Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Come on, don’t get too upset. Your man was only trying to scare you. Did he tell you where to deliver the money?’

  ‘No. He said he’d ring me this afternoon sometime and see how my fund-raising was coming along. Then, when I had the whole two hundred and fifty thousand, he’d give me instructions on when and where to hand it over.’

  One of her tears dripped on to the back of Katie’s hand, and then another, but Katie didn’t take it away. ‘Did the man tell you who he was? Or who he represented?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What I mean is, did he say that Pat had been kidnapped by any particular gang?’

  ‘No, he didn’t give me any names.’

  Katie said, ‘Patrick, would you fetch that latest recording for me? The one about the Pearses. It’s on my desk, next to the clock.’

  Detective O’Donovan left the interview room. Liam Fennessy sat down now and said to Mairead Whelan, ‘So Pat’s overdrawn at the bank? Has business been going badly?’

  ‘Terrible bad. Disastrous. He’s having to close the shop at the end of the month. Everybody buys on the interweb these days. I don’t know how we’re going to manage.’

  Liam glanced at Katie as if to say there’s definitely a pattern here. Micky Crounan with his bakery and Derek Hagerty with his auto workshop. Now Pat Whelan and his music store. All of them bankrupt or near-bankrupt, but all of them kidnapped for ransom.

  Detective O’Donovan came back with the DVD recording of Katie’s last conversation with the man who claimed he was speaking for the High Kings of Erin. He slotted it into the interview recorder and switched it on. Katie used the remote control to fast-forward it until she came to a part that was appropriate for Mairead Whelan to hear.

  ‘Let me tell you this,’ said the husky-voiced caller, ‘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.’

  ‘That’s him!’ said Mairead, firmly. She took out a tissue and smartly wiped her eyes, and sniffed. ‘That’s the cancery bastard who called me!’

  Katie was taken aback by her vehemence. ‘You’re sure about that? You don’t want to listen to any more?’

  ‘No, I don’t have to. That was him all right. God rot him.’

  Katie said, ‘All right, Mairead. What I have to do now is talk to my superior officers to see what we can do about the ransom money. But, please – you must not breathe a single word of this to anybody, not even your closest relatives or your closest friends. If Pat’s been kidnapped by the people I think he’s been kidnapped by, they’re likely to go after anybody who can identify them, or give even the smallest scrap of evidence against them. I’m not going to beat around the bush, Mairead, they’ll kill them, and not pleasantly. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Mairead Whelan. ‘I shouldn’t have come here, should I?’

  ‘What choice did you have?’ Katie asked her. ‘How else could you have hoped to find enough money to pay them off? Besides, I’m going to make sure that you have close protection from now on. It’ll be discreet, plain-clothes protection, so that the kidnappers won’t realize that you’ve contacted us. Where do you live?’

  ‘The Lodge, Ard na Laoi, just off the Middle Glanmire Road.’

  ‘All right, then. Detective O’Donovan here will make a note of your phone numbers and all your particulars. When the kidnappers ring you again, we’ll be recording your conversation and with any luck we may be able to trace where they’re calling from, too. Meanwhile, when you do talk to them, Mairead, try your very best not to sound angry and resentful, no matter how you really feel. You’ll have a detective with you the whole time to help you through it. Just tell them that you’re doing everything you can to get hold of the money, and you’re hopeful that you’ll be able to pay them off well within the three days.’

  ‘Are you sure I’ve done the right thing? What if they find out that I’ve come here and they kill Pat? How am I ever going to forgive myself?’

  Katie stood up. ‘You’ll get him back, Mairead. I promise you that. Patrick – if you can make a note of all of Mairead’s details and run through any of her husband’s business background that she knows about. You know – aggressive creditors, outstanding court orders, things like that. I have to go and brief Chief Superintendent Molloy.’ She paused, then she added, ‘Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy.’

  ***

  Halfway along the corridor to Bryan Molloy’s office, Katie’s mobile phone rang. She saw that it was Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán calling. She was probably wondering why she hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet.

