by Jane Ryan
‘They’ve gone out to meet someone. I believe they’ll find out about Richie and the extent of his involvement. Which means they’ll find out about me. I won’t be going back to the office. She came back from Barcelona with information about an informant.’
‘Yeah, but she got it wrong. Joe Clarke was never an informant.’
‘Don’t interrupt me! Take the next left for Enniskerry. I believe Seán Flannery told her about Richie. She and that oaf Watkiss have put two and two together and uncovered what Richie’s doing. I told him Mike Burgess was a buffoon. That Emer Davidson case last year nearly blew it wide open.’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Gavin, you’re not the brains of the operation. You’re an enforcer. Stick to what you know. Circle the roundabout and take the exit back towards Dublin.’
‘OK, but are you sure the razzers know about Richie?’
‘I’ve worked for Graham Muldoon for over twenty years. He’s wise to something and isn’t telling anyone.’
The phone fell from my hands. It was Ms Goddard. That sanctimonious bitch. Josie Goddard. Not Joe. Josie. I threw myself out of the pound car. Roaring for Liam O’Shea and Muldoon in jagged breaths. In my haste I hit the emergency button on my Tetra radio. Gardaí came from every direction in Harcourt Square, pouring out of doors, tracking my signal.
‘We need to go now!’ I shouted at Liam O’Shea.
‘Jesus, Bridge, what in God’s name?’
There was a pile-up in the car park.
‘It’s all right! I’m sorry. Everything’s fine.’
I was shouting at ten gardaí who did not think everything was fine, judging by their faces. I snatched at Liam O’Shea who was standing in the middle of them and put a hot mouth to his ear.
‘Josie Goddard was Flannery’s informer! Muldoon’s secretary! She’s in Devereux’s car. They’re on their way back from Wicklow. We can track the bug’s GPS signal.’
‘Go up and get Muldoon,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll get armed support and we’ll go after them full strength.’
‘Right.’
DCS Muldoon must have heard the commotion as he was on the stairs. The time for discretion had passed.
‘It’s Ms Goddard, she’s Flannery’s tout. She’s in a car with Gavin Devereux right now and wants to warn Richie Corrigan we’re on to him.’
To Muldoon’s credit he didn’t flinch at the rat in his woodpile.
‘You have their location?’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m tracking it now.’ In my haste to get to Muldoon I’d hung up on the bug. ‘We can listen on the way?’
‘Fine, where’s the ASU?’
‘Liam O’Shea’s getting them – they’ll be waiting in reception.’
As I fell into step beside Muldoon, an urge to speak overwhelmed me. ‘DCS Muldoon, my dad told me you had copies of my mother’s signatures on Nasda Holdings withdrawal slips – may I ask where you got them?’
‘Josie gave me a dossier. It was handed in for me anonymously with photocopies of the slips. We believed it came from a whistleblower in the bank.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘So it would seem,’ said DCS Muldoon.
He opened the door to reception and, true to his word, Liam had an Armed Support Unit waiting for us in the foyer.
‘I need a second unit,’ said DCS Muldoon, ‘covert please. I want Richie Corrigan under surveillance while I wait on a warrant. Liam, travel with the ASU, assume Devereux is armed. Bridge, with me in the undercover car.’ A hissed whisper. ‘I want every part of Josie’s life investigated. With extreme prejudice, Detective Garda Harney.’
I was the right woman for that.
He walked down the stairs, his shoulders set and heels clicking. No rest tonight.
Chapter 64
Described by one of my former commanders as a match player, unpredictable and always in for the long haul, I stood outside DCS Muldoon’s office, folders and back-up documentation in hand and waited to be seen. With Josie Goddard in custody and the National Bureau of Crime Investigation preparing a file on Joe Clarke’s financial issues, DCS Muldoon wasn’t in a good mood.
‘Detective Garda Harney!’
His bark took me out of my reverie.
It was 8.30am, Muldoon bristled in full uniform and his office had a woody clean smell.
‘Good morning, Detective Chief Superintendent Muldoon.’
