Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘If you didn’t suspect that he wasn’t telling you the truth, why did the Pearses call the guards?’

  ‘How should I know? Listen, I really need to go to the jacks and I don’t want to wet my pants, thank you very much.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll let you go and relieve yourself and then we’ll come to an arrangement, you and me.’

  ‘Arrangement?’

  ‘Go and water the horses first. I can’t stand talking to someone so twitchy. Malachi?’

  Eoghan heard somebody else approaching and then his left arm was grasped tightly and he was hauled up on to his feet as easily as if he had been a young child. Because he was still completely blindfolded he had to stagger to correct his balance, but then his left arm was grasped again and he felt the tape around his wrists being sliced apart with a very sharp knife.

  A hard hand gripped his right shoulder and, with stumbling steps, he was pushed straight along a corridor for about thirty or forty feet, then tugged to the left, and then stopped. He heard a door open and a growly voice said, ‘There you are. You can sit down to piss. Don’t want it spraying all over the shop.’

  He unbuttoned his trousers and sat down. The toilet seat was wooden and rickety and the varnish was peeling, but he didn’t care about that. As he emptied his bladder, he thought, My hands are free now, and there’s only this one fellow close enough to stop me. If I can surprise him, maybe there’s a good chance that I can get out of here. He could hear the thin-voiced man talking and a young woman replying to him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying, so they were obviously some distance away.

  He knew it would be dangerous. If they had been prepared to shoot a detective garda who had tried to stop them, they would have no compunction at all about shooting him. In fact, he was almost one hundred per cent sure that was what they were going to do anyway. For some reason, the thin-voiced man seemed to be sure that he knew something incriminating about Derek Hagerty’s escape, even though he didn’t – or if he did, he wasn’t aware that he knew it. Whatever it was, though, it had been motive enough for them to murder Meryl and her husband, and horribly.

  Behind his woollen blindfold, his eyes prickled with tears. Meryl. Oh God, Meryl. I loved you so much. Why did I take you on that stupid drive up to Fermoy? Did I really believe that you would go to bed with me? And Patsy. How is Patsy going to cope, if they kill me?

  ‘Aren’t you fecking finished yet?’ the growly voice demanded. ‘You’re putting the Shannon to shame in there.’

  Eoghan stood up, pulled up his trousers and zipped up his fly. He groped around for a few seconds as if he were fruitlessly searching for something, and then backed out of the toilet and said, ‘Can’t find the handle to flush it.’

  ‘Jesus, out the way, would you,’ said the growly voice. Eoghan was roughly pushed aside, but as soon as that happened he reached up with both hands and wrenched the scarf down from his eyes. It had been knotted so tightly that it hurt his nose when he tugged it down, and he couldn’t get it over his chin.

  He blinked in the sudden light. One of the bald-headed bouncer-types who had kidnapped him was stretching up to reach the cistern arm because the toilet chain was missing. Eoghan hunched his head down and shoulder-tackled him, as hard as he could, just like in rugby at school, and the bouncer-type hit the wall and dropped down between the wall and the lavatory bowl, so that for a few moments he was wedged in the corner.

  ‘What the feck do ye think ye’re playin’ at, ye feckin’ gowl!’ the bouncer-type screamed at him. He grabbed hold of the toilet seat to pull himself up, but its fastenings gave way and he fell back again, with the toilet seat landing in his lap.

  Eoghan limped along the short distance to the end of the corridor until he reached the high-ceilinged hallway. He hesitated for a split second, looking for the best way to escape. All of the doors around the hallway were closed, and might be locked, and he didn’t want to risk running upstairs and trying to hide. He crossed over to the front door and hurriedly jiggled off the security chain. The two cast-iron bolts were both stiff, but he managed to force them back, the bottom one by kicking it with his stockinged foot, and then he pulled down the door handle and tugged. He tugged it again and again, but the door was double-locked and wouldn’t open.

  ‘So – thinking of taking a walk, were you, Eoghan?’ said that thin, scraping voice. ‘I thought you and me agreed that we had business to talk over.’

