Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘David, get out of here, now, and go home,’ Katie warned him. ‘I don’t want to arrest you, but unless you leave I swear that I will.’

  David advanced on her and shoved her again, and then again. She fell backwards on to the couch and he toppled heavily on top of her. He seized her right wrist and forced her arm straight upwards, while at the same time grabbing the hem of her skirt and twisting it right up almost to her waist.

  ‘So you think you can play dirty with me, do you?’ he hissed at her, right in her face, so that she could feel his spit prickling all over her cheeks and she was overwhelmed by the smell of whiskey. ‘You think you can flirt with me and jeopardize my professional reputation and mess up my marriage? You just wait until I report you to your superiors. Then we’ll see who can play dirty!’

  His hand fumbled underneath her bottom until he found the elastic of her thong.

  ‘First of all, though,’ he panted, ‘how about some compensation for that bottle of Bolly you made me break? Yes? How about that? Only fair, don’t you think? And you know you like it, don’t you, even though you make out you don’t!’

  Katie didn’t answer him. Instead, she tensed every muscle in her body and then heaved herself sideways so that David fell off her and on to the carpet.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, reaching out for the edge of the coffee table to pull himself up. ‘What the hell did you do that for? I thought you wanted it!’

  Katie sat up and then climbed over him. He snatched at her ankle, but she trod on his stomach so that he gasped and said, ‘Shit!’ and let her go.

  ‘Now, get out of here,’ she told him. ‘Get out of my house and don’t ever come back.’

  David levered himself up between the couch and the coffee table and eventually managed to stand. He stood there, swaying, one eye closed because he couldn’t focus with both eyes. ‘You know what you are?’ he blurted. ‘You’re a fecking witch. I should have known that the day I first saw you. I’ll tell you something, witch, if anybody deserves a fecking belt, it’s you.’

  He lurched towards her, raising his arm as if he intended to slap her. Instead of backing away, though, Katie took a step forward, lifted herself up on the balls of her feet and swung her right leg in a side roundhouse kick, so that her shin struck him hard in the ribs.

  David doubled up and staggered to his left. As he did so, Katie punched him directly on the cheekbone with her elbow. He fell sideways on to the floor, staring at the carpet.

  Almost a minute went past, with David still staring at the carpet and Katie standing over him. At last he managed to sit up, wincing. There was a crimson bruise on his right cheek and his right eye was already beginning to close.

  ‘You’ve hurt me,’ he whispered. His voice was tiny, like a miniature man shut up inside a matchbox. ‘You’ve really, really hurt me. I think you’ve broken my ribs.’

  ‘Do you want me to call for an ambulance?’ asked Katie.

  David took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘There’s nothing they can do for broken ribs. Don’t worry. I’m a doctor. I have plenty of painkillers.’

  ‘Do you want a hand up?’

  ‘No, thank you. I don’t want anything more from you, ever. I wish I’d never set eyes on you.’

  ‘Well, the feeling is mutual, David, I can assure you. Now I’d very much appreciate it if you’d get up and leave. I’ll ask the people who are looking after Sorcha to ring you in the morning, but you’ll be hearing from the court, too.’

  David managed to climb to his feet. He shuffled out of the living room into the hallway and Katie opened the front door for him. He paused for a few moments before he stepped outside, as if he wanted to say something to her, but either he was in too much pain or else he couldn’t think of anything venomous enough, or both.

  Katie watched him as he crept back next door. She felt sick with contempt at his arroagance and his stupidity, and disgusted at her own weakness, too. How on earth could she have found him so attractive? Even in his drunken anger, hadn’t it occurred to him that since she was a Garda officer she would be highly trained in self-defence? Every Saturday morning she still went to Muay Thai kickboxing sessions.

  She closed the front door and locked it. She went back into the living room and tidied the cushions on the couch. She looked around and felt very empty and lonely . How did my life come to this? she thought. But then she heard Barney whuffling and scratching at the kitchen door again, and she went through to let him in.

