by Jane Ryan
I stood in the mouth of the apartment’s balcony and looked at the early stages of activity in the square. People scurried back and forth, a harried look to them. I kept my eyes peeled for Mossos.
‘Tell me about Building 38,’ I said.
‘All those buildings are ancient, they lean over and nearly connect at the top, but if you’re thinking of breaking and entering someone’s apartment for a vantage point I wouldn’t advise it, Bridge. Lots of those occupants are illegally armed.’
I changed tack. ‘Tell me, if the cartel blame Flannery for the drugs seizure in Kilkenny, why didn’t they kill him when he got here?’
‘It’s not Venezuela, Detective Garda Harney. We have some semblance of government.’
I’d offended him, my world-class talent.
‘Sorry, Ramon.’
‘Believe it or not, we have a dedicated anti-corruption task force for elfuncion publica, but the cartels have too much money.’ He sounded beaten. ‘Something else you should know – we’re working on the Fuentes schedule.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’d say Fuentes paraded Flannery around waiting for Interpol to flag it. Contact is instigated with the Garda through the embassies, a slow process with information going back and forth. Ending with a single member of the Garda – you – coming over unarmed to observe the operation in Barcelona. Fuentes, through the Mossos, know what’s happening.’
‘But doesn’t it complicate everything if the Mossos kill Flannery?’
‘Last year a Fuentes hitman killed one of their Dutch associates near Sagrada Familia outside his hotel, in front of tourists. The Spanish authorities won’t let anything disrupt the tourism industry and the Mosso’s investigation was overseen by the Guardia Civil, who were brought in from Madrid. The interruption to Fuentes business cost them millions, lost them operatives and closed shipping lines for months. Fuentes won’t let that happen again, so if the Mossos kill Flannery, it’s clean. No federal government involvement.’
‘But there’ll be an investigation?’ I hated thinking of Seán Flannery in the past tense – it was too good for him. ‘I want to arrest Seán Flannery and take him home to face the courts. My Detective Chief Super wants it too.’
‘Won’t happen. While all the talking is going on in the diplomatic channels, the Mossos will take Flannery to a prearranged area and kill him – with the necessary narrative for the authorities, shot while escaping custody or something – if things get complicated they’ll kill him in Carrer Marquis del Berbera, but that would be a secondary option.’
‘So Dublin isn’t in the loop on this?’
‘In this equation the Mossos control everything, the only unknown is you. They’ll have eyes on you. Remember in this situation you’re the goalie and the Mossos are the penalty shoot-out strikers. The Irish are not known for their goalies.’
‘You’ve never met Shay Given.’
‘I’ve heard of him.’
He gave a harsh laugh that died on the doorstep of his next subject.
‘Does O’Driscoll know where you are?’
‘No, but he has this number. I rang him last night to check in.’
‘Don’t mention where you are at any point – to anyone – even over the phone.’
‘Right. The Mosso I met first day here told me they’d arranged accommodation for me as a courtesy – in Sabadell.’
‘Sabadell. Mossos headquarters. It figures. Listen, the Mossos don’t expect you to show up. Inviting you to Complex Central is el ardid, a trick. They’ve done their duty and if you show up near Flannery and get shot they, the Mossos, have plausible deniability. Be careful, Bridge, you’re alone in this. It’s your decision to pursue Flannery.’
His tone frightened me. It was a glowing cigarette being held to my skin, the hairs scorching.
An engine backfired outside and I jumped. ‘Oh!’
‘Bridge!’
‘It’s fine. A Vespa or something.’
We were jittery.
‘Let me make it easy on you.’ Mendes seemed to be puffing an early-morning cigarette.
I pictured the smoke coming down his nose and out of his mouth as he formed his next words.
‘Go to Mossos HQ and wait until Flannery has been dealt with. Is this guy worth being shot for, Bridge? Fuentes don’t leave witnesses.’
