit anxious. He said a final goodbye and walked down the steps, his feet crunching across the gravel. He looked back at her as he crossed the road to his car. She was still standing in the doorway. She was wondering, the way they all did. What had she told him, what had she said? What meaning did it have for him that it didn’t for her? He could have comforted her, told her that she had said nothing he didn’t know already. But he would have been lying. So he left it, left her standing in the doorway, the baby on her hip, and that strained and puzzled expression still on her face.