Blinding Lies Read online

  Blinding

  Lies

  Amy cronin

  Poolbeg

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, businesses, organisations and incidents portrayed in it are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2020 by Crimson

  an imprint of Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © Amy Cronin 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd, 2020, copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978178199-402-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Amy Cronin lives in Cork, Ireland, with her husband and two children. Having obtained an MBS in Management from Cork Institute of Technology, Amy worked in a variety of jobs before deciding to write full-time.

  Blinding Lies is her debut novel, the first part of a trilogy.

  Acknowledgements

  To Paula Campbell, Gaye Shortland and all the team at Poolbeg – thank you for a warm welcome, kindness and enthusiasm for my writing.

  Every time a dream comes true there are supportive people behind the one daring to give it a go – those who listen, cajole and cheerlead. I owe a debt of gratitude to Valerie and Will, my first readers and proud supporters. To Linda, Elaine and Stephanie for listening and for your endless encouragement. To Sandra for answering multiple questions patiently and with enthusiasm. To my wonderful friends and family. And to Kevin: the very first reader, an excellent plot-hole finder, and the most steadfast supporter of all.

  This book is based in Cork city and county, but I should mention that the Lee Street Garda Station and the names of some businesses are fictional – as are the characters, of course!

  Having been an avid reader all my life, it is a profound privilege to write my own book and be in a position to offer it to readers – I truly hope you enjoy this sliver of my imagination!

  Dedication

  For Kevin

  Prologue

  When the bullet pierced his neck, blood erupted in a vivid red mist, staining the wall behind him. Kate watched as his hands went to the wound, but it was futile. A crimson river flowed quickly, pulsing between his fingers, and dripped onto his white shirt.

  David’s blue eyes bulged, and his knees gave way. He looked at Kate in a silent plea for help. Even in his desperate state he must have known she would never save him. Immediately, it seemed, the front of his shirt was covered in blood. He was dying. His hands dropped, giving in to the inevitable, and he collapsed back onto the carpet.

  Quickly, she threw the gun she was holding onto the floor. She hadn’t heard the gunshot – perhaps she was in shock? Her throat ached where David had squeezed it, trying to crush the life out of her, the way he had done to her sister for almost four years.

  She had finished packing. When David had let himself into the house her suitcase was standing ready in the hall with her passport resting on top. She hadn’t realised he had a key but later she would guess he had taken her sister’s set.

  David had been frantic, searching for a gear bag that he accused her of taking. He had screamed that the Germans were in the city, looking for him, looking for it. She had never seen David Gallagher scared. She had expected anger, but his state of mind both frightened and intrigued her. David had promised that his brother John was on his way here, and together they would peel the flesh from her bones until she handed it over. She believed his threat – she had borne witness to the Gallaghers’ sadistic capabilities for far too long.

  She stood over David Gallagher as he lay dead on her living-room floor. She felt … nothing. She had imagined this day many times and had thought she would feel triumph and relief. Instead, she felt empty. It was over. The nightmare was over.

  A pounding at her front door, violent thumping on wood, made her jump.

  John!

  Grabbing her jacket, hat and scarf, and slinging a red satchel over her shoulder, she moved quickly to the backdoor. Her suitcase and passport forgotten, she fled her home.

  Perhaps the nightmare was only just beginning.

  1

  Thursday

  The office was cold that morning, the November chill pervading every available space. Plug-in heaters warmed the corners of the open-plan room. The early arrivals kept their coats on and shivered, shaking away the morning commute as they switched on computers and printers.

  Anna sat at her desk, hands cradling a cardboard coffee cup, slowly thawing as the heat penetrated her gloves. She savoured the café latte as she did every morning; the coffee shop across the street, Victus, was a staple in her morning routine. The Lee Street Garda Station, the newest of the Cork city stations, had been built less than four years before, owing to the huge increase in both crime and population in Ireland’s largest county. When Anna had moved to the building three years ago, it had still had that brand-new smell. As a member of Garda staff, providing clerical and administrative support to the Gardaí, she worked on the ground floor, and was usually first at her desk. She liked to begin the journey from her home in Kinsale as early as possible, to beat the infamous morning rush-hour commute. This morning, as with every other, the office slowly came to life around her and she greeted her colleagues with a smile.

  Today, though, Anna felt slightly on edge, her smile tight. She hadn’t slept well. The strands of an idea, a theory, had been pulling at the corners of her mind since she had begun to type up her work notes yesterday evening. She was naturally a logical thinker – her analytical approach at work hadn’t gone unnoticed in the three years she had worked in the busy station. That, and her post-graduate diploma in statistics had led to her being tasked with organising and collating files from Garda stations throughout the county. And yesterday she had noticed a thread that just might sew some unsolved cases together.

