by Jane Ryan
‘OK.’ The other voice was deep, betraying no judgement. ‘How long is he missing?’
‘He’s been gone two weeks. I’ve kept it quiet, but people are looking for him. Bloody razzers tore up the lab, all hell’s broken loose with the dealers. There’ll be a street war if he doesn’t show up soon.’
The wheels screeched as I turned into the bus lane, leaving tyre tracks on the road. Blaring the sirens and full lights on in the grill, I raced back to the Square.
Seán Flannery was missing.
Chapter 22
The sky was whipped ice-cream shot through with grey ripple, cold but dry. My taste buds were watering for warm soda bread pooled with butter and laden with fine-cut citrusy marmalade. It was seven thirty and nothing was going to keep me from the canteen in Harcourt Square.
Amina and I sat at conjoined desks and she logged on to her laptop as I shovelled brown bread into my mouth.
‘You and your marmalade!’ she said.
A playful smile hung off the corner of her mouth. It was good to see. She’d discarded her niqab in favour of a headscarf when Ashleigh from HR – who I’d christened Bluntface – had unceremoniously told her it was against Garda policy to wear a bedsheet to work. Perhaps she had hoped Amina would complain, act the victim. Amina had shrugged, telling Bluntface the niqab had served its purpose. Bluntface’s confusion was comical and Amina hadn’t enlightened her.
‘What purpose was that?’ I had asked Amina.
‘For someone to see through it,’ she said. ‘Everyone else ignored my niqab and by extension me. People who benefit from the status quo feel the most natural way to keep order is to ignore change and isolate anyone different. You aren’t like that.’
I had felt ridiculously pleased. It was a curtain pulled back on our friendship. I had longed to take Bluntface down on Amina’s behalf, but my motives weren’t entirely altruistic. Amina had returned Bluntface’s insulting behaviour with a searing politeness and I would emulate it in future.
‘You’re always eating sweet stuff,’ she said now. ‘How do you stay so thin, Bridge?’
‘It’s not sweet stuff, it’s marmalade, one of your five a day right there.’
My mouth was packed and she grimaced at the train wreck littered with orange peel.
‘Disgusting,’ she said.
‘Fair enough.’
Amina checked Interpol’s systems for postings and outstanding warrants. ‘We’re an hour or more behind the other police forces – I-24/7 is crawling – there are too many sessions open.’
As Amina continued to talk about IT failings and her challenge in learning the complexities of Interpol online, her hands were busy, full of purpose.
My phone beeped, a text from Chris asking me to phone him, soon as I could.
‘Chris?’ I said.
‘Aye, good of you to call, lass.’
‘Well, you said it was urgent.’
‘Get yourself somewhere you can talk.’
His usual soft accent was tight in places.
‘I am – is everything OK?’
His tone of voice alarmed me.
‘Right, no easy way to say this, so I’ll come out with it. There’s drugs in Burgess Data Centre. Kilos of cocaine in a water cooler.’
I was washed up on the edge of my seat. No words.
‘Andy the financial guy in Burgess Data Centre found them,’ said Chris.
‘But how would you fit drugs in a water cooler? Wouldn’t people see it?’
Chris gave a mirthless laugh. ‘No, Bridge, it’s not drinking water. This system cost over ten million pounds according to Andy. It has towers, pipes and ducts, cools the cages and racks where the servers are stored. It’s the latest in technology, but the thing is – it’s never been operational – although Burgess Data Centre paid for it as soon as it went in. Andy’s been on hot coals since the Inland Revenue audit wanted to understand why the cooling system was never turned on. He had a look inside the cooling towers, found bricks of cocaine.’
‘Christ!’
I tried to picture Mike Burgess’s florid face. All I had was a head of dyed hair and indistinct features.
Amina was listening, gimlet-eyed.
‘How big were the bricks?’
‘Five-kilo packs. Wholesale,’ said Chris.
‘Mike Burgess was an importer? How did we miss this?’ Bile rose and I put a hand under my breast, cursing my scaffolding-like bra, and massaged the heartburn.
