The Night Caller

Book 1: DS Lucy Golden

by Martina Murphy

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

'Well plotted and page turning' - Patricia Gibney

'A tense, fast-paced, and deftly plotted thriller, which kept me guessing right to the end. I'm already looking forward to the next outing for Detective Sergeant Lucy Golden and her crew!'- Andrea Carter

Sometimes darkness stalks the most beautiful places...

On Doogort East Bog, Achill Island, a body is found. The close community is stunned to learn that it's Lisa Moran, a popular teacher who disappeared two days earlier.

DS Lucy Golden is assigned to the case. For her, it's personal. As an Achill native, she knows that sometimes great evil can lurk in plain sight. Having moved back from Dublin, she has spent the last ten years trying to prove herself to her colleagues after her husband was jailed for fraud. This is her chance to put the past behind her. Her teenage son Luc's behaviour, however, is increasingly troubling and Lucy doesn't have time for distractions.

When another body is found in an abandoned property on the bog, with links to a murder 20 years ago, the stakes are raised - but a pattern is emerging. Can Lucy put the pieces together? Or will her family crisis mean the murderer claims his next victim?

'A novel that raises the bar for crime procedurals. . . artful, measured and gripping' Shots Magazine

'A twisty mystery, a moody setting and a troubled cop on a tricky case. What more could you want?' Peterborough Evening Telegraph

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 96000

Sample

Eight months previously

But, Jesus, she’d been some feckin’ weight, the size of her. And she’d been a screamer to boot. And he had struggled, feckin’ struggled, to carry her from the bathroom, where she’d made a right mess, across the bog to the water tower. But it was done now, save for the auld fella in the house, mithering and moaning. He should finish him off too while he was at it.

But no. He’d proved himself and probably would again, so he’d leave him alone for the time being.

He wiped his hands down the legs of his jeans, bits of blood and spatter making a right mess of them. He’d have to do a great tidy-up on the place, so he would. Bleach the place.

Pearl, her name had been. But she was no pearl among women, that was for certain sure. An auld bitch, just like the other one, years ago. He’d given Pearl a chance, but her trying to work the old man against him was something he wasn’t prepared to overlook. And the old man falling for it, all over again. That had cut deep, so it had. Pearl had died roaring. All in all, it was a sad state of affairs.

And now, after all the shouting and screaming, there was silence. That pure, earthy envelope of quiet that you could only get way out here. All around him lay the bog, brown, with hints of purple in its spring coat. He could sense that the land was readying itself, getting set to bloom. In a few months the bog cotton would turn this place pure white. Marigolds and sundews would abound. But now the sky loomed grey and oppressive. He could hear the lap of the ocean past the road beyond, and meanwhile, the bog stretched away in every which direction, keeping its silence and its secrets.

The water tower where he’d put her was rust-coloured in the dipping of the evening sun. This bit of land would probably be his one day, he thought. One day soon. But he wouldn’t take it: he’d sell up, put the money into his own place. Too many memories here, too many memories in his head. Too many memories on his body.

He put his hands into his pockets, took a final look at the water tower, a final look at the fields. It had not been meant to go like this.

The next one would be better.

Closer to home.

He knew which one.

He just had to bide his time.

Ready himself.

Day One

Present

The call comes at ten in the morning. I’m in the middle of signing off on an investigation that has ended well for me and my partner, Dan. Without breaking a beat, I reach over and put the phone on speaker while, one-handed, I continue to type the final paragraph. ‘Detective Sergeant Lucy Golden.’

‘Lucy, it’s William.’

I stop typing. The DI wouldn’t call unless something was up.

‘Hi, Cig, I’m listening.’ Across the desk, Dan looks over, eyebrows raised.

‘I want you and Dan to get on down to the bog at Doogort, there’s been a body found.’

‘Doogort’s bog, Achill Island?’

‘Yes ‒ you’re local, they’ll talk to you. We think it’s that missing girl, Lisa Moran.’

