Death on the Coast Page 12

  * * *

  The home of Conor Reilly stood forlorn and neglected on a street of tidy terraced houses not far from the centre of Cork city. Fin O'Malley, the detective assigned to Sally and Lizzie, slowed the patrol car as they drove slowly past it.

  ‘I thought you might like to see the house of the guilty as we have to go straight past it.’

  ‘It’s still empty?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Our Mr Reilly is a very successful thief. He owns the house, and several other student houses in the city. He was a terrible difficult man to catch, so he was, but, just like Al Capone, we got him on non-payment of tax. Ever. He’d never paid a penny in thirty years! Can you believe that now?’

  ‘Sounds like the Irish tax office is a bit slacker than ours,’ muttered Lizzie. ‘They get my dad before he’s even made any money.’

  O’Malley chuckled as he turned the car in to a car park that looked like it belonged on a condemned building site. Solid metal two-metre-high railings surrounded a single-storey, wire netting-covered sprawl that hardly featured in the flat landscape. ‘Welcome to Cork prison, spa and sauna currently under repair.’

  Once out of the car the view was no better. ‘This is horrible,’ said Lizzie. ‘What a depressing place.’

  O’Malley winked at her. ‘Ah, well now, we don’t give the inmates a soft life like you Brits do. This is better than it was, ladies. Before the EU interfered, even the rats wouldn’t stay long. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the charming Reilly.’

  They showed their badges and were escorted to an interview room, which was so like an ordinary interview room at home that Lizzie relaxed and took a normal breath.

  ‘You all right?’ Sally asked, as O’Malley went off to sort out the prisoner. ‘It’s hardly your first time in a prison.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge, I think it’s being in a foreign country. I know it’s only across the water, but it feels different, doesn't it?’

  ‘Let’s focus on the interview. I want all that this guy’s got about the mysterious Kathy Kelly, so let’s be very nice. At first.’

  On first glance Conor Reilly was handsome, thought Lizzie. He had black hair that was going grey around the sides, ridiculously blue eyes, and a half grown-out beard. Mid-forties, she would guess. She instantly warmed to him when he gave her a huge smile as he sat down. He wasn’t handcuffed, she was pleased to note. He was only a tax avoider after all, not a master criminal. Fin O’Malley sat near the door, folded his arms across his stomach, and nodded at Sally.

  ‘Thanks for seeing us, Mr Reilly,’ said Sally, after the introductions had been made. ‘We are going to record the interview so we can take it back with us to the UK. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘No problem. Fire away,’ Reilly said. ‘This will make a pleasant change – chatting to you two ladies instead of looking at these arses all day.’ He sat back, put his arms behind his head, and spread his legs wide.

  Lizzie frowned. Try classic male domination posture on me, would you, mate? She sat up straighter and set her mouth in a straight line. No one was going to intimidate her that easily, twinkly eyes or not.

  ‘Tell us about Kathy Kelly,’ said Sally. ‘In your own words. How did you meet, and what was your relationship?’

  ‘Ah, Kathy. Live wire that one. Met her about, oh, five years ago. She came to live in one of my student lets, over towards the university. Was studying there, I assume.’

  ‘You assume? I thought you were friends, or even lovers?’ Lizzie watched his eyes as he turned towards her.

  ‘Did you now? Well, I suppose you could call it that, although we were never official, if you know what I mean? More just occasional lovers, you could say.’ He closed his eyes and scratched at his scalp, shifting his rear on the seat. ‘Oh, yes, a live wire, that one, she was.’

  ‘You obviously knew her well enough to give her a laptop, Mr Reilly,’ said Sally. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Ah. Well, it may be more that she stole it from me, but I didn’t report it to the Garda.’

  ‘And you didn’t do that because it was already stolen, I presume?’

  ‘Not just a pretty face, your sergeant,’ Reilly said to Lizzie. ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘So, if you were only occasional lovers, as you suggest, why did you carry on paying for a website, hosting her domain name, not getting anything in return once she had gone away?’

  To Lizzie, the air, already stale, turned still and sticky.

  Reilly put down his hands on the table and laced his fingers together. ‘I can do a favour for a friend, can I not?’

