Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I doubt if his mistress was best pleased, either,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘But I’d say we have to accept that times have changed. There’s much more cross-pollination between the gangs in Cork and the gangs in Limerick than there ever used to be.’

  ‘“Cross-contamination”, I’d call it,’ Katie put in.

  ‘I blame all those improvements to the N20 myself. You have to admit that since they’ve made the road better, we’ve seen more scobes from Limerick in town than we ever used to. In fact, we’ve seen a general increase in scobes from all over.’

  ‘Go and tell Bill Phinner, in any case,’ said Katie. ‘It could very well help the technical boys to identify the bomb-maker if they know that Clearie O’Hely might have had a hand in it. It always surprises me how bomb-makers can’t help themselves leaving their own telltale trademarks on their handiwork, like the way they twist the wires, or the type of tape they use.’

  She turned away from the window. ‘As for me … I’ll go and have a word with Bryan Molloy, reluctant as I am. If anybody knows about Limerick gangs, then he does.’

  ‘Rather you than me, that’s all I can say.’

  29

  When she knocked at the door of Bryan Molloy’s office, he surprised her by looking up from his desk and waving her inside with a smile on his face.

  ‘Katie!’ he said. ‘What’s the craic? Fancy a cup of coffee? I’m just about send Teagan to fetch me one, and some of them Kimberley biscuits, too. I think I’m addicted.’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m grand altogether,’ said Katie, sitting down opposite him. ‘I had coffee only an hour ago. I was meeting with Professor Michael Dempsey from the university history department.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘And what was all that about?’

  Katie had never seen him so breezy before. She almost preferred him when he was being openly unpleasant, but here he was, smiling at her and cheerfully rubbing his hands together as if he couldn’t wait for her to give him the latest update.

  ‘He specializes in Irish mediaeval history and so he knows as much about the High Kings of Erin as anybody. I’ve asked him to see if the real High Kings ever killed any of their enemies in the way that the Pearses and Micky Crounan were killed. I’m trying to establish if the fellow who’s been ringing me up is the genuine article or if he’s bluffing.’

  ‘That’s good thinking, Katie. Yes, that’s very astute, I’d say. I’ll be interested to see what your professor comes up with. So, what other lines of inquiry do you have going? Did you manage to wring any more out of Derek Hagerty yet? He’s still with us, isn’t he? We’re going to have to decide what to do with him. He can’t stay here at Anglesea Street for ever – not unless we start charging him rent!’

  Bryan Molloy let out a sharp bark of laughter and sat back in his chair, his fingers laced across his stomach, clearly pleased with himself.

  Katie said, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to lead us anywhere, but he gave me enough information for us to track down the friend that Meryl Pearse had with her when she found him by the roadside.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s something, I suppose,’ said Bryan Molloy, although he didn’t look very impressed. ‘Hasn’t he come out and named any of these High Kings of Erin, or given us some idea of what they look like?’

  ‘He’s too scared. It was as much as I could do to get the name of Meryl’s friend out of him. He may have been party to his own kidnap to begin with, but now he’s totally terrified and he won’t say a word.’

  ‘So who was her friend?’

  ‘An old flame of hers, her childhood sweetheart as a matter of fact. Apparently they were out for a drink together for old times’ sake. Eoghan Carroll his name is. He lives in England now but just at the moment he’s visiting his parents in Carrigaline. He was out today, but as soon as he gets home DS Ni Nuallán will go round and see if he can help us with any new information.’

  ‘Eoghan Carroll? His da’s not Brendan Carroll is he, by any chance? I play golf with a fellow from Carrigaline called Brendan Carroll. Lives just off the Ballea Road.’

  ‘No,’ said Katie. ‘Eoghan’s father is called Paul and his mother is called Mary and they live in The Grove.’

  ‘Oh. Can’t be him, then!’ Bryan Molloy gave another bark of laughter. Katie had the feeling that she was trying to have a conversation with an exuberant dog.