  Eoghan turned around. The two bouncer-types with their black suits and shiny bald heads had positioned themselves on either side of the hallway, blocking the way to the stairs and the kitchen. Between them stood the carroty-curled brother and sister, Aengus and Ruari, both dressed in grey chalk-striped jackets, as well as Lorcan, the crimson-faced man, whose grey hair was even wilder and more straggly than ever, and who had a strange, distracted smile on his face, almost beatific, as if he were high.

  Eoghan looked tensely from one to the other, slightly crouched down. He felt like a cornered animal.

  ‘Now why don’t you come back to the lounge, Eoghan?’ said Aengus. ‘You never gave me the chance to explain what I had in mind. Jesus! I can’t believe you rushing off like that without even saying “see ye”.’

  ‘What in God’s name can you and me possibly have to agree about?’ said Eoghan. His words sounded flat and expressionless, as if they were being repeated by a translator standing beside him.

  ‘Well, come here, sham, and I’ll tell you,’ said Aengus. Without saying anything else, he turned and walked back along the corridor, accompanied by Ruari and Lorcan, although the two bouncer-types waited in the hallway for Eoghan to follow them. He hesitated for a moment, but then he did. He knew that he had no alternative.

  They went through to the large gloomy drawing room. Aengus and Ruari sat together on the ottoman while Lorcan went over and perched himself on one of the window seats. The two bouncer-types stood in the background, hands clasped together, silent and unmoving. Eoghan sat in one of the tub-like armchairs. Either the seat cushion was too flat or the sides were too high, but it made him feel diminished and small.

  Aengus started to twist one of his carroty curls around his left index finger, around and around. ‘You know something, sham, I was almost coming around to believing you. That’s why I let you have a comfort break. I was coming around to trusting you, ninety-nine per cent at least.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you seemed sincere enough, like. Maybe you did take Derek Hagerty’s story at face value. Which, of course, you were supposed to.’

  ‘Am I a prisoner here?’ asked Eoghan, and again his voice sounded flat and unfamiliar.

  ‘Of course not. But I’d prefer it if you stayed here until we got things sorted. You realize that you’ve complimicated the situation enaaarmously by taking off your blindfold. Not only for us, but mostly for yourself, like. Before, we could have dropped you off somewhere inconvenient and let you find your way home and that would have been an end to it.’

  ‘Why can’t you do that now?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Eoghan, use your brains. You’ve seen us now. You know who we are. You can identify us in a court of law.’

  ‘I don’t have the first idea who you are, and if the price of getting out of here is to forget I ever saw you or witnessed one of these two feens shooting a garda, then that’s a price I’m more than willing to pay. As for Denny, or Derek Hagerty, or whatever you want to call him, I didn’t see anything at all when we found him by the roadside that made me suspicious, and neither did he say anything that made me doubt that he wasn’t telling us the truth. Not while I was with him, anyway. I can’t vouch for what Meryl thought, or her husband.’

  Staring out of the window with a freshly lit cigarette, Lorcan said, ‘I think you’re missing the point, Mr Carroll. It’s all very well your promising us now that you won’t rat us out to the law, but we don’t have any guarantee that you won’t change your mind as soon as you’re safely b
ack in England. It would only take an e-mail to Anglesea Street, now wouldn’t it, or an anonymous phone call?’

  ‘What more can I give you than my word?’ said Eoghan.

  Lorcan breathed smoke out of his nostrils. It had started to rain again and silver droplets were spotting the window. ‘You can give us your cooperation, that’s what you can give us.’

  ‘Cooperation to do what, exactly?’

  ‘Get yourself released, of course. You could call your bowl feen and tell him that you’ve been abducted but treated fair so far, but you’d need him to cough up a bit of money to get you free.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. My father doesn’t have any money. He’s retired from the council on a pension.’

  ‘Oh, he can find the money all right. You won’t be asking for much, only fifty thousand euros, say. He can find that.’