  ‘Kyna? I won’t be too much longer. Something’s come up. Another broke businessman’s been kidnapped, would you believe? Pat Whelan, the owner of Whelan’s Music Store. His wife’s here now. I just have to talk to Molloy and then I’ll be with you.’

  ‘You don’t have to hurry,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She was silent for a very long time, and then she said, ‘Nessa passed away five minutes ago. Father Buckley from the hospital chaplaincy came up to give her the last rites.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Katie. ‘Dear God in heaven.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She remembered a consultant psychiatrist at Templemore telling her group of trainee gardaí, ‘Much more often than most people, you will find yourselves being hit unexpectedly and devastatingly hard by emotions such as fear, and disgust, and pity, and grief. I am not suggesting for a moment that you could or should make yourself immune to such emotions. You wouldn’t be human if you did. But while you are on duty, you must keep calm and rational and level-headed. Learn to suppress any reactive outbursts until later. Shout or weep or break things by all means, but wait until you get home.’

  ‘I’ll come over as soon as I can,’ she told Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, and then she continued along the corridor to Bryan Molloy’s office. Before she knocked on his door, though, she took a deep breath to steady herself, and held it. Wait until you get home.

  Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was standing behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, going over his diary appointments with his secretary, Teagan.

  ‘Now, look here, girl,’ he was saying, ‘how can I show up for that meeting of the Southern Law Association if at one and the same time I’m supposed to be giving an after-dinner speech to the Cork Business Association? Mind you, if only these people would stop associating with each other, we’d all have a quieter life!’

  He looked up when Katie came in. ‘Katie! How’s that young detective of yours? Any news?’

  ‘I just heard from DS Ni Nuallán at the hospital. She died a short time ago. It may have been a blessing, considering that she would have been paralysed for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Ah well, I’m sorry to hear it. Very sorry. I’ll be writing a letter of condolence to her family.’

  He was about to go back to his diary, but then he realized that Katie hadn’t just come to tell him that.

  ‘You haven’t found that witness fellow, have you? The fellow from Carrigaline?’

  ‘Not yet, no. But a woman has just come in to tell us that her husband’s been kidnapped. Mairead Whelan – her husband Pat owns Whelan’s, which is one of the oldest music stories in Cork.’

  ‘Has she heard from the kidnappers at all? He hasn’t just walked out on her?’

  ‘Oh no. They’ve called her. They want two hundred and fifty thousand euros, they said, or else they’ll kill him or amputate his arms and legs and cut out his tongue.’

  ‘Holy Mary! Did they say who they were?’

  ‘No, but I played Mrs Whelan the recording of the last call I received from the fellow who said that he was speaking on behalf of the High Kings of Erin. She swore blind that it was one and the same as the fellow who rang her.’

  Bryan Molloy turned to his secretary and said, ‘Teagan, would you give us a moment, please?’
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  Teagan gave Katie a quick, sympathetic smile, as if she could guess what she was in for, picked up the diary and left the office, closing the door very quietly behind her.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Bryan Molloy.

  Katie sat down opposite his desk and crossed her legs, but said nothing.

  ‘What am I going to tell the media?’ Bryan Molloy asked her. ‘More important than that, what am I going to tell Jimmy O’Reilly?’

  ‘For the time being, you should tell the media nothing at all,’ said Katie. ‘The kidnappers warned Mairead Whelan that if she reported her husband’s abduction to the Garda they’d kill him at once. As for Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, you can tell him the truth, that the so-called High Kings of Erin have taken another bankrupt businessman and want nearly a quarter of a million euros for his safe return.’

  ‘No, no, Katie, I don’t think you have me. What am I going to tell him about our hopeless inability to stop these High Kings of Erin? How am I going to explain that we are making absolutely no progress at all in identifying who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing?’