I’d heard of Lisa Moran, not because she’d been a high-profile missing person but because my mother had told me. I’d got in from work three days ago and she’d met me at the door almost bursting with the news. I’d barely got my coat off by the time I’d been given all the details. I hadn’t taken much notice because Achill Island, my home place, was a nowhere land where nothing much ever happened. There had been a murder once, over twenty years ago, when I’d been stationed in Dublin, but apart from that, the island was a speck in the Atlantic Ocean, joined to the mainland by a bridge, whose sole purpose was to make it easier for tourists to come in the summer.

‘Can you give us some background, Cig?’ Dan asks, as we pull on our jackets.

‘They’ll fill you in at Achill Island garda station – they’re clearing a space for you now – but what I can gather is that Lisa Moran, twenty-five, disappeared three days ago while walking home from her job in a primary school on the island. She had no drug issues that we can find, no depression or other mental-health issues. In short, according to the regular lads who investigated the case, there was no reason for Lisa Moran to want to disappear.’

‘CCTV?’ I ask.

‘Some, but nothing from where she vanished. Get on down here. Joe Palmer and I are on the scene and I want you and Dan as part of the investigation. The super has appointed me SIO.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ I disconnect, and watch as Dan gulps the dregs of his coffee. He jokes that it’s the detective in him, the habit of never leaving anything unfinished.

‘So, Achill Island garda station, here we come,’ Dan says, as we head out of our own station in Westport, which is fifty kilometres from Achill, to pick up our standard-issue Hyundai i40. Dan has got his jacket on upside down and is trying to wrestle his sleeve free.

‘Yep.’

‘A homecoming for you,’ he jokes.

I make a face and he laughs, but in all seriousness, I seem to have spent my whole working life trying to escape the place and it keeps dragging me back.

Achill Island is approximately 150 kilometres square and is nearly 90 per cent peat bog. Scenic and wild, it has several small towns dotted around it. I was born forty-one years ago just outside Keem, near the far end of the island, proud boaster of one glorious beach and the highest cliffs in Europe, accessible only on foot. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to leave. I thought I’d drown in this all-seeing place where the views of the neighbours held such power. I had managed to escape the island to work in Dublin and I’d succeeded in becoming a detective garda, but thirteen years ago, I’d been sent back west, demoted to a regular uniform. I’ve spent the last decade clawing my way back up the ranks, proving myself over and over, and that was hard in a place where nothing really happens. I’d finally landed a promotion of sorts to Westport, but now it looked as if I was heading home once more. The only good thing to come out of the demotion from Dublin was that Luc, my son, benefited from being near my mother, and in that respect, I think sometimes it was worth it.

Half an hour later, I’m driving across the bridge from the mainland to the island. I drive through Achill Sound, taking the road that leads to the bog.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dan mutters. ‘Would you look at that fella!’

‘That fella’ is Eddie. Once a university professor, he’d had a breakdown and now he spends his days shambling along the roads of Achill, thumbing lifts, his trademark brown coat flapping out behind him.

‘He must be freezing,’ Dan says, as we zip by him. ‘What happened to his shoes?’

‘He thinks someone is poisoning him through the soles of his feet. My mother says he’s going about telling everyone to watch themselves.’

‘Is there no family?’

‘A sister. She makes no pass on him.’

‘Aw, Jesus,’ Dan says.

The sister is old-school, under the impression that if she ignores his behaviour, if she brushes it under the carpet, no one will notice and it will go away. Far better to do that than admit to any sort of mental illness in the family. The west is full of such people.

‘Give Achill garda station a ring. Ask them to contact Sylvia O’Shea – they’ll know who you mean. Tell them Eddie is barefoot near Bunacurry.’

Dan nods and spends a few moments talking to one of the regular guys on the desk about Eddie as I drive the final few miles towards where the body was found.

As we near the site, I can see a crowd gathered. ‘Damn,’ I mutter.

‘At least the media aren’t here yet,’ Dan says, just as we’re overtaken by an RTÉ truck that pulls past and comes to a stop in front of us with a bit of a skid. Before I can react with a beep of my horn, Jayne Lowe, the western reporter for RTÉ, hops down from the vehicle.

