‘Out you go, the pair of you.’
It was the coldest summer in fourteen years. A forbidding storm loomed across the Atlantic, already ripping apart the eastern coast of the United States and hardly wearing herself out before she made her crossing. The baby had arrived two days earlier and, although her mother had not yet registered a name for her, to Anna’s mind she was and always would be baby Janey, just like her perfect baby doll. She’d even drawn a small pink heart on the doll’s right thumb, and one to match on her own. They were triplets now. Her mother had spent almost ten minutes the previous evening scrubbing the pink away, complaining and irritated. She wasn’t usually so brusque. Anna knew it was a mixture of the new baby and the storm warnings. Soon, everything would settle down. Once more, they’d sit and read stories and Anna would stroke her mother’s mane of soft red hair that smelled of Shalimar and glided across her face like a protective armour of silk.
‘Make the most of it now; when that storm comes, ye won’t get out for days,’ her mother called as she made her way back into the cottage.
She’d wrapped them both up, extra blankets for the baby, but it wasn’t cold, not really. The old tabby wound itself around Anna’s legs a few times, its fur warm against her cool ankles. She would usually bend down and stroke her, pick her up and snuggle deep into the soft fur. Today, the cat was ignored; and in the way that most cats seem to know everything worth knowing, she cocked her tail high and strode away with dignity. Anna hardly noticed her slip deep beneath the thick summer hedging that hid most of the garden from the small track beyond. Anna stood gingerly beside the large pram, afraid to move in case she missed anything. She peered down at the tiny peach face below. Jane’s eyes were wide open, blue and grey and green. Anna had never seen anything like them; soft buttons that transfixed her so she could hardly breathe. Even now, with her hands stuck stubbornly in her pockets, she wanted to thrust them inside the pram and touch the baby’s cheek.
‘Give her a little space,’ her mother had said a hundred times already since the baby arrived. But Anna couldn’t help it; she loved her more than she’d ever thought she could love anything in the world.
She marvelled at her mother who seemed to take the baby’s utter perfection in her stride. From what Anna could see, her mother spent all her time washing, cleaning, feeding or crying. ‘Baby blues,’ she said as she blew her nose and got up to fold more clothes. ‘I’ll be fine once your father gets back.’ Her father was due in four days’ time; he’d be here then for a few weeks before heading back to the lighthouse on Tarbert Island once more. ‘And before we know it, we’ll be headed for Christmas, all here together,’ her mother said between sniffles. ‘That’s something to look forward to.’ Anna didn’t see anything wrong with right here and now. They had the baby; her father was coming home soon. Of course, it would be somewhat improved by the arrival of her Barbie Fairy Castle with matching Ken and fairy clothes, but really, sunshine or not, this was the best summer of her life.
‘Come on, Anna.’ Ollie Kerr, a small square-shaped boy with an expression belying his sensitivity, eyes so icy blue they looked cruel in one so young, was standing at the end of the house. ‘Come on, we have time for a quick kick-about.’ Ollie lived in the next house up. He seemed to lurk constantly somewhere between the two properties. When Anna thought about it, she wondered if he ever spent any time anywhere but outside her house, waiting for her to play some stupid boy’s game.
‘Can’t today,’ she said pointing at the pram, ‘I’m minding my new sister,’ and she thought once more how much she liked the sound of the words. My sister, my little sister, Janey.
‘Oh.’ She could see he was disappointed; he would never have any sisters or brothers. His parents had adopted him. Married too late, her father had said ominously and she figured, years later, that he was thinking, There but for the grace of God. Her dad was fifty-six when Janey was born; strong and handsome in his uniform. Anna thought he was the greatest man ever.
‘Maybe later?’ Ollie murmured, head low, walking away from the cottage. Anna knew that often he went no further than the copse and watched from there.
‘Yeah, maybe.’ She had no intention of wasting one second on him, not now she had Janey.
She stood for a while, just watching the baby, listening for the very low sounds that Janey was trying to make. She wasn’t gurgling yet, but every so often a small sigh would rise from her and Anna would feel her breath catch in her chest, as though she was waiting for the pronouncement of a great prophet – words of wisdom, words never uttered before, words to treasure for evermore. For evermore.
