Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)
Page 21
‘The same sources say that Mr and Mrs Pearse were buried up to their armpits in sand and then doused in petrol which was set alight.
‘Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire who attended the scene today refused to confirm or deny the identities of the victims or how they had met their deaths. She also declined to comment on the suggestion that the murders may have been committed by the High Kings of Erin, who netted a quarter of a million euros in ransom money for Derek Hagerty even though he had already escaped.’
Katie could only sit and watch this report with a growing feeling of helplessness and frustration. But Bryan Molloy had been right. It was up to her to ferret out these ‘reliable sources’ who were leaking so much confidential information to the media. After all, he had made it clear that he wasn’t going to do it, not the great Acting Top Cop.
She poured herself another drink and went into the kitchen. Barney was scratching at the door, so she let him in, and he brought with him the smell of damp dog hair and fog. She went to the fridge and took out three eggs, which she cracked into a Pyrex jug. The third egg crushed to pieces in her hand and all the shell dropped into the omelette mixture.
She started to fish out the fragments of broken shell with a teaspoon, but then she suddenly lost patience and threw the jug into the sink. The jug didn’t break, but bounced up, so that egg was splashed all the way up the right-hand curtains and halfway across the window.
Katie didn’t cry, but stood there watching the egg sliding slowly down the windowpane.
***
That night, she was woken up by the sound of shouting from next door, followed by screaming and the loud slamming of doors.
She lifted her head from the pillow and squinted at her bedside clock. It was 3.07. So much for Sorcha sleeping until morning.
The shouting and screaming went on for at least ten minutes. Katie lay there in the darkness, wondering if she should go next door and intervene, but in the end she decided it would be wiser not to. God knows what an angry David Kane would tell his wife if she tried to stick her nose in, especially after tonight’s performance on the porch.
After ten minutes there was absolute silence, which in some ways was more disturbing than all the arguing. Katie remained awake for nearly an hour afterwards, but eventually she slept. She dreamed that she was back in Knocknadeenly, talking to John, trying to persuade him to come and take Barney for a walk with her, but he kept his back to her and wouldn’t turn around.
‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Don’t come. See if I care.’
He still wouldn’t turn to face her. ‘I’ll be gone by the time you get back,’ he told her, and even in her dream she was sure that she would never see him again.
25
Next day, the sky was slate-grey and it was raining hard. Shoppers hurried to and fro past the windows of Pat Whelan’s shop as if they were fleeing from some major disaster.
Only one customer came in all morning, at ten minutes to twelve, when Pat was almost ready to close. He was a fiftyish man with a crimson face and wet grey straggly hair. When he had closed the shop door behind him, he stood on the mat and shook his old-fashioned black rubber mackintosh with a rumble like distant thunder.
He approached the counter and said, in a slurry accent, ‘The Broad Black Brimmer.’
‘The Broad Black Brimmer?’ asked Pat. ‘What of it?’
The crimson-faced man leaned closer, and his breath was sour with last night’s Guinness. ‘The sheet music, if you have it, on account of me and my friends are holding a republican evening.’
‘Oh yes?’
The crimson-faced man spoke with the precision of somebody who knows that he’s still under the influence of drink. ‘We’re commemorating the amnesty that the Free State offered to the soldiers of the IRA in October 1922.’
Pat went across to the racks of sheet music and started to sort through the section devoted to the Wolfe Tones. ‘And – ah – why would you be commemorating that, like?’
‘Because the boys told them to shtick their amnesty, that’s why. They stayed true to the cause. And because of that, a lot more of them died. It’s them we’ll be honouring.’
Pat found him the sheet music of ‘The Broad Black Brimmer’, but as he went over to the till he couldn’t stop himself from glancing apprehensively towards the street outside. Shortly after a quarter past seven that morning he had received a phone call from the carroty-curled young man, advising him in that hoarse, throaty voice to step out of his shop at noon precisely, and lock it, leaving a sign on the door saying ‘Back in 5 Minutes’. That would indicate that he had intended to return, and that he hadn’t been a party to his own kidnapping.
He felt tingly with nerves but at the same time felt an underlying sense of relief. For over three years now, he hadn’t been able to see any way at all to clear his debts and the future had appeared unrelentingly grim. He had already accepted that he would probably have to sell his house, and his car, and all his stock for a knock-down price. He wasn’t at all sure that his marriage could survive him going bankrupt. Mairead had already talked about going to live with her sister in Waterford, and he could hardly blame her.
‘You should come along,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘We’re holding it at Quinlan’s, tomorrow night. We’ll be singing all the good old favourites – “Come Out Ye Black and Tans”, “The Boys of Fair Hill”.’
He broke into song, waving his hands as if he were conducting a choir. ‘The smell on Patrick’s Bridge is wicked, how does Father Mathew stick it? Here’s up them all, say the boys of Fair Hill!’
He cackled and snorted and shook his head.
Pat said, ‘Thanks for the invitation, but I can’t.’
‘You’d have a whale of a time. At least think about it.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Oh, pity. Are you going away, then?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Off on your holliers?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Oh yes? Where are you going, like?’