How did she get here so quickly?

‘They nearly took out the side of our car,’ I snap.

I watch Jayne beckon the TV crew to follow her with a flick of a finger. There’s no point in rolling down the window and giving her earache about her driving because she’d use the footage, probably to show how stressed we are or something.

‘Let’s see if we can find the Cig and see what Joe has for us,’ I mutter to Dan.

‘The joy of it all.’

We’re both a little scared of Joe, the deputy state pathologist. His reputation goes before him, like the heat from a furnace. It burns if you don’t take care.

I park our car right behind the RTÉ van so that they’re blocked in and Dan chuckles. We climb out and start to make our way towards the entrance to the woods.

Jayne Lowe spots us.

‘Detectives! Detectives,’ she calls. I notice that she’s cleared a little patch for herself and is now surrounded by awestruck onlookers. She looks like an exotic species compared to the locals, all flamboyant colours and bracelets. ‘Can you tell us anything about the body found? Any idea who it is?’

Dan and I don’t answer and she didn’t expect us to but the camera gets a shot of us passing under the tape, suitably grim-faced. We hear Jayne saying to camera, ‘As you can see the detectives have arrived.’

‘If I gave her the two fingers do you think she’d say, “As you can see, the detective has just given me the two fingers”?’ I copy her husky serious voice.

‘She would,’ Dan nods. Then, ‘Who the hell is that fella?’

I stare in the direction he points. A shambling doughy man, with a large face and big features is panning the crowd with a mobile phone. He’s about twenty-five, but looks older.

‘That’s Lugs,’ I say. ‘The local vlogger. And I mean “the”. Apparently, he has loads of followers. Luc gets a great laugh out of him. His vlog is called, wait for it, “My Boring as Shit Life”.’

Dan chortles then says, ‘I’ll put in a request for one of the regulars to get that footage from him.’

We watch Lugs for a second more as he talks into his phone.

‘I’d like to give him and that RTÉ wan a kick in the hole,’ Dan says.

Me too. There they are, turning the scene of a murder into entertainment. Though no doubt they’d both claim that the public have a right to know the details. And, to be fair, it’s probably the most exciting thing to happen here, ever.

‘And there’s that dorky kid from the Island News,’ I groan. ‘Here she comes. Hurry.’

A frizzy-haired, frazzled young journalist, holding her phone out in front of her and wearing a badge saying ISLAND NEWS, scurries towards me and Dan. ‘Detectives? Who is this body? Has it been identified? What age—’

‘Do not come any closer. It’s a crime scene,’ Dan snaps at her.

Her voice trails off. ‘I wasn’t going to. Can I just have a quote?’

We move away.

‘Ah, come on!’

Once we leave the fuss and activity behind, the sounds of the road and the crowd recede and the peace of the place wraps itself around us. The bog stretches on and on for miles, roads running up and through it but not many people live here. Most of it is protected land now and the surrounding areas are isolated: the land is too barren, the ground too unstable to build on affordably. It’s one of the attractions of the island, though – it even got its picture in a Bord Fáilte magazine. There’s a huge biodiversity of life and rare plants and lots of types of trees and birds apparently. Beyond the bog, further now than we can see, is the dip of the land into the ocean. Rain falls silently. The rich smell of damp earth rises as we walk and the sound of the ocean echoes thunderously in the gloom of the day.

It’s easy to spot where Lisa was found because, up ahead, tape flutters in the brisk breeze, marking the area for about thirty feet in either direction, and regular lads are stationed at the scene.

‘Dia dhuit.’ One of the lads from Achill station greets me in Irish as he logs Dan’s and my arrival in the book. Everyone entering or leaving a crime scene has to be logged in. I remember doing this job myself, back in my uniform days, and having to tell my then commissioner that no one was allowed on site. Even though he knew the rules, he was not a happy man.

