by Jane Ryan
‘Assistant Commissioner, I’ve no proof of that. But it’s possible. Flannery’s gang are well armed and trained. Any of the guns I’ve seen are well maintained.’
The AC would get my inference. Some of the dissident republicans trained criminal gangs for a fee and let them use their underground ranges. It stood to reason Flannery would use those dissidents and that was a two-way street. Flannery would be charged a tithe on a shipment of this size.
‘The genesis of the cocaine, please,’ said the AC.
It was a fair question.
‘I believe it’s the Fuentes cartel from Venezuela,’ I said. ‘They’re one of the largest cartels in South America with routes and operatives into North America, West Africa and Europe. The purity levels of the cocaine is consistent with Fuentes. Some of the other cartels are exporting coca base to labs in Mexico to be refined into cocaine, but it’s not as pure as Fuentes’ product. I’ve been working with Forensic Science Ireland on a geographical signature for the cocaine – and, although it’s not foolproof, along with the gang tags on the cocaine we believe Fuentes are Flannery’s supplier.’
‘A find of this magnitude changes the way we investigate this gang.’ The AC took a good look at me. ‘You believe this is Seán Flannery’s gang and the farmhouse was his production facility?’
‘Yes, Assistant Commissioner.’
I wriggled on the hook.
‘Seán Flannery’s gang will be upgraded to an Organised Crime Group,’ he went on, ‘along with the other two gangs the state is investigating on an all-Island basis. DCS Muldoon will head the investigation into Flannery’s gang. His unit will work across all necessary Garda and Government departments and your forensic work will take precedence. DCS Muldoon will brief me directly on an event basis and I look forward to your first report. Good day.’
The AC and his team exited the room in a series of heel-clicks and swinging doors.
Paul threw an appreciative glance at me on his way out. At times I was a cat dancing towards a dot of light with Paul holding the torch, twitching it with the subtlest of taps.
O’Connor snarled at me. ‘You’d better be right about Flannery. If all he’s supplying is Mummy’s Little Helper, no amount of pull from Mr Justice Harney will keep you in the Force.’
He left in Muldoon and the AC’s wake. The shell of tension surrounding the rest of us cracked. Some detectives even laughed.
‘Right,’ said Joe. ‘Tech Bureau are going to love us. Bridge, call the duty scientist you know in FSI and tell her there’s a change in the forensic strategy on this case. They’ll have to get down to Kilkenny again and map that farm for everything it’s got.’
‘They’ll kick off no end,’ I said.
Joe supressed a snort of amusement. ‘Go on! You’re delighted. Flannery’s being upgraded to an OCG so the Tech Bureau will have to suck it up.’
Liam didn’t give me a high five, it wasn’t his style, but he grinned in my direction. ‘One step closer.’
‘I’ll get him, Liam. He’ll be on the run now with his largest shipment impounded and his lab out of action. Problem is, we won’t be the only ones after him.’
‘True. He’ll have Fuentes on his tail. Hey, your man Paul is well in with the brass.’
He was looking for car keys or something he’d put down and had his back to me. I was glad he didn’t see the heat flooding my face.
Chapter 20
1988
Clarendon House was a Mother and Baby Home and housed forty-five boys from babies to twelve-year-olds. The Home was a Victorian house in a cul-de-sac off a secondary thoroughfare in Drumcondra. With too much grey rendered stone and too few windows, it wasn’t to the liking of the parish priest for whom it was built. He gave it and the two acres on which the building stood to the nuns. They were the Sisters of Christian Charity and Education and they intended the house for boys in the long term. The girls in residence were six and seven weeks old, awaiting adoption or transfer to an orphanage if they were not successful in acquiring new parents.
Seán was singing to himself as the boys walked in a line down the tiled corridors to the refectory for breakfast. Sister Assumpta had told him he was lucky to be in such a good home with kind nuns to give him a path to follow. There was a shuffling further back the line where the younger boys were and he heard a sob he recognised as being from his friend Gavin. Gavin struggled a bit when trying to keep up with the others, complaining when his heels had been rubbed to burning from too-tight shoes.