  ‘Fifty thousand euros? How? The only way he could raise that kind of money would be to sell his house. The stress of it would kill him. He has a weak heart as it is.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ said Lorcan. ‘The Garda will help him. Especially if you tell your father that Derek Hagerty admitted to you that he helped to arrange his own kidnap, so that he wouldn’t have to pay his creditors.’

  ‘But he didn’t. He said nothing to me at all except that he’d been beaten and all his front teeth were pulled out with pliers.’

  ‘Again, Mr Carroll, you’re missing the point. Derek Hagerty won’t talk, but the shades are convinced that he was a willing party to his own abduction. They believe that he knows full well who was supposed to have taken him. But – since he won’t talk – they’re desperate for witnesses. It’s highly likely that the Pearses found out the truth somehow, or they wouldn’t have notified the guards when they gave Derek Hagerty a lift into the city, so that they could pick him up and take him in for questioning. But, sadly, the Pearses are no longer in any fit state to testify.’

  Eoghan was still shivering and he found it hard to make sense of anything that Lorcan was saying.

  ‘I’m supposed to ring my father and tell him that I know for sure that Derek Hagerty was faking it?’

  ‘That’s it, you have it. But you also have to tell him that you managed to persuade us that he told you nothing. That’s the reason we haven’t silenced you for good and all, like the Pearses. All we’re asking for is a small amount of recompense for the trouble you’ve caused us, and then we’ll let you go.’

  Eoghan glanced towards Aengus and Ruari. They were sitting side by side in their matching jackets, both expressionless. With their flour-white faces and their carroty curls they looked more like two life-size marionettes than real people, and Eoghan found them more frightening than anybody he had ever encountered in his life.

  ‘Why should I do anything you want me to do?’ he challenged them. ‘You murdered my Meryl. Burned her alive! Christ, you sound like you’re proud of yourselves for killing her!’

  Lorcan shrugged. ‘She should have listened to you, Mr Carroll. She should have left Hagerty where he was, or minded her own, at the very least.’

  ‘Are you those High Kings of Erin they’ve been talking about on the news?’ Eoghan demanded. ‘Is that who you are?’

  ‘Well, well, the light has shone through at last!’ said Aengus, with a sudden smile. ‘The very same. The great notorious High Kings of Erin! Not all of them, of course. There are more of us, like, all over the country. But all of us are sworn to do the same thing, and that’s to restore Ireland’s pride in herself and to punish those scobes who brought her so low.’

  Eoghan didn’t know what to say to that. He couldn’t really understand what Aengus or Lorcan were talking about, or follow their logic, if there was any logic to it.

  ‘So … will you do it?’ asked Aengus. ‘You’ll agree to make the phone call and ask your father for the money?’

  ‘And what if I will not?’ said Eoghan.

  Aengus looked at Ruari and then across at Lorcan.

  Lorcan was about to light another cigarette. ‘Oh, you will, I think,’ he said, with the cigarette waggling between his lips.

  34

  Katie was due to meet with Derek Hagerty and his solicitor at two o’clock that afternoon to discuss the provisional withdrawal of the charge against him and how the Garda were planning to protect him and his family after he had left Anglesea Street.

  However, she postponed the meeting for an hour because she had something more important to do. She drove to the hospital in Wilton to pay her respects to Detective Garda Goold and to give her condolences to her family.

  The mortuary was silent and dimly lit. Rain was starting to patter against the clerestory windows and the mortuary attendant’s shoes made a scrunching sound on the highly polished vinyl floor. After the attendant had folded back the pale green sheet that covered Nessa Goold’s body, Katie stood for a long time staring in sadness at her lumpy, ruined face. The surgeons had attempted to suture back the flaps of flesh around her mouth, but Katie could see that even if she had survived she would have had to suffer months, or years, of reconstructive surgery.

  She crossed herself and spoke the same words that her father had spoken over her mother’s open casket all those years ago, and over the casket of his second wife-to-be, Ailish, after she had died in a car crash less than six months ago.

  ‘Solas geal na bhFlaithis ar a hanam.’

  ‘May the joyful light of heaven shine on her soul,’ translated Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, coming up behind her. ‘Poor creature. She deserves a Scott Medal for what she did.’

