Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Tell O’Donovan to go all the way round the house. Tell him to look in all the windows and see if any of the doors have been left unlocked. Check for any signs of a struggle or a hurried exit, like carpets rucked up or furniture knocked over.’

  Detective Sergeant ó Nuallan waited a little longer, and then Katie could hear Detective O’Donovan talking to her again.

  ‘He says there’s an electric leaf-blower in the back garden which is lying in the middle of the lawn. It’s still plugged in with an extension lead that goes through the open kitchen window.’

  She paused, and then she said, ‘The back door’s unlocked, and there’s washing hanging half in and half out of the washing machine.’

  Another pause, then, ‘Horgan says that there are two cars still inside the garage – the green Audi A3 and a mustard-coloured Peugeot 208.’

  Katie stood up. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘they’ve been taken. I’ll bet you money they’ve been taken.’

  ‘O’Donovan’s had a quick sconce inside the house and it doesn’t appear like there’s any indications of a struggle. If they have been taken, they must have gone without any kind of a fight.’

  ‘Take Quinlan and get out there,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll go down and see Denis MacCostagáin and see how much manpower he can muster. After that, I’m going to have that talk with Derek Hagerty, and this time it’s no more Mrs Good Cop.’

  ‘Don’t you think this is jumping the gun, like?’ asked Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I mean, they’re a grown-up couple and they’re only late for a coffee morning. It’s not like they’re missing children.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ said Katie. ‘But I’d rather risk the money and the man-hours than give Bryan Molloy another chance to say that I’m always two steps behind. Did you hear “Morning Ireland” this morning? They quoted him almost word for word. “Detective Superintendent Maguire and her team still have a fair amount of catching up to do.” Thanks for nothing, Molloy.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let him get under your skin so much. He’s just an old-fashioned misogynist and everybody knows what a great cop you are.’

  ‘The trouble is, Kyna, he’s a great cop himself, and there’s no two ways about it.’

  ‘Well, I know he made a reputation for himself in Limerick.’

  ‘He deserved it. The way he stamped out the worst of those feuding gangs – the Ryans and the Keane-Collopys and the McCarthy-Dundons. The Duggans, too. The Duggans were pure bogmonsters. You only had to look at them the wrong way and they’d feed you to their pigs, and you’d be lucky if they’d shot you first.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about the Duggans, for sure,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Niall Duggan, wasn’t it, and those terrible twins of his, Aengus and Ruari? My friend Paul Dannehy was attached to Henry Street for a while, looking into some car-theft racket, and Ruari Duggan spat in his face and told him she’d hang his danglers on her Christmas tree.’

  ‘That sounds like her all right,’ said Katie. ‘But as much as I hate to admit it, nobody was able to lay a finger on those scumbags before Bryan Molloy went in there with all guns blazing. As far as most of his fellow officers are concerned, he’s still the chief boy.’

  ***

  Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin was on the phone when she went downstairs. He was an angular, gangling man who always stooped because of his height. He had a high crest of wavy grey hair and a large, complicated nose, so that he looked like some extinct flightless bird. He was obviously harassed. The television in the corner of his office was showing a rowdy crowd scene, although the sound was turned down. The caption running underneath the picture was ‘Violence Erupts At Anti-Water Demo In Cork’.

  ‘No, no, Sergeant, for feck’s sake, no!’ he repeated. ‘You absolutely have to keep it low-key. RTÉ are showing it live. Yes, Inspector Rooney’s on his way to you now and I don’t want this getting out of hand, do you deck it?’

  He put down the phone and shook his head.

  ‘What’s the story?’ Katie asked him.

  ‘It’s that demonstration outside County Hall against Irish Water installing smart meters on the estates. About fifteen minutes ago one of our patrol cars knocked over three protestors. Only by accident, like, and none of them was seriously hurt, but the crowd didn’t see it that way.’

  ‘So what’s happened?’