We don special dust suits so we won’t contaminate anything before making our way over to the Cig, Detective Inspector, William Williams. He’s the only DI in the district so he’s usually the one to take charge when something big comes up.

He has a habit of standing completely still, as if he’s absorbing every detail of a scene, and today, in his brown jacket and trousers, hands tucked into pockets, he almost looks like part of the landscape.

‘Lucy,’ he says, his accent pure Limerick, ‘I want everything on that missing girl by the conference this evening.’ He says it without preamble, barely flicking a glance at me.

‘Sure.’

‘Jim D’arcy is the IRC.’

I’m glad about that. The incident-room coordinator has a big job: it involves opening a book on the investigation, coordinating all the reports and job sheets and ensuring that details don’t get lost in the flood of material that comes into an investigation in the first few days. Jim has a solid head on him.

I turn to stare at the blue tent that has been erected over the body. The entrance flap flutters in the breeze. In the brief glimpses I get, I can see the forensic team at work, and Joe, examining the body, being careful not to disturb anything.

Finally, Joe emerges from the tent. He must be near sixty but looks older. The stuff he’s seen over the years seems to have etched itself into the lines of his face. I hope I don’t get like that. Even though, with the scar, my face is nothing to write home about as it is.

The Cig and I allow Joe time to get his breath back before crossing towards him, Dan behind us. Overhead, the jagged sounds of a helicopter can be heard. I try not to think that this whole scene, right at this moment, is on William and, by default, me and Dan. This is our case and we have to nail someone.

As we draw level with Joe, we get a better view of the body, which is lying on its stomach, face turned to the left, right cheek buried in the wet earth, spread-eagled, fingers wide, hair fanned out across the back. Barefoot.

‘It’s that missing girl,’ Joe says, as he removes his gloves. ‘The one you sent me the picture of, William.’

‘Are you sure it’s her?’ William asks. ‘She appears to be wearing a tracksuit.’

Joe shoots him a look of such disdain that even I wither. ‘Unless two people with the same face have gone missing at the same time.’

‘According to what I’ve been told by the regular lads, she was wearing a black mid-length skirt with a white blouse and black jacket and shoes when she went missing,’ William says firmly.

‘Maybe she didn’t go missing on the day they thought,’ Joe says.

‘She failed to return home from work last Friday,’ William insists, ‘so it’s a fair bet that—’

‘Do you want to hear what I have to say or stand here arguing about fashion?’

‘He wasn’t—’ Dan attempts to stick up for William.

‘Go ahead,’ William cuts him off.

Joe aims his comments at me, blanking the two men completely. ‘You’ll appreciate that I have to get her back to the mortuary first for a post-mortem. I’ll let you know when so you can send someone over.’ Then to William, ‘Try to get a member who won’t faint this time.’

Beside me, William stiffens. Apparently, the last murder he’d handled, a couple of years back, a new recruit had been sent to observe the post-mortem and ended up in hospital after cracking his head on the tiles on the mortuary floor.

Joe continues, ‘You’ll get a detailed report, but from what I can see here she’s been dead since last night because of the level of rigor mortis. This is not the kill site. She died elsewhere, I’m pretty certain of that, as there is very little blood on site. From her injuries, there should be. She was badly beaten before death. Two of her fingers appear to be broken as is her left cheekbone and eye socket. She has a lot of ante-mortem facial bruising.’ He shrugs. ‘Because she’s fully clothed, there isn’t a lot else I can tell you right now. Forensics took some prints from the small areas of skin that are exposed. I’ll give you a call sometime tomorrow with anything we get. I’ll send through a preliminary report for the conference.’ And with that he stalks off.

‘Two people with the same face,’ Dan mimics him. ‘He’s an awful arsehole, isn’t he?’

‘He’s all right,’ William says. ‘Lucy, will you go in and have a look? I’d like your impressions. Dan, talk to the auld fella who found her. Find out what he knows. After that, yez can head out to talk to the mother – she’s the one reported her missing. The liaison officer has been in contact with her already. It’s Phil.’