Everything was new, at least Sister Assumpta told him everything was new, and what had Seán to compare it with? He got all his shoes and clothes in bin bags. Some had a clean lavender smell, others not so much. The biggest problem was nothing fit. The nuns took whatever was donated. Once they got shoes from the Dubarry factory and a boy had walked around in navy wellies for six months – they stank but Sister Assumpta had said ‘Isn’t he covered?’.
Gavin had started to cry in earnest, big whinging sobs, and Seán looked around to shush him. He hoped to see Sister Assumpta, but she was on kitchen duty. The boys walked to all meals in single formation, arranged by age, and with their index fingers pressed into their lips. Seán was eight and close to the top of the line, a few bruisers in front of him, but those boys were men to Seán. He worried Gavin might get into trouble – the nuns told the boys they had nothing to cry about.
A single nun swept up the line, the beads of her rosary swinging in the furrows of her black habit. Seán knew by the ear-splitting silence that she’d stopped. A slap was delivered, not stinging – Seán could grade these things from a flat-handed smack to a knock-out punch. This was nothing, but enough to stop Gavin’s sniffles.
The refectory was one of those places where death had lived. The nuns spoke of consumption and the time their sisters had selflessly nursed those with tuberculosis. He knew the nuns had lost sisters in that epidemic. He didn’t know what the words ‘epidemic’ and ‘tuberculosis’ meant, but he knew anger when he saw it. Whenever Sister Assumpta spoke of it her mouth became wire-thin, lips pushed inwards, and she steepled her gnarled arthritic fingers. She called it ‘The Great Sacrifice’ the nuns had made for the Irish people. ‘People who were sinners.’ Sister Assumpta’s voice was thunder after lightning. These people were sinners because they believed in the wrong God and yet the good nuns had nursed them. Like those sinners, Seán was a sinner, but his sin was indelible, given to him at birth by his mother, according to Sister Assumpta. No matter how many times he asked forgiveness of God, He couldn’t hear him as he was steeped in original sin. Seán was a teabag at the end of the huge crockery teapots when all the tea had been poured out, soggy with sin. Even so, he tried to make God listen.
The refectory was in the basement and had clerestory windows, but the house faced east and the sun pushed as much splintered light and rays onto the boys as was possible during the summer months. They sat at rickety trestle tables and each nun had a row to give breakfast to.
‘Seán,’ said Sister Assumpta. She put a rough ceramic bowl in front of him. It had a thin green line around the top and a much thicker green line around the centre. Guineys shop in the city centre hadn’t been able to sell them as they were rubbish, even for remnants, so gave them to the convent.
Sister Assumpta came down the line a second time with a huge pot of porridge made with milk. Premier Tír Leighin dairies left extra bottles of milk with the daily order – rumour had it one of the farmers in the big depot in Rathfarnham felt sorry for the orphans. She ladled out the porridge. It had a toasted oaty smell and was hot. Seán took a spoon of brown sugar from the bowl, pooling the grains on top of the fluffy porridge, and watched it caramelise. It was his favourite time of the day – the clattering of cutlery, the smiling nuns, the rows of boys slurping and joking. They were allowed to talk during mealtimes if Father O’Mahony wasn’t there.
It was rare for the priest to appear at breakfast, as the morning light seared his rheumy eyes. The nuns would stop meals
whenever he came into the refectory and everyone had to be quiet. A small knifepoint of a man, he had shiny brown hair and pockmarked skin. This was one of those rare mornings.
Father O’Mahony’s cracked blue eyes ranged around the refectory until they found Gavin. He shrank under the priest’s gaze yet was brave and never shook. Father O’Mahony’s eyes probed Gavin for a weakness and bored into it, all through the prayers of adoration and contrition.
When breakfast was over and they were making their way to the classrooms in the shabby prefabs near the edge of the grounds, Seán passed by Gavin and squeezed the top of his arm.
Gavin’s eyes pleaded with him and Seán mouthed, ‘It’s OK’.