He rubbed a hand over his bristling head and I half expected a blue spark of electricity.
‘Sit down, Bridge.’ He sat behind his desk and flicked the elastics off an A4 folder. ‘Seán Flannery’s body is being transported back from Spain, we will perform a full post-mortem, but the Spanish have examined him.’ He held up a hand to cut off my open mouth. ‘As is their right in their country. They’ve promised an internal investigation of the police who attended the crime scene but have stated Flannery was not shot with a Mosso Esquadra weapon.’
I snorted. ‘So they got the guns from Fuentes. Big difference.’
‘There’s nothing else we can do, Bridge.’
‘It’ll be a whitewash. They’ll say it was person or persons unknown.’
‘The Mossos have lodged a complaint about you through diplomatic channels, said you were suspected of assisting Flannery in his escape. They’ve no proof to back up this allegation, but it’s caused problems for the Commissioner and the Minister for Justice.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘I agree, but if you had some proof to back up your allegations about Fuentes involvement, it would be nice. The Commissioner will go to bat for you, as he’s aware of the corruption in the Mossos and that Spain is a portal for the cartels – don’t get me wrong – if we had any kind of proof we’d go to the EU Commission. O’Driscoll in Madrid has your back on this.’
‘I’ve Joe to thank for that.’
Muldoon paused at the mention of Joe’s name.
‘Is there anything we can do for him?’ I said.
Muldoon shook his shovel-shaped head. ‘No, but there are positives. He didn’t do anything for financial gain, he’s up to his eyes in debt and he has questions to answer about his relationship with Flannery – but Joe didn’t pass on information to his sister. And by her own admission she didn’t pass anything onto Flannery. Joe’s retiring, that’s about the height of it.’
‘And Josie Goddard?’
The wrinkles on Muldoon forehead raised up into a V.
‘DPP are preparing a file for prosecution.’
‘And Corrigan’s murder?’
‘We have the man who pulled the trigger but he’s nothing. An enforcer.’
‘Did you talk to Josie about it?’
The ground might have shook at my temerity, but Muldoon didn’t.
‘I listened to one of her interviews. She’s not dancing, maintains she and Corrigan were friends and never passed on any information to anyone about anything.’
‘We’ll find something on her, DCS Muldoon.’
‘The DPP will struggle as we can’t admit any of the recordings in the car into evidence, but the Criminal Asset Bureau will leave her without a farthing. Josie maintains she met Corrigan when she was a girl, staying in a hostel in Dublin. He helped her get a job in some accounting firm in the seventies. She said Corrigan was obsessed with your mother.’
Muldoon’s face narrowed at my sharp intake of breath.
‘Corrigan also ‘helped’ my mother get a hostel and a job. He lied when he said they’d had an affair. I remember her looking at Richie Corrigan, wherever he went – as a child I thought it was admiration, but now I believe she was watching him.’
Muldoon shook his head. ‘Hard to see him as the brains behind Flannery’s OCG. He was such an old duffer.’
‘On the outside,’ I said.
‘Indeed. Were Fuentes his backers?’
‘I believe so – he was their asset, laundered their money but with Josie in custody they moved against him. Or who knows? The decision to kill Corrigan might have been made a
t the same time they decided to kill Flannery. Maybe Fuentes are waiting for the dust to settle and see who rises up to replace Flannery.’
DCS Muldoon gave a wintry smile.
‘What’s happening with Nasda Holdings and Slowell?’ he said.
‘Everything Richie Corrigan touched is coming under investigation. We have a Munster Bank Isle of Man employee co-operating with us and we’re preparing charges against said employee. Amina is working on warrants for assets held in the country and in France, those we can fast-track based on testimony, your belief and audit trails. The Inland Revenue and West Midlands are working on Slowell Holdings and Burgess Data Centre, but it’s going to take time.’
‘We’ve disrupted Fuentes cash flow and supply chain in here, the UK and possibly Europe. To what extent I don’t know,’ said DCS Muldoon.
‘There’s something else,’ I said.
I debated with myself as to whether I wanted to discuss this with anyone, but if I had learned anything it was that I couldn’t do it alone.
