A deadly affair detectiv.., p.1
A Deadly Affair (Detective Jack Brody Book 3), page 1
A DEADLY AFFAIR
A DETECTIVE JACK BRODY NOVEL
J.M. O’ROURKE
Published by Inkubator Books
www.inkubatorbooks.com
Copyright © 2023 by J.M. O’Rourke
J.M. O’Rourke has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83756-129-2
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-83756-130-8
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83756-131-5
A DEADLY AFFAIR is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
CONTENTS
Inkubator Books
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
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PROLOGUE
Marie Kennedy opened her eyes and looked around the darkened room, the paint peeling from its walls and smelling of mould. For a moment she forgot where she was, and then it all came back to her. This had all been a mistake, a BIG mistake. Please, she thought to herself, just let me get back to my warm bed in Dublin. Why the hell did I agree to come here?
Her heavy eyes slid to the edges of their sockets, taking in her watch and the torch, still switched on, lying atop the bedside locker where she’d left them.
She noted the time and blinked… what?
She reached for the timepiece and brought it close to her face, squinting.
And blinked again.
This couldn’t be right… could it?
The watch told her it was one o’clock in the morning, which meant that three hours had passed.
Three hours!
Three hours since he’d said it’d take him only a few minutes to go and work out whether or not he could fix the bloody boiler… oh, and the fuse board too, because the electricity wasn’t working either in this godforsaken place. What a shithole it had turned out to be. Nothing worked. Relax, he’d told her, there was no problem, he’d go and sort it out. Like Donagh Hughes was a plumber now too? As well as an electrician? But the man’s unfathomable self-belief and boundless confidence was, she had to admit, a turn-on in a way. The man really believed he could do anything. It was why he was so successful, she supposed. It was why she had decided to start an affair with him. It was why she was lying here waiting for him.
She sat bolt upright and turned her head to take in the other half of the bed. He might have slipped in, and maybe she hadn’t noticed. But no. His side of the bed was completely undisturbed. So where the hell was he? She felt a sensation like cold water trickling down the back of her neck.
The last time she remembered feeling that sensation was when she had gone to interview Walter Kelly as a cub reporter. The man who’d hacked his parents to death had been released on licence and was living quietly somewhere in the wilds of west county Galway. She had driven all the way from Dublin on spec, hoping to find him and get him to agree to an interview. She’d spent the entire day driving around as she chased up yet another lead, and as darkness began to fall, her car got a puncture. She’d ended up walking for an hour in the driving rain. By the time she’d finally arrived at the house where she thought he lived, a full-blown storm was raging. She banged on the door, soaked to the skin, forgetting who it was that might be living here, thinking only that she wanted to find somewhere dry and out of the storm. When the hall light flickered on, she remembered who it was… and stopped banging. But too late. She heard the door latch slide back, and with it the details of the case came flooding back. Of how Walter Kelly had stabbed his dear mummy and his dear daddy over eighty-six times – each. Of how he had then taken a chainsaw to their bodies and cut them up, again and again, until they were literally tiny pieces.
And there she was, knocking on this crazed killer’s door. What if he wanted to do the same to her? Well, what then? He hadn’t much to lose? Not now, now that he was an old man. And, she imagined, from first appearances of this place, prison would be considered the lap of luxury in comparison to this hovel. No, there’d be no loss on him if he were to go back inside. And arriving at his door the way she had, if this was indeed where he lived, maybe she’d given him the perfect opportunity.
Fast-forward to the present day, she thought of all this now, lying here in bed in this hovel, waiting for Donagh to come back. It was the same feeling.
As it turned out, the bearded and bespectacled Walter Kelly had been an absolute gentleman. He’d repeated what he’d said in court, that his actions were those of revenge, but for what he’d never mentioned. Also, he’d told her, there was the matter of an acid trip, a very bad acid trip. Walter had liked to dabble back then. He actually reminded her of her grandfather, and she’d felt right at home. He’d gotten her something to eat, given her an exclusive interview that had effectively launched her career. Afterwards, in the middle of the night, he’d insisted on returning with her to her car and helping her change the wheel.
The rest, as they say, was history.
She called out Donagh’s name, ‘Where the hell are you?’ trying to imbue her voice with a bravado that wasn’t there and failing miserably. She looked about, couldn’t spot her mobile phone. She tried to remember where she’d left it, but didn’t have a clue.