When Sister Assumpta came for Gavin in the evening to assist Father O’Mahony at vespers, Seán took Gavin’s place. He was too young, seven, and Seán had been eight for nearly a year.
Later that night Seán pulled his Foxford blue blanket up around his shoulders. Sister Assumpta had allowed him sleep in with Gavin as a special favour. He’d cried on Seán’s neck until it was wet, mumbling ‘sorry’ over and over until the double breaths from his sobbing chest shook both their small bodies.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Seán. ‘I’m older than you. I’ll keep you safe.’
He pulled Gavin into him and tucked the blanket around both of them. The blanket had come all the way from Swinford where it was knitted on big machines in the woollen mills. Most of the babies in Clarendon House went to America, so the mill sent down blue and pink blankets to wrap them in as they went on their journey. Seán knew no one had wanted to adopt him, but Sister Assumpta had said he could keep the blanket anyway.
Chapter 21
2019
A couple of days after Lorraine Quigley’s post-mortem I found myself outside the cracked stone gates of a convent, made more bleak by a rumpled iron gate across the entrance. I got out of the car and the shrill November cold tore through my work suit. Inside the grounds, work on a housing estate had finished for the day with muddy potholes everywhere. Was there anything as woeful as part-built houses and silent cement mixers in the semi-darkness of winter?
I parked on gravel needing a rake and pushed the doorbell. A rattling of pulleys and bells then a sparse woman in a flowery housecoat opened the door. Her face as florid as her housecoat was floral, a blinding combination.
‘I’m here for Sister Assumpta, please? My name is Detective Garda Bridget Harney.’ I flashed a smile to go with the badge and she put her hand out to hold my wallet. Why do people always want to handle my badge? Of course I couldn’t give it to her, so I held it under her nose, suspecting she couldn’t read anything near or far without glasses.
‘It’s all right, Philomena,’ said Sister Assumpta.
She stood in the shadows of the hallway, hers a stentorian voice inconsistent with her stealthy steps. She was a scrubbed-clean woman with a fine thatch of snowy hair pinned under a veil and quick eyes. Less the kind of nun who wanted to help and more the austere Reverend Mother, suited to the buttressed and high-raftered ceilings of the convent. Her voice expanded as a good red wine filled the mouth.
‘You are welcome, Detective Garda. Come in.’
There was no warmth, despite her greeting.
She led me to a splendid but severe parlour, and we sat down. Looking around, I judged that the parlour was designed to make the laity feel cowed in an everlasting God’s presence.
‘You said on the phone this was to do with someone connected to a case you're working on?’
No small talk, none of the famed nun’s parlour tea from my boarding-school days.
I tried to soften her. ‘Yes, and thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’
She gave a bark of laughter and threw her hand towards the window. ‘Well, there’s no point in pretending things are normal. Look at what’s happening to the place. This is the only time it’s quiet.’ Her face was wreathed in a manic humour.
I had misinterpreted her opening coldness. She was furious.
‘The order sold the convent and grounds to developers.’ She meant philistines, her last words full of rancour. ‘We’re to be evicted in three months. To a house in Celbrige. This is what we are reduced to, selling our convents to fund a Redress Scheme for ungrateful wretches we helped.’
It was spoken with such disdain I couldn’t let it pass. ‘I don’t know anything about your circumstances. I was educated by nuns, good women, but there’s no denying the wrongdoing in some of those Homes.’
She gave me a look that curdled in my chest, so I changed tack.
‘Celbridge is full of old-world charm, good bookstores and you’re not homeless.’
She snorted. ‘What would you know? Steeped in privilege as you are. Your father a retired judge.’
‘How do you know about my father?’ This was interesting.
‘Oh, you’re assuming because I’m a nun I’m not up to date with the world’s affairs? All you have to do is look outside to see how imbedded in the world’s affairs I am. Bunch of builders knocking down my home and destroying the sanctuary of this place! It’s all we have left.’ She shook her head at me. ‘I don’t want money, none of us ever wanted money. All we wanted was peace and quiet.’
Again, discretion should have been the better part, but our countryside was littered with grottos and churches the size of beached cruise liners.