‘No bother. I know Phil. I have her number,’ I say, approaching the tent and pushing back the flap. It covers a small patch of bog, brown and damp and cold, a place dying off but one that will bloom in spring. But Lisa, who has lain here for the last few hours, won’t ever do anything ever again. The thing about a murder is that it’s violent and cruel, yet the dead body and the space you find it in always have an emptiness about them, a stillness. I take a second before looking at Lisa more closely. She lies on her stomach, cheap grey tracksuit almost blending into the land. The smell of death is all around and the loneliness of her passing is something I can almost feel. What happened to you? I wonder, as I hunker down to look at her face. Outside, I can hear the bustle of Forensics and the low mumble of voices, but in here, it’s like another world. Whoever put her here must have walked. He must have walked from somewhere because a jeep or a car on the bog would have been noticed. There’d be tyre tracks.

I take a final look at Lisa and I mentally promise her that we’ll do our very best to get justice.

Emerging, I say to the Cig, ‘Definitely not the kill site. I think we need to extend the cordon to the road at least. Whoever put her here walked with her.’

‘Yes, I agree. No tyre tracks and the ground is soft. Anything else?’

‘The way she was positioned, it looks deliberate. It’s not as if she was hit from behind and fell over.’

‘Good.’ He nods. ‘I thought the same. Talk to as many witnesses as you can today, build up a picture of her. I know when she went missing, the regulars did the usual door-to-door and handed out leaflets, but we’ll have to redo. I’m just going to check with the garda Tech Bureau, tell them exactly what we want them to do and why. I’ll see ye back at the station.’

I watch him walk off. William has been my senior investigating officer a number of times now, though we’ve never done a murder together. He’s tough and thorough, just what you need leading an investigation. He doesn’t have much of a personality, though, and the joke in the force is that he lost it in a robbery.

Not much of a joke but it’s hard to joke about William.

‘Where’s Dan?’ I ask a regular guard.

‘Over there,’ she replies, pointing to where Dan is introducing himself to an elderly man who is sitting on one of the stone walls that run like snakes through the bog. A black and white collie-type dog is dancing about his feet.

I know Milo McGrath, the man with the dog. He’s friendly with my mother, though I can say that about everyone. She and Milo are in the same hot yoga class or something. Or maybe his wife and my mother are, I’m not quite sure.

Milo is an enthusiastic member of the Achill Island community: he’s on the Tidy Towns Committee, the Street Painting Committee, and he manages the local St Patrick’s Day parade. I know all this because he regularly appears in the Island News.

His eyes brighten a little as he recognises me.

He greets me in Irish. Achill is a Gaeltacht area, which means that Irish is the spoken language of the people. A tiny pocket of Ireland, holding fast to its ancient tongue, I love the place for it. We exchange a few words before switching back to English for Dan’s benefit.

‘It’s great to have a friendly face to talk to. It’s been a terrible shock, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Take your time,’ I say, hunkering down beside him, getting out my notebook. ‘Just tell us what you remember.’

‘It’s marvellous to see you,’ he goes on, determined to prolong the conversation. ‘I knew you were working out of Westport and that you’re back living here with your mother, but I’ve never seen you about?’ The question hangs.

‘Be bad luck if you did.’ I smile and he laughs a bit.

‘I do remember you from the telly, though,’ he says then, ‘that time on Crimecall, when you were telling the nation to lock their doors and such.’

Beside me, Dan suppresses a grin.

‘That’s right.’ Most embarrassing moment of my life. It had been brutal. The lads in the station had pissed themselves laughing.

‘And now, God bless us’ – oh yeah, he’s also on the church committee – ‘you have this to deal with. That poor girl, just lying there, I got a terrible fright. I thought it was one of those shop dummies but sure …’ he stops and shakes his head ‘… the smell. That told me it was real.’

‘It must have been a shock.’ Dan slides in to sit beside him. The dog nuzzles Dan. He pats its head and calls it a ‘good girl’. Milo’s face brightens at the gesture. Dog people like people to like their dogs. It always works on witnesses.