When the door opened behind her, Anna was hardly aware of it. Her mother’s voice made her jump. ‘Have you been here all this time, have you not had a run around?’ She looked about the garden, as though she’d lost something. ‘Is Ollie not here with you?’
‘No, he’s gone home; I told him I was minding the baby.’ Her mother had already told her off for calling her Janey. We can’t call the baby after a rag doll, now can we?
‘You know fine and well, the baby no more needs minding than I do. Come on, you can help me hang the clothes on the line, an hour or so in this wind and we’ll have them dry.’ She took a cursory glance inside the pram hood, a small stretch upwards of her thin lips confirming that all was well with Janey. ‘You need to run around a bit, Anna; you’ve been stuck beside the baby all day long.’ She was talking over her shoulder, having handed the bag of clothes pegs to Anna.
She didn’t count them, but it felt as though there were hundreds of nappies and tea towels and hand towels. She passed each one, hot and steaming as it was violently shaken out before her mother pegged it to the line. All sparkling white – almost a blue white – an obscene testament of cleanliness and purity against the overcast backdrop of grey skies and dark-green summer foliage. Her mother had boiled the nappies in a pot, that looked to Anna more like a cauldron, on the range, filled to the top with Omo bubbles, the smell steaming the small kitchen with the aroma of a muggy launderette. By the time they reached the bottom of the basket, it sounded as though the first of the washing hung out was already well on its way to being dry. The energetic flapping on the clothesline was an eternal reminder of wasted time. At the end her mother stood back to inspect the work, then she made her way into the house.
‘Don’t let me see you bothering the baby now; go and find Ollie and play with him for a while.’
Anna willed herself not to take one more peek and walked towards the gate. She walked the path that bordered the small garden her mother had given up trying to cultivate into something more sophisticated than a square, even green patch. She looked at the copse beyond, her eyes searching the greenery for a hint of Ollie. Surely he was there watching her; she should call out to him, she knew. But usually, unless he was really cross with her, he came to her once she was standing at the gate.
The wind was coming up stronger behind her back. She almost felt it whispering something in her ear. Janey, Janey, Janey. Something made her turn, and even from where she was, she knew that something was not right. The neatly tucked-in pram cover had been loosened on one side. Her mother always fastened down the navy cover so it sat in a rigid rectangle, like a stretched canvas guarding the treasure beneath. She ran towards Janey, her voice a strangled squeal now. She just knew the baby hadn’t pulled open the covers, and whatever had opened those covers, it had not been her or her mother. She looked towards the cottage door; her mother’s face a white oval, her eyes embedded in deep black circles, her hair a wiry bright halo about her thin and frightened frame.
‘What is it?’ Her mother spoke in a whisper and later, when she remembered parts of those few minutes, Anna would wonder if she could have heard the words above the rising winds, above the scream that hung low in her own chest. She couldn’t answer, hadn’t looked yet, but she knew. They reached the pram together, running, stumbling through panic and over nervous unsure footfalls. Her mother pushed before her, pulled back the already opened covers. She inched away from the pram and looked about the garden, a woman already possessed. Anna moved closer to where Janey had lain. She placed her hands on the brushed cotton under-blanket. It was still warm, still holding onto the last memory of her, and Anna put her face in, drinking in the final sense of the sister stolen from her.
Iris Locke had three minutes left on the timer. After that, she was giving up and going home. She wasn’t sure at this stage how many laps of the track she’d run, but she knew it was enough, feeling it stretch down the back of her legs and drawing the breath from her lungs as though her insides were beginning to burn up. Truth was, Iris hadn’t taken a decent walk in twelve months, never mind a run. This was payback for the sedentary lifestyle undercover had forced her into. Her days had fallen into a pattern and it didn’t leave much time for little more than work and more work.
