Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  ‘That’s why I went looking for Jilleen, to see if she could help me at all. And lo and behold, she still had the letter and the very shooter that Molloy gave Donie to do away with Niall Duggan.’

  Katie said, ‘What you’ve given me, this is very important evidence – especially ths gun. It looks like a SIG Sauer P226, which is one of the pistols issued to the Garda Emergency Response Unit. We can check the serial number to find out where it came from, and if it is a Garda-issue weapon, we can check who it was signed out to, or when and how it went missing.

  ‘More than that, we can check the striations on the bullet that was used to kill Niall Duggan against the rifling of the pistol barrel. That’s always presuming we still have the bullet, which I would guess that we do.’

  ‘You can do what?’ frowned Jilleen. ‘I’m sorry, what you said then, that was all Greek to me.’

  ‘All gun barrels have unique imperfections,’ Katie explained. ‘When you fire a bullet through them the imperfections scratch the bullet and our forensic technicians can match them together. It’s a bit like a barcode on your shopping.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ Gary Cannon asked her.

  ‘Nothing hasty, Gary,’ Katie told him. ‘I’m not going to make the same mistake as you and ask Bryan Molloy about this to his face. As you and I have both found out to our cost, he’s not to be messed with. He has a lot of friends and allies in the force, and in County Hall, too. Now, if you and Jilleen will excuse me, I have to get back to Cork to see my lawyer.’

  She stood up and shook Gary Cannon’s hand. As she did so, though, Jilleen looked up and said, ‘There’s one more thing.’

  ‘Go on,’ Katie coaxed her.

  ‘Not in here, though. Let’s go outside.’

  Gary Cannon went to fetch Jilleen’s purple raincoat for her and shrugged on his own cheap waterproof windcheater. They left the Cauldron and went outside on to Nicholas Street. Jilleen immediately reached into her bag for a packet of cigarettes, took one out and lit it.

  ‘Sorry, but I’ve been dying for a fag.’

  They walked together down towards St Mary’s Cathedral, with Gary Cannon walking in the road because the pavement was so narrow. Jilleen blew out smoke and said, ‘I think the Duggans have found out that Donie shot Niall. That’s the reason I told Gary here about it, in case they gave me any trouble.’

  ‘How did the Duggans find out?’

  ‘I’m not totally sure that they know, but I told Donie’s son Sean about it, about a month ago. Sean’s just thirteen now.’

  ‘What made you do that?’ asked Katie. The rain had eased off now and a strong, fresh wind was blowing up the street from the river. Katie was thankful for it because it blew away the smell of Jilleen’s perfume and her cigarette smoke.

  ‘I never meant to tell him, ever,’ said Jilleen. ‘But the poor kid was getting bullied something terrible at school. I told him if his da was still alive he would have gone around to the playground and knocked those bullies’ heads together. Sean said his da never would have done, because what he had heard about his da, he was a softie and never got into any fights or nothing.

  ‘So I told him that his da had been a stronger man than all of those bullies put together, not to mention any other Moyross scummer. I told him that his da had single-handed finished the fighting between the Quaids and the Duggans and made this city a better place for everybody to live in altogether.’

  ‘And you told him how Donie had done that?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Bryan Molloy giving him the gun?’

  ‘I might have done, yes.’

  ‘So you did?’

  ‘Yes. No. Well, yes. I think I probably did.’

  ‘So you think that Sean might have boasted about to it to the Duggans? Any boy would, especially if he was being bullied.’

  ‘He doesn’t know any of the Duggans. The Quaid and the Duggan boys might not be throwing petrol bombs at each other any more, but that doesn’t mean that they’re bum-chums. But there’s a lad in Sean’s class who’s the son of Lorcan Devitt’s younger brother, Phelim. This boy was one of the worst of the bullies and I think Sean might have told him.’

  They had reached St Mary’s now and turned right so that they were walking beside the cathedral wall. High above them, the cathedral’s tower had all the grey ruggedness of a castle in a fantasy novel. Jilleen finished her cigarette right down to the filter and then flicked it across the street.

