Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire)

by Graham Masterton

  Bill Phinner was there, too. He climbed out of his car when he saw Katie and said, ‘Are you okay, ma’am? You’re looking more than a little shook there, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Bill. How long are you going to be?’

  ‘Oh, three or four more hours yet. It’s probably better if you go to a hotel or something for the rest of the night. We can lock up when we’re done.’

  ‘No, I’d rather stay. I want my own bed tonight, thanks, and I have my dog to look after.’

  ‘You’re sure about that, ma’am?’ asked the female garda, sympathetically.

  ‘I’m sure. This man gave his life for me. I don’t know why. I thought he hated me, but perhaps he loved me. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.’

  ***

  Katie stayed in the living room until Bill Phinner came in and said, ‘We’re all finished now, ma’am. You can get somebody in to do the cleaning for you now. I have a number if you want it. They’re very good with human remains.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill.’

  He stood there for a while, as if he wanted to say something meaningful, but then he simply flapped his hand and said, ‘Goodnight to you, then. Or good morning.’

  ‘Goodnight, Bill.’

  ***

  The next morning, Katie went in to see Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly as soon as he arrived at the station. He was still hanging up his raincoat when she knocked at his office door.

  ‘Ah, Katie,’ he said. ‘I guessed that I’d be seeing you bright and early.’ He inclined his head towards the folded copy of the Examiner on his desk. Katie couldn’t read the headline from where she was standing but she could see the front-page pictures of Aengus and Ruari Duggan, and the burned-out Touran.

  ‘You’ll know about David ó Catháin, then,’ said Katie.

  ‘Of course. Denis MacCostagáin gave me a full briefing late last night.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, I’m asking you to revoke my suspension. David ó Catháin is no longer alive to pursue his complaint, which in any case I refuted absolutely, and there are no other witnesses.’

  ‘Well … I hope you realize that I’ll have to make a report,’ said Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly. ‘But, yes, I regret that you’re right. Under the circumstances, I have very little option but to reinstate you. I’m not saying that it pleases me, but now and then we all have to swallow a bitter pill or two.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you feel that way about it,’ said Katie. ‘But at least I’ll be able to go down now and start to question Lorcan Devitt.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll have very much to say to you. That Duggan gang were always a tight-lipped lot.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But that was when the twins were still alive and everybody in the gang was in fear of getting them riled up. All Devitt has to worry about now is getting the best deal out of us that he can. I’m sure he’ll have a whole heap of things to tell me, especially about the High Kings of Erin.’

  Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly cocked his head to one side. ‘Are you trying to say something, Katie?’

  ‘About the High Kings of Erin, sir? Which particular High Kings of Erin would you be referring to?’

  Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s expression darkened like rain clouds coming in from the west, and his eyebrows furrowed. He took a breath and Katie could tell that he was about to say something, but then he bit his lip and said nothing at all. She looked back at him, not smiling, but trying to show him with her eyes that she knew all about the High Kings of Erin racket that he and Bryan Molly had been involved in, even if she couldn’t prove it. Even more satisfying than that, she could tell that he had realized that she knew.

  ‘I’ll be sure to report back to you after, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Katie. You do that.’

  ***

  She entered the interview room to find that Detective O’Donovan was already there, talking to Lorcan Devitt about last night’s game between Cork and Kilkenny.

  A burly uniformed garda was sitting in the opposite corner of the room with his arms folded, as impassive as an art installation in the Crawford Gallery.

  Katie pulled out a chair and sat down. She reached into her pocket and took out a pack of Carroll’s cigarettes and a red plastic lighter, which she laid on the table. Lorcan eyed them and said, ‘I thought Garda stations were no-smoking zones. Health and safety, EU regulations and all that shite.’

  ‘They are, Lorcan, but I thought you would probably be gasping, and one good turn deserves another.’

  Lorcan still didn’t reach for the cigarettes, although he didn’t take his eyes off them. ‘Who said that I would be doing you a good turn, Detective Superintendent?’