  37

  Pat Whelan heard voices and opened his eyes. Above him was the sharply sloping ceiling of an attic room and when he turned his head to one side he saw that he was lying on a single bed with a thin horsehair mattress covered by a scratchy pink wool blanket. The room was gloomy: the only light came from a dormer window, grimy-glassed and speckled with raindrops, through which he could see only dull, charcoal-grey clouds.

  He heard footsteps mounting uncarpeted stairs, and voices growing louder. ‘Oh, but they will, I’m sure of it,’ a young woman was saying, right outside the door. ‘They know what will happen if they don’t. What they don’t know is that the very same thing will happen if they do.’

  He made an effort to sit up, but when he did so his chest was gripped with such agonizing pain that he let out a child-like whimper and dropped back on to the blanket. He felt as if his ribcage had been mercilessly beaten with a metal bar and then his nipples branded with a red-hot iron. When he looked down he saw that a white gauze bandage had been wrapped several times around his chest, and that there were dark brown spots of dried blood where his nipples had been. Apart from the bandage, he was wearing only a pair of grubby grey tracksuit bottoms which he had never seen before in his life.

  The door opened and the carroty-haired twins, Aengus and Ruari, came in, followed by Lorcan. Aengus was wearing a lime-green roll-neck sweater, while Ruari was dressed in a dark brown sweater and an orange tartan skirt. Lorcan was all dressed in black – black jacket, black shirt – but still crimson-faced, as if he had just returned from a wake where there had been plenty to drink.

  ‘Did I hear you bawling there, Patrick?’ asked Aengus, leaning over him. ‘I think we might have some ibuprofen downstairs if you’re still feeling any pain.’

  ‘What the hell did you do that to me for?’ Pat croaked at him. ‘That was just sadistic.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Aengus. ‘If you’d been a shade more cooperative we wouldn’t have had to touch you at all. But we had to show you who was in charge here, like, and that’s the way the great High Kings always did it. There’s nobody going to be sucking your tits in future, and that’s for sure.’

  ‘You’re a total header. You’re all total headers.’

  ‘There’s no call to be offensive, Pat. The fact of it is we needed some proof that we have you and snipping your tits off was much less drastic than pulling out your teeth or cutting your mickey off. Anyway, you’ll be glad to hear that they were sent to your wife by express post which means that she’ll receive them this morning. Here – I’ve brought you this phone so that you can give her a ring and see if the guards have managed to drum up the ransom for her.’

  ‘I swear to God I wish I’d never got myself involved in this.’

  ‘You didn’t have a choice, Pat,’ put in Lorcan, lighting a cigarette. ‘Well, you did, when you started to borrow more money from the bank than you could afford to pay back. You need to tell your wife that, on the phone. Tell her that you’re surviving, just about. But tell her why we took you.’

  ‘I don’t see what difference a doonchie overdraft like mine could have made to the whole Irish economy,’ Pat protested.

  ‘On its own, you’re right, Pat, it was a drop in the ocean. But there were tens of thousands of other small businessmen who did the same as you, and even if tens of thousands of drops don’t quite make an ocean, they’re enough to sink the fecking ship. Did you ever hear somebody say “there’ll be the devil to pay”? Well, the devil is the sailor’s name for the gap
between two planks in a ship’s hull, and to pay the devil meant to seal that gap with hot pitch. Except that when it came to the Irish economy, we had no hot pitch ready to seal it up with, because of people like you who never gave a thought for tomorrow.’

  ‘Here,’ said Aengus, and handed Pat an iPhone. ‘Give your missus a call. Tell her what your situation is and who has you and why you’re here, and most of all ask her if she’s managing to raise the money.’

  ‘I hate to do this to her. She’s sick enough as it is and I’ve let her down so many times lately this will break her melt.’

  ‘Pat, call her. Otherwise we might have to send her another piece of you, just to doubly prove that we have you, and you wouldn’t like us to do that, would you?’