Okay. Okay. Hold it together. Don’t panic. There’s a reasonable explanation for all this, has to be. There always is. Just like that night back with Walter Kelly, there’s nothing to worry about, she told herself.
Take a breath, that’s it, in, out, in, out, much better now…
She pulled back the duvet, swung her legs onto the cold, wooden floor, shivering as she stood, feeling the frigid air wrap itself around her like a wet blanket. She’d forgotten that she was almost naked, with nothing on but a tiny nightdress, her clothes draped over the back of a chair just inside the door. A door that was still open, just as it had been when she’d nodded off. She went and quickly pulled them on, then stood looking out of the room, at the raised trapdoor in the middle of the hall, a faint, anaemic light seeping out from it.
She called out his name again, but got no reply.
‘Come on, Donagh, where are you?’
But still, there was no reply.
She cast her eyes slowly along the hallway. There was one door on the left leading to a small living room, another next to it to a bathroom, and in the wall on her right there was the door to the kitchen. None of the rooms looked like anyone had used them in years. And at the end of the hallway was the front door. She stepped out.
‘Come on,’ she called, ‘where are you?’
No reply.
This is ridiculous, she thought.
There was no use thinking about it or being scared. Like old Walter Kelly, it was all mere setting and atmosphere. Nothing to be scared of at all. Especially not out here in the middle of nowhere. The place to be scared was in the city, where you could pass any type of headcase on the street and not even know it. That was where the real danger lay, not here. No, definitely not here. Atmosphere and setting, nothing more…
Or was it?
Yes, yes, of course it was.
He’d fallen asleep or something, that’s all, nothing more than that. Had to be. She stepped out into the hall and stood above the small open trapdoor in the floor. Looking down, she could see the light from his torch casting long shadows onto the floor and wall beneath. She called, ‘Are you there, Donagh?’
No reply.
Despite everything she’d told herself, it returned, the coldness trickling through her. She tried to ignore it, but it was impossible.
And she became aware of something else too.
A silence. Deep and heavy, it seemed to have a sound all of its own, a crackling, fizzling white noise. As she listened, that silence seemed to grow louder, in equal proportion to her ratcheting fear. She stood looking down into the pool of weak light seeping up from the basement through the open trapdoor, could see the wooden steps descending, and felt the urge to clamp her hands over her ears and drown that sound out.
But she didn’t need to. Because just as suddenly, it ended, the silence was gone, replaced by something more tangible, an actual, real sound – that of tinkling glass. She held her breath, straining to make sense of it, and blinked as a bead of sweat dripped into her eye. She was no longer cold. No. Instead, she felt like she had just stepped into a sauna.
The noise sounded again.
Oh Jesus.
‘For fuck’s sake, are you down there or not?’ she shouted. ‘Come on, stop messing around. Come up here, for God’s sake. Come up now!’
She listened, could feel her heart beginning to jackhammer inside her chest, blood pumping through her ears, sounding like a waterfall.
But only for a moment, as the sound began to fade once more…
A realisation had begun to dawn on her, so obvious that she cursed herself for not having thought of it earlier. It jarred her back into a more rational – though still frightened, just not as much – state of mind. She thought: What if he’s had a heart attack?
Like. For real?
Middle-aged men were always getting heart attacks, weren’t they? It’d be just her luck, because all she could see in this were the ramifications for her. Selfish, yes, but how would she explain it? Shit. Oh Christ, what to do if that was what happened? What if he was lying down there on the cold floor right now? W-what… w-what if he was dead? Shit. Shit. Shit. How was she going to explain it?
Like seriously. How?
She knew there was only one way to find out if he was down there. And that was to go down herself and have a look. Just don’t think about it. Do it.
She turned, facing the bedroom she’d left a moment ago, her back to the trapdoor now, and stretched down one leg, feeling about for the first step, then finding it, following with the other. Slowly, leaning forward onto the old wooden floor, she began to descend. She went down, placing her hands onto the floor to support herself, looking along the hall ahead of her, unable to see where she was going, heading down, down, down… I won’t think about it, I won’t think about it, I won’t…
There was a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach when she reached the bottom and straightened again, and with it a certainty that she would find him here. Because she had to find him here. Where else could he be? There was nowhere else for him to go… was there? No, there wasn’t. It was impossible. He had to be here.