‘I have a tout.’
‘Is your informant on CHIS?’ said DCS Muldoon.
My face screwed itself up. ‘Not so much. I knew there was a leak, but thought it was O’Connor so I kept information on the tout to myself and Joe. I’ve been running Sheila Devereaux.’
‘What? Gavin Devereux’s grandmother has been informing on him and Flannery? All the while this has been going on?’
‘Yes, she told us about the drug shipment coming in and the Farm in Kilkenny where Flannery processed his cocaine. She told us about his chemist. It was all her. That’s why the intelligence was so strong. Flannery had no idea. Now he’s dead Gavin Devereux will step up. I’m pretty sure that’s what Sheila Devereux wanted, but the material point is we’ve a way into the Fuentes cartel. Gavin doesn’t know his grandmother is our informant.’
Calculations floated across Muldoon’s eyes.
‘You know the guy heading up MAOC – we can deliver real intelligence to him,’ I said. ‘We may never be in a position to do anything significant to Fuentes, other than keep our own patch clean, but MAOC have power. They work with the DEA. If Sheila Devereux can give us intelligence, who knows where it will lead. I’ll need your help in running her.’
‘You will,’ said DCS Muldoon. ‘And she’ll have to know we’ll offer her up to Gavin if she doesn’t do as we say.’
I’d picked the right man to work with.
Chapter 65
A coiled sensation built in my throat until it became a full dry retch. I put my feet on the cold floor of my bedroom and sat in the inky darkness, a darkness made for slumber, not scrabbling for gingernut biscuits. I kept them on my locker for morning time nausea which had formed its own routine over the last week. My body looked the same but the person living inside me was making him or herself known. I stumbled downstairs, surprised to see a light on in the kitchen. The house was warm with our central heating rattling through the pipes. My father had the radio on and Shay Byrne was wishing everyone a good morning and introducing James Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain’. It was about all I could put up with at 6.15am.
Nata had been taken in for questioning by the Gardaí and was facing possible charges of elder abuse, but she’d get a warning, nothing more. My father had wanted a custodial sentence but what had she done? Other than given ‘a family friend’ as she described Richie Corrigan, access to my mother and brought her on a couple of outings. It was a stout defence, still her brush with the Gardaí meant she’d lose her working visa.
‘Morning, Dad.’
‘Good morning, Bridget. Too early for scrambled eggs?’
The lumpy liquid texture had me running for the kitchen sink and bringing up any gingernut I’d managed to swallow.
‘Are you all right, Bridget? Do you have a stomach bug?’
My father’s face was creased with concern. It was time.
‘No, Dad, it’s morning sickness. I’m pregnant.’
I didn’t know where to laugh or cry as my father stood there with a frying pan in one hand, in his full-length silk dressing gown and white hair standing up in tufts.
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, indeed, Judge – oh.’
‘No, I don’t mean that – are you all right about it? Are you happy?’
‘Yes, I am, Dad.’
He put his cooking equipment down and went to the cupboard. ‘Your mother used to take a liquorice-bark tea when she was carrying you. Couldn’t stomach anything else in the morning.’ He turned and smiled at me with some loose-leaf tea in his hand. ‘I got some in, just in case.’
‘You knew I was pregnant?’
He raised his thin bony shoulders up to ears rushing down to meet them. ‘One of the mornings a couple of weeks ago you got sick. You looked so like your mother. Leaning over the sink and running the tap.’
‘Oh, Dad, why didn’t you say!’
‘I’m not sure. You always have everything under control and I didn’t want to interfere.’
I let out a weak laugh. ‘Dad, I haven’t a clue what do with children. I always expect them to behave like characters from a parenting manual. Even my own pregnancy, I treated it as if it was happening to someone else, but I can’t anymore. I’m never going to be prepared for a child, but is anyone on their first? I have to give control over to the baby now. Let him or her set the pace.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Bridge. We haven’t been open over the years. It’s my fault. I didn’t come from a family where anyone talked about emotions or their troubles. It was seen as shameful and I brought that silence to my own family. If I’d been more open with you and your mother I’d have known what a scoundrel Corrigan was. And saved her decades of pain.’
