She and i, p.3
She and I, page 3
The rest of the squad is undoubtedly more alert than I am. Presumably they didn’t stay up until six in the morning watching repeats of Cheers, so fair enough. There is chatter among some of them as they pour themselves coffee from the pot at the back of the room, and Dunwoody and Smith seem engaged in a deep, serious discussion over by the window. I count: there are ten of us in total. More than usual.
‘Go on then,’ I sigh, still staring at Peter Denny’s photograph. ‘What have you got, Browne?’
‘Well, Sir. We’ve been running background checks on all the people who were at the party, you get me? It took a while, there were so many of them and they aren’t exactly the cleanest bunch I’ve come across …’ He shuffles his papers and brings one to the surface. ‘If there are one hundred crimes committed in Vetobridge every year, I’d say this group is responsible for about seventy of them.’
Jess whistles, long and slow. When he doesn’t continue, she adds, ‘Browne, what are you waiting for? The Queen’s Speech was last week.’
Browne clears his throat. ‘Carrie Riley got a fine last year for possession of a Class C. Brian Reed was charged with possession with intent to sell and he actually did six months for it back in 2015. Kyle Devlin spent a night in a cell in 2016 for being drunk and disorderly. According to the file, he tried to punch a police officer but didn’t do any damage. He was so off his face, I think.’
‘OK,’ I say, making a few scratchy notes on the whiteboard. ‘Thanks, Browne. All of that helps … I don’t know if I’d call it great news, though.’
‘Unless the police officer he punched was you?’ Jess asks conversationally.
Browne scowls at her and speaks more loudly. ‘I wasn’t actually finished, Sir. It’s Joshua Mackley we want to be looking into. He’s the brother of Peter Denny’s girlfriend and a good friend of Denny’s too, apparently. Legal owner of the house in Wits End. He’s our boy all right. Look at this.’ He holds up a page from his pile and turns it around so that it faces us. Dunwoody and Smith have stopped their chat and are squinting at the page.
‘Joshua Mackley,’ says Browne. ‘Has a conviction for possession of a Class B. He also got his driving licence taken off him at the start of 2018 – DUI. He was eleven times over the limit, apparently. And what’s more …’ Browne pauses for what I know must be an attempt at dramatic effect.
‘What?’ Jess demands, not in the mood for his games.
‘He committed an assault in July 2018, but he was never convicted. Victim suffered broken ribs, a lot of bruising, damage to his windpipe, apparently. There’s a picture – look.’
Browne holds up a second page. It is an A4 coloured photograph of what looks like a bloodied Christmas ham.
‘He must be a right thug,’ Jess says. ‘Joshua Mackley did this with his bare hands?’
‘Yup,’ says Browne, clearly delighted with himself. His huge, delighted smile makes for an interesting contrast with the swollen, puffy face in the photograph. Leaning closer, I can make out where an eye might be, above a huge swelling that must once have been the man’s cheekbone. The man’s lip has puffed up and, if I squint, I can see some bruising already on his neck.
‘Who is the unfortunate soul who decided to piss off Mackley?’ I ask.
‘You don’t recognise him, Sir?’ Browne asks. ‘Do you, Sergeant Curran? I believe you saw him only just this morning in a similarly bloody state …’
Jess stands and rips the picture from Browne, her face incredulous. ‘It’s never …’ Her voice is hoarse. ‘It is! It’s Peter Fucking Denny.’
‘Right in one.’
I take the page from Jess and stare at it. Then I reach over and stick it on the board, next to the photograph of Denny with the tankard. Now that they are next to each other, it is clear that it is him. The hairline is the same, the one eye that can be seen in both is unmistakably the same deep brown.
‘How the hell was Mackley never convicted,’ I ask, ‘if they had this to go on?’
‘Mackley and Denny both agreed it had been a misunderstanding,’ says Browne. ‘It happened outside a pub on the 12th of July … Police everywhere, obviously, so they separated them. They both said it was just a drunken brawl over nothing. Denny wouldn’t give a statement and wouldn’t hear of Mackley taking the flack. Said he’d provoked him. Apparently, both of them were off their faces, so officers just put them in the cells overnight to dry up and gave them a slap on the wrist.’