Pat hesitated. Then he said, ‘Nowhere in particular. In fact, I just might come to Quinlan’s. I could do with a night out.’
If the guards manage to trace this fellow, he was thinking, seeing as how he’ll probably be the last person I talked to before I went missing, that will confirm that I had no idea at all that I was going to be kidnapped.
The crimson-faced man rolled up the sheet music and stuck it into his raincoat pocket. Pat followed him to the door to let him out.
‘I’ll be seeing you at Quinlan’s, then, most likely,’ said the crimson-faced man. He leaned out into the street and stuck out his hand, palm upwards, squinting up at the sky. ‘The fecking angels are crying again. Don’t know what they’re so fecking sad about.’ Then he teetered off down the street, stumbling over one of the high raised kerbstones and nearly falling in front of a taxi.
Pat checked his watch. Three minutes to twelve. Oh well, deep breath, Pat, now’s the time. He went to the back of the shop to collect his khaki waterproof jacket and switch off the lights and set the alarm.
Before he left, he looked around the shop and had a strange feeling that he would never set foot in it again, although there was no logical reason why he shouldn’t. Once he had received his share of the ransom money, he would at least have a chance to arrange some kind of repayment plan with his creditors, and maybe he could find a way to save the business from closure.
He locked the front door and started to walk eastwards along Oliver Plunkett Street towards Parnell Place, as he had been instructed on the phone. The rain was lashing down now and he gripped the collar of his jacket and kept his head down. A young woman in a red raincoat collided with him and almost poked out his left eye out with the spokes of her umbrella, but when she said, ‘Jesus, I’m sorry!’ he simply waved one hand to show her that it didn’t matter, and carried on walking.
He reached the corner of Parnell Place and hesitated, looking south towar
ds Parnell Bridge, blinking against the raindrops on his eyelashes. Parnell Place was one-way, with traffic coming from his right, but at that moment there was no traffic at all, only parked cars.
Now that he had locked the shop and was out on the street, he was beginning to doubt that he was doing the right thing. Perhaps by agreeing to this mock-kidnapping he was being a coward rather than a realist. All right, he was up to his ears in debt, and this ginger-haired young feen had threatened him with God knows what if he didn’t play along. But he was still his own man and he had always prided himself on being afraid of nobody or nothing. Apart from that, faking his own abduction to extort money was a serious crime. If he were found out, he could face a long stretch in jail.
He looked across to the other side of the road, to the cream-painted facade of the Panda Mama Chinese Restaurant on the corner. The carroty-curled young man had told him to walk slowly over towards it. The plan was that a car would pull up in front of him, two men would climb out, and they would snatch him. Parnell Place was never too crowded, so it was unlikely that anybody would come to his assistance, but there were bound to be at least three or four witnesses.
As he stepped off the kerb, a dark blue Ford Mondeo that was parked outside Mulligan’s pub started its engine and reversed out into the street. It stopped for a second as the driver changed gear, then started driving towards him with its headlights on full.
He was suddenly gripped by the thought, This is sheer fecking madness. What the feck am I doing this for? These people are criminals and I’m allowing them to take me away?
The Mondeo slithered to a halt right in front of him. Its doors were flung open and two bulky bald-headed men climbed out of it. He turned around and started running away, back along Oliver Plunkett Street, running in the road because the pavements were too crowded. He ran as fast as he could, not even looking behind him to see if the men were coming after him.
He dodged an elderly couple crossing the road in front of him and almost lost his balance, staggering like a man running too fast down a steep hill. A green An Post van blew its horn at him and a cyclist shouted something abusive that he didn’t catch.
He wasn’t fit. He had only recently given up smoking and he had been drinking far too much since the business had started to lose money. And just as he passed the Ovens Bar, gasping, the crimson-faced man in the black rubber raincoat stepped out in front of him, as if from nowhere at all, and seized the sleeve of his jacket. He slewed around, panting, with clear snot running from his nostrils and rain dripping from his chin. He was too breathless to speak, but he tried to wrench his arm away. The crimson-faced man clung on to him, his eyes staring and fierce, not smiling or friendly at all now, and wouldn’t let him go.
‘I had a feeling you might lose your bottle, boy. That’s why I’ve been waiting here for ye.’
‘Get the – get the feck off of me – ’
‘I will in me bollocks.’
A few seconds later, the two bouncer-types arrived and immediately seized Pat’s arms. Several passers-by stopped to stare at them, but nobody made any attempt to come over and ask what was going on. It was raining too hard, and in any case they didn’t look like the sort of men who would take kindly to being challenged.
‘You came to a solemn agreement,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘You can’t go back on a solemn agreement.’
‘I didn’t agree to nothing,’ Pat protested, as the bouncer-types tugged him back along the street, half marching and half hopping. The Mondeo had followed them, even though Oliver Plunkett Street was a pedestrian-only zone after eleven in the morning. One of the bouncer-types opened the back door and pushed Pat inside, climbing in next to him, while the other walked around the car and wedged himself in on the other side. The crimson-faced man sat himself in the front passenger seat. ‘Right,’ he said to the driver, ‘let’s get the fuck out of here.’