  ‘Bryan, we are making progress,’ Katie insisted. ‘We have witness descriptions of at least two of the offenders, and their vehicle, and I don’t think it’s going to be long before we get a breakthrough. It certainly doesn’t help that they seem to be receiving inside information from somebody here in the station.’

  ‘Oh, that again! You’re sure about that, are you? I’m beginning to think that’s nothing more than an excuse for your incompetence. You don’t seem to be able to get a handle on this at all, Katie. You say you’ve made progress, but at what price? We have two young gardaí dead now, as well as three known homicides – Micky Crounan and the Pearses. We’ve lost a whole heap of public money paying for the freedom of a man who already happened to be free. Now it looks like we’re going to pay almost as much again to get this Whelan fellow released – even if he manages to escape, too, which he may very well do – although I doubt if you’ll get know about it before it’s too late. And where is our last surviving witness to Derek Hagerty’s abduction, I ask? Bundled away by the High Kings of Erin before we could ask him even a single question.’

  ‘Bryan, you’re being unfair,’ Katie retorted. ‘My team have been working all the hours that God sends them to break this case, but you know yourself that the evidence is less than minimal. We have the saw marks left on Micky Crounan’s vertebrae, we have the footprints left on Rocky Bay Beach, we have a fingerprint lifted from the Carrolls’ doorbell in Carrigaline, and two sightings of two bald gorillas in black suits, who nobody has yet come forward to identify. Plus some bits and pieces of bomb that may or may not have been put together by Clearie O’Hely.

  ‘I’m hopeful, though, that Derek Hagerty will break, sooner or later, especially now that he’s been charged.’ She checked her watch. ‘Talking of that, I have to be at the District Court in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Bryan Molloy. ‘How can you possibly pursue your case against Derek Hagerty when you have no witnesses left alive and no material evidence?’

  ‘Bryan, no messing,’ Katie snapped at him, ‘I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.’

  Bryan Molloy’s eyes bulged and he repeatedly jabbed his finger at her ‘I’ll tell you whose side I’m on! I’m on the side of efficiency and effectiveness in clearing up serious crime in this city! You know how I dealt with the gangs in Limerick? They thought they were hard, but I was harder than they were. I didn’t give them an inch, not a fecking inch, and I’m not going to give an inch to any of the gangs here in Cork, whatever they call themselves. But it takes good team management to be efficient and it takes good intelligence and first-class detective work to be effective, and you, girl, are seriously falling short.’

  Katie said, ‘This is your idea of a truce, is it? This is your idea of us “rubbing along together”?’

  ‘Katie, you don’t have to call a truce with somebody who doesn’t have anything to offer you. And up until now, what have you come up with?’

  ‘You don’t know me at all, Bryan,’ said Katie. ‘You don’t know the way I work or what connections I have, and I can promise you that one day soon you’re going to regret talking to me like this.’

  ‘I’m shaking in my boots,’ grinned Bryan Molloy. ‘Meanwhile, if you or one of your team will be so kind, I’ll need some detailed background information on this Whelan kidnap so that I can talk to Jimmy O’Reilly again and see if he can authorize another two hundred and fifty thousand euros ransom money. I don’t know if he’ll be able to let us have that much, but if he can, we’d better not lose it this time.’

  Katie was about to lash back at him that no crime ever got solved by sarcasm, but she bit her lip. Wait until you get home.

  Instead, she said, ‘Detective O’Donovan’s taking down Mairead Whelan’s particulars right now. I’ll ask him to send them up to you.’

  ‘And what are you going to do about Derek Hagerty?’

  ‘I’ll drop the charge against him, for the time being anyway, although I still think I could make it stick. Believe me, there’s enough holes in his story to strain the poppies.’

  ‘Drop it,’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘We don’t want to look even more cack-handed than we do already. And you’ll have to turf him out, whether he wants to go or not. This is the Garda station, not the fecking Simon Shelter.’