  ‘I’m not giving up on Derek Hagerty yet, not by any means,’ she told him. ‘I’m hoping that his sense of guilt will win through in the end. He’s quite aware that if he colluded in his own kidnapping then he’s just as responsible for Garda McCracken’s murder as the rest of the gang. I can’t keep him under arrest for very much longer, though, not without moving things forward. I have to get him into the District Court by noon tomorrow.’

  Bryan Molloy leaned forward again, and for a moment Katie thought he was going to say something sarcastic. But he kept on smiling and said, ‘Listen, Katie, I’m sure you’ll crack this one. You’re a great detective and you have a grand team working for you. I know we haven’t always got along together as well as we should have done, and mostly that’s been my fault, like. I can only plead stress. It hasn’t been easy, taking over from Dermot at such short notice, and Cork is not the same kettle of fish at all as Limerick – like, I don’t know half the councillors here, or the clergy. I don’t know half the fecking criminals, for that matter.’

  ‘You’re a stonecutter, though,’ said Katie, nodding towards the triangular Masonic clock on his desk. ‘That must help.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bryan Molloy. He didn’t seem offended in the least by Katie saying that – or if he was, he wasn’t showing it. ‘Nothing like the old secret handshake to open doors for you. Not that we really do have a secret handshake. We don’t sacrifice virgins, either.’

  He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘What I’m trying to say to you, Katie, is that maybe you and me can call a truce, like. I’ll support you one hundred and ten per cent, and maybe you can stop your detectives poking around in my private accounts. They won’t find anything untoward, because there’s nothing untoward to find, which makes the whole exercise a provocation and nothing more.’

  ‘It’s not really in my remit, Bryan,’ Katie told him. ‘The Public Accounts Committee asked us to look into the financial affairs of several officers in the division, and that’s mostly been done with their full cooperation. You know what it was all about. There were so many allegations of favours being done, especially after that penalty points affair, and the Kieran Boylan drugs business.’

  Bryan Molloy didn’t answer immediately, but slowly licked his lips, as if he could taste something vaguely disagreeable. She could almost hear him thinking what Commissioner Martin Callinan had said about Garda whistleblowers before he had decided to resign: ‘disgusting’.

  Instead, he nodded and said, ‘Very well. But if you have any questions, you could come directly to me, you know. I’d be only too happy to help out. I’ll let your people have my bank statements if you want them, but they’ll only see that I’ve been spending too much money on golf club subscriptions.’

  ‘All right, Bryan,’ said Katie. ‘I might even take you up on that.’

  He picked up his phone and started to prod out a number, but just as she turned to leave, Katie said, ‘By the way, Clearie O’Hely’s been seen around the city.’

  Bryan Molloy stopped dialling, although he didn’t look up.

  ‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ Katie added. ‘You know, considering his reputation with bombs and all. Unusual to see him here in Cork.’

  ‘It’s a free country,’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘A man can go wherever he pleases, even if he does have a reputation.’

  ‘I just wondered if you’d heard anything, that’s all. You know, the old Delmege Park telegraph.’

  Now Bryan Molloy raised his eyes. He was still smiling, but his smile looked tight now, and forced, as if he were trying hard to stop it from turning into a scowl. ‘No,�
� he said. ‘Not a whisper.’ He whispered the word ‘whisper’, which for some reason made it sound threatening.

  ‘Right you are, then,’ said Katie, and left his office. She almost collided with his secretary, Teagan, as she came in carrying a mug of coffee and a plate of Kimberley biscuits.

  Purely out of mischief, Katie took one of his biscuits and bit into it as she walked along the corridor back to her office. As she did so, though, an inexplicable feeling of unease began to come over her. It was the same unease she felt when she wasn’t sure whether she had double-locked the front door before she left home, or had left a candle burning in the living room. She stopped and turned round, frowning. Something unsettling had happened in that encounter with Bryan Molloy, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

  When she reached her office, she dropped the half-eaten biscuit into her waste bin. Outside it was still dark, and the rain was lashing against her windows harder than ever, like mad people flailing their arms against the glass, trying to break in.