My throat closed with unshed tears. The years had marked my father and not in a good way.
‘Why don’t we try to be a bit more open? You and me? Help each other. It’ll be nice being a grandad.’
Now I did cry, fat tears down my face.
‘Don’t worry, alanna, we can do it.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘Right, let’s get you the best obstetrician we can. The chap who did your mother is long retired but I’ll have a chat with him, see who’s top of their game at the moment. Your mother went to the Rotunda. Good hospital.’
I gave him an encouraging smile. He was at his finest when helping. He was full of light and it lessened some of the sorrowful lines my mother’s illness had soldered onto his face.
‘I’ll call you later when I’ve a couple of names.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
I got dressed and drove into Harcourt Square.
Liam was hanging around the corridors, a stupid smile on his face.
‘So you’ve heard?’
‘What? I’ve heard nothing, Bridge.’
‘Don’t ever go into politics, Liam. You can’t lie for toffee. Seeing as you’re here, want to go out to the Gardens? See how they’re marking Il Duce’s death?’
‘Flannery would’ve loved to hear you call him that. All right so, I’m driving. And if you want any advice about babies, my sister’s had a few and I – ’
‘Liam, if I want your advice I’ll ask for it.’
He was a grinning idiot.
‘But thanks, O’Shea.’
‘Right, the Gardens it is.’
He drove and we turned onto St Martin’s Garden’s cul-de-sac and entered a war zone. Gavin Devereux’s sentries blocked the avenue, the fire brigade and an ambulance sat outside Flannery’s house. Trails of harsh-smelling black smoke sat in the air as though they’d made a funeral pyre of his East Wall home.
‘What happened?’ I said.
A young sentry eyed me.
Sheila Devereux was in Flannery’s front garden. Her face singed and bloodied, skin hanging off her neck in gluey blobs. She was keening, a hollow sound full of pain, as the paramedics helped her into the ambulance. Gavin stood beside her, no kindness on the hard planes of his face. He moved closer and said somethin
g to her. Of course I leaned in – as if I could hear from this distance – but I saw the animosity. It was stark.
‘Stand back, Bridge. Leave the emergency services to their job,’ said Liam.
I never listen.
‘Is Mrs Devereux all right?’ I said.
‘Takes more than a booby trap to kill her,’ said the young sentry. ‘It went off in Seán’s house, but she made it out. Youse probably never copped it but Fuentes cartel kidnapped Seán a couple of weeks back. Sheila must have known something as she told everyone to stay inside, said it was a big meeting with the bosses and everyone had to be out of sight. Even Gavin, lied to his face –’
‘Sheila Devereux has a back channel to Fuentes?’ I said. An acute pain behind my eyes.
‘I never said that!’ He was high-pitched with panic. ‘You fuc– you razzers are putting words in me mouth!’
His voice had drawn the eyes of Flannery’s people to us. Liam and I made for the car. A more senior member of Flannery’s gang was deliberately making his way towards us. He had the face of a hornet and I didn’t want to provoke him or the wasp’s nest Flannery had left behind.
Liam reversed the car out of St Martin’s cul-de-sac just the right side of unseemly haste.
‘You could feel the anger radiating off the lot of them. What’s going to happen now?’ he said.
‘Don’t know, Liam, but I’ll tell you this – Gavin’s in charge. Interesting times ahead. You still looking at that posting down the country?’
He looked at me. ‘No, think I’ll stick around. You’d never know when I’d be needed.’
‘We need to find out who killed Kay,’ I said, grimacing.
‘Knew that would come up at some point.
My stomach rumbled. ‘Can’t think when I’m hungry. Fancy a toastie in the Ritzy?’
‘You’re buying,’ said Liam.
**THE END**
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jane ryan
I HEREBY SOLEMNLY AND SINCERELY DECLARE BEFORE GOD THAT I WILL FAITHFULLY DISCHARGE THE DUTIES OF A MEMBER OF THE GARDA SÍOCHÁNA . . .