‘Was it a sectarian attack, do you think?’ asks another officer.
‘Could have been,’ answers Browne. ‘That’s the first thing I thought of. The Mackleys are Catholics, though I’m not sure if they’re practising, and Denny’s family regularly attend services at the Church of Ireland in Vetobridge.’
I snap my head up to look at Raymond Smith, my first original thought of the morning finally coming to me. ‘Smith, you live near Wits End in Vetobridge?’
Smith, the youngest and keenest of the team, nods quickly. ‘I was one of the first to respond, Sir. Wits End is five minutes from me. I drove Keeley Mackley here earlier.’
‘Know anything about the family?’
He seems to falter. ‘No, Sir. Sorry.’
‘What about Denny’s family?’ I ask, looking back at the photograph of Peter Denny’s beaten face.
‘FLO is with them now,’ says Jess. ‘He lived with his mum, dad and younger sister just outside Droless. One of them will come in and identify him later.’
‘And when are we looking at a post-mortem?’
‘One o’clock tomorrow,’ answers Jess. ‘Jaxon says.’
‘Right.’
I hesitate, drumming my fingers on the whiteboard.
‘OK … Our priority is to find Joshua Mackley and talk to him, see what he knows. I know it’s too early to say, but it looks like he’s our most likely suspect. Browne and Colson, take as many uniforms as you need and get me Mackley. Bars, bookies, check the beach. There aren’t many buses that run on New Year’s Day so hopefully he’ll be remembered if he tried to get on a bus. He might be with the girlfriend – Curran, do we have a picture of the girlfriend and of Mackley?’
‘I can get one copied,’ she says immediately. She moves from her seat to the side of the room where she picks up a thick blue binder. ‘I lifted an entire photo album from the Mackleys’ this morning when I called in.’
Jess comes towards me, not looking where she is going, her feet used to the inconsistencies in the carpet, her fingers flipping through photos.
‘So this.’ She twists the photograph album around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees so I can see it properly. ‘Is Joshua Mackley. Pretty recent photo, I’d say, he is only twenty-five.’
I take the album from her and squint at it, wishing I had remembered to bring my glasses from the bedside table before I left this morning. In the photograph is a skinny man, pale, who looks much younger than twenty-five. He sits on a bar stool, the picture on his T-shirt obscured by a microphone stand and a huge electric guitar. The boy’s eyes are closed, but the profile is clear and it is a good image. A professional shoot, I think.
‘If you flip ahead …’ Jess leans over to do just this. ‘That’s Keeley Mackley, the girlfriend – the blonde one. And that’s Jude Jameson with the straight hair. The pictures are labelled on the back, that’s how we were able to identify them all so quickly. The album is mostly photos of them as kids but these ones seem recent.’
I flick through the album and stop at a photograph of two smiling little girls, arms hooked around one another’s necks, standing on top of a boulder at the Vetobridge rock pools. They are grinning from ear to ear. It is almost identical in position and pose to the photograph on my desk of me and Rebecca.
‘That’s Naomi Ross there,’ Jess continues, pointing to another photograph. ‘They must have a band as there are a lot of pictures of them performing.’
‘What about the knife?’ I ask.
Jess and Dunwoody both try to speak at once and glare at one another.
‘Dunwoody,’ I say, pointing at him.
‘It’s with the lab,’ he says. ‘We’ll hopefully have results by the end of today or the start of tomorrow. Jaxon says it definitely looks like our murder weapon and he can confirm that at the PM tomorrow.’
‘Great. You stick on that, keep plaguing everyone at the lab until they’re sick looking at you. We want to know who has handled that knife. OK, CCTV?’
Edie Edgecomb speaks from her place next to Jess. ‘I’m on that, Sir.’ Her thick, Southern Irish accent contrasts with her pretty, laughter-lined face – so much so that I find myself blinking in surprise every time she speaks. ‘The uniforms that first attended the scene say the Mackleys’ house faces a main road, across which is a Spar garage – I’ve asked for the tapes. A uniform is en route to pick them up now.’