Chapter 47
Ramon’s comments about Fuentes and the way they did business had a chilling reality to it. If I wanted to arrest Seán Flannery it would be tantamount to a rescue operation. My skin tingled and my clothes chaffed. I was rescuing a man who’d hurt a young girl, killed the woman he lived with and killed my partner. Who could suffer such a man to live? I could let Fuentes and the Mossos kill Flannery, pretend I didn’t know what was happening, but if I left any human being to state-assisted murder, what did that make me?
I had to phone my father, to warn him what was coming, but mostly for selfish reasons, to hear his voice before I left the apartment.
‘Hello? Who’s this?’
In my haste I’d used my burner phone.
‘It’s me, Dad. Bridget. You OK?’
‘Yes, Bridget, of course I am. Are you all right? Has anything happened?’
The fear in his voice was my fault.
‘I’m good, Dad.’
He let out a breath. ‘Thank God.’
There was no easy way in.
‘Dad, someone from the DOCB is coming to take you in for questioning. It’s about Nasda Holdings and laundered money.’
A pause.
‘You shouldn’t be telling me this, Bridget. It’s illegal.’
‘Dad, what kind of a daughter would I be if I didn’t?’
‘You’re a good daughter, Bridget. Don’t worry about me, I can handle myself. You stay focused on your job in Barcelona.’
‘Dad!’ My voice was grainy with panic. ‘Don’t hang up! In Mum’s study there are statements from Nasda Holdings. Richie Corrigan was involved and –’
‘Bridget, you can’t tell me any of this. And if what you say is correct, they’ll subpoena my phone records and this call will show up. From an unregistered number.’
I was an idiot. ‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘It’s all right, alanna. Listen to me, your mother and I haven’t done anything and I’ll prove it. You’re the one I’m worried about. For God’s sake, stay safe.’
He sounded strong.
‘Dad, I love you.’
‘Are you all right, Bridget?’
‘I’m fine, Dad. Honestly.’
‘Stay that way.’
Chapter 48
A tenuous plan spun in my mind with a single tenet, get Flannery away from Fuentes and the Mossos. My best idea was to find him, intervene and trust some of the Mossos were real police and would back me up.
It was no plan.
The burner rang again and Joe’s number flashed on the boxy screen. I didn’t answer, knew I wouldn’t be able to tell him I’d no design other than to forge ahead.
Grabbing my black windcheater, I took the stairs instead of the creaking lift. The base of the courtyard was busy and I was going for the lone holidaymaker on a guided tour look, complete with padded windcheater, hop-on-hop-off bus map and fanny pack, but I had my running shoes on. Ramon said I was being watched – problem was I didn’t know who was tracking me. I prayed the Mossos were as broke as An Garda Síochána and overtime was an issue.
I took the metro to Jaume, wandering in and around the wider avenues of Via Laietena, and had a café con leche in Heaven, a tourist haven with hundreds of reviews on TripAdvisor. It was bustling with self-importance and confusing coffee recipes, a place to be seen, and many of the customers were queuing for selfies with the baristas as much as the matcha coffee. The noise level was similar to a jabbering aviary. No one noticed me heading for the toilets. I ditched my jeans and windcheater and took my running gear out of the fanny pack, leaving with the help of a bathroom window onto the street behind the café.
&n
bsp; I jogged away, heading for Carrer del Marquis de Barbera.
A stiletto knife of grey street.
I waited behind a corner and watched for someone to come out of the building where Seán Flannery was captive. Excitement had mixed with fear, coiled itself too tight around my gut and snapped. I had no way back to Matthew and the children other than to tell them I had apprehended Kay’s killer. I owed Lorraine Quigley, whose life Seán Flannery had horribly snuffed out, and countless others. All those innocent lives stacked against mine – it wasn’t such a sacrifice. I put my father’s face from my mind. He would survive. It’s what he did. The main door of the building opposite where Flannery was being held opened and disgorged a young family with their mother. I held the door for her as she backed out with a buggy, shouting ‘No te separes!’ at her children and pulling them close.
‘Gracias.’