  ‘They’ve smashed the patrol car’s windows and rolled it over on to its roof. Now the whole thing’s turned ugly. They’ve started tearing down fencing and tossing rocks and Sergeant Mulligan’s just asked me if they can use batons. Jesus! And all over water meters! You know what the protestors are saying? They don’t want water meters because they think they’ll make the water radioactive and they’ll all die of the radiation poisoning, like Chernobyl. Every time Irish Water dig a hole and try to install a water meter the goms come along and stand in it, so that they can’t.’

  ‘I’m looking for as many feet on the ground as you can spare me,’ said Katie. She told Superintendent MacCostagáin about Derek Hagerty and the Pearses, and that she urgently needed gardaí to back up Detectives O’Donovan and Horgan out at Ballinlough. ‘Maybe half a dozen officers for door-to-door inquiries. I think there’s a strong possibility that the Pearses have been abducted by these High Kings of Erin. If they have, they could be in serious danger.’

  ‘You don’t think these High Kings of Erin could be all a hoax? Just some eejit ripping the piss?’

  ‘It’s possible. So far we don’t have any evidence one way or the other. But whoever they are, they seem to know what we’re doing almost before we’ve thought of it ourselves, and that’s what worries me more than anything. They knew that Shelagh Hagerty had told us about her husband being abducted, although God alone knows how. Because of that, they booby-trapped Mrs Hagerty’s car and Garda McCracken lost her life.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting they have a stoolie here in the station?’

  ‘No, Denis, I’m not, but I’m keeping an open mind, and I’m trying to get a step ahead of them, whoever they are, instead of being two steps behind.’

  ‘Well, I don’t honestly know how much manpower I can spare you,’ Superintendent MacCostagáin told her. ‘I might be able to send out a couple of cars from Togher and Carrigaline. Jim Rooney obviously has his hands full at the moment, but I’ll see what I can arrange for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Denis. Whatever you can do, I owe you.’

  As she was walking along the corridor back to her own office, Katie heard her phone warbling. She hurried to pick it up, and said breathlessly, ‘Yes?’ It was Detective O’Donovan ringing again.

  ‘Still no sign of the Pearses, ma’am, but Horgan’s just been talking to an aul wan who lives across the road. She said she was cleaning the windows in her lounge and she saw Norman and Meryl Pearse climbing into a black van with two big fellers.’

  ‘What time was this?’ Katie asked him.

  ‘Half ten, quarter to eleven, thereabouts, that’s what she thought. She said she usually listens to the Niall Carroll show on the radio and that hadn’t started yet.’

  ‘Could she describe the van at all? Did she know what make it was? I don’t suppose she managed to lamp its registration?’

  ‘All she said, it was black with black windows along the sides. So most likely it was a people carrier of some sort.’

  ‘All right. I’ll have an alert put out for it. There can’t be too many like that. There’s a couple of units coming out to help you with the house-to-house and anything else you need, but they can’t spare any more than that because there’s some kind of a public-order problem at County Hall. Anti-water-meter demonstration. It looks like it’s almost a riot.’

  ‘Gollun, don’t these eejits have anything better to do? Why don’t they go and fall on their arse somewhere and make themselves some compo?’

  ‘I’ll get back to you, Patrick,’ said Katie. ‘I’m going to question Derek Hagerty again, see if I can’t get more out of him.’

 
‘Well, good luck to you so.’

  20

  Derek Hagerty had just finished his lunch when Katie went down to see him – bacon and cabbage and boiled potatoes, although he had hardly touched it and it had now gone cold. He looked haggard and his eyes were rimmed with scarlet.

  Katie pulled out a blue plastic chair and sat down opposite him, laying her iPhone down on the table and setting it to record. Derek Hagerty glanced up at her and then continued to stare down at the plate of food in front of him.

  ‘You know that you’re free to leave any time you want to?’ Katie told him. ‘You haven’t been formally charged with any offence and we can’t legally hold you here any longer without making a special application to the court.’

  Derek Hagerty gave an almost imperceptible nod, but didn’t answer.

  Katie said, ‘You’ve told us that you’re in fear for your life from your abductors and that’s why you’re reluctant to return home. We’ve offered you protection, but you haven’t given us any clear indication that you’re prepared to accept it.’

  ‘Everything’s a mess,’ said Derek Hagerty, closing his eyes and shaking his head. ‘It’s all such a fecking mess. I never dreamed that it would turn out like this. I never fecking dreamed it.’