  ‘Oh, I know you will, Lorcan. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain. If you tell me everything you know about the High Kings of Erin, I can testify to the judge that you were deeply remorseful about your life of crime, and most cooperative, and that he should take that into consideration when he sentences you.’

  Lorcan Devitt shrugged and nodded. He opened the pack of cigarettes, took one out and gripped it between teeth so brown that they looked as if they had been varnished. He lit it and took a deep, deep drag, which he didn’t blow out directly, but let it leak out in dribs and drabs as he talked.

  Detective O’Donovan switched on the recorder and Katie said, ‘Go ahead, then, Lorcan. Tell me in your own words.’

  She asked him no questions to begin with, but simply let him ramble on, smoking and gesturing and pulling faces as he did so. The burly garda in the corner gave a single cough, but otherwise he said nothing and didn’t move a muscle.

  Lorcan Devitt didn’t tell the story chronologically and he constantly changed the subject and digressed and gave irrelevant explanations, but gradually he confirmed almost everything that Katie had come to suspect about the High Kings of Erin, who they were, and how they had been trying to scam public funds.

  ‘It was Molloy who said we should go for the small businessmen who were very nearly bankrupt. He said that would give us some kind of moral justification, like. The High Kings of Erin restoring Ireland’s pride! More important than that, your small businessman would be likely to agree to go along with it. Because of that, we wouldn’t have to set up any kind of ambush or deal with any security guards like we would have had to do with rich people.

  ‘Rich people would have given us a rake of trouble, no question about it. If you kidnap Paddy Poorboy, who gives a shite? But if you kidnap Pearse Lyons or Dermot Desmond or Martin Naughton … then you’re catching a Celtic Tiger by the tail and no fecking mistake.

  ‘We still had problems with them, though. We told Micky Crounan we needed some of his teeth to prove we had him, but after we’d tugged out a few he changed his mind and said that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with it. He got so bothersome that one of the twins topped him in the end, I don’t know which one of them. We were going to dump him in the river, but Molloy said we needed to do something spectacular so that the media would take notice.

  ‘As you know, like, we were holding a gun to Molloy’s head all the time on account of we’d found out about him ordering a hit on Niall. I had the feeling right from the start, though, that Molloy really relished it.. He enjoyed playing the righteous cop to the media, whiter than white, when all the time he was blatantly scamming the system. He liked the money, too. Oh, he definitely liked the money.

  ‘All in all, I think the only thing that worried Molloy was you, Detective Superintendent Maguire. That was why he dreamed up that plan of Derek Hagerty getting away. We made a right hames of that, though. Didn’t count on that Pearse fellow sussing it out. And then he tried to fix things by paying Clearie O’Hely to make us a bomb, which was supposed to make you look even more of an amateur. The bomb was a shade more powerful than he’d counted on, though. He didn’t reckon on that young garda getting killed.

  �
�Molloy always said we couldn’t have any witnesses who could identify us, because in the end that would lead back to him. That’s why we did for the Pearses, and that’s why we took that Carroll fellow … and in the end, that’s why we took out Derek Hagerty, although Derek Hagerty never saw our faces.’

  He lit another cigarette and breathed smoke out of his nostrils, closing his eyes for a moment in pleasure.

  When he opened them again, he said, ‘That’s why he sent us to take you out, Detective Superintendent Maguire. Very urgent, he said. Top fecking priority. Somehow you’d found out about the way he’d done for Niall, although he couldn’t think how. “If you don’t take out that fecking woman,” that’s exactly what he said, “we’ll all of us be stuck in the slammer for the rest of our lives, with no fecking remission.”’

  ‘So all the time, Bryan Molloy was telling you in advance what we were doing to catch you?’

  ‘Well, not him directly.’

  ‘If not him directly, then who?’