  ‘You can indeed,’ said Sally, ‘but somehow that doesn’t strike me as your style, Mr Reilly.’

  He grinned. ‘Sharp as a knife. There are five or six friends sharing my hosting facility. I’ve been stuck in here for the last year. I just let it run, and pay up once a year. All happens through online banking. No mystery there, Sergeant.’

  Lizzie nudged her sergeant’s foot. ‘Can I ask a question, Mr Reilly? Are you still in touch with Kathy Kelly? Is she still living in the city?’

  He stared hard at Lizzie. ‘I am not in touch with that woman. She stole from me. I’m here helping you find her, aren’t I? I have nothing to do with her any more, and I think she’s moved over the water. She hasn’t contacted me for three or four years. Isn’t that why you’re here?’

  But she may still have something to do with you, Lizzie thought. Something you don’t want to share. Oh, no, she didn’t believe for a minute that Kathy Kelly had gone from Reilly’s life. Maybe Kelly had something over him she could use. She flicked a glance at Sally, who was looking through her notes. Time to press on.

  ‘Mr Reilly, is Kathy Kelly blackmailing you?’

  Reilly rocked back in his chair and bellowed a laugh. ‘What? What are you talking about? Blackmailing me? That little tart?’ He shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘You don’t look stupid, girly,’ he said, ‘but I guess you must be.’ He snorted once more.

  Fin O’Malley got to his feet. ‘That’s enough, Reilly. Don’t you be losing your manners with the officers from England, now, or you’ll be back in your cell and no time off your sentence for helping the British police.’ Reilly subsided, crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the table top.

  ‘Thanks, Detective O’Malley,’ Sally said. ‘So, Mr Reilly, you have no idea at all of the whereabouts of this Kathy Kelly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could you describe her for me?’

  ‘Medium height, black hair, long. Dyed, I guess. Thin. Too thin.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Young, early twenties.’

  ‘Eye colour?’

  He shrugged. ‘No idea. She had ’em closed most of the time.’ He gave a rallying smirk and glanced at Lizzie from under long, dark eyelashes.

  ‘What about her university courses, her family background …’

  Reilly stared at Sally. ‘You haven’t really got the story, have you, Missus? I hardly knew the girl. I’ve got nothing more to say to youse.’

  * * *

  Conor Reilly waited in his cell for the click and clunk of the lock drawing back and the precious hour of ‘association’ time to begin. It had been a very long ten minutes. His agitation was almost under control, but until he checked in, there was no way of knowing whether or not the game was up. The British police. He never would have given them the credit, but they’d gotten as far as him. He just hoped Tana hadn’t left them too many clues to follow. She wasn’t a professional after all.

  He leapt from his bed as soon as his door was unlocked and ran to the nearest payphone – shoving the young lad who was about to lift the receiver himself out of his way. ‘Later,’ he said, and waited until the lad had slunk away. ‘Brendan, it’s me,’ he said when the phone was picked up. ‘The British police have been in to see me about Kathy Kelly.’ He listened, nodding. ‘No, I think I convinced them that I hardly knew her. Have you heard from her?’ He frowned. ‘Okay, keep me posted. Have you got her in
sight? Good, good. It’s been a long time coming and we’re not throwing it away now.’ He replaced the receiver and banged the wall hard with his fist. To be stuck in this place now, of all times, and on a tax dodge, was an irony not lost on him.

  * * *

  Back on the outside, in the grim car park, Sally thanked Fin O’Malley for taking them in.

  ‘It was nothing, glad to be of help. Where to now?’

  ‘I’d like to go to the university and check out their records. Then see what your search has come up with, as far as records go, for any Kathy Kelly registered in these parts between one and five years ago. We could go back further, but we have to assume she moved to England at some point in the last few years, as Reilly claims not to have been in contact with her for three or four years.’