  A few days ago, there had been a break-in at a house near her own home. The victims were her elderly neighbours. She had been given the report on the crime to add to the statistical analysis files she compiled weekly, and it was ready to be logged into the national security system.

  But details of the report rankled Anna. It wasn’t the fact that the address of the break-in was in a house near her own semi-detached house in the coastal town of Kinsale that had caused her heart to skip a beat. She had typed reports similar to this many times – burglaries were common in every town. It was the subsequent crime that she felt certain would follow, in the same geographical area, that caused her breath to catch in her throat.

  A tower of files was stacked precariously to her left, an ominous reminder of work awaiting attention. Post-it notes and memos were tacked to the padded cubicle walls, listing daily tasks and reports to follow up. Yet she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything other than the theory that had caused such broken sleep the night before. Finishing her latte, Anna decided
she would get nothing else done until she had examined the previous cases and tested her idea. Her mother had always told her to trust her gut instincts – and if she was right, a serial sex-offender could be finally apprehended.

  Her computer was on and her files almost loaded. She shrugged off her coat and pulled off her gloves, drumming her fingers impatiently until the blinking cursor indicated the system was ready. Pulling a notebook and pen towards her, she began. Accessing archived reports that she had analysed and categorised over the last three years, she made notes – dates, addresses, the fine details, linking it all with lines and arrows. There was a connection here somewhere and she was determined to find it. She opened Google Maps, and cross-referenced addresses, ticking them off her list. She was looking for the thread that connected it all, methodically working through each point, each crime. Every time she found it her excitement grew. These reports were detailing crimes from all over the city and county; while the crimes were geographically dispersed, they all landed on Anna’s desk in the city centre at some point. And now she knew she was right. There was a pattern!

  From time to time she sat back and reread her notes, just to be sure. Finally, she closed the last report, her heart pounding. Confidence pulsed through her. What had been merely a hunch, gnawing at her, prodding her subconscious until she paid attention, was now a sure connection.

  She looked up from her notes. The office was almost full, clerical support staff and administrators milling in to start a new day. The city station was a busy place, and soon, by nine o’clock, the buzz of activity would be a steady throb.

  Lately, it was even busier than usual. A political conference was taking place in the city in less than a week, and every available space within the station was taken up with extra bodies. Brexit was on everyone’s mind. In the midst of their busy schedule, several politicians had decided to organise what they called a ‘Unity Conference’ in the newly built event centre in the city. Gardaí had been drafted in from other city stations, Dublin and Limerick, a myriad of detectives and undercover officers from stations throughout the country. Personnel were dispersed across the city’s stations to ensure the event ran smoothly. The Events Unit and its team were more visible every day, the Events Coordinator ever present. Every corner of the room had a desk squeezed into it; every available plug was powering a new device. There was a long list of domestic and foreign politicians attending the conference, arriving into the city in a matter of days, and the tension in the station had been palpable for weeks. The Chief Superintendent, Janet McCarthy, was engaged in meetings every hour of every day, it seemed to Anna. She didn’t know how the Chief Super could get anything else done.

  Anna’s experience in the station over the last three years led her to believe a political conference meant nothing to the city’s ordinary criminals – crime never stopped, certainly not for visiting dignitaries. The report on her desk detailed a violent robbery. And with growing certainty, she knew an even more sinister crime would follow.

  Anna provided clerical support to some of the detectives in the Garda Station, and she remembered the name of the one who was investigating the latest in this list of unsolved attacks – Detective Sergeant William Ryan. He had taken over the investigation after the retirement of the previous detective. DS Ryan had only been involved in the most recent case. Anna liked him. He was recently transferred into the city station and seemed to be enthusiastic about the job.

  “Hi, Anna!”

  Her colleague Lauren breezed past and started unwrapping herself from her layers of winter clothes. Her desk chair was soon laden with her coat, heavy cardigan and blanket-sized scarf. She pulled off her hat, her dark bob fizzing with static, her multiple bracelets tinkling. Lauren spotted the takeaway coffee cup Anna had left on her desk and smiled warmly at her friend.

  “Ooh, thanks! Did you get me anything nice?”

  Anna grinned and tossed a paper bag across the small gap between their desks.

  Lauren Doyle had started in the station a week before Anna, and they had quickly bonded over some of the worst aspects of the job – perpetually grumpy detectives, the more macabre case details, and the shocking lack of staff parking.