  ‘Stupid, stupid girl,’ said Katie. ‘What in the name of Jesus possessed her to try and stop some scumbag with a gun when she wasn’t armed herself? I’m so cross with her. But, no, you’re right. She does deserve a medal. How old was she?’

  ‘She’d be twenty-four next Friday. We were going to take her to the Long Island for cocktails and get her hammered.’

  Katie stood beside the trolley for a long time without saying anything. This wasn’t Nessa Goold any longer, after all. This was just the body that had carried her through her short and tragic life. Nessa Goold herself was elsewhere, in the hands of God.

  She and Kyna left the mortuary and went to the relatives’ room. There she found Nessa’s father and mother, as well as her grandmother and two of her brothers. They were all red-eyed and looking miserable, but the men stood up when Katie came into the room.

  ‘Do sit down,’ she said, and she sat down herself, beside the softly bubbling fish tank. ‘I just want to tell you that every officer at Anglesea Street has been shocked and saddened by Nessa’s passing. She had such a great future ahead of her in the Garda and I can’t imagine why fate was so cruel as to snatch her away from us so young.’

  Nessa’s mother began to sob, with her handkerchief pressed against her mouth, and her father put his arm around her and held her close.

  Katie said, ‘Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán said to me that Nessa’s courage deserved a Scott Medal. That’s the medal for bravery that is awarded once a year to gardaí who have knowingly risked their lives to protect others.

  ‘I want you to know that I’ll be writing to the interim commissioner to recommend that Nessa is chosen for the highest award, the gold medal. It’s the least I can do to honour her. She was a very courageous and selfless young woman, and even though we’re all feeling such pain at losing her, we should also be feeling tremendous pride.’

  She shook hands with all of the family and embraced Nessa’s mother, and then she and Kyna left. Standing on the steps outside the hospital, buttoning up her raincoat, Katie said, ‘I swear to God that Nessa Goold is going to be the last of our officers murdered by the High Kings of Erin. I swear it.’

  ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  Katie started to answer but her words were drowned out by a deafening burst of thunder right over the hospital roof. She waited for a moment, until its last echoes had crumbled away, and then she said, ‘I hate to admit it, Kyna, but Bryan M
olloy is absolutely right. The High Kings of Erin have been making me play catch-up, right from the very beginning. I’m always two steps behind them. What I have to do is find a way to get ahead of them somehow – to try and anticipate what they’re thinking of doing next, so I can catch them at it.’

  They started to hurry together towards Katie’s car. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was cold and spiky, as if somebody were casually and vindictively throwing lengths of wire at them.

  Once they had settled into their seats and slammed the doors, Kyna said, ‘What about Pat Whelan? Do you think he’s faked his kidnapping, too?’

  ‘We still don’t have definitive proof that Derek Hagerty faked his. But my instinct is, yes, this is the pattern. The High Kings of Erin approach a businessman who’s right on the edge of going bust and suggest he colludes in his own abduction. It’s very much like what Kevin McGeever tried to do – pretend that he’d been kidnapped to get his creditors off his back – only much more carefully worked out.’

  They were driving along the South Ring now and there was another rumble of thunder right overhead. The rain began to drum on the roof of the car so loudly that they could hardly hear each other.

  ‘But what about Micky Crounan?’ shouted Kyna. ‘If he was colluding in his own abduction, how did he end up getting his head cut off? And even Derek Hagerty had all those teeth pulled out. You wouldn’t collude with that, would you? I know I wouldn’t. I go to jelly if the dentist tells me that I have to have a filling.’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that yet,’ Katie told her. ‘But I’m beginning to wonder if these High Kings of Erin ever have any intention of letting their victims go free, whether the ransom’s been paid or not. Even if they were kidnapped willingly, their victims can still identify them, so the High Kings are always going to regard them as a liability. And look what extremes they’re prepared to go to, to silence any witnesses.’

  ‘They didn’t kill Derek Hagerty, though, did they?’ said Kyna.

  ‘Because Derek Hagerty escaped. Or claims he escaped.’