  Katie could feel the heavy weight of the SIG Sauer automatic in the Aldi bag she was carrying. Gary Cannon was saying something about the cathedral being the oldest building in Limerick, if not the entire world, and that Oliver Cromwell’s men had used it to stable their horses, but her mind was racing and she was only half listening to him.

  They stopped at the corner of St Augustine’s Place. Katie said, ‘I really must get back now. But thank you for what you’ve told me, Jilleen, and thank you, Gary. Do you have an e-mail address or a mobile number so I can keep in touch with you?’

  ‘Not exactly at the moment,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘I can tell you my home number, though.’

  Katie entered that into her iPhone, as well as Jilleen’s mobile phone number.

  ‘Good luck to you so,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘Let’s hope that justice is done at last.’

  Katie gave them both a wry smile. ‘That’s my job,’ she said. ‘Justice.’

  At least it was before I was suspended, she thought, as she walked back up Nicholas Street. Now my job is getting my own back.

  46

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán knocked on the half-open door of Inspector Fennessy’s office, but there was no answer. She pushed it open wider and saw that he wasn’t there, although his computer was still logged on and there was a cup of coffee beside it, with the lid still on.

  She walked over and dropped on to his desk the folder that she had been preparing for him on drug-arrest statistics. As she was turning to leave, his phone rang. She reached over and picked it up and said, ‘Inspector Fennessy’s office.’

  Ciara on the switchboard said, ‘Is that DS Ni Nuallán? The caller wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the High Kings of Erin case. He says he’s in a phone booth with not much change and it’s desperate.’

  ‘Okay, put him through,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

  Almost at once, a panicky voice said, ‘Is it you who’s investigating the High Kings of Erin?’

  ‘The senior officer is Inspector Liam Fennessy, but he’s not in his office just now. My name’s Detective Sergeant Kyna Ni Nuallán. I can help you.’

  ‘Listen, I’m calling you from a phone booth. I have to be quick because I don’t have much money and I think they might be watching us. This is Pat Whelan of Whelan’s Music Store who was supposed to have been kidnapped by the High Kings of Erin, and I have Eoghan Carroll with me. He was taken in Carrigaline when that garda was shot.’

  ‘I can send a patrol car round to you directly,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Which phone booth are you calling from?’

  ‘Don’t do that, just listen. Eoghan and I escaped yesterday from the house where they were holding us. It’s somewhere up near Bridestown. We’ve both been beaten a bit, but nothing too serious. I’ve told my wife to find somewhere safe to hide herself and Eoghan’s done the same for his parents.’

  ‘Pat, please, tell me where you are. We can come and pick you up and give you protection.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not telling you where we are until I hear that the High Kings of Erin have either been arrested or else they’ve been paid their money and got away with it. It’s not that I don’t trust you personally – it’s just that Eoghan thinks that somebody tipped them off that he was there when that fellow Hagerty was found and that you wanted to question him about it. He’s sure that’s why they came for him. Serious, who could have known about that? You have to admit that it could only have been a guard, or somebody who works at the
Garda station.’

  ‘You’re safe, though, and reasonably well?’ Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán asked him. ‘Is there any way I can contact you?’

  ‘Not until we hear that the High Kings of Erin are safely locked up, or that they’ve taken their money and run. If you don’t manage to catch them, of course, we’re going to have to talk about protection. Those headers don’t like anybody staying alive to give evidence against them, as you very well know.’

  ‘Pat, can you just describe them to me?’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Give me some idea what they look like, or how they talk, or anything else that might help me to identify them. Do they have an accent? How do they dress? Do they have an unusual smell about them? Please, Pat. Anything.’

  But then the phone went dead and all she could hear was an endless beeping. Either Pat had run out of change or else he had deliberately hung up. What disturbed Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán most of all was that neither he nor Eoghan Carroll felt that they could trust the Garda to take care of them. Katie had strongly suspected that somebody at Anglesea Street was passing information to the High Kings of Erin and now Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was sure of it.