‘I keep seeing her when I close my eyes,’ Milo says, after a moment.

Dan gives him a second before asking gently, ‘Can you talk us through everything that you remember?’

‘I’ve already done it but sure I can do it again.’ Milo makes himself a little more comfortable on the wall. He orders the dog, ‘Lie down,’ but she continues to jump about. Milo ignores her.

‘I always take herself for a walk along here, every morning and evening. You could set your watches by us. Eight o’clock we set off from Bunacurry and then, sure, we turn up the bog road and then we just roam around the bog paths for a bit until half past ten. It gives the wife time to herself in the morning. She likes that. Doesn’t like me getting under her feet. Anyway, today it was the same as usual. It was quiet enough – I only saw one or two people, the usual people really. It can be busier but, sure, it’s winter and getting fierce cold so not so many people are about now. Anyway, I let herself off the lead once we got to the bog, like I know it’s illegal,’ he darts a look at us and we say nothing, ‘but, sure, everyone does it and she’s a good dog, listens to me. Lie down!’ The dog stares back, immobile, and Milo rolls his eyes.

‘She mostly listens,’ he clarifies. ‘Anyway, Steph, that’s her name, she was running along and next minute she veers off the path and she never does that because she knows it’s dangerous but she started up a terrible yapping. Now she’s never done that before either and I thought she was in trouble, had fallen into a bog hole or something, so I ran to her – well, I walked really because I didn’t want to sink into anything myself, you know – and when I got to where Steph was, I saw that poor girl.’ He blesses himself.

‘So, you let your dog off yesterday?’ I ask.

‘It’s not a big crime, is it?’ He looks worried. ‘She’s a good dog and—’

‘It’s not a crime,’ I say with a smile. ‘But just to clarify, you let her off yesterday too?’

‘I did. Just for a few minutes, like.’

‘And when you came to this place yesterday?’

‘She ran right past, no barking.’ A pause. ‘I do vary the route I take each day up here,’ he continues, a little apologetically, ‘but I would swear that girl was not there yesterday. Steph would have smelt it. If she’d been there yesterday, the dog would have known.’

‘What time did you walk yesterday?’ Dan asks.

‘Same time. I got here about nine.’

‘And on the walk back?’

‘I would have passed here or near here about a quarter to ten or so.’

So, between nine forty-five yesterday and nine this morning that body was dumped. I jot it down. Talking to more witnesses will narrow that window. As will the estimated time of death.

‘Who do you normally see on the walk?’ I ask. ‘Would you know their names?’

‘The same people mostly. Some I know to nod a hello to and some I don’t.’

‘Who did you see yesterday?’ Dan asks.

Milo screws up his eyes and squints into the winter sun. His dog does the same. ‘Mrs Cassidy, she always walks through here in the morning. She’s about ninety and as fit as a fiddle. Do you know Mrs Cassidy, Lucy? Your mother sings in the choir with her.’

‘I do,’ I say. Everyone on Achill knows Mrs Cassidy. ‘Anyone else, Milo?’

‘A couple of joggers, I’d know them to see. And a tall fellow – he’s like Forrest Gump, always running up and down. He wears T-shirts with slogans on them. The one yesterday morning said, “Pain is …”’ he scratches his chin, thinking. ‘What was it now, it was ridiculous. Oh, yes, “Pain is your body’s way of growing stronger.” Did you ever hear such shite? Anyway, he’s a nice enough chap, always nods a hello or whatever. Then there’s another fellow that was out running yesterday. He was with a girl – both of them had headphones in and were going fast enough. And then there was another man with his dog. Now I didn’t know him and, to be honest, he wasn’t that friendly. Normally you’d pat someone else’s dog and, sure, I patted his and he showed no interest at all in Steph.’ Milo sounds wounded. ‘I think that was about it for yesterday. And as for today, sure I was only out awhile when Steph found the girl so I didn’t see anyone.’

It’s most likely that Lisa’s. . .