  ‘It’s more of a mess than you realize, Derek,’ said Katie. ‘We questioned Norman and Meryl Pearse yesterday about picking you up from the roadside at Ballynoe and taking you in. They denied it. In fact, they insisted that they had never even heard of you. This morning, though, I’m sorry to tell you – ’

  She paused, deliberately. Derek Hagerty opened his eyes and frowned at her. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘This morning it seems that the both of them were taken away from their home by at least two men. At the moment we have absolutely no idea who those men were or whether the Pearses were taken against their will. They missed a regular coffee morning with a friend of Mrs Pearse and they left their house unlocked. Both of them left their mobile phones at home, so we have no way of locating them that way.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Derek Hagerty. ‘Oh God, no.’

  ‘Derek,’ said Katie, leaning forward and staring him straight in the eyes, ‘you have to tell me the truth now, the whole truth, before anything happens to the Pearses. This isn’t a game any more. If the Pearses are hurt or murdered, then you’re going to become a suspect on more than one conspiracy charge. Extortion and homicide and God knows what else. You could be locked up for the next twenty years.’

  Derek Hagerty tilted his head back and took several noisy breaths through his nostrils.

  Katie continued, ‘I’m not going to mess with you any longer. Whoever it was who called us and said that he was dropping you off on Grand Parade, he also told us that he thought you were lying about being kidnapped. Maybe it was Norman Pearse, maybe it wasn’t. He claimed that you showed him some really bad bruises, but when he allowed you take a shower he saw that those bruises had mostly washed off. He also said that you still had a mobile phone on you, and that he heard you talking to somebody while you were in the bathroom, arranging to meet them. Now, it’s conceivable that what your man thought were bruises were nothing but dirt, but what I find impossible to believe is that any kidnappers would allow their victim to keep a mobile phone.’

  Derek Hagerty said, ‘You’ve known all along, then, that I haven’t been straight with you?’

  ‘Yes. I was hoping that I could coax you to tell us what really happened voluntarily. But now that somebody’s taken the Pearses, there’s no more time for that. Come on, Derek, I need to know if you were genuinely kidnapped, and if you were, who by. If it’s all been some kind of a fraud, then I need to know that, too, and who’s involved in it.’

  Derek Hagerty clenched his fists tightly and lowered his head, pressing his knuckles against his temples.

  ‘I’ve been such a fecking fool,’ he said. ‘I never knew that I could end up doing anything like this.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ said Katie. ‘You’ll feel so much better about it if you get it off your chest.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t tell you. They’ll kill me, I know they will, but not just me. Shelagh, too, for telling you that I was kidnapped, and the kids, too, and who knows, my mother and father besides.’

  ‘Who, Derek? Who are they?’

  Derek Hagerty was crying now. He lowered his left fist and it squashed into what was left of his boiled potatoes. He pushed the plate aside and scraped the potato off his hand on the edge of the table, but all the time he didn’t stop weeping.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, at last. ‘I can’t tell you what they do to people who cross them. They’re not scared of the law. They’re not scared of nobody.’

  Katie said, ‘Derek – listen to me. I’m deadly serious now. When a garda gets murdered, every police officer takes that personally and we make a special effort to track down whoever was responsible and bring them to justice. When Garda McCracken was killed, I took it personally, and let me tell you now that I’m going to find out who did it and make them pay for what they did, even if I have to hurt people like you. You think you’ve been a fool? You just wait until I’ve finished with you.’

  Derek Hagerty could do nothing but sob. He opened and closed his scab-encrusted lips like some grotesque tropical fish, but he didn’t, or couldn’t, say any more.

  Katie sat back, waiting for him to pull himself together, but as she did so her iPhone pinged. It was a text message from Ciara on the station switchboard. JUST HAD CALL 4 U. HE SD V. IMPORTANT. I TLD HIM U BUSY BUT HE SD HED RING BACK. HE SD HES HK OF E ??

  Katie stood up. ‘Think on what I’ve said, Derek. I appreciate how frightened you are, but you have to face up to this. Otherwise, the rest of your life is going to be ruined. Your family, your business, everything.’