She’d spent almost a year in undercover, living the life of a seemingly carefree twenty-something, PA to one of Ireland’s most high-profile businessmen. The McCracken case was meant to be the making of her career; for a while it was the sting of the decade. The fact the case had fallen apart had not been her fault, and yet, because of it she’d been thrown to limbo land. In the final analysis, a year of her life had been sucked into something that amounted to a sideways deployment and now she was further away than ever from what seemed like an easy hop into the team she’d always dreamed she’d be part of. It looked like they’d managed to pull McCracken down on several charges of corruption; there was still hope that he might be implicated in the unlawful death of a tax official who’d taken too keen an interest in his affairs. It hardly mattered to Iris’s career now, the pronouncements on her future had already been rubber-stamped in Dublin. She’d been shunted back to Limerick, her reputation tainted by association rather than by her own ineptitude. When they’d released her from undercover her face was too well-known by then, a minor celebrity in some ways. It didn’t make it easy with her already bitchy colleagues. So, at twenty-nine, she was back in the floaters’ pool, a detective sergeant, with nowhere to go. She was filling her time visiting schools and women’s groups, not what she’d signed up for.
When her watch bleated out that it was time to stop for now, she slowed to a brisk walk and headed for her car. She recognised immediately the numbers of the two missed calls on her mobile; drank back as much water as she could and decided she’d ring her father later. Even when she’d been working undercover, she managed to talk to him every day. Her job was unfair on everyone, especially her father, who’d spent forty years on the force. He’d have preferred if she’d done something ‘safer’, perhaps teaching. It was never going to happen. At this stage she figured she was genetically engineered to be a detective; you don’t just turn your back on generations of guards – it had to come out somewhere.
‘Hi, Diane – you called.’ Iris tried to keep her breath even. She doubted that Diane, a perfectly made-up fifty-something, ever broke a sweat – more flight-attendant material than civil servant.
‘Yes, Detective Sergeant Locke.’ She seemed to sniffle at the title. ‘Superintendent Penrose has had a request in for you…’ The line seemed to go dead for a moment, as if Diane had forgotten she was there. ‘Inspector Grady, Murder Squad. They have three bodies in a fire and they need hands on board.’
Iris racked her brains. She thought she knew everyone in Murder, and certainly, she knew all the senior officers. God knows, she’d approached them all at some point to include her on their teams. Murder in Dublin Castle had always been the end goal – but until now, it was a no-go, it seemed. ‘Grady? That doesn’t ring a bell for me at all,’ she said, catching sight of a single strand of hair. It fell tenaciously from the band currently working hard to hold back her long growing-out fringe. She pulled the stray distractedly, still tossing over the various names in Dublin Castle.
‘No.’ Diane’s voice was sand dry. ‘You might not have. He’s based in Corbally station.’ She seemed to pause for a minute while Iris digested what she was saying. ‘Limerick, Sergeant Locke, you’re staying in Limerick.’
‘Limerick. But I never said I wanted to transfer to Murder in Limerick…’ The Murder team in Limerick was too close to her father’s back door, so she’d never approached them.
‘You said you wanted Murder. There are no vacancies in the Murder teams at Dublin Castle. Superintendent Penrose says there may be one coming up in Limerick.’ The voice on the other end of the line lowered. ‘This could be your last opportunity to get into Murder, Sergeant.’
Iris knew she could be in the floaters’ pool until she reached her fifties if she didn’t grab this chance to get onto a team. ‘How do you mean, there might be a vacancy?’
‘I’m not sure exactly, but I think there’s a senior post to be filled and they’re hoping the current DI will fill it. You could even be looking at applying for an inspector’s job.’
‘Hmm, but…’ Iris was going to say, people didn’t just swan into inspectors’ posts, but then she remembered who she was talking to. ‘So, when do they want me there?’
‘Get there as soon as…’ Diane seemed to mull over something for a moment, then she said, as though it had just dawned on her, ‘Corbally, isn’t that where your father worked?’
When she dropped the phone, Iris wasn’t sure if she was happy or not. Sure, this was her shot at Murder, but Limerick? No one wanted to go to Corbally and Iris especially didn’t want to work Murder there. But then, maybe anything would be better than staying in the floaters’ pool? Another community-watch meeting or bunch of third-year students and she’d crack up. And, it was Murder, after all – even if it was Limerick. Damn, damn, damn it.
Ben Slattery wasn’t quite sure how Grady had managed it, but he’d pulled in nearly twenty bodies, apart from himself, the DI and June Quinn. They even had a new DS on the way, of course, though what they needed was a superintendent as well to keep Byrne out of the incident room.