  * * *

  The university record keeper, Una McKeever, was a gently spoken woman of sixty or so. She held the archived records for every student who had studied at the university for the past hundred and sixty-two years. During the timescale they were interested in, three Katharines and one Kathryn Kelly had studied there.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘the usual spelling of the name is with a C not a K, after St Catherine, you know. We’ve got dozens of them. The K is more unusual.’ Una spread out copies of the appropriate documents on the table in front of her. ‘I found four names: one studying medicine, one in the law, one in Celtic and art studies, and the last one in food economics. They all graduated …’ She stopped and scanned the record of one girl. ‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no they didn’t.’ She looked up at Sally. ‘I remember it now, one of the Kathy’s died in her first year here, a terrible death.’

  Lizzie held her breath. Oh, please, let it be. ‘Did she die in a fire?’ she asked.

  The woman stared at her. ‘Now, how on earth would you know that? She did, ’twas a terrible thing, I can tell you.’ She clasped a hand to her mouth.

  Sally took her arm and led her to a worn wooden chair. ‘Here, have a seat, Una. I think we’ve found our Kathy Kelly. Can you tell us what you remember, please?’

  Una fanned her face with the document while Lizzie resisted the impulse to rip it out of her hand.

  ‘I remember it well. It was in November, about five years ago. Almost to the day, I’d say.’ She stared at Lizzie again and grew even paler. ‘I remember it now. There had been a spate of arson in and around the city. Most unusual for Cork, and then one night the first-year girls’ dormitory went up. All the students should have been at the Christmas ball, but Kathy Kelly, a postgrad researcher who looked after the younger ones, had the most awful toothache.’ Una searched her pockets for a handkerchief while the two detectives hovered. ‘She was in bed and had taken quite a lot of painkillers it seems – from the newspaper article. Didn’t stir an inch, poor mite. She was found the next day when the fire was out, still in the very bed.’

  Una got up and returned to her record drawer. ‘Here, you can have this as well. It doesn’t matter now.’ She passed Sally a newspaper cutting and sat back down on the chair, dabbing at her eyes. ‘None of it matters any more. We’re going over to the computer and I’ll be on the scrapheap soon enough.’

  As soon as they felt able to leave her, Sally and Lizzie shot out into the corridor. They scanned the article. It was exactly as they had been told, but the picture of Kathy Kelly, although in black and white, showed a plump, fair-haired young woman with the sort of open expression that made Sally’s heart go out to her. Just a youngster – twenty-two years old. And that fire could easily be laid at their suspect’s door, couldn’t it?

  Sally held the piece of yellowing newsprint. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Kathy Kelly’s dead. It puts us right back at the start, doesn’t it? We’ve got nothing.’ Lizzie folded her arms. She was cold, and tired, and fed up.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I was thinking, grumpy. Our serial killer isn’t Kathy Kelly, is it? The suspect probably stole Kelly’s ID and certificates after she was dead, and, if she had Kelly’s ID, she could have applied to Exeter as her, couldn’t she?’

  Lizzie wouldn’t meet her sergeant’s eyes. ‘We’re still nowhere. She could be anybody. We only have a name. A common name. And there was no Kathy Kelly listed as being part of Patel’s course.’ She kicked the skirting board.

  ‘Now, don’t get all depressed on me. We know she’s smart enough to fake an ID and persuade a tough guy like Reilly to do stuff for her. We know she’s now in Exeter. She’s Irish. She probably started killing before she came to England. Although this one could have been an accident, I suppose. We have a description, of sorts. We know loads more than we did a couple of hours ago; certainly enough to make it worth getting up early for. Come on.’ She nudged Lizzie’s arm.

  ‘Okay, sorry. I just got excited for a minute that we may have found her.’ She reread the article. ‘Let me have a look at what Kathy Kelly was studying,’ said Lizzie. She looked at the girl’s record and punched the air as she followed Sally back to the car. ‘Yes, there’s our connection. Kathy Kelly was studying Arts and Celtic Studies here in Cork. The Ancient Religions course at Exeter fits perfectly with postgrad research. I knew that professor was hiding something. I reckon he knows exactly who we’re asking him about. Maybe it’s time we were a bit less polite.’ She stopped and held both hands in front of her to break Sally’s stride. ‘Or, or … what if the killer has something over the professor, too? What if she made him take her name off the register?’