‘Excellent.’
‘What do you want to do about the two girls downstairs?’ Smith asks. ‘They’re waiting to give statements.’
‘Jude has to have her mum with her,’ Jess says. ‘She’s only seventeen. Shall we take her, boss?’
I nod. ‘We’ll take Jude. Edgecomb and Clarke, do you want to take Keeley Mackley?’
The two women make sounds of agreement and stand in unison.
‘Get as detailed a statement as you can,’ I say. ‘Find out everything you can about this party, what happened, how exactly they found Peter Denny this morning. See what their relationship was like, if they had many arguments … see how Joshua Mackley felt about Denny.’
‘Of course, Sir,’ says Edgecomb.
‘I’ll go and get us a room,’ Jess says to me.
‘First things first,’ I interrupt. ‘Coffee.’
We go to my office, where I keep a jar of instant coffee that tastes marginally better than the incident room mud. As we stand side by side, waiting for the kettle to boil, I rub a hand across my face. My forehead is sweating and my head aches. The half dozen paracetamol I swallowed this morning are beginning to wear off – maybe it was the dozen or so tins of Guinness last night.
‘First case in Vetobridge in a while, eh, Sir?’
‘Mm,’ I murmur in acknowledgement.
I can’t remember the last time I visited Vetobridge. My daughter, Rebecca, used to love to go there at the weekends, and I know the last time I visited was with her.
Quite a while ago, then.
The town consists of a single main street with cafés and newsagents and pound shops all the way along one side, and a promenade overlooking the stony beach on the other. The streets are cobbled, meaning everyone drives slowly, and while the average age of the residents seems to be about sixty-five, people aren’t expected to live past seventy – about ten years less than the average. The sea air does not do them any good. One or two cops take a drive through the main street on a Saturday night, just to reassure the locals that we’re keeping an eye, but I can’t remember the last case I had there.
Despite the cruel caws of the seagulls that follow you wherever you go, I have always thought Vetobridge is pretty and the cafés quite quaint.
Even if I can no longer bear to drive past the beach or the rock pools without thinking of her.
‘Do you want to go and visit the crime scene after our interview?’ Jess’s question snaps me out of my daydream, something involving Rebecca and an ice cream.
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘We’ll sort all that out later.’ I rub my hands together in a mixture of an attempt at excitement and a genuine need for warmth. ‘Right, what’s the betting then?’
‘Too early to say,’ Jess says promptly.
‘Oh, come on. You’re no fun any more.’
‘OK … a rival drug dealer.’
‘Damn. I was going to say that.’ I drum my fingers on the side of the mug Jess has just filled for me. ‘OK, I’ll go with Joshua Mackley, then. Sometimes it is the most obvious.’
‘How much?’
‘Dinner and a pint when this is over?’
‘Done. Are there any decent pubs near your new place?’
She has accepted my recent move to Loughbricksea and the implied separation from my wife of twenty-five years without comment. That’s the thing I like most about Jess: she is uncomplicated, unflappable and – mercifully – completely uninterested in my personal life.
‘None at all,’ I say enthusiastically. ‘But I wouldn’t make you come all the way to Loughbricksea and pay for dinner anyway.’
She pretends to guffaw as we make our way to the lifts.
Jude
1st January 2020, afternoon
Mum is my appropriate adult.
It doesn’t feel very appropriate to be sitting next to her in a police interview room.
It isn’t like the interview rooms I’ve seen on TV, and I take this as a sign that they aren’t taking me seriously as a suspect. The wall that separates us from the corridor is entirely made of glass, with wooden blinds running across horizontally, like in someone’s conservatory. The blinds have been pulled shut and we’re sitting with our backs to them, but I’ve definitely heard some commotions outside: footsteps, fiercely whispered conversations, the swish of papers dropping to the floor.
There is a whiteboard to my left. I have an image of being asked to draw the other party guests in jumbo marker.
I wonder when I last ate or slept. I had the other half of Keeley’s Toffee Crisp when we were getting ready yesterday, but I can’t remember the last substantial thing before that. I haven’t slept since … well, a lot longer.