‘Looks like it, but given the amount of time we spent investigating Burgess, why didn’t we find anything? If he’s managing a drug network, why weren’t there any traces of it?’
‘You’re sure about this finance guy?’ It was a whistle in the dark.
‘He’s motivated, terrified he’ll go down same as Burgess.’
‘Is any of the Burgess Data Centre business legitimate?’
‘Aye, Andy says the data centre has real customers, thousands of ’em. Burgess has blue-chip trading partners and a logistics company he uses. It’s all above board.’
‘How can I help?’
‘Not sure you can. I’m on my way out there now with a forensics team.’ Chris sounded dismal. ‘Maitland will have me for this.’
‘He can’t. Maitland and O’Connor were involved in the original investigation. They were the senior officers on the case, and we ran everything by them.’
‘Aye.’ He sounded perkier.
‘Does this have something to do with Emer Davidson’s murder?’
‘Well, if Burgess was importing cocaine on this scale it throws up a whole new avenue of suspects at least. It would give a brief something to bring to a judge’s attention.’
‘But Anne Burgess confessed.’
‘I know, lass.’ Chris had a placating tone in his voice. ‘But drugs on this scale, we should’ve picked it up.’
‘Can you see Mike and Anne Burgess involved in the drug trade?’
‘No, Bridge, no more than you can, but we could both see Declan Swan in this.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Don’t know. Supposed sighting in Brazil, warrant for his arrest is active. Watch your back – there’ll be wigs on green when Maitland gets this information and you can be sure he’ll be on the blower to O’Connor the minute I’m out of his office.’
‘He’s Detective Superintendent O’Connor now.’
‘Course he is, the arsehole.’
I couldn’t have put it better.
‘If I were you, Bridge, I’d get out ahead of it. I’m leaving now for BDC and I’ve a meeting scheduled with Maitland this evening.’
A strand of tension rolled around my stomach, the way a candyfloss stick moves around the bowl, rising and growing with each swirl.
‘What was that all about?’ said Amina and her nose twitched.
‘You know Kay and I found an arm in a pig carcass last year?’
Amina nodded, her busy fingers still.
‘Turned out it belonged to a girl called Emer Davidson, her other arm turned up in Birmingham. This older man Mike Burgess was having an affair with her so his wife, Anne Burgess, killed Emer Davidson. Seán Flannery was called in to dispose of the body.’
Amina’s hands flew up to her face. ‘How did Seán Flannery know him?’
‘Relax. It was legitimate. Flannery crewed for the George Yacht Club in Dún Laoghaire. Mike Burgess kept a boat there and Flannery was his skipper for a summer.’
‘And Anne Burgess is in prison?’
‘Yes, but we’ve missed something quite significant,’ I said. ‘I won’t pretend I was wary of Anne Burgess’s confession, I believed every word, but I’m not so sure now. Declan Swan, her son-in-law, has absconded and Burgess Data Centre is concealing kilos of cocaine. Different landscape from last year.’
Chapter 23
1998
‘In there, look! She’s sitting in a window with her diddies hanging out.’
Gavin’s voice was off-key with excitement. He and Seán ran dow
n Bloedstraat in Amsterdam’s red light district at full pelt. Brandy and Monica sang about a boy being mine from speakers outside a coffee house. Both boys whickered with laughter as they passed semi-naked women in windows lit with neon red. They ignored the men-with-the-money congealed around the base of the houses, the Japanese tourists with their Nikons slung around their necks and the girls with threadbare veins who didn’t have windows to sit in.
It was hot and the canals reeked. They were inky-coloured at night and reflected the garish neon, giving a spray of plastic seduction, but the daylight sloughed it off and left the canals their original offal-brown colour. Gavin and Seán tried to move their mouths around the names of the streets, ‘Bloedstraat’ and ‘Oudezijds’, the profusion of consonants and double-weight vowels belonging to a different planet and ‘the Dam’ was light years away from Dublin.
‘Come on, man,’ said Gavin, ‘how are you going to celebrate turning eighteen? Get laid or get high?’