  Lauren pulled a chocolate croissant from the bag and squealed in delight. She looked around the room. Most of the Garda staff – the civilians – started work before nine, to avoid the city traffic and grab a parking space. Lauren, with an apartment nearby, was almost always the last to arrive.

  “Any news?”

  Anna grabbed her notebook and scooted across the small distance between their desks on her wheeled swivel chair. She felt a trembling excitement at finding a potential lead and hoped her friend would see the same link she had.

  “Will you take a look at this with me? I was typing up the report on the break-in at a house in Willow Rise yesterday evening when I came across something.”

  “That’s near where you live, isn’t it?” Lauren said, wiping croissant pastry flakes from her lips. Her black-framed glasses had slipped down her nose and she pushed them up with her little finger.

  “It is! The Pearsons live at Number 3. My house is behind theirs.” Anna shuddered involuntarily.

  She had read the report; it had been a horrendous ordeal for her elderly neighbour and his wife. Their house had been broken into in the middle of the night by two men. Mr. Pearson had been punched and kicked before the house was ransacked. Reading the report of the attack had left Anna shaken – she could only imagine how traumatised her neighbours must be.

  “So,” she continued, “something about these cases was gnawing at me and I want to get your opinion. I had to look back over the other cases to see if I was remembering correctly, and I am.”

  “What other cases?”

  “The unsolved sexual assault cases.”

  Lauren’s hand paused, her coffee cup suspended in mid-air. Her blue eyes had grown huge behind her glasses.

  “The six sexual assaults over the last three years?”

  “Seven actually. I looked over the files and, as I thought, the general addresses are all the same. Obviously, in a big county like Cork, there are house break-ins every week; it’s a regular occurrence. But in a number of these cases, a woman has been assaulted in a house close by within a few days. First, there’s a break-in. Elderly people, couples or singles – there’s no connection there, except that none of them had a house alarm. Then a few days later, a young woman is sexually assaulted in a different house nearby.”

  “It must be a coincidence!”

  Anna suppressed a sigh of annoyance. “Seven coincidences? I don’t think so! And besides, there are no such things as coincidences, Lauren! There are only facts, patterns, and logic.”

  Lauren smiled patiently at her friend – she and Anna had had this conversation many times. Lauren made decisions based on the zodiac and moon phases, Anna on weighted logic. They had long ago agreed to disagree and salvage their friendship.

  “I’ve checked Google Maps to be sure,” said Anna. “In two cases, the house that was broken into looks directly into the house where the victim of the assault lives. In the others, the houses are close by.”

  Lauren gasped and Anna’s heart leapt – there was something worth exploring here.

  “Do you think the burglar is the rapist?” Lauren asked, her voice low.

  Anna shook her head. “No. The Guards have made arrests for most of the robberies. A few of them were kids, some were drug addicts – they’re not connected. The robbery at the Pearsons’ was committed by two men who were wanted for a lot of other crimes throughout the county – theft, arson and so on – forensics have their DNA.”

  “But there’s no DNA match for the sexual attacker on file.” Lauren was familiar with the crimes too.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Lauren furrowed her brow. “You’ve lost me now.”

  “If you look at this from the angle of the sexual assault, it becomes clearer. It’s a stand-alone, seemingly random cr
ime, right? Except, within a week prior to it occurring, a house nearby is broken into, where the owners had no security alarms in place. In the transcript from their statements they were all asked and confirmed they didn’t have one. Most of them mentioned they were planning to get one now that they had been robbed. It’s unusual these days not to have one.”

  Anna paused and took a deep breath before quickly laying out her theory.

  “What if the attacker is from the alarm company? What if he’s the guy who installed the alarms? It would give him plenty of opportunity to scope out the estate, check if there’s any woman alone at night. All the sexual assault victims lived alone, or their partners or housemates worked nights. The alarm guy could have figured that out if he was watching the area, and spending time there by day installing alarms. And if his DNA isn’t on file, the Guards have no way of catching him.”

  Lauren gulped her coffee loudly, wincing slightly as it scalded her throat. To Anna, she looked a bit sceptical.

  Anna ploughed on, speaking in a rush. “There’s never been a link between the assault victims. No common relationships or club memberships, nothing. Now there is. Even though the crimes have taken place throughout the city and county, there is one thing they all have in common – they all live close to a house that was recently broken into. With no house alarm. And if all of those homeowners subsequently got an alarm installed, and used the same company …”

  Anna spread her arms wide and watched the gears of cognition click into place in Lauren’s mind.

  “Jesus!” Lauren spluttered around a mouthful of croissant. “You have to talk to the detective about this. I mean, it’s a long shot, but there could be something in it!”