I decide this has been the longest day of my life.
Mum has finally stopped asking questions. She has changed into what Keeley calls her ‘church outfit’, even though Mum hasn’t been to church in nearly ten years: sensible navy trousers with a perfectly ironed seam, a flowery blouse, small heels and a navy jacket. I wonder how many people will mistake her for my solicitor. She sighs dramatically every few minutes and flicks her fingernails off her styrofoam cup of tea. Now that the initial shock has worn off and she has established that I’m not hurt in any way, she just wants to go home. Wants the others to deal with the police so she can take her chore-doing, always-smiling daughter home. All of this mix-up, this little murder, it really doesn’t concern her and her family.
‘Just tell them the truth,’ she says again. ‘When he comes back in, just tell them exactly what you know and what happened, and with any luck we’ll be home for three o’clock.’
I ignore her.
We are waiting for Detective Inspector Chris Rice to return. I can’t help thinking that he must be at the other side of some one-way glass, or looking at a video feed, watching how we interact and writing up a few preliminary notes. At least, I hope this is what he is doing. I hope he isn’t talking to Keeley or, Jesus Christ, beating a confession out of her. That happens in some police stations, apparently. Keeley doesn’t need an appropriate adult; she is all alone. My heart starts to race and I have almost stood up to bang on the wall when the door flies open and Rice enters.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, ladies!’ he says in his booming voice. A Belfast accent but an Oldry suit. A show at a determinedly Oldry policeman. Local. Approachable. Just like you. ‘I’m all yours now. Do you want more tea? Sergeant Curran, go and get them some more tea, will you? And bring the digestives off my desk.’
The woman who had started to follow him into the room turns on her heel and goes straight back out.
Rice is old, but I don’t know if he’s closer to sixty or seventy. He has a tuft of hair clinging determinedly to his skull above each ear, but apart from that he is bald. He has wrinkles and a pockmarked nose but, despite these physical shortcomings, he is smiley and looks kind. Like a close friend’s old grandfather who likes to keep up with his younger relatives.
‘She’ll only be a min,’ Rice informs me. ‘We can have a wee chat while she’s gone. So, Jude – is it OK if I call you Jude?’
I nod.
‘Jude. You know why you’re here. You know why your mum is here. You’re not under arrest or anything mad like that –’ Rice rolls his eyes as if this is insane. ‘Just need to get some info from you, make our lives a wee bit easier. You can have a solicitor present if you’d prefer?’
He looks at me. I look at Mum. She looks at him.
‘Is that … Well, I really don’t think we’ll need one,’ Mum gushes, all wrapped up in a little high-pitched bark of a laugh. ‘This has all been a big misunderstanding, Jude wouldn’t –’
‘Grand!’ Rice rubs his hands together excitedly.
The sergeant returns with a triangle of cups pressed between her hands and half a packet of chocolate digestives under her arm. The whole thing has taken her under a minute, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the tea and biscuits were waiting outside the door – is this a test? Is Rice supposed to lull us into a false sense of security before she arrives and starts screaming at us? She sets a cup down in front of everyone except herself.
‘Detective Inspector Chris Rice, interviewing Jude Jameson as a witness in the murder of Peter Denny. 1st January 2020 at 1334 hours. Also present are Detective Sergeant Jessica Curran and Linda Jameson acting as appropriate adult. For the purposes of the tape, Miss Jameson has refused legal counsel.’
Rice has pressed a button on a tape recorder and garbled all of this before the sergeant sits down. He reaches to pull the biscuits from under her arm, crinkles the packaging, then offers us all one in turn. We all shake our heads. He shrugs and takes three, cramming the first into his mouth whole.
‘So.’ He rubs crumbs from his fingers on to the desk and sweeps them off. ‘Jude. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your relationship with the Mackleys? Something nice and simple to start us off … I gather you’re close?’
Mum snorts beside me. We all turn to look at her.
Mum looks at the detectives and seems to shimmy around, as if blocking me out of the conversation. ‘It’s just …’ Her voice is low, like she is explaining to my PE teacher why I can’t go swimming. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an understatement, Detective.’