‘How many of you are here?’ I said.
‘So because we are a few old women we deserve to lose our home?’
‘No, of course not, but this building is the size of a hotel – you could house over fifty families here.’
She looked at me with the scorn of the righteous to the godless.
Despite her sense of entitlement, I pitied her. ‘It must be difficult to lose your home.’
‘You have no idea how it pains our community! To leave the refuge of a convent and go to live in a . . . house. Where do we gather to pray? We have no place anymore in society.’
A marble mantel clock with a glass dome and ivory figures at the centre made square-sounding ticks and frowned at both of us. It was the type of ornament people would have flocked to see in a jeweller’s window decades ago. Now it was offensive, an embarrassment that would end up in the rubbish heap or eBay.
‘Sister Assumpta,’ I was mindful of her pain, ‘have you heard of a young woman called Lorraine Quigley?’
She lowered her chin. ‘She was the girl you found in a freezer in Kilkenny. It was on the news and in the papers earlier in the week. Terrible.’
‘This man is connected with her murder. Do you know him?’ I handed her a picture of Seán Flannery.
She pulled a glasses case out from behind a cushion. ‘These are the community pair,’ she said. The half-moon spectacles sat on her nose and gave her an elegant look.
When concentrating she was a handsome woman, but the dark habit and the veil gave her a sexless quality.
‘No, I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?’
‘His name is Seán Flannery. He heads up an organised crime family – although gang might be more appropriate – he has no actual family. Flannery was a product of the church and state environment. I believe he was born in Clarendon House, the Mother and Baby Home, then grew up in St Augustine’s. You never came across him?’
‘I’m not sure, I will check our records. People don’t realise there were thousands of unwanted babies in this State. Before things changed. There were many homes run for orphans by any amount of orders. You don’t remember it, but we were in education, healthcare, everywhere people needed help. We did what God asked us.’ She eyeballed me, daring my defiance. ‘Never forget it was the plain people of Ireland who gave us those girls.’
I had no intention of ‘rolling back the years’ and wanted her to be more specific.
‘Did you work in any of the Mother and Baby Homes? I’ve checked some medical records and I believe you’re a qualified midwife.’
Her level gaze gave nothing away.
‘Yes, but I haven’t delivered a baby in decades. Many nuns of my time were from good families and we were educated. I moved from Home to Home as I was needed. I lived in our main convent in Glasnevin. Not that it’s any of your business.’
She stood up and walked to the parlour door.
‘If that’s all, Detective Harney?’
‘Will you contact me if you remember anything about Seán Flannery?’
She nodded and called for Philomena to show me out.
Sister Assumpta was on my mind as I got into the car. My hands of their own accord tied my seat belt. I turned the car towards Harcourt Square and dialled the listening device in Gavin Devereux’s car. The unit connected without a ring tone. I had listened to hours of recordings from the interior of Gavin’s car, all of it boring, ounces being discussed and street dealers, and one guarded conversation about ‘toys’ which meant guns. We knew Flannery’s gang received guns from the Fuentes cartel, but it was nothing that would stand up in court and no details as to locations. Gavin was a talker and had a complicated personal life with many girlfriends and a fleet of accompanying children – he spent much of his time ferrying them around pleading and arguing with their mothers in equal measure.
The radio hummed in the background of Gavin’s car. He was alone. He pulled in somewhere and the driver’s door binged as he stood out with the engine still on. Out of range of the microphone I wasn’t catching anything.
I heard the door slam. And then another. Someone was in the car with him.
‘I don’t know where he is,’ said Gavin.
There was an edge to his voice.
‘What do you want me to do?’ said another voice.
A guttural voice I didn’t recognise.
‘Find him,’ said Gavin. ‘He dresses as a beggar sometimes and hangs out on the southside – Monkstown, Dalkey, Blackrock. He can live on the street for days.’ A thumping sound of fist against dashboard. ‘What the fuck did he think he was doing? Check local Garda stations in those areas. If for some reason he was picked up it’ll be for loitering outside a school or playground. But he’d never give his real name and they mightn’t realise who they have.’