‘De nada.’ I’d learned something from the Duolingo app I’d downloaded.
Inside, the foyer smelled of garlic and bike oil. I took the stairs to the second floor. While the stairwell was dark, the landing was bright from a frosted window that faced the street. It was open and the building needed air if the foyer was anything to go by. From the shadows I chanced a look out to Flannery’s building. Two men were smoking handrolled cigarettes on a second-floor balcony, the ember ends glowing and their cruel faces thrown into sharp relief by each drag. The smell of burnt rubber swayed in the tepid morning air.
A man I recognised from the CCTV footage exited the main door of Flannery’s building. He had a machete strapped to his leg. Despite his swagger, he looked furtive and walked towards the other end of the alley with quick, backward glances.
I ran to the third floor and skittered to the ground. The landing window had been jammed fully open with a bar. It was nine thirty. According to Ramon, this area housed most of the low-paid workers in Barcelona, which might account for the stillness of the building. I crawled over to the open landing window and lifted my head slightly up, not wanting to catch the eyes of the men on the balcony below. One was slouching on the railing. The other turned towards him in a fluid movement, the deep notes of their laughter reverberating in the close space, a church choir. My eye was drawn into the interior of the apartment and three men bunched on the floor in a kneeling tripod.
Seán Flannery’s outline was so familiar it didn’t matter his face was turned away. The men were bare-chested and Flannery’s network of white weal scars grizzled against the pale of his skin.
It happened fast.
Chapter 49
Machete Man came shouting down the alleyway. He pumped his legs and roared. I couldn’t understand his words, but the guttural urgency of his tone was plain. The men standing on the balcony laughed, one gave a gaseous snort. It was an unusual reaction, unless they were stoned.
A minute later Machete Man barged in the apartment door where Flannery was being held, shouting, and kicked out at the group of kneeling men. Flannery was hauled up, his eyes shiny and hard, a shark’s face. He gave nothing away, fear or calm. Machete Man brandished his blade and swung it at Flannery, close enough so he’d feel the air split in front of him.
The captors shouted and shoved one another. Flannery stood, immobile, while the other two prisoners cowered. The bar holding the window open was rough against my palm as I pulled it out and took it with me as I raced down the stairs. No one was visible but doors clicked shut behind me. Of course I had been followed, one against many, in spite of my paltry subterfuge. I had no element of surprise, but I could be unpredictable. Psychotic.
They hauled Flannery and the others through the building’s front door and six pairs of eyes greeted me as I lunged towards them. Flannery didn’t need an invitation to any fight. He took Machete Man. High Boy pulled a gun gangsta-style, on its side with his forefinger flat against the barrel. His movements were theatrical and gave me time. I fell to the ground and took his legs out from under him. Then popped up jack-in-the-box style and hit him with the window bar, kicked him in the face on his way down, his doped eyes never registering what happened. Commotion on the balcony above us as the other men ran at the remaining guard. Flannery bent over a slumped Machete Man, searched his pockets and pulled out the handcuff keys. Sirens split the air behind us.
‘Seán Flannery, don’t take those handcuffs off! I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Kay Shanahan and Lorraine Quigley –’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now.’ I pulled the chain between the handcuffs. He was barefoot and his feet were in shreds. We made for the end of alleyway in an awkward pantomime-horse formation.
‘You are not obliged to say anything – unless you wish to do so – but whatever you say will be taken down in writing – and may be given in evidence!’ My words came out in gasping heaps and fell between our fleeing feet.
‘There’s no time, Bridge. They’re coming for us! Can’t you hear them? The Mossos!’ Panic made him shout, but he was fast and kept pace with my long strides.
We were making good ground.
‘Tell me you have a plan or they’ll shoot both of us!’ he said.
I didn’t have a plan.
‘We need to get out onto Via Laietana,’ I said. ‘It’s a main thoroughfare. The Mossos can’t corner us there. There’ll be too many people. Tourist bus will be passing by in five minutes.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It’s all I’ve got, Seán Flannery!’