  30

  When Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán and Detective Garda Goold turned into The Grove, they saw that there were three vehicles parked outside the house named Crannagh – the Avis rental car that Eoghan was using while he was visiting his parents, a tan-coloured Volvo estate, and a black Volkswagen people carrier with tinted windows.

  The rain had eased off now. The sky was still grey but as bright as a migraine, and the pavements were starting to dry.

  ‘Looks like they have visitors,’ said Detective Garda Goold.

  ‘Yes,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, narrowing her eyes. She was trying to focus on the two bulky men in black suits and white shirts who were standing in the porch of the Carroll house, talking to somebody in the open doorway. The men’s heads were both white, as if they were bandaged like the Invisible Man. She wished that she had worn her glasses – her eyesight had been getting worse lately. She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door of their silver Toyota before Detective Garda Goold had even brought it to a halt.

  The Grove was a quiet cul-de-sac of two-storey, four-bedroom properties, painted white, with low hedges in between them. As Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán reached the concrete drive in front of the Carroll property she could hear a woman inside the house screaming shrilly and a man shouting, ‘Get off me! Leave go of me! Get the hell out of here!’

  The man was mid-thirtyish, with brown hair and a bottle-green sweater, and he was wrestling with the two bulky men in black in the hallway. Now that she was nearer, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán could see that both of the bulky men had plastic shopping bags tied around their heads, with holes torn open for their eyes and mouths. They were like a thuggish and frightening version of the Rubberbandits, the hip-hop duo from Limerick who wore the same kind of plastic-bag masks. She guessed that the man who was shouting was Eoghan Carroll. One of the bulky men had clamped one hand around the back of his neck and seized his right wrist with the other hand, and was trying to tug him off balance and out of the hallway.

  ‘Garda!’ shouted Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, hurrying forward. ‘Garda – let him go!’

  The bulky man ignored her, heaving Eoghan into the porch and swinging him around so that he collided with the front of the Volvo estate. Eoghan fell sideways to the ground, in between the Volvo and his rented Opel Insignia, but the bulky man reached down and dragged him up on to his feet again.

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shouted, ‘Garda! Let him go or I’ll arrest you!’

  She tried to seize the collar of the bulky man’s jacket, but his companion stepped over, gripped the sleeve of her coat and wrenched her away. As she stumbled, he pushed her so hard in the chest that she toppled into the hawthorn hedge behind her, hitting her head against the wall of the house.

  She tried to struggle to her feet, but the bulky man kicked her in the shin, and then the hip, and spat at her and snapped, ‘Next time, mind yer own fecking business, ya bitch!’

  Again she tried to get up, but he kicked her shin yet again, even harder this time, and her blue woollen coat was hopelessly snagged by the hawthorn spikes. Her head felt as if it had been cracked in half. She looked up at him, but all she could see was his eyes staring at her out of the holes in the plastic shopping bag, and his thick red lips. There was a pale red C across the side of his face, but that was only C for Centra supermarket.

  The two of them started to drag Eoghan away from the house. He was still struggling and shouting, ‘Leave go of me! Leave go of me, you bastard!’ and now his father had emerged from the house, brandishing an aluminium walking stick, while his mother continued screaming in breathless panic.

  Now, however, Detective Garda Goold came forward and stood between the two bulky men and the Volkswagen people carrier. She held up her right hand almost as if she were directing traffic in the middle of Patrick Street and she cried out, ‘Stop! Garda! Stop right there! I said stop!’

  Even Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán wouldn’t have taken her for a police officer. She was so young, and what with her brown wavy hair and the mole on her upper lip and her duffel coat she looked more like a sociology student.