‘Iris Locke,’ Grady said as they drove out of the station; perhaps it was convenient that he couldn’t meet Slattery’s eyes. ‘She comes well recommended. She’s spent the last while in undercover.’
‘Any relation of old Nessie?’ Chief Superintendent Locke had run a tight ship. He was a bear of a man with a monster’s appetite, but he’d been a good guard and decent enough to any detectives who found themselves in his division.
‘The daughter. Not that it matters but she’s the one that was…’ Grady’s voice drifted.
‘A celebrity? That’ll go down like a lead balloon. She’s hardly out of nappies.’
‘She’ll get the same chance as anyone else, Ben.’ There was a note of warning in Grady’s voice; they needed as many good detectives on board for this one as they could get. ‘It’s headline news, our burnt-out family. It will be front-page news and you know what that means.’
‘It means that like every other case, if it’s murder we’ll work our backsides off to find out who did it.’ Slattery and Grady went way back. For the next few miles they drove in silence, each chewing down on the scant details they already knew and the difficult scene that lay ahead.
Slattery narrowed his eyes as the car drew up close to the smouldering ruins. He exhaled, more than muttered a grunt to the DI beside him.
‘Give me a drowning any day, or even an RTA, but fires,’ Slattery moaned as he opened the door of the Ford. Nine times out of ten, fires were down to faulty wiring, but they still had to come for a look-see to rule out anything more.
‘Well, we don’t get to choose,’ Grady said, but they both knew, fires were the worst.
‘Neither did they.’ Slattery was thinking about the poor sods that had perished inside. The place was a wreck; hard to imagine what it was like before the blaze, though it hadn’t been exactly plush, he could tell that much. Slattery stood for a moment, taking in his surroundings. The cottage snuggled at the end of a narrow track, everything about it was overgrown, from tall evergreen trees to the grass that licked greedily from all sides. The cottage was old and crumbling, with little beyond wind chimes and a few scattered toys around the door to stake a claim on the present decade. It gasped with a neglected mournful air that had as much to do with the desolate temperament seeping from its very fibre, as it had with the peeling paint and dirty windows. The smell of smoke and death didn’t help the place either, but Slattery had a feeling that the rot had set in long before the cottage caught fire. They made their way up a narrow road, already a couple of locals had gathered. The fire boys confirmed the worst for them and they stood around taking in the debris that remained of three wasted lives.
‘You can have a chat with them in a while,’ Grady said to Slattery, and he nodded towards a small band of onlookers drawn to the cottage despite the melancholic circumstances, or maybe because of them. They stood in a shallow semi-circle, their expressions a mixture of grief and morbid curiosity. Perhaps he knew Slattery would prefer to stand and take statements from them than go anywhere near the charred cottage.
‘Inspector.’ They both turned to see a tall copper-haired detective making her way along the track behind them. She was attractive, no doubt, but there was an air of independence to her that sat at odds with her soft curves and pink cheeks. This was no shrinking wallflower. Here was a girl, Slattery suspected, who could take care of herself long before she ever had to. ‘Inspector.’ She was out of breath, like a woman who’d just run a marathon. ‘I’m Sergeant Locke.’ She stuck her hand out between Slattery and Grady, perhaps unsure which of them was which.
‘Good to have you here,’ Grady said, shaking her hand, and turned towards Slattery. ‘Slattery, you can bring her up to speed.’
‘Lovely.’ Slattery managed to curb the irony when he caught a sideward glance from Grady that warned him he was not to create any trouble. ‘Right, we’re going in, you might as well tag along.’
It was the smell more than anything. It filled up your senses, so you were surrounded by death. There was no getting away from it with a fire. Slattery knew even the most-hardened cops dreaded this kind of case. You never really saw the victim. Of course there would be photographs; smiling, sun-filled days where the person was vibrant and vigorous. But, in Slattery’s mind, most fire victims remained that – just images – with the burnt remains a half-cooked gruesome reminder of the vulnerability of beauty, youth and grace. We are all flesh and bone, he thought, and eventually we rot and when we do, it’s not pretty.