  She had just replaced the receiver when Inspector Fennessy walked in, closely followed by Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin.

  ‘Ah! Kyna! Anything I can help you with?’

  ‘I’ve just taken a phone call for you,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘You won’t ever believe who it was.’

  ‘Oh. It wasn’t the lotto, was it, telling me that I’m a multimillionaire?’

  ‘Almost as good. It was Pat Whelan.’

  Inspector Fennessy flinched, almost as if a wasp had suddenly flown close to his face. ‘Come here to me? Pat Whelan? You mean Pat Whelan who’s been kidnapped?’

  ‘The very same,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘He was ringing from a payphone. He says that he and Eoghan Carroll have both escaped from the High Kings of Erin. They’ve gone into hiding and they’ve sent their families off, too, in case the High Kings of Erin come looking for them at home.’

  ‘Well, there’s a turn-up for the books,’ said Superintendent MacCostagáin, with what almost amounted to a smile. ‘If they’ve managed to escape, that’s going to save us a quarter of a million euros of public money. I should think that Jimmy O’Reilly’s going to be opening a bottle or two tonight!’

  ‘Ah, no, it can’t be true,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘It’s one of your hoax phone calls, that’s what it is. What did the fellow sound like?’

  ‘Very scared. I’d say he was shaking.’

  ‘Well, of course he was. He was scared that you were going to catch on that he was taking the piss. Shaking? Shaking with laughter, more like.’

  ‘Did he tell you where he was calling from?’ asked Superintendent MacCostagáin.

  ‘No, he didn’t. There was some traffic noise, like you’d expect, but nothing special. We’ll have it recorded and we can probably trace it back, but if it was a phone booth that’s not going to help us much.’

  ‘I’d say we ought to be fair cautious about this,’ said Superintendent McCostagain. ‘Maybe we should hold off paying this ransom until the High Kings of Erin can give us further proof that they’re still holding Whelan and Carroll as hostages.’

  ‘It’s a hoax,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘They tried to pull the same kind of a stunt with Derek Hagerty. There he was, making out that he’d escaped, while all the time he’d colluded in his own kidnapping right from the start. They only shot him because he messed the whole thing up and was going to give evidence against them.

  ‘This sounds to me like the same trick backwards. Somebody calls pretending to be Pat Whelan and says that he and Eoghan Carroll have escaped, but we can’t be sure that he’s telling the truth because they’re in hiding, so what do we do? If we don’t pay the ransom money according to the arrangements they’ve given us, the two of them will probably end up dead, if they’re not dead already, and then we’ll be blamed for causing their deaths from incompetence.’

  He imitated a high woman’s voice. ‘“Oh, but Pat Whelan rung us up and told me the two of them were still alive.” “Oh – how did I know it was really Pat Whelan who was calling?” “Because he said he was.”

  ‘Listen – if we do hand over the money and Whelan and Carroll are set free unharmed, then at least we’ll be given some credit, for being humanitarian, if nothing else.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Suppose we hand over the money but it turns out that they’re dead already?’ She was trying not to show how angry she was at Inspector Fennessy mimicking the way she spoke and trying to suggest that she was naive and gullible. ‘Suppose we hand over the money and the High Kings of Erin set them free but then they kill them later, like Derek Hagerty, so that they can’t give evidence against them?’

  ‘What if the moon drops into Cobh harbour and the whole of Cork is drowned by a tsunami?’ Inspector Fennessy retorted. ‘We can’t deal in fanciful theories, Kyna. We have two men here whose lives are in jeopardy and we can’t afford to take any unnecessary chances. We already have the cash wrapped up, according to the High Kings of Erin’s instructions. Superintendent MacCostagáin and I are meeting here now to go over the best way to maximize our chances of arresting them and at the same time minimizing the risk to the hostages.’

  ‘So that call I just answered, you’re going to ignore it completely?’

