Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

'It was a present,' said FitzGerald. He leaned against the door jamb. 'It's about this guy Martin Hayes.'

'The missing wife? Is he still in custody?'

'Helping us with our enquiries,' said FitzGerald. 'We put him in one of the cells overnight, but he's here of his own volition.'

'What's your take on it, Jim?'

FitzGerald shrugged and ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair, as if to reassure himself that it was still in place. 'He's hiding something, there's no doubt about that. But he's not a wife-killer. We've given the house and garden a going-over, and there's nothing to suggest foul play. We've spoken to neighbours and relatives and there've been no arguments. No rows. Just your average suburban family.'

Hogan sat back in his chair and put his pen down on top of his stack of files. 'You know as well as I do, Jim, your average suburban family pretty much accounts for half of our murder cases. All that suppressed anger. Crying babies. Kitchens full of knives.'

'Their daughter's seven, hardly a baby,' said FitzGerald, humouring his boss. 'No money problems, so far as we can see. And when we accuse him of doing something to his wife and child, he gets upset. Really upset. If it's an act, it's a bloody good one.'

'So she's left him. She's walked out on him.'

'So why doesn't he just say that? The thing of it is, there was blood on the banister upstairs, so there's something going on. But there are no signs of a struggle, and she's taken some clothes with her.'

'So she went away, took the daughter with her?'

'That's the way it looks.'

'Without telling him?' Hogan pulled a face as if he had a sour taste in his mouth. 'Bit unlikely, don't you think? No note?'

'He says not.'

'And you've checked with her relatives?'

'Sure. With her mother and an aunt. The aunt that Hayes said she'd gone to stay with. She's not with either of them. I've had both addresses checked by the RUC

Hogan took off his spectacles and polished them with a large blue handkerchief. 'So what's your feeling, Jim?'

'I don't think he's done anything to her. Or the daughter. He's not the type. Things like that don't happen out of the blue, and there's no history. Plus, if he had done anything, he wouldn't have left the blood on the banister. One thing he's not is stupid. No, he's not done away with them. But I think he knows where she's gone.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Because if he didn't, he'd have been on to us, right? Wife and kid vanished. He'd have called us, for sure.'

'Unless he really believed that she'd gone to stay with the aunt.'

FitzGerald shook his head. 'He didn't have a phone number, she didn't take the car, he didn't know what train she was on. No, she didn't go to Belfast. She went somewhere else, and I think he knows where.'

'So why won't he tell you where she is?' Hogan put his spectacles back on.

'Maybe he's embarrassed. Maybe she went off with someone he knows.'

'He's lying to the police to save himself from embarrassment?' Hogan pulled another face, screwing up his nose and wrinkling his eyes.

'Yeah, I know. It doesn't make much sense to me, either. But I figure that if he knows she's alive and well, he knows he's not going to be convicted of hurting her. He probably figures that if he just keeps on denying that he knows what's happened to her, eventually we'll just go away.' FitzGerald shrugged. 'Hell, maybe he figures she'll come back.' He scratched his chin. 'The O'Mara woman is a strange one, too. There's no sign of her. Spoken to her relatives – they haven't seen her. She hasn't withdrawn any money recently, didn't buy a ticket anywhere, car's still parked in front of her house. She's just disappeared into thin air.'

'But the only connection is that she worked at the school, right?'

'Well, it's a bit more than that. She spoke to Hayes the day she disappeared. Or the day before. Frankly, we're not quite sure when she went. She was last seen driving away from the school at five o'clock in the evening. The school rang us the following lunch-time when she didn't turn up at work.'

Hogan removed his wire-framed spectacles, took a small yellow cloth from his desk drawer and began polishing them again. 'You're not suggesting Hayes has had anything to do with her disappearance, are you?'

FitzGerald shrugged. 'I honestly don't know. There's no evidence he ever met her.'

'So it could just be a coincidence.' Hogan sighed and put his glasses back on. 'God, I hate coincidences,' he said. 'Bane of our lives, coincidences.'

'And another thing,' said FitzGerald. 'He's not asked for a solicitor. Keeps asking if we've finished and wants to go home, but he's not asked to call a solicitor. If he'd done something, he'd know that his best bet would be to be legally represented.'

'Unless he thinks he's smarter than we are.'

FitzGerald shook his head. 'No, he's not playing mind games with us. I think he knows he hasn't done anything wrong and that we're going to have to let him go eventually.'

Hogan put the yellow cloth back in his drawer and picked up his fountain pen. 'So you're going to treat it as a domestic?'

'I think so. Until I can prove otherwise. I thought John and I would have another go at him after lunch, and if he doesn't budge we'll let him go later this afternoon.'

'What about keeping an eye on him?'

'Yeah, are you okay with that? Overtime considerations and all.'

Hogan grinned. 'Ah, so you don't want to sit outside his house yourself, is that it?'

FitzGerald smiled ruefully. A night in a car wasn't his idea of a good time. He put his hands up in mock surrender.

'Go ahead, Jim. But have a word with uniforms first. See if they've got a couple of men spare. Just for a day or two, mind.'

– «»-«»-«»Andy twisted the metal tie around the black rubbish bag, then eased it into a second bag and sealed that as well. Even sealed inside two plastic bags, the fertiliser in the Tupperware containers would absorb moisture from the air to the extent that it would be uselessly damp within two weeks. She had explained the chemistry to Green-eyes, but Green-eyes had said that it wouldn't be a problem. That meant that whatever Green-eyes was planning, it would be over within a fortnight.

Sweat was beading on Andy's forehead and she wiped it with a towel. Early that morning, Green-eyes had sent the Wrestler and the Runner to buy dehumidifiers and electric fans, and they'd gone some way to lowering the humidity, but it was still in the mid-eighties in the open-plan office. It was somewhat cooler in the smaller individual offices and meetings room, so they all took frequent breaks to cool down.

They'd spent most of the day processing the fertiliser through the ovens and then sealing it in the Tupperware containers and black bags, but by midnight the offices had become so humid and hot that Andy had told Green-eyes it was pointless continuing. They'd have to let the air-conditioning recover. Green-eyes had given Andy a sleeping bag and told her to sleep in one of the offices and not to open the door until morning. Andy figured it was so they could take off their ski masks. The discomfort of wearing them for twelve hours while they worked the ovens must have been almost unbearable.

Now that the dehumidifiers had been brought in, they'd be able to work throughout the night, but it was still uncomfortably hot.

'I'm going to take a break,' Andy said to Green-eyes, who was checking the thermometer in one of the ovens.

Are you hungry?' Green-eyes asked. 'There are some sandwiches in the coffee room.'

Andy went along to the meeting room. There was a Marks and Spencer carrier bag next to the coffee machine, containing a dozen packs of sandwiches. Chicken salad, sausage and mustard, bacon, lettuce and tomato, cheese and pickle, smoked salmon. And there was an assortment of canned drinks. Andy popped open a Diet Coke and drank, and then took a smoked salmon sandwich and sat down at the long table.