  ‘Inspector Fennessy, he was like the go-between. He’d ring me up and say, “Molloy says that two detectives are on their way to Carrigaline to question the Carroll fellow, make sure you lift him before they get there.”’

  Katie felt herself growing cold. Liam Fennessy had been passing information to the High Kings of Erin? Liam Fennessy? Of all the officers in the station, she thought she could trust him the most. She and Liam had always worked so closely together, and she had helped him as much as she could when his marriage to Caitlin had broken up. She knew that he was always affected by the stress of his job, but she had never imagined that he could betray her like this.

  Detective O’Donovan turned and looked at her, and she could see that he was as shocked as she was.

  ‘What about Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll?’ she asked Lorcan Devitt.

  ‘What about them? Pair of shites. If we could have found them we would have cut their fecking heads off, too.’

  ‘So they did escape?’

  ‘Of course they fecking escaped! Not only did they fecking escape, they fecking put both of my cousins in the hospital. They pushed Malachi downstairs and broke his fecking neck, so that he’s going to be a quadraplongic for the rest of his life, and then they took his gun and shot Ezra in the shoulder and it looks like he’s never going to have the proper use of his arm again. He used to be a snooker champion, too. Well, pub snooker champion, at Dolan’s.’

  ‘And you have no idea where they are, Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll?’

  ‘Like I said, if I knew where the scumbags were and I wasn’t stuck in here I’d cut their fecking heads off and have them baked into some hundred-year-old lady’s birthday cake. It’d be big enough.’

  ‘But you were still going to collect the ransom for them?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Why not? So long as you lot didn’t know that they had escaped, we could take the money and run. That was the idea, anyway, and we could settle the score with Whelan and Carroll later, when they showed themselves.’

  ‘But Inspector Fennessy knew that they’d got away?’

  ‘Of course he fecking knew. I told him myself.’

  ‘How much were you paying him?’

  ‘Ten per cent. And Molloy was getting twenty.’

  Katie sat watching him smoke for a while, then she said, ‘I think we can take a break right now. I’ll have somebody bring you some coffee or some tea, if you’d like some. We can talk again later.’

  ‘Oh, you’re off to have a quiet word with Inspector Fennessy, I imagine?’ said Lorcan Devitt, slyly.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ snapped Katie.

  49

  Katie and Detective O’Donovan went as quickly as they could to Inspector Fennessy’s office, but they could hear his phone ringing unanswered as they walked along the corridor, and when they reached his office there was no sign of him. His computer was switched off and the folders on his desk were unopened.

  Next, they went to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy’s office. He wasn’t there, either. His computer screen was blank, too, and his golf clubs were gone.

  Katie knocked at the door of his secretary’s office.

  ‘Teagan, do you know where ACS Molloy has got himself to?’

  ‘Oh … he went out about an hour ago. He said he had a racial integration meeting at County Hall.’

  ‘Did he give you any idea when he was coming back?”

  ‘He wasn’t sure. He said he might be playing golf this afternoon.’

  ‘Did he say where?’

  Teagan shook her head. ‘It’s usually Fota. Do you want me to try calling him for you?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Katie told her. ‘I don’t think he’ll be picking up.’

  ***

  Now Katie and Detectiove O’Donovan went to Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s office. He was sitting at his desk reading the latest BAILII report on Supreme Court decisions, and when Katie and Detective O’Donovan walked straight in without knocking he looked up in annoyance.

  ‘I’ve been questioning Lorcan Devitt,’ said Katie.

  ‘And that somehow entitles you to walk in here without an appointment and without even knocking?’

  Katie ignored that retort. ‘Lorcan Devitt has confirmed something I already knew … that Bryan Molloy was being blackmailed by the Duggans to assist them in their kidnap operation. Apparently Liam Fennessy was involved in it, too, although I don’t yet know what leverage they might have against him.’

  Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly opened and closed his mouth like a large bottom-feeding fish. Then he said, ‘And … you believe him? Devitt’s a leading member of one of the worst crime gangs in Limerick, for the love of God. He’d tell you anything at all to reduce his sentence.’