  ‘Like I say, the overwhelming likelihood is that it’s a hoax. Either that, or the High Kings of Erin are trying to make us look like fools when it comes to the media coverage. They did it with Derek Hagerty. They did it with the Pearses. I don’t want to give them the opportunity to do it again.’

  Inspector Fennessy laid his hand on her shoulder and said, as reassuringly as he could, ‘After Superintendent MacCostagáin and I have finished our discussion, Kyna, I promise you that I’ll listen to the conversation you had with this fellow. If it sounds even remotely like your man might be authentic, I’ll ask the sound technicians to see if they can match it to the voice of the real Pat Whelan. But I have to tell you that I’m very, very sceptical. Once bitten, like. Especially with these High Kings of Erin. They’re laughing at us, all the way to the bank.’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán nodded towards the green folder she had left on his desk. ‘Those drug-arrest statistics you asked for.’

  ‘Great. Thank you. I won’t be able to look over them today, though. The ransom money for both hostages is supposed to be handed over at eleven this evening. We have a hell of a lot of preparation to do in a very short space of time. We’ll be holding a general tactical meeting at thirteen hundred hours, so I’ll talk to you again then.’

  He paused and smiled at her, and said, ‘Sorry if I’m stressed, Kyna. Thank you for fielding that call. Don’t worry. If we plan everything carefully, tonight may see the end of the High Kings of Erin.’

  ***

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was walking back along the corridor when the lift doors opened ahead of her and Katie stepped out.

  ‘Kyna,’ said Katie. ‘I was hoping to see you. I wanted to thank you for telling your dad about my suspension. His friend Gary Cannon called me and gave me some sound information. I can’t tell you all about it now, but I think it might make all the difference.’

  ‘You haven’t been in to see Molloy, have you, ma’am?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ve just come back from a meeting with my solicitor and he’s advised me to say nothing at all to Molloy – or to Jimmy O’Reilly, either.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, my solicitor is going to be getting in touch with the Ombudsman for me, requesting an urgent review. Other than that, all I can do is go home and watch TV. I just came in to the station to hand in my gun. Is Liam Fennessy in? I thought I’d try and get a quick update on the High Kings of Erin.’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán glanced up and down t
he corridor to make sure that nobody else was there and then she said, ‘There was a phone call for Inspector Fennessy, only about ten minutes ago. He wasn’t in his office so I took it. The fellow on the other end said he was Pat Whelan and that he and Eoghan Carroll had managed to escape from the High Kings of Erin.’

  ‘Serious? Do you think it was genuine, this call?’

  ‘It sounded like it to me. He said that he and Eoghan had got away and they were hiding somewhere, although he wouldn’t say where. He said he’d told his wife to leave home until the High Kings of Erin were caught. Eoghan had told his parents to do the same.’

  ‘And of course you told Inspector Fennessy?’

  Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán nodded. ‘He came back almost as soon as I’d put down the phone. I don’t know why, but he seemed to be sure that it was only somebody wheeling me. Either that, he said, or else the High Kings of Erin were trying to make fools out of us again, like they did with Derek Hagerty.’

  ‘So what’s he going to do about it, this call?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Nothing at all, as far as I can make out. He’s having a meeting with Superintendent MacCostagáin right now about how they’re going to set up the handover of the ransom money this evening. He said he’d have a listen to the phone call after, but he didn’t seem to set much store by it.’

  ‘You mean he’s still planning to hand over the money even though there’s a chance that Pat and Eoghan could both have escaped?’

  ‘It looks like it. Unless he listens to the phone call and decides that it’s not mockeyah after all.’

  ‘I need to have a word,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t care if I’m suspended or not.’

  ‘Ma’am – ’ began Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, but she could see that Katie was determined. She lifted both hands as if to say, Go ahead, then, good luck to you so, and watched as Katie walked briskly along to Inspector Fennessy’s office.

  Katie knocked once, opened the door and walked straight in. Inspector Fennessy and Superintendent MacCostagáin were standing over a side table which had a large-scale map of Cork City spread out on top of it. They both looked at Katie in surprise and then they looked at each other, plainly at a loss as to how they should react.