The driver was a young man with spiky blond hair and a red spot on the end of his nose and sunglasses, in spite of the gloom. He twisted around in his seat and reversed at speed all the way back to Parnell Place, the gearbox whining in protest.
‘I want you to let me out,’ said Pat, his voice quaking. ‘I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve come to a decision. I don’t want any part of it.’
‘A bit late now, Pat,’ said the crimson-faced man, without turning round.
‘I won’t say a word to nobody, I swear to God.’
‘Too right you fecking won’t. You won’t get the fecking opportunity.’
‘Just let me out. I can deal with my financial problems on my own.’
‘You’re too late, Pat. I told you. Now shut the front door, would you?’
‘Listen – ’ Pat began, but one of the bouncer-types took hold of his right ear and twisted it around so hard that it felt as if he were tearing it off.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, pressing his hand to the side of his head.
‘It’s like you were told,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘Either you cooperate willingly or else we’ll have to force you to cooperate, and we don’t want to have to do that. It only makes for bad feeling.’
‘Jesus Christ, that hurt.’
‘I’m sure that it did, like. Now let’s have some peace and quiet, shall we, unless you want more of the same.’
They were driving along Merchants Quay now, alongside the river. The crimson-faced man turned around in his seat and held out a black woollen scarf. ‘Right now, Pat, we’re going to put a blindfold on you. You won’t mind that, will you? It’s entirely for your own protection, like, so we can be sure that you can’t tell anybody where we’re taking you. It wouldn’t be like a real kidnap, would it, if you knew where you were?’
Pat said nothing, but closed his eyes as one of the bouncer-types tied the scarf tightly around his head. It smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, and even though he kept his eyes closed it still made them water.
26
When Katie left for the city at seven-thirty in the morning David Kane’s Range Rover was still parked in the next-door driveway, so she hadn’t gone to see if Sorcha needed any help. If his tantrum on the porch last night was anything to go by, she was beginning to ask herself if he had been telling her the whole truth about his marriage, and Sorcha’s violent rages. She thought that if she ever found herself married to a man who smashed champagne bottles when he was denied sex, she would probably end up doolally, too.
It was so dark in her office that she had to switch on the lights, and her desk lamp as well. The rain pattered against the windows like somebody throwing handfuls of currants at them.
She had only just started to leaf through the messages on her desk when Detective Horgan appeared at her door.
‘Morning, ma’am. Miserable old day today. Drawky, my grannie would have called it.’
‘What did you want?’ Katie asked him. ‘I have to go and interview Derek Hagerty again in a minute.’
Detective Horgan held up a green manila folder. ‘It’s Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy, ma’am. I’ve been checking with the Companies Registration Office in Dublin and I’ve discovered that he’s the majority shareholder in a limited partnership called Flathead Consultants.’
‘Flathead Consultants? And what do they do?’
‘Construction consultants, apparently, whatever that means. They haven’t yet lodged their accounts for last year, but in the previous year they had a turnover of one and a half million euros and made a profit of six hundred and seventy thousand.’
‘Construction consultants?’ said Katie. ‘What on earth would Bryan Molloy know about construction?’
‘I suppose “construction” could cover a whole multitude of things to do with building. Getting planning permission, that kind of thing. Molloy has very close contacts with lots of politicians, doesn’t he? Goes to all their fancy banquets, plays golf with them regular. They’re all Masons, too.’
‘Maybe you’re right. So where did all of this turnover come from?’
‘And what do we know about Crossagalla Groundworks?’
‘Not much. The names of their directors and not a lot else. They have a website, but all it gives you is a list of what projects they’ve been involved in, like the wastewater works at Carrigrenan.’
‘Okay,’ said Katie. ‘Why don’t you get in touch with Henry Street and see what they can tell you about them? Meanwhile – look – I have to go. We’re holding a media conference at eleven and apart from talking to Derek Hagerty I have to get up to speed on these Rocky Beach murders.’
Detective Horgan turned to leave the office and as he did so he almost collided with Bill Phinner, who was still wearing his lab coat, as well as his usual mournful expression. He always looked to Katie as if his dog had just died and he had lost a bundle of money on the races at Mallow, both on the same day.
‘Good morning to you, Bill,’ she said. ‘What’s the story?’
‘Oh, good morning,’ he said, looking over at the rain that was dribbling down the windows. ‘Not that good, though. I have a leaky attic roof at home that needs fixing.’
‘What about our victims? Have we identified them yet?’
‘We’re still waiting on the DNA. We should get the results of that in an hour or two. But the female had three fingers of her left hand curled up tight against her palm, so that the fingertips weren’t burned, and we were able to take some good prints off of them.’
He laid the printouts of two sets of fingerprints on her desk, both of which had been marked with red felt-tip pen.
‘We compared them with all the prints that we lifted last night from the Pearse house, and they matched all right. So the female is definitely Meryl Pearse. We’ll be double-checking, of course, with the hairs we’ve taken from their combs and brushes, and the residue from Norman Pearse’s electric razor, but I don’t think there’s very much doubt as to the male’s identity.’