The woman who opened the door, her body framing its width, had a head of grey hair curled tight to plump pink cheeks. An unevenly buttoned, knitted cardigan hung over a black polyester midi-dress. Swollen legs in elastic stockings led down to well-worn tartan slippers.
‘Mrs Joan Murtagh?’ Lottie enquired. ‘We rang you a few minutes ago.’
‘Did you?’ The woman checked their ID and guided them past her, into her home. ‘My memory lets me down at times.’ She shooed the dog down the path. He stretched and walked away, his warm paws trailing footprints in the snow behind him.
Lottie sniffed the scent of fresh baking inside. Entering the kitchen, she spied brown bread resting on a wire rack.
‘Would you like some?’ Mrs Murtagh asked, noticing Lottie’s line of sight.
Without waiting for a reply, she sliced up half the loaf, placed it on a plate and took the lid off a butter dish. A wooden walking stick hung, unused, from the table edge. She moved surprisingly quickly and Lottie thought she was probably around her mother’s age.
‘Eat up,’ Mrs Murtagh said. She poured boiling water from the kettle into a teapot. ‘You both look like you could do with a decent feed.’
‘Thank you.’ Lottie buttered the bread and took a bite. ‘Delicious. Try some,’ she told Boyd.
‘I’m on a diet,’ he said, taking out his notebook and pen.
Mrs Murtagh broke into a robust laugh.
‘Diet me hole,’ she said. She looked over to Lottie. ‘Dangerous job for a woman, being in the guards.’ She placed the teapot on the table and sat down.
Lottie fingered her damaged nose. ‘I like my job.’
‘I bet you’re good at it too,’ Mrs Murtagh said, pouring black tea into three mugs.
‘When did you first meet Susan Sullivan?’ Boyd asked, looking around for milk.
‘You’ll have to bear with me. I’m liable to forget important stuff. Early Alzheimer’s, my doctor thinks. So let me think. It must be five or six months ago.’ Mrs Murtagh munched the bread. Crumbs stuck to facial hairs at the corner of her lips. ‘Susan heard about my charity work with the homeless. I was fundraising for a shelter, wanted to convert the extension at the side of my house into a type of hostel. Did you notice it on the way in? Poor Ned, my late husband, built that himself, God love him. A heap of crap it was.’
Lottie nodded.
Mrs Murtagh continued. ‘The council stopped me. Said it wouldn’t be in keeping with the general area. I know the neighbours complained. Got a campaign up and running to oppose me, they did. Didn’t really matter in the end. I hadn’t enough money at the time.’
‘What did Susan do?’ Lottie asked.
‘She called to see me. Wanted to help. Gave me ten thousand euro straight up. Cash. No questions asked. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, do you? I got the extension renovated and installed a restaurant-style cooker. Kitted it out top notch, I did. And we started our own soup kitchen.’ Mrs Murtagh sipped her tea, her face alight with pride. ‘Did I show you?’
‘Maybe later,’ Lottie said. ‘How did you operate it?’
When Mrs Murtagh raised an eyebrow, Lottie said, ‘The soup kitchen.’
‘Oh. We cooked up the broth, poured it into flasks and drove around town delivering it to the poor unfortunates. A few of them live on the streets and there’s another crowd down by the industrial estate. You know, along the canal, behind the train station.’
Lottie knew. Her ribs still ached from the mugging.
‘Did Susan give you any idea why she was doing this?’ Lottie buttered a second slice of bread. If Boyd wasn’t going to eat, it was his loss.
‘She wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves. Concerned with children sleeping rough, she was. It’s a national disgrace, what’s going on in this country, so it is. All those houses boarded up and the poor have nowhere to sleep.’
Mrs Murtagh banged her fist on the table, eyes flaring. Her passion surprised Lottie. Pity there weren’t more like her, she thought.
‘Susan ranted on about developers building all those ghost houses. Said it was criminal the way the council allowed them to carry on,’ Mrs Murtagh said.
Lottie looked at Boyd. He returned a knowing look.
‘But she worked for the council,’ Lottie said.
‘I know. But she never had the final say. That’s what she told me.’
‘Did she ever mention Tom Rickard? He’s a developer.’
‘I’m not stupid, just forgetful. I know who he is. With his snooty wife and junkie kid, looking down their noses at us mere mortals. I tell you, I’ve more wealth in my heart than Tom Rickard will ever have in his bank account, Detective Dottie.’ She slammed the lid back on the butter dish.
‘Did you have a run-in with him?’ asked Boyd.
Lottie caught his smirk at Mrs Murtagh’s inaccurate mention of her name. She ignored him.
‘Not personally, but I know his kind,’ Mrs Murtagh said. ‘Susan didn’t have much time for him anyway.’
‘Why not?’ asked Lottie.
‘Something to do with him owning St Angela’s. That’s the big empty orphanage place out the road. She mentioned one time about him buying his way through the development plan. I don’t know what that means but I can make a fairly good guess.’
Lottie drained the remnants of her tea. Mrs Murtagh started to refill the mugs.
‘How many people are involved in the soup kitchen?’ asked Boyd, declining the tea.
‘Just me, now Susan’s gone. I don’t know how long I can keep it going, with no money coming in.’
Lottie had a feeling that Mrs Murtagh would keep her soup kitchen going until the day she died, money or no money.
‘Have you any idea why someone would want to kill Susan?’ Boyd asked.
‘I don’t know.’ The woman shook her head, sadly. ‘She was a decent soul. Only wanted to do good for people. It’s a mystery to me.’ She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘A lot of things are a mystery to me nowadays.’
‘She must have spoken to you about her life. Had she any worries or concerns?’
‘She told me she was dying. I’ve never met anyone who accepted a death sentence like she did. Resigned to her fate, she was.’
‘Did she ever tell you where the cash came from?’
‘Cash?’ Mrs Murtagh was silent, thinking for a moment. ‘Yes, she said it was owed to her, from a long time ago. “Everyone pays in the end.” Susan said that. Funny how I can remember these things and not others. You know, I have a feeling there’s something else I need to be telling you. But I can’t remember for the life of me.’
Lottie digested the information.
‘Did anyone have a grudge against her?’ asked Boyd, tapping his notebook impatiently.
‘Susan was a quiet soul, just wanting to help people. I don’t know why anyone would want to harm her.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend or partner?’ Lottie asked.
‘Not that I knew of.’
‘Did you know she had been in St Angela’s as a child?’
The older woman was silent for a time, nodding away to herself.
‘She told me it was a terrible place. No child should be abandoned by a mother the way she was. Said she was one of the lucky ones, if you could call being scarred all your life lucky. The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for in this country.’ She shook her head wearily.