  ‘I know, sir, but I have another witness, apart from him. A very credible witness.’

  Assistant Commisioner O’Reilly reached across his desk for his phone. ‘Let’s have Bryan up here and see what he has to say about it. Have you any idea what damage this could do? I can’t believe this! You’re only two hours back from being suspended and already you’ve turned my whole day into a fecking catastrophe!’

  ‘He’s not there, sir,’ Katie said, quietly, as Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly started to punch out Molloy’s extension number. ‘He’s not there and neither is Inspector Fennessy.’

  Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly slammed the receiver down. ‘Then where are they?’ he demanded.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, sir.’

  ‘Jesus, this is a fecking catastrophe! Find them! Find the both of them! You’re detectives, for Christ’s sake! Find them! And not a word of this to anybody! If this gets out the whole fecking roof is going to fall in!’

  Katie called both of their mobile phones again and again, but there was no reply from either of them. Eventually she went downstairs with Detective O’Donovan to the CCTV control room and asked the Crime Prevention Officer to check when Acting Chief Superintendent Bryan Molloy and Inspector Fennessy might have driven out of the station car park, and where they went.

  Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy had driven into the station car park in his black Mercedes S-Class at 8.07 a.m., but left only twelve minutes later. He had driven along Merchants Quay and then crossed the River Lee by the Christy Ring Bridge to take the N20 due northwards.

  ‘I’d say he’s on his way back to Limerick,’ said Detective O’Donovan. He checked the clock and said, ‘Well, he’ll have got there by now, easy, especially in that motor.’

  Inspector Fennessy had left the station car park in his metallic green Mondeo only a few minutes later. He had driven northwards, too, but on the N9 towards Fermoy.

  ‘Are you going to put out a bulletin on them?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

  Katie shook her head. ‘If we do that, Jimmy O’Reilly’s right, the roof will fall in. We need to be really, really careful. They’re not dangerous to the public, either of them, and we have to think about the reputation of the force as a whole. I’l
l contact DS Brown at Henry Street. He’ll know who Molloy’s friends are, and where he’s likely to go if he thinks he’s in any kind of trouble. As for Liam Fennessy … I don’t know. It might be worth waiting to see if and when and where he turns up. He must have been under an awful lot of pressure of some kind to get involved in this.’

  Katie went back to her office and switched on her desktop computer. There was a message on her phone from the press office, asking her to call back as soon as she could about the Duggans, and the shooting at her house of David Kane.

  She went into her small private toilet and stared at herself in the mirror over the washbasin. She looked almost as waxy-white as one of the Duggan twins, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had showered this morning and washed her hair but it still looked like a crow’s nest, and although she had put on her maroon suit which usually made her feel quite smart, it seemed too tight across the bust today, and her breasts felt sensitive.

  All the same, Katie, she said to herself, you’ve done it. You’ve beaten the High Kings of Erin. They’re finished, both the original High Kings of Erin and the new High Kings of Erin, the Duggan gang and Bryan Molloy.

  There was so much to clear up. She had to find Bryan Molloy and Liam Fennessy, wherever they were. She also had to track down Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll, and find out how they had managed to escape, and if they would have to face charges of assault for the injuries they had inflicted on Lorcan Devitt’s two cousins. Under EU law, even criminals had rights.

  She fixed her make-up and then she went back to her desk to call James Brown in Limerick and the press office downstairs. She hadn’t even had the chance to pick up her phone, though, when Detective Dooley knocked at her door.

  ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘Come on in. How’s it going with Roisin Begley?’

  ‘Well, see for yourself,’ grinned Detective Dooley. He opened the door wider and led a pretty young girl into the office. Her dark brown hair was long and straight and shiny, and she was wearing a very short pink dress, with Detective Dooley’s tan leather jacket hung over her shoulders. Her emerald green eye make-up and her bright pink lipstick gave her the appearance of a little plastic doll.