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FIFTEEN

GARETH

‘So, it’s my first day on the beat, I’m helping out as a community support officer – you know, the usual – when I see a man, drunk like a fish, passed out in a wheelie bin,’ I said, trying not to notice the vacant expressions barely looking in my direction.

‘And I asked him where he lived and if I could walk him home and the guy was absolutely passed out, right? So, I tried to get him to his feet. I’d grab him, pin him against the wall, but then he’d slide right back down onto the ground again.

So, the officer I was with, Linda I think her name was, we both hoisted him up and dragged him home, one arm each over our shoulders.

He would mumble and groan instructions every so often about where his house was.

It was this lovely cottage. We thought we’d just leave him there, let him walk in, but when we tried to unhoist him from our shoulders he collapsed right back down again.

So, we literally dragged him to the door, rang the doorbell.

Both of us wondering, how can you get so pissed that you can’t even walk?

But then his wife opens the door, and she says, “Well, where’s his wheelchair? ”’

I waited for anyone to laugh but they just continued to glare at me, dumbfounded.

Normally, that story absolutely killed whenever I told it.

I confess it wasn’t actually true; it was adapted from a joke I had heard somewhere, but it made for a good icebreaker when people asked if I had any funny police stories.

I suppose they were only nine. But not even any of the other officers in the classroom laughed; their looks, too, were treacherously vacant.

‘Tough crowd,’ I heard one of the others say at the back of the classroom.

Lord above. I hated Schools Outreach Day.

‘Okay, well, thank you so much for that interesting story, Detective Donoghue. Class 4B, let’s give him a big round of applause,’ the teacher said, laden with fake zest.

I wandered ruefully to the back of the classroom as the pupils gave me very scattered and broken applause.

‘Nice job,’ Cis whispered patronisingly, as we both leaned against an iridescent wall display of how photosynthesis happens.

‘Ha, good one!’ I retorted sarcastically in a hushed tone as we half-watched one of the other officers from the station invite a child up to put handcuffs on a dummy.

‘So…’ she muttered. ‘I don’t think you answered my question.’

Urgh, I had forgotten she had asked me that on the way here. How the hell was I supposed to answer that?

‘Yes, if it came to it, yes, I would, of course,’ I said as quietly as I could, while trying to hide my irritation with her.

I didn’t think there was the slightest possibility of it ever seeming likely that Fran had killed Mr O’Neill; that the loving wife I had been with for a quarter of my life had murdered this old man in cold blood.

‘You sure? You know spousal bias is a thing, right?’ Cis responded.

‘If I truly believed that my wife killed Mr O’Neill, I’d bring her in myself, I promise you,’ I said to Cis quietly yet sternly, and I believed what I said.

I wouldn’t make a promise I couldn’t keep.

But Cis had been asking me this kind of stuff all week since Fran had given her statement, and all it had achieved was to make me feel even more distant from her, like I was betraying her by even being involved in the case. ‘So, can we just…drop it now, please?’

I didn’t really want to discuss this when I still hadn’t found a meaningful way to exonerate Fran from the investigation.

My research into O’Neill and his Heart of Hope foundation had continued to be frustratingly unfruitful.

But those notes on her phone…something about them was still bothering me.

I told myself it was nothing, but I knew I’d have to ask her about them when the investigation wrapped up.

‘Well, department policy means it couldn’t be you arresting her, but it’s still good to know.’

One of the teaching assistants spun rapidly around in her chair and hushed us. We both lowered our volume again, feeling as if we had regressed a few years, and obediently cowered our heads in shame.

‘Do you believe I’d arrest my wife?’ I asked after a minute or so had passed, and the assistant had gone to help some kid yank a pen he had got stuck up his nose.

‘Gareth, do you remember that time you turned over a Twix from a witness when you thought it could be considered bribery? I have no doubts that you, sir, would turn over your own wife in an instant,’ Cis said.

‘If Fran did kill O’Neill, she covered her steps well.

But there won’t be any kind of footage or evidence that would incriminate her. This is the problem.’

‘Okay. Can you just…not?’ I said to Cis while folding my arms, starting to feel she was pushing my patience a little too far. ‘I don’t particularly want to talk about this. The idea of my wife being a murder suspect doesn’t fill me with joy.’