The sick feeling in her stomach was so bad she felt like retching. She thought again, What if he’s dead? And clamped a hand over her mouth. Like, what the fuck happens then? She retched, feeling the bile trickle up the back of her throat, and swallowed it back down. He could be, he might be dead, he HAD to be dead. Otherwise why hadn’t he answered her calls earlier… well, why?
Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m going to find his fucking body down here, aren’t I?
She stood there completely motionless, listening, the silence becoming like a feral scream. On the floor against the wall a few feet away from her, she saw the torch he’d taken down with him, its aura of weak light scarcely enough to reach the steps or beyond to the oil boiler next to it. On top of the oil boiler sat a rusty spanner. All else was consumed by the pitch dark.
And once more she heard it, that tinkling glass sound, from somewhere behind her. She froze as the torchlight flickered and died, the basement falling into an inky blackness. And like a dam that had been breached, panic swept through her.
Then she screamed.
1
The crowd was gathered around the memorial stone, awaiting its unveiling to the memory of the Old Man. There was the Old Man’s widow, Alice, their two children, and their children, also the brass, or the spaghetti hats, and the uniforms and plainclothes, the washed and unwashed, the great and the good. All here, together, in tribute to Chief Superintendent Tom Maguire, dead four months to this very day.
Voyle could not help but think just how unfair it was, to be cheated out of life as retirement beckoned on the horizon. The Old Man didn’t deserve that.
The priest said some words, and a member of the colour party stepped forward, removed the flag of the Republic from the memorial stone, revealing the black granite slab beneath, on it the outline of a Celtic cross etched in gold leaf. A second member of the colour party stepped forward to join his comrade, and together they took a corner each, stepped to the side in opposite directions, extending the flag fully before swivelling about to face each other and moving in again. In a series of synchronised movements, they folded the flag until it was in a tight, neat square. One placed it onto the open, outstretched palms of the other, and he carried it to the tall, regal woman with the sad but proud – very proud – expression. Alice received the flag and held it close to her chest.
And so the curtain had come down on the final act in the Old Man’s life. Who knew what lay beyond it. Maybe the Old Man did now. But all that was certain for Voyle was that he was gone from this God’s green earth, and gone forever.
The priest bowed his head, and the congregation was silent. They did not make a sound. All that could be heard was the rustling of the branches of the trees in the park where the Old Man liked nothing better to do than walk his dog, and the chirping of a single bird. A robin maybe. Voyle’d heard the dead sometimes returned as a robin. Or was it the other way round, that the robin was a harbinger of death? Whatever.
The family, the priest announced, would like nothing better than for everyone to make their way to the Green Valley Hotel for a slap-up lunch. It was what the Old Man had wanted. He’d left specific instructions.
It was then a telephone rang. Voyle cursed. What was it with everyone? Was it too much to ask that they switch off their phones during a solemn, sacred occasion such as this, a memorial to the Old Man, for God’s sake. Seemed that it was. If they couldn’t turn it off for this, then for what would they turn it off? He shook his head in disgust.
The phone rang again.
Voyle felt something nudge him roughly in his side. He looked in the direction of that nudge and saw Marty Sheahan staring at him. The phone rang for a third time. Marty indicated with a sharp nod of his head, and Voyle realised, Shit, that’s my phone. He was nothing if not cool under pressure and acted like nothing had happened. Quickly and discreetly he placed a hand into his pocket and knocked it off, brought the hand out clutching a tissue that he used to wipe his nose, like he wasn’t the one who’d farted in the elevator. But then, he couldn’t believe it…
The phone rang for a fourth time.
Shit and double shit, shit, shit.
He put his hand back into his pocket, ostensibly to return the tissue, stooping as he did so, looking at his shoe like he was inspecting it. He whipped out the phone, crouching to knock it off, but it didn’t, it kept on ringing. He answered, snapped, ‘What?’ before raising his eyes again to see that it was no use: no one had been fooled, they were all watching him. With no choice now, guilty as charged, your honour, Voyle raised his free hand in a mortified gesture of apology, and stepped back into the crowd, gratefully swallowed up by it. He pushed through and emerged out the other side. It took a little while; the crowd was very big, this being the Old Man after all. Voyle was half listening to the voice on the other end of the phone, which sounded panicked, but then he stopped in his tracks when he realised who it was… Her. And as he listened, he felt only sad regret for what had once been and was lost, and for what might have been but never was.