As they neared the cottage, Slattery spotted two uniforms, staking out crime-scene markers. The forensic boys had begun their work and Slattery heard them cursing the damage done by the fire first, and then the water.
‘Inspector, you didn’t take long.’ The fire chief nodded towards the two detectives. He was young, probably his second time overseeing an incident of this nature. He was shorter than most of the fire fighters, but his eyes were keen and Slattery had a feeling that he would work day and night to figure out what had happened here.
Coleman Grady held out a hand. ‘It’s Grady and,’ he nodded towards his colleagues, ‘Slattery and Locke. Well, what have we got?’
‘It’s not good, I’m afraid. Three bodies, two kids and the mother, still in their beds. We have names, Anna Crowe, her son Martin and daughter Sylvie – that’s the baby, but no official ID yet. She was an artist. The place is full of burnt canvases.’
‘Shit…’ Slattery said, his hand partly covering his nose and mouth. The gritty air cut into his lungs, this was far worse than he’d imagined, and he cast an eye in Grady’s direction. They needed more manpower; they’d need experienced officers to work this with them alongside the uniforms who could take on the grunt work. Slattery groaned, he hated new people foisted on him, almost as much as he hated fires.
‘Shall we…?’ Bennett asked, and led the way towards the front door. Inside, it was as black as Slattery had expected, lit only by the raw white of two bulbs running from the fire engine outside. There was still the sound of hissing from the dying fire, still the odd creak of wood, settling into its new form. The cottage was the traditional layout, with the addition of a lean-to kitchen and bathroom at the rear. They walked into what would have been the living room first. Off this room, at either end, were two bedrooms. They would leave those until last. In what Slattery supposed was the children’s bedroom, he could hear Professor Rafiq Ahmed gently advising the photographer which particular angles to take of the victims. The place was filled with the disintegrated vestiges of large canvases and littered throughout the sitting room were the remains of various jars of flowers, all charred now, their water dirty, only ash petals left behind. The kitchen was probably the least damaged, which was unusual in domestic fires. Still, Slattery could make out some of the book spines heaped in a sooty corner, mainly art and travel, not a cookbook in sight. Amazing what could survive.
‘We’ve checked the electrics; all seems fine there. Nothing to suggest the fire was electrical,’ Bennett said.
‘That’s unusual.’ Locke bent to examine the remains of a mobile phone from beneath the kitchen table.
‘Better not to touch anything,’ Slattery barked – his voice so loud it startled Locke.
‘This is not my first time out, sergeant.’ Iris’s voice cut across the room icily.
‘Anyway, there were no open fires in this grate recently, no chip pans, no signs of cigarette smoking – really, if there was a question…’ Bennett looked around the room, as if it might give up its secrets if he stared long enough at its blackened walls.
‘So… what can you tell us?’ Slattery asked.
‘From the damage left, I’d say there were two fires. The bedrooms are badly burnt. Here, well, it’s mainly smoke damage. Apart from the lighter stuff, it looks like it was just about to take off, when we arrived.’ He exhaled deeply. ‘My feeling is, someone set those two rooms alight… and that makes it…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘Murder,’ Rafiq Ahmed said softly from the doorway. ‘Our victims were shot, one after the other – a clean, probably silenced shot in their sleep. From what I can see, they may not even have known there was an intruder.’
‘Fuck,’ Slattery said before he stormed out the door.
The incident room was buzzing by four o’clock. Already the hum of expectation zipped through the place, the odd nervous ripple of laughter, the light banter. It all halted as soon as Grady stood before the group. They were here for one thing only – to get whoever had killed the Crowe family while they slept. Grady nodded across at June Quinn. She was putting up the last of a series of ten by eights taken out at the site. They’d managed to get a decent snap of the family too, all smiling faces. The image made Iris gasp. She knew this woman, Anna, well, she’d met her at least, somewhere, sometime. The intrusion of a ringtone edged past her memories. It was gone – but there was a sliver of familiarity about Anna Crowe, she was sure of it. Iris stepped closer to the case board. Anna had been an attractive blonde woman and her two young kids, a boy Iris would put at about seven, all gap-toothed and freckled, and a small baby, wrapped against the cold Irish summer of last year.
‘Settle dow. . .
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