  Sally’s eyes glittered. ‘Good, good, good. Heh! She could still be at the university. We’re coming to get you, whoever you are,’ she said to the ceiling. ‘Let’s get the police records from our little friend Fin, and I’ll ring the boss. We’re doing all right, Lizzie, and if we get finished here quickly, we may even get a pint in an Irish bar before we catch the plane home.’

  23

  Jay Vine woke slowly, savouring the familiarity of his bedroom, the smell of bacon frying downstairs, and the feeling of being safe that home always gave him. His throat was raw from throwing up the corrosive, acidic bile that was laden with crushed pills. Was that only yesterday? He shuddered and dug deeper under the duvet. What to tell his parents? His mum had picked him up from the station, eyes all shiny because he was home for Christmas, but she had recoiled when she smelt the whisky and saw the dregs of vomit on his clothes. He’d just stood in the drizzle and tried not to cry. It was a bad moment when your own mother didn’t want to touch you. And as soon as she found out what he had been part of, she would never be able to touch him again. Unbidden, tears slid into the pillow. He must have been mad, totally crazy to ever get involved with Tana. She was a witch. She enticed him, drugged him with all her spiel. Tricked him. If they caught him, he would say he had to run, he was frightened for his life. Yes, that was all true. That was the story he would tell if he got caught. When. When he got caught.

  He pushed away the duvet and staggered into the tiny en suite that his parents had installed for him while he’d been away. The shower would wash it all off him, and the washing machine would do the rest. Then he would pack, and slip out the door. First stop would be money, then the train to Plymouth, foot passenger on the ferry to Jersey, foot passenger to France, and he’d be gone. He turned the hot water up high and tried to drown out the sound of his weeping under the water’s steaming flow.

  * * *

  Dan drew up to the solid grey stone house just off Bodmin’s main street. The Vines were shopkeepers in Bodmin, and had owned the greengrocer’s until the latest supermarket had taken their last customers and closed them down. He scrolled down further. The father now worked for a heating engineer and the mother was a teaching assistant. Jay’s sister and brother were older than him but the brother had committed suicide. That was tough on a family. Dan could see no signs of life at the house, but he got out of the car and banged on the door anyway. Pressing his ear against the wood, he could hear the sound of a radio playing at the back of the house. After a
minute or so he walked to the end of the short terrace, took a left, and counted down the gardens until he was outside the back of the house.

  As he unlatched the gate, a small woman opened the back door with a pile of damp washing in her arms. She gave a yelp when she saw Dan and dropped the washing onto the path.

  ‘Ooh, you gave me a fright. Where did you pop up from?’ she gasped.

  ‘Here, let me help,’ he said, and retrieved several items from the concrete path. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Hellier, Devon and Cornwall Police, Mrs Vine. I’m sorry to have startled you.’ He piled the clothes back into her arms. Men’s black jeans, black socks, even black underwear. Jay’s washing?

  Linda Vine calmed when she saw his badge. ‘What do you want? We haven’t done anything wrong, have we?’

  ‘No, of course not. It’s Jay I want to see. He may be able to help us with our enquiries.’

  Mrs Vine cocked her head to one side like a bird. ‘Is he in trouble? Only he was in a terrible state when he got home last night. Proper distressed he was. I had to send him straight to bed, and then get this filthy washing in the machine first thing this morning. God only knows what he’s been up to, some awful end-of-term party I shouldn’t wonder. You know what students are like. And then he’s faffing about, saying he wants a lie-in, but I could hear the shower going.’

  Dan glanced at the upstairs windows. ‘Can I speak to him now? It is a matter of some urgency, Mrs Vine. I could go and call him myself if you’d prefer. Might be quicker?’ Dan moved towards the open back door, but Mrs Vine beat him to it.

  ‘No, no, I’ll go up and tell him. You wait in the dining room. My husband’s at work, you see, and I’m going in to work myself this afternoon. It’s all such a nuisance, isn’t it?’ She thumped up the stairs and banged on the door. ‘Jay, open up, there’s a policeman here to talk to you.’ She banged again but got no response. ‘He’s not answering. I don’t think he can hear me because of the shower.’