We ran, puffing, up the alleyway.
‘Up there,’ he said. He jutted his chin towards an open first-floor balcony window. ‘That balcony. We have to go through a building – the Fuentes Mossos will be at either end of this lane.’
Much as it galled me, he had a point. He made a stirrup of his hands.
Cars screeched in the distance, blue-and-red lights blistered the alleyway.
Yet I paused.
‘Come on! They’ll start coming down the lane!’ he said.
Against all my instincts I put my foot in Seán Flannery’s hands and he boosted me up. I got onto the balcony and pulled him up after me. We raced through an apartment full of circular-shaped mouths and out their front door. From one building into a basement café of another. Up through their back stairs and out through a family apartment. To a soundtrack of shock and what I took for expletives. People reaching for phones to dial 112. This time we went from one balcony to the next door one, jumping the meagre distance in a panicky scrabble.
The plaster crumbled under my sweaty hands. Flannery kicked in the balcony window. The frame was swollen and burst with his first kick. We flung ourselves inside. The place was furry with decay, and empty. We were on the fifth floor and my lungs burned with hot holes. My body shook with adrenaline overload, but no one was following us.
‘This isn’t good,’ I said. ‘It’s too quiet. They’re clearing the area –’
A clean crack tore the air around me. Plaster puffed in a cloud inches to my left. A deep hole, big as a five-cent piece in the wall.
‘Snipers,’ said Flannery. ‘They’ll be looking for a clean kill and no witnesses.’
We shrank further into the darkness of the apartment.
‘If we can get out the back of this apartment, it should bring us onto Nou de la Rambla, it’s close enough to Palau Guell. The Mossos can’t shoot us there, it will bring too much attention,’ I said.
An acrid, vinegar smell found us. Flannery looked at me.
‘Tear gas. They want to get rid of bystanders with their camera phones. The Mossos will say they’re trying to get us out of the building.’
We were on the run again.
Down through the building, into the basement and out the caretaker’s back door, but it wasn’t onto Nou de la Rambla. The street was too small. We were lost.
The Mossos had made a perimeter and were banging out tear-gas canisters the way a vending machine pops out Sprite cans. Gas rose in a laneway near us.
‘The buildings will give us some protection and it ta
kes the tear gas a couple of minutes to get hold of you,’ I said.
I held my badge out and blocked Flannery’s body, preparing to make a run for it.
He pulled me back.
‘You can’t get shot for me – let me go in front, Bridge.’
An odd shiver went down my back at the way he said my name.
The Mossos had stopped shooting tear gas and turned off their sirens. Coming in for the kill.
‘I’m not saving you, Flannery, I’m making sure you come home to face murder charges for Kay, Lorraine and fuck knows who else you’ve killed.’
‘Don’t swear, Bridge, you let yourself down and you let me down.’
His words echoed around me. They were sacred to him, a catechism taken from childhood and in the eerie quiet they triggered a shadowy memory.
‘I never killed Kay, Bridge.’
The shape of the words left his mouth and hung over his head in silty speech bubbles.
‘They will shoot me, no matter what, if they have to shoot through you to get to me, they will. You need to go.’
He stepped away from me.
‘No!’ It was a hissed shriek. ‘They don’t know we’re here yet – we have about a minute to get to the end of this laneway. There has to be a main street near here. More people somewhere!’
‘Look around you, Bridge. There’s no one here. They’ve scarpered or are indoors. Go!’
He turned as if to run back to the Mossos. I grabbed the chain.
‘You’re handcuffed and I’m a police officer. You will not be shot!’ I pulled him around. ‘Follow me! You’re not going to be gunned down in an alleyway. It’s too good for you, Seán Flannery.’
‘But it’s not good enough for my sister.’
Chapter 50
I pivoted towards him.
There was a kind of relief on his face.
‘There are two kinds of blood, Bridge. The kind you’re born with and the kind you’re born into. I was born into your blood. Your mother is my mother. I’m the child she left at the Mother and Baby Home.’