‘I get it, sorry, that’s on me, darling,’ Cis admitted as she placed what was meant to be a comforting hand on my shoulder. Both of our eyes snapped to watch the ‘drugs are bad’ part of the presentation that Steve took over to lead.

‘Well, this is painfully ironic,’ Cis murmured as Steve drastically dumbed down the UK’s war on drugs for primary school kids.

Didn’t quite know what Cis meant by that, but I was afraid to talk any more or face the wrath of the teaching assistant.

Part of me wanted to shout out: ‘Don’t listen, kids, they say cocaine only makes you party harder!

’ but I decided that potentially being suspended probably wasn’t worth the embarrassment it would cause Steve.

‘So, Angus? Have you brought him in?’ I asked, breaking the silence that had steadily built up between Cis and I as we’d left the classroom and walked through the school corridor after Steve’s sermon had come to a close.

‘Well, we went to him to talk, he refused to leave his house, so we set up there to ask him some questions. God damn, the place was piled high with crap and reeked to high heaven. Have you been round there recently?’

‘No…no, I’ve never been,’ I said.

‘You’ve never been round to Fran’s brother’s house?’ Cis asked, not even trying to mask her surprise.

‘I’ve met him two, maybe three times, and he’s said about that many words to me, too,’ I explained, realising it would seem a bit crazy to someone who didn’t know about Angus.

‘The guy is a recluse, he barely comes out of his house and doesn’t seem to ever let anyone in.

Normally Fran goes alone, every few weeks.

’ I paused, realising there were several nuances and layers to Angus.

‘You do know he’s not Fran’s biological brother, right? ’

‘Yeah, the records said. So, what actually is the relationship there?’

‘Fran never really speaks about it much. Well, she never really speaks about her childhood at all. But from the small breadcrumbs that she’s mentioned, she and Angus grew up together in the same children’s home.’

There was another brief, uncomfortable pause between us as we walked through the school corridor that was littered with shoddy art exhibits from the children.

We signed out at the desk and returned our visitor passes.

I felt like Cis bringing this up meant she had something up her sleeve.

I was a pawn in some part of a plan I couldn’t quite fathom yet.

Somehow, she needed me to connect the dots.

Some people at training had called her ‘The Puppet Master’ after she used to play the pretend-witnesses off each other during questioning, causing them to accidentally incriminate one another in the process.

I liked Cis, but Fran had always said something about her just rubbed the wrong way.

‘Machiavellian’ or something was the word she often used.

I always dismissed Fran when she said that or when her face turned into a scowl whenever I mentioned Cis’s name.

But now, I was starting to wonder if my wife had more intuition than I realised.

If your friend’s wife was a suspect in a murder case, would you really quiz him about it so nonchalantly?

‘This whole case, Gareth, it’s all completely baffling to me. I honestly believe you when you say you don’t think Fran did it,’ Cis said as we strolled back to the car.

Now, I knew that was an out-and-out lie.

‘What do you want, Cis? Just…’ I said in a half scoff, half groan, stopping in my tracks in the middle of the car park. ‘Just get on with it, please.’

‘Look, I didn’t want to get into this here,’ she said with a murmur, ‘but I need your help.’

Ah, Puppet Master, we meet again.

‘If Vivian finds out I’m letting you do this, so help me God,’ Cis said as we walked through the Criminal Investigation Department.

‘God help us all,’ I corrected as I marched into Cis’s office and saw the reams and reams of paper strewn and pinned all across the small three-by-three-metre room. There was a clear lack of any positive feng shui in here. How did she manage to get anything done in this rubbish tip?

‘And this is everything from O’Neill’s attic, too, right?’ I said, gesturing to one of the many clutters of case files.

‘Correct,’ she affirmed. ‘Other than the stuff the director’s office took.’

That didn’t surprise me; there was something else going on here with O’Neill that the head honchos at the police were clearly concerned about.

‘But let me be perfectly clear, Cis, the only reason I’m helping you with this is to prove Fran didn’t do it. Someone killed O’Neill, but I’d bet my career that it wasn’t her.’