Cross - Ken Bruen [38]
The fax had arrived from Keegan in London and I took it to a coffee shop, ordered a slice of Danish and double espresso, began to sift through the data.
Best of all, there were photos.
The father, Bob Mitchell, known as Mitch, was a small-time hood – some strong-arm stuff, credit-card scams, local enforcer, but nothing major. His son Sean was nineteen and there was something about the boy, I'd gotten a jolt of recognition, but couldn't pin it down. The daughter, Gail, was twenty, pleasant-looking face, nothing special.
Their mother, Nora, had been on holiday in Galway when she was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
Guess who?
Rory Willis, brother of the crucified boy. He'd been arrested, convicted and was waiting sentence when he skipped. In the old days, you got convicted, you went straight to prison, but now you had a time before sentence was handed down and usually you got time to prepare for your incarceration. It wasn't that we had such an enlightened justice system, it was pure maths – the jails were overcrowded and even convicted persons were out and around.
Rory was believed to have gone to England. Keegan had added his own thoughts: the family had been especially tight-knit and the girl had made some sort of suicide attempt after the death of her mother. The father had gone off the local radar and the whereabouts of the family was currently unknown.
My coffee came and I bit into the Danish. Very sweet but I appreciated the rush. Add the double espresso and my blood was hopping.
It had to be them, but the sheer violence of the two murders, a crucifixion and a burning, bothered me. There was a massive degree of insanity here that I couldn't fathom. Round and round it went in my head. The ferocity of their acts had me stumped, but it was them, wasn't it? And if it was?
Case solved.
My stomach heaved as the pictures, imagined, of what they'd done to that boy, the actual nails, etc. . . . Jesus.
Mainly I felt sickened to my stomach. Such violence, to crucify a boy, burn a girl in her car. I pushed the Danish aside. Even the coffee had lost all taste. The funeral, it came back to that. If I went, I was going to learn more, I was absolutely convinced.
Meanwhile I'd call Ridge, give her the material, see what she did with it.
As I said, just maybe I was finally getting a handle on this investigation lark. My instincts, free from the whispers, the dark warped whispers of cocaine, booze and nicotine, were finally kicking in.
Long time coming, oh yeah.
And more's the Irish pity it took so long.
My gut was telling me that Maria's funeral would bring the Mitchells out, certainly the girl. The more I read of Keegan's notes and faxes, the more I became certain she was the prime motivator, the dark angel. Proving for me that you throw enough grief at a person, wreak enough physical damage on a basic decent human being, you can create a monster. I was willing to bet my passage to America she'd show.
She did.
Wet doesn't describe the weather. As Bob Ward says, four kinds of rain, all bad. The real in-yer-face personal stuff, it wants to lash you, soak you to your soul, and by Jesus it does. Galwegians, they take rain as God's way of saying, 'I prefer the Brits.' I prepared for it: my Garda all-weather coat, Gore-Tex boots that I'd bought at a closing-down sale in a sports shop, an Irish fisherman's cap that I found in the flat.
It wasn't enough. Galway rain has ways of sneaking in, dribbling down the back of your neck, in your ears, and don't even mention the blinding assault on your eyes. My main concern was, would it affect the batteries in my hearing aid?
It didn't, but not from lack of trying.
A sizeable crowd for the funeral.
I spotted a girl dressed in a drab black coat, with a black beret to hide her hair, standing well back from the mourners, lest anyone chat to her. She was oblivious to the rain pelting her face.
I heard straight away that Maria's father had suffered a stroke and the mother had retreated into catatonia, and who could blame her?
This girl was bound to be feeling