  Derek Hagerty looked up at her miserably. ‘Chalk it down,’ he said. ‘Don’t I fecking know it.’

  ***

  Only ten minutes after she had returned to her office, Katie’s phone warbled. She picked it up and said, ‘Ciara?’

  ‘He’s calling back, ma’am. The HK of E fellow. Do you want to take it?’

  ‘Please, Ciara, put them through.’

  She waited a moment and then she cleared her throat and said, ‘DS Maguire. Is that who I think it is?’

  ‘Well, that depends entirely on who you think it is.’ It was the same hoarse, slurred voice that she had heard before. ‘I know more about you, Detective Superintendent Maguire, than you could ever imagine possible, but even I have to admit that reading your mind is somewhat beyond me.’

  ‘What do you want? You left a message that it was important.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll agree with me that it’s important all right. I gather that you’ve been concerned about Norman and Meryl Pearse.’

  ‘What if I have?’

  ‘Give me some credit, Superintendent. It was Meryl Pearse who found Derek Hagerty by the side of the road, and it was Norman Pearse who shopped him.’

  ‘That’s what you say.’

  ‘That’s right, and I say that because I know for a fact that it’s true, even though they wouldn’t admit it to you, would they?’

  Katie reached across for a ballpen and scribbled on her big yellow notepad, HK knew that Pearses denied helping DH? How?

  ‘Whether they admitted it to you or not, Superintendent, they did it, but they could have saved themselves a heap of grief if they had just kept quiet about it.’

  Katie was sorely tempted to ask, Have you taken them? What have you done with them? but she didn’t want to give the caller any indication that she suspected the Pearses of having tipped off the Garda about Derek Hagerty. The High Kings of Erin might have the Pearses in captivity and they could be trying to trap her into giving them the justification for punishing them.

  ‘Well, I know what you’re thinking, Detective Superintendent,’ said the hoarse voice. ‘I said I couldn’t read your mind, but maybe in this instance I have a
n inkling. You’re thinking that we’ve abducted Norman and Meryl Pearse, and that we intend to teach them a lesson for squealing to the law. But that’s where you’re wrong. We did abduct them, and the reason for me calling you now is to put up my hand and admit it. But – we have absolutely no intention of teaching them a lesson. The road to hell is paved with intentions, both good and bad. No – what we set out to do to the Pearses, we’ve already done it.’

  Katie still said nothing. She was now almost positive that the High Kings of Erin really were responsible for all the crimes for which they were claiming credit. They knew far too much about them to be hoaxers. But there was still a possibility that Norman and Meryl Pearse were still alive and unharmed, and a wrong word from her could change that instantly.

  ‘If you want to find them, go down to Rocky Bay Beach. You know Rocky Bay Beach? It will take you only twenty minutes or so. The sea’s on the turn, but it won’t be high tide again till ten o’clock tonight, so you shouldn’t have any trouble locating them. Good luck to ye.’

  Katie said, ‘Whatever you’ve done, or whatever you’re thinking of doing, I can tell you now that you’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Oh, how many times have I heard that before? My mammy always used to threaten to smack me a clatter, but you don’t frighten me, Detective Superintendent Maguire, not a bit more than my mammy ever did! Let me tell you this, the sooner you learn to rub along with us, the happier we’re all going to be. You do your thing and we’ll do ours, and Ireland will have its pride restored before you know it. Éirinn go Brách.’

  With that, the caller hung up.

  21

  The bell above the front door of Whelan’s Music Store jangled as the carroty-curled young man stepped inside. Outside on Oliver Plunkett Street, the two bouncer-types in black suits stood on either side of the entrance, their eyes hidden by wraparound sunglasses, their hands clasped over their genitals in the classic pose of bouncers everywhere.

  The carroty-curled young man walked slowly through the store, pausing for a moment to tilt his head sideways and admire the electric guitars hanging on the right-hand wall, and then the Roland and Yamaha keyboards arranged in a serried line on the left-hand side. He stopped by a drum kit and flicked his index finger against one of the crash cymbals, so that it made a soft pish!