  One of the bulky men went straight up to her and pushed her out of the way. He opened the rear door of the people carrier and his associate started to force Eoghan inside. By now Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán had managed to tug herself free from the hawthorn hedge and pull her phone out of her coat pocket to call for backup. Eoghan’s father had caught up with the bulky man who was manhandling his son and started to hit him across the back with his walking stick. The other bulky man punched him on the cheek and he spun wildly away, as if he were dancing a jig, and tumbled heavily on to the pavement.

  Detective Garda Goold caught hold of the open door of the people carrier and wouldn’t allow the bulky man to close it. He wrestled with her and hit her on the shoulder with his fist and swung the door violently from side to side, but still she clung on.

  ‘Nessa!’ shouted Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, limping down the driveway to help her. ‘Nessa, let them go!’

  But Detective Garda Goold held on to the door handle and wouldn’t loosen her grip. Inside the back of the people carrier Eoghan was struggling, too.

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shouted, ‘Nessa! Leave it! We have backup coming! They won’t get away!’

  But then the bulky man stopped trying to force Detective Garda Goold to release her hold on the door, and instead he turned round and drew out a large grey automatic pistol from underneath his jacket.

  He pointed it first at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, directly at her face. ‘Hold it dere, girl,’ he warned her, in a thick Limerick accent. ‘Don’t ye be movin’ a muscle.’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stopped beside the Volvo estate and lifted both hands. ‘Nessa,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, come on, Nessa, let go of the feckin’ door,’ said the bulky man with the pistol, without looking round at her.

  ‘Let this fellow out and then I will,’ said Detective Garda Goold.

  ‘Nessa,’ the bulky man repeated. ‘Would you ever let go of that feckin’ door?’

  ‘Nessa, let it go,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

  ‘We’re Garda detectives,’ said Detective Garda Goold. ‘You’re under arrest, both of you, for public order offences and assault.’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s head was banging so loudly she thought that everybody around her must be able to hear it. What made it bang even harder was the dread of what was certainly going to happen next, unless Detective Garda Goold immediately backed away.

  She was about to say, ‘Nessa,’ one more time, but the bulky man turned round and without any hesitation at all shot Detective Garda Goold point-blank in the mouth. The noise of the shot was deafening and the lower part of Detective Garda Goold’s face exploded like a huge scarlet chrysanthemum. She pitched backwards on to the pavement and lay there with her arms and her legs spreadeagled, her eyes staring up at the grey
clouds, twitching and jerking.

  The bulky man kept his pistol pointing at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán as he opened the front passenger door of the people carrier and heaved himself in. His companion slammed the rear door, walked round, and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Without any hurry at all, they drove off, turning left at the end of The Grove to head north, towards Douglas and Cork.

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán rushed over and knelt down beside Detective Garda Goold. Her jaw had been completely blown away and her tongue was hanging down like a tattered scarlet scarf, but she was still breathing bubbles of blood.

  ‘Oh, Nessa,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Oh, Nessa you poor, poor darling!’

  Eoghan’s father had managed to get back on to his feet now. ‘I’ll call for an ambulance right away,’ he said.

  ‘And can you bring me some warm blankets, please,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Warm blankets and some gauze if you have any, to try and stop the bleeding. Or a face cloth, or a towel, anything.’

  By now, neighbours had started to emerge from their houses to see what was happening. They stood a little way away, as if they were figures in a religious tableau, while Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán knelt beside Detective Garda Goold and held her hand tightly, and prayed for her.

  ***

  Katie was still halfway through her paperwork when her phone rang.

  ‘It’s Kyna here, ma’am. Nessa Goold’s been shot.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Only a few minutes ago. She was shot in the face, but she’s still conscious and we’ve called for an ambulance.’

  ‘Who shot her?’

  ‘There were two big fellows already at the Carroll house when we arrived there to talk to Eoghan. They were taking Eoghan away with them, forcibly like, but Nessa tried to stop them. That was when one of them pulled out a gun and shot her point-blank.’

  ‘Mother of God. I’ll come out there now. What kind of vehicle did they have, these fellows? I don’t suppose you got their number, did you?’