Gavin wanted nothing more than this and his excitement, toxic and pollutant, issued off him in hot waves. He spun around, drunk at ten on a Thursday morning in August, on a day that promised to be at least as hot as yesterday’s thirty-four degrees.
‘This is the life, man! Fucking eighteen and kings of the highway!’ he said.
‘You’re seventeen.’
‘Ah Seán,’ Gavin was laughing, ‘you’re so serious. We can do anything we want – no one to tell us what to do, what time to come in ’cos your fucking tea is getting cold.’
Seán looked at Gavin who didn’t understand his luck escaping Clarendon House to his grandmother’s home at eight years of age. Seán had been left there, moving just before his thirteenth birthday to St Augustine’s Home, where routine had eroded free will and lights out ushered in some of the most violent times he’d ever known.
He took out his sheet of paper where he’d written instructions for the trip, a selection of dates and times of flights back to Dublin, for when they’d have to buy a ticket home. He knew a good part of this was meaningless, but he was reassured by the plan. The squareness of the paper, the neatness of his handwriting made everything manageable. In the uncurbed vastness of a world where he had no one to depend on, Seán was calmer if he had instructions, even if they were his own.
‘Stop swearing and remember we’re here to do a job,’ he said. ‘We’re not on holidays like all these other fools. Our way was paid for one reason.’
‘Yeah-yeah – but look at the babes!’ Gavin’s narrow finger pointed at the windows, a bottle of sudsy beer in his other hand. ‘Fuck, I’m hungry – any chance we get some Rancheros? Or do they have Taytos in Amsterdam?’
Seán’s phone rang.
‘Man with a mobile phone!’ Gavin shouted it out loud. ‘Is it that Guy-whose-real-name isn’t-Guy? He’s a fucking copper, isn’t he?’
‘Shut up!’
The brick pavements were old and uneven, covered in the summer’s baked-in dirt and dog excrement.
Seán pulled Gavin onto the Korte Niezel bridge and walked towards Dam Square, telling him to keep quiet. The Nokia 8210 continued its blippy ring and a number pulsed on the green screen in thick-stemmed font. They stood in the doorway of a vacant shop with a dusty window covered in ‘Three Lions – 98’ stickers.
Seán put the blue-and-silver phone to his ear, marvelling he’d been trusted with it.
‘Hello, Guy?’
‘How are you getting on?’ said the dislocated voice on the other end.
‘Good. We’re staying in a place called the Trident. It’s off Dam Square. We found an ad for it at Central Station. It’s good value.’
Seán had no idea of hotel value, but he wanted to sound sophisticated. They were in a room at the top of a budget hostel. The bed was strange – a double mattress sunken into a purpose-built cavity in the floor, the edges surrounded by cushions. Seán was beyond impressed by this and took a photo with his new camera. He’d get it developed when they were home. The boys had slept in their sleeping bags on top of the bed, unsure if they were allowed get under its striped cover which was tucked into the floor.
‘You have enough money to get around?’ said Guy.
‘Yes.’ Seán had more than he needed and was already planning to keep half of it for when he got back to Dublin.
‘Good. Go to Daazta bar in Leidseplein and meet my contact Lucas this evening at 11pm. I’ve told him you’re coming, and he’ll be expecting both of you. He’s going to give you some product and we’ll see if you can get it back here. Then we can move on to the next step.’
‘OK,’ said Seán.
‘Don’t say much, do you, kid?’
The voice was mocking and Seán hung up. He and Guy weren’t friends.
‘OK, so what did the Man say?’ Gavin put emphasis on the word and gave a snicker. ‘You know his real name isn’t Guy, don’t you?’
Seán bent his head a fraction.
‘You should tell him we know all about his bullshit,’ said Gavin.
‘Stop swearing – you’re letting yourself down and me down by association.’
‘Ah shit, Seán, you’re not still on about that?’ Gavin reeled, the early-morning drinking taking a toll on his balance.
‘Calm yourself – you’ll draw too much attention to us.’
