The Doll's House

‘A sister?’


‘Yeah. I think her name was Deborah, or Debbie.’

‘Go on, Ozzie.’ Kate rubbed her hands together to keep out the cold.

‘She never wanted anything to do with him. As I said, we both got fucked over by folk.’

‘Ozzie, when Detective Lynch asked you a minute ago about the name of the benefactor, the guy who could have done this to Jimmy, you seemed very sure that you wouldn’t be worrying about him.’

‘Did I?’

‘That’s the impression I got.’

‘You’re very clever, Miss. Jimmy would have liked you. He always admired intelligence, did our Jimmy.’

‘So tell me, Ozzie, why wouldn’t you be worrying about that benefactor of his?’

‘Because it wasn’t his benefactor who did Jimmy in.’

‘No? How can you be so sure?’

Instead of looking at Kate, he rearranged the newspapers on his bench. Then, with his voice as flat as a pancake, he said, ‘Dead men can’t commit murder,’ looking coldly up at Lynch, ‘nor can murder be blamed on them either.’





Estuary Road, Malahide


With Lynch and Kate interviewing Ozzie Brennan on the quays, O’Connor was irked that things weren’t moving fast enough. They had another victim and were no closer to pulling in a suspect. Nothing conclusive had come in from the CCTV footage shown on television the previous night, and the lab results of what was under Jenkins’s fingernails had given Johnny Keegan his get-out-of-jail-free card. They had a test sample. What they needed now was a match.

Despite any number of motives and a shitload of information coming in from the public, the only thing mounting up was victims. The last incident-room meeting had felt like a momentous amalgamation of unanswered questions, and with Morrison dissecting another body, the house call O’Connor had planned for the Jenkins residence had been delayed long enough.

Nodding to both sets of police officers stationed outside the Jenkins home, the first car on the public road directly in front of the house, the second at the top of the long gravelled drive, O’Connor was in perfect form for talking to the family. The police presence was deemed to be secure, but low-key. Chief Superintendent Butler didn’t want the family upset, but at the same time he wanted his own arse protected should anything go awry.

O’Connor parked his car on the main street beside the unmarked police car and walked up the drive to one very impressive house. He could smell the sea air, and the whiff of seaweed tangled within it. A perfect setting, he thought, for a perfect celebrity home, one which jutted out from the landscape like a millstone wanting to be seen. His head ached, and the dazzling white lime-rendered walls forced him to squint. The house was double-fronted, two-storeys high, with a flat roof linking to another part of the building, almost like a second house, to the rear. Both front and back buildings had apex-shaped roofs, each with a circular window in their top gable, like a large vessel out at sea.

There were several cars at the front. O’Connor leaned down to the driver’s window of the police car parked closest to the residence. ‘I see there’s a big crowd here today, guys.’

‘It’s been like that from the beginning, sir.’ The officer turned to his colleague in the passenger seat, mocking, ‘Archie here’s been taking notes. Tells me his wife reads all the glossy magazines so he can spot a celebrity from a mile off.’

‘Well done, guys.’ He gave them a reassuring look. ‘Keep your eyes on the others too, the non-celebrities, that is. Killers aren’t in the habit of wearing signs.’

O’Connor was surprised to find the front door open, but as he stepped into the hallway, half a dozen heads turned, everyone knowing instantly that he didn’t belong. It was the youngest of the group who addressed him first, a well-built teenager, whose voice sounded as if it had just broken. The guy had a mass of blond hair. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with Cool written in white across the front. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Detective Inspector O’Connor.’ He reached out to shake his hand. ‘And you are?’

‘Jay Jenkins.’ He had an unexpectedly strong grip for a teenager.

Opening a heavily panelled wooden door behind the main stairway, Jay Jenkins held it ajar as O’Connor walked inside. ‘I’ll get my grandmother for you. Just a second.’ He left the room before O’Connor could clarify that it was the boy’s mother, not his grandmother, whom he wanted to see.