  ‘We have a safe house in Macroom that should be free in a day or two. In the meantime, he could go back to his own home. It would give him the chance to sort out his affairs, cancel his newspapers or whatever and pack what he needs. But we’d have to give him round-the-clock protection.’

  ‘As long as it’s only a couple of days and no more than that. For the love of God, Katie, we can’t afford many more officers out on protection duty. We simply don’t have the manpower, and if you saw the overtime costs you’d pass out on the spot.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can arrange with Denis,’ Katie told him.

  As she opened the office door to leave, Bryan Molloy said, ‘There doesn’t have to be this enmity between us, Katie. But you have to prove to me that you’re on top of these kidnappings. I can’t go on making excuses for you for very much longer.’

  Katie pretended that she hadn’t heard that, and walked out into the corridor without closing the door behind her.

  33

  The door opened and Eoghan heard floorboards creaking, and people breathing, and the sound of their clothes rustling. He could smell perfume, too, heavy and musky, similar to the Jovan perfume that his wife, Patsy, sprayed on herself far too liberally whenever she went out in the evening.

  He was blindfolded with what felt like a woollen scarf, knotted so tightly at the back of his head that it was bringing on one of his headaches. His wrists were bound behind his back with gaffer tape and his shoes had been taken away. He was lying on his right side, very awkwardly, on what felt like carpet that was worn down to the backing.

  Wherever he was, it was chilly and smelled strongly of damp, like most old houses in Cork. He was trembling with the cold and also with the shock of being dragged away from his parents’ house and seeing that young detective shot, right in the face. On top of that, his bladder was so full that it was painful.

  He heard shuffles and murmurs and then somebody came up and squatted down close to him, and sniffed. Then a thin, abrasive voice said, ‘So! You’re the fellow who found Derek Hagerty lying by the roadside, along with that Pearse woman.’

  ‘Do you think you could untie me here? I’m absolutely bursting for a slash.’

  ‘Oh, just piss in your kecks, I don’t mind. What I want to know is, what did you think when you picked up Derek Hagerty?’

  ‘Is that his name?’ said Eoghan. ‘To me and Meryl, he called himself Denny.’

  ‘Denny, Derek. Whatever he called himself, what did you think?’

  ‘What do you mean, what did I think? I thought we ought to call an ambulance o
r take him to the nearest Garda station, that’s what I thought. But he begged us not to, said he was scared for his life. He was totally shitting it, so Meryl said she’d take him back to her house, God rest her soul.’

  ‘You know that she’s dead?’ the thin voice asked him.

  ‘Of course. It’s been all over the news. It was horrible, her getting all burned up like that. She and I were going to be married once upon a time.’

  ‘Yes, I know about that. You have my sympathy, believe me.’

  ‘Was she killed because of this Denny fellow? This Hagerty, or whatever his name is? Am I here because of him? I was going to go to the cops about it, but my father told me that it would be safer for me to forget about it altogether and go back to England a couple of days early, just in case. I wish I had now.’

  ‘Do you know the names of the people who killed her?’

  Eoghan had to squeeze his eyes tight shut and clench his thighs together for a moment to stop himself from urinating. Then he said, ‘No, of course I don’t. Even the cops don’t know. How could I?’

  ‘Did Derek Hagerty tell you who had kidnapped him? Did he mention any names?’

  ‘No, the people who took him, he said he’d never seen them before.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘I didn’t have any reason not to.’

  ‘Ah, no. I have a strong suspicion, Eoghan, that you did not believe him.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Eoghan retorted. ‘Why should I have not believed him? I didn’t care one way or the other! He was all bloody and bruised and the smell off of him was rank. All I wanted to do was for us to get rid of him as soon as we could. To be honest with you, I didn’t even want to pick him up in the first place.’

  ‘But you had an inkling that he wasn’t telling you the truth, didn’t you?’

  ‘Like I say, it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. Not a hat of shite, believe me.’

  ‘All the same, you did think that he could have been lying about what happened to him, or exaggerating at the very least?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’