  Grimacing, Pat lifted himself up so that he was supporting himself on his left elbow. ‘If Mairead’s told the guards that I’ve been kidnapped they might trace this call, mightn’t they?’

  Aengus shook his head. ‘Not with that phone they won’t. Now, get on with it.’

  Pat dialled his home number and waited for Mairead to answer. The phone’s speaker was switched on so that Aengus and Ruari and Lorcan could hear it, too.

  ‘Hello?’ said Mairead. ‘Who is this?’ She sounded out of breath and very close to tears.

  ‘It’s Pat, May. It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Pat! Oh, God! Are you all right? I had these terrible things in the post this morning! There was a letter with them saying they’d been cut off of you! Tell me they haven’t really done that!’

  ‘They did, May. They took me yesterday when I was leaving the shop and now they have me locked up. They said they had to cut something off of me to prove that they really had me,’

  ‘Oh, God, I can’t believe it. Are you all right?’

  ‘Well, I’m hurting still, of course, but I’m okay otherwise. You haven’t told the Garda, have you, or anyone else?’

  There was a moment’s pause. Pat could hear his Mairead trying to suppress her sobs, and he looked up at Aengus and Ruari with undisguised hatred. Aengus smiled, but Ruari remained expressionless. The strong smell of her perfume was already filling the room.

  ‘May – ’ Pat repeated, ‘you haven’t told the Garda, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mairead. He had never heard her sound so deeply miserable, even when her back pain was at its worst. ‘This fellow rang me yesterday and said that if I told the guards that you’d been kidnapped he couldn’t guarantee what might happen to you. He said I had to find two hundred and fifty thousand euros by Saturday midnight or else I might never see you alive again, or they’d do something terrible to you like amputate your arms and legs. And after what I got in the post this morning, I believe them, Pat. I believe they’ll do it if I can’t find the money for them. I do.’

  ‘But how are you going to find so much money?’

  ‘I don’t know, Pat. My sister Maureen has a bit put aside and the father has a pension I can lend a borrow from, although I’d have to pay him back.’

  ‘Of course, pet. We’ll find a way, tell him. And don’t give up hope. These people who took me, they call themselves the High Kings of Erin like the old kings of Ireland. They say that they’re punishing all the small businessmen like me because we ruined the country by spending money that we didn’t have. Well, no, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, either, but that’s what they say. They’re not criminals, they say, they’re patriots.’

  ‘Pat – ’ Mairead began, and for one moment Pat thought that she was going to admit that she had contacted the Garda after all. He prayed that she had, because he was completely convinced now that when the High Kings of Erin had said that they would mutilate or murder him if they didn’t get their ransom money, it had been no empty threat.

  ‘May,’ he said. ‘The leprechauns.’

  ‘What?’ she said, but then she obviously understood what he was telling her. When their children had been small, they had cautioned each other when they were having an adult conversation and they thought that the children might be able to overhear them by saying ‘sshh … the leprechauns’.

  Aengus took the phone out of his hand and switched it off. ‘Leprechauns? What’s all that about?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Just a pet name. Nothing.’

  ‘What did I say to you?’ grinned Aengus. ‘Women are shite when it comes to telling lies. You could tell that she’s contacted the shades already.’

  ‘She swore that she hadn’t. You heard her for yourself.’

  ‘Of course she did. She was trying to keep you alive, as any good wife would. But she will, if she hasn’t already, and you can thank your lucky stars for that, Pat.’

  Wincing with pain, Pat eased himself back on the mattress. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘Because we’re the High Kings of Erin and there’s nothing in our kingdom that we don’t know about, that’s how.’

  Ruari came up close to the side of his bed and looked down at him coldly. ‘You did well, Pat,’ she said. ‘Not long now and this should all be over.’