Seán knew who ‘Guy’ was but didn’t trust Gavin. It was too risky and of late Gavin had been reckless. Arrogance sticking out of him as far as his puny erection when he pointed to the girls with the fake smiles behind the full-length windows. Seán hated to make eye contact, but his vision snagged on their bare limbs. A window full of fat Arab women made him shiver with disgust.
‘Look at the dumbo on her!’ Gavin was shouting.
‘Keep it down and come on.’ Seán’s head knotted and a thirst to beat one of the Arab girls filled him. Sister Assumpta had warned him against his uncontrollable temper. ‘We have to go to this Daazta bar at eleven this evening – we’ll go over there now and check it out.’
‘Recon!’ Gavin drawled in his best Platoon voice.
‘Shut up, Gavin. You can get something to eat in Leidesplein when we’ve sussed this bar out and we can take a bit of time for ourselves after.’
They kept walking.
It was important to be clever. Seán had read a book where the main character said life wasn’t for people who weren’t clever, who didn’t have something intelligent to say. Clever people had better, cleaner lives.
‘Why did you put us on a boat with those useless psychos?’ Seán asked Guy-not-his-real-name, anger fizzing out of him.
‘Lower your voice. What did you think was going to happen when I sent you over to Amsterdam? You were there to bring coke back. Did you think you were on a holiday?’
‘No, but I didn’t think we’d end up sailing some rubbish boat home!’
‘Thought you’d be flying home first class, did you?’ Guy laughed – more a sneer at what he saw in Seán’s eyes.
He had thought they’d fly home, maybe post the drugs back to Guy. He felt foolish standing in the circle of Guy’s nasty amusement.
‘I had to test O’Dwyer and the route,’ said Guy. ‘He approached my contact in Holland – the man you met in Daazta bar – with a deal about sailing a private yacht from Rotterdam. So we wanted to test it. Have to say I didn’t buy into it. I’d have sworn you’d get pulled in by any number of coastguards but turns out it was fine. What was your take on him?’
The man called O’Dwyer was all mouth. He could sail, but spent his time telling Seán and Gavin about his house in Montenotte in Cork city, and how he was looking for the next thing. In this case smuggling drugs into Ireland through Castletownbere in County Cork.
‘It’s called being on the ball, lads,’ O’Dwyer had said.
He had a broad, muck-savage accent Seán despised. Gavin had called him a presumptuous dickhead and Seán had itched to stick a blade into O’Dwyer’s lower back. Seán had done the hard work on the voyage, staying up through the night a
nd navigating the Dover Strait, around by Plymouth and across the Irish Sea. Gavin keeping him company. Seán had enjoyed it but was damned if he’d tell Guy that. O’Dwyer slept most of the time, as had his two thugs. He knew his maps and how to sail, but was lazy. The thugs were Dutch and kept to themselves on the boat, in case anything got out of hand. They had carried themselves with barely concealed violence, a body language Seán knew. He didn’t share any of this with Guy.
‘It was a good learning experience and O’Dwyer said you were useful. He’d sail with you again. Plus, you had the advantage of returning to the country off the books. As far as your passport is concerned you dropped out of sight in Amsterdam. Don’t underestimate how useful that is.’
Seán knew Guy had put him in danger with a group of strangers. He also realised Guy didn’t care. He had given the boys quarter of a kilogram to bag up themselves and sell. A terrible excitement rose up in Seán as he watched Gavin cut up a Dunnes Stores bag for the twists of plastic they would put their merchandise in.
‘Cut it with Granny Dev’s bread soda,’ said Seán. He took a packet from a shelf over the counter. ‘And her hairspray. Then we’ll have crack as well – some users prefer it.’
‘You want us to start cooking crack in me nana’s kitchen?’
‘No, Gavin! If you use hairspray to stick it together it will look like crack.’
‘Sound,’ said Gavin and set about his work.
After a solid hour, they had product to sell.
‘So 250 wraps at €50 a throw,’ said Seán. He sounded confident and professional.
‘So what will we make?’ said Gavin.
‘Twelve and a half grand.’
‘Fuck!’ Gavin spun in the air and yelped, his voice rising to canine frequency. ‘Can you imagine menana’s face when we tell her how much money we’re going to make?’