  Pat looked back up at her, breathing in that musky perfume with every agonizing breath, so that he could actually taste it. He didn’t find her words reassuring at all. All he felt was utter hopelessness, like the time when he was five years old and he had lost his mother in the English Market and thought that he would never see her again.

  38

  By the time Katie left the house to take Barney for his morning walk, David’s Range Rover had already gone from the driveway next door. The clouds were low and grey, but there was a fresh, salty south-west breeze blowing in from the harbour and that helped to wake her up. She hadn’t managed to fall asleep until well past three o’clock in the morning, thinking about David and how he had attacked her.

  She had a hectic day ahead of her and she had to be at her most alert. It was likely that the High Kings of Erin would contact Mairead Whelan sometime later and give her their final instructions for handing over the ransom money. Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly would only authorize the payment, however, if Katie could convince him that she had an effective plan for making an arrest and recovering the cash before it was shared out and laundered. The serial number of every single note would have been recorded, even though the High Kings of Erin had insisted that they be non-sequential, but once a note had been through pubs and grocery stores and betting shops it was almost impossible to trace who had handled it.

  She had the beginnings of an idea of how she might trap them, although ultimately it would depend on where and when and how they wanted the drop to take place. What worried her was that their informer inside Anglesea Street could well tip them off about what she planned to do before she could put it into action. She didn’t know who she could trust and who to keep in the dark.

  On a more positive note, she had already worked out how to set up Roisin Begley. She needed Roisin to admit that she was offering sexual intercourse as well as massage, and that at least some of the money she was making she was paying to Michael Gerrety. It was vital that they didn’t make the same mistake as the gardaí in County Louth last year, who had entered a brothel without identifying themselves as police officers and subsequently had their case thrown out of court. She wanted to see Michael Gerrety convicted so much that it was almost like a constant headache, but he had the best lawyers in Cork and it would take only one procedural error to see him go free again.

  She went into the Day Today store on the corner of Grove Garden to buy herself a cheese and tomato sandwich and a newspaper. As she untied Barney on her way out, her iPhone rang. Barney looked up at her and made that disappointed noise in the back of his throat, as if he knew that she would have to hurry him back home and go rushing off to Anglesea Street.

  It was Inspector Fennessy calling her. ‘Good morning, ma’am. Sorry to ring you so early.’

  ‘What is it, Liam? I’ll be leaving the house in fifteen minutes tops. Can’t it wait?’

  ‘I just thought you should know that Mairea
d Whelan received a package in the post first thing this morning.’

  ‘Oh God. What? Not teeth.’

  ‘A bit grislier than that. Nipples.’

  ‘You’re codding me. Nipples?’

  An elderly man who was walking past her turned his head and gave her a look of alarm.

  Inspector Fennessy said, ‘There’s a note with them claiming that they were cut off her husband, to prove that they have him, and that he’ll be contacting her later this morning. She has no way of telling for sure if they’re his, but she reckons they are.’

  ‘All right, Liam. I’m out with the dog right now, but I’ll come in directly. Where are these nipples now?’

  ‘Bill Phinner’s sending one of his technicians around to collect them, and the note, too. He can take blood and DNA samples and send them off to the deputy state pathologist for further tests if he has to.’

  ‘Jesus. This gets worse by the minute. No news about Eoghan Carroll, I suppose?’

  ‘Not yet, no. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that they haven’t barbecued him like the Pearses.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you in a half-hour so.’

  ***

  When she walked into the station from the car park, she found Detective O’Donovan waiting for her by the front desk, blowing his nose.

  ‘Pat Whelan’s rung his missus,’ he said, stuffing his handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘We haven’t been able to pinpoint where the call came from exactly, but it was close to the city, northside. We have it recorded, though.’

  ‘How does he sound?’

  ‘Not too good, I’d say. Sick as a box of frogs, in fact. From what he said, I think we can be sure those nipples they sent to his missus are actually his.’

  They went upstairs in the lift to the second floor. ‘She hasn’t heard from the High Kings of Erin again?’