Living Death

by Graham Masterton

  After only three rings, a recorded voice said, ‘Lorcan speaking. Tell me what’s on your mind and leave me your number and I’ll get back to you. Or not, as the case may be. If I don’t get back to you, don’t ring again. Slán go fóil.’

  Putting on a strong Tipperary accent, Conor said, ‘Lorcan? This is Redmond O’Dea from the Firmount Kennels in Carrigahorig. It was Bartley Doran give me your number. I have some grand dogs suitable for training up to gameness. A Neapolitan mastiff, he’s the star of the show. I’m not codding you, he’s a beast of a yoke. And a couple of bull terriers, too. They’re real aggressive. They’d bite the leg off of an ironing-board. Any road, this is my number. Looking forward to hearing from you.’

  ‘That was perfect,’ said Katie. ‘Now all we have to do is wait.’

  ‘I think he’ll call back all right,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘It’s the Neapolitan mastiff that’ll swing it. They’re fecking yuge, those dogs. My brother had one once and when it was fully grown it was bigger than him, and my brother’s not what you’d call a midget.’

  Detective Ó Doibhilin knocked at her open door. ‘I’m back now, ma’am, and I have Maureen Callahan down in the interview room. I have the briefcase, too. I took it over to the Technical Bureau and they’ve X-rayed it. There’s no explosives inside of it.’

  ‘I didn’t think there would be,’ said Katie. ‘It’s better to be sure than have yourself blown into five thousand pieces. I’ll come down now and have a chat with Ms Callahan.’

  She stood up. ‘I shouldn’t be long, but if Lorcan Fitzgerald rings back while I’m away, be sure to page me, won’t you?’

  When she and Detective Ó Doibhilin went downstairs to the interview room, they found Maureen Callahan sitting with her arms crossed, scowling. Detective Scanlan was sitting at the end of the table, while Sergeant Daley was sitting directly opposite, laboriously filling out the charge sheet against her, his thick-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and his tongue clenched between his teeth. The brown leather briefcase, still unopened, lay on the table between them.

  ‘Well now, Maureen, here’s a contradictory situation,’ said Katie, pulling out a chair and sitting down next to Sergeant Daley. ‘One minute you’re helping us out with a valuable tip-off, and the next you’re stroking our Assistant Commissioner’s briefcase.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ said Maureen.

  ‘You told Detective Ó Doibhilin here that the briefcase belongs to you. Is that true?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing until I can ring my solicitor, and then I’m saying nothing. The law gives me the right to say nothing.’

  ‘It does, yes, Maureen. But if you choose to say nothing when you could have said something to prove your innocence, the court will take a fierce dim view of that, I can tell you. They don’t care to have their time wasted, and neither do I.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘Let’s see what’s inside this briefcase, shall we?’

  ‘You’d have to be having a warrant for that.’

  ‘If it’s not your briefcase, why should you care? In any event, we can search you and your personal property without a warrant if we have reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed.’

  Maureen said nothing, but continued to scowl. Katie stood up, took a pair of black forensic gloves out of her jacket pocket, and tugged them on. Then she flicked the catches on the briefcase and opened it up. Inside, under several layers of bubble-wrap, it was packed with bundles of €20 notes. She lifted up the bubble-wrap, picked up one of the bundles of notes and looked at what was printed on the label – €1,000.

  There were twenty bundles altogether. She checked all of them, flicking through the notes to make sure they were all genuine, and not just bundles of paper with €20 notes top and bottom.

  ‘So you were sitting in the bar at Fota Golf Club with twenty thousand euros in small-denomination notes in your briefcase, but because you were frightened that somebody might trip over it, you gave it to a total stranger to look after? Is that your story?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘You might be saying nothing, but I’m saying that these twenty thousand euros are a pay-off to you from Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly to meet me and give me information about an illegal arms shipment.’

  ‘You can say what you like, girl,’ Maureen retorted. ‘How are you going to prove it, that’s the thing?’

  ‘I shall ask Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, right to his face. And I shall also be sending this briefcase back to our technical experts to check it minutely for fingerprints and DNA. If there’s any forensic evidence at all that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly left any trace of himself inside of it – if he handled this money or this bubble-wrap, then you’re going to be in deep, deep trouble, and so is he.’

  ‘Away to feck, DS Maguire. You’re only saying that to scare me. Well you won’t scare me, I can tell you that. Nothing scares me, girl – nothing!’

  Katie closed the briefcase and sat down again.

  ‘You can refuse to answer if you like, Maureen, but let me ask you this – there’s no arms shipment, is there?’

  ‘I want to make a phone call. I’m entitled to make three phone calls.’

  ‘You can make all the phone calls you want to, but later. There is no arms shipment, is there? You were helping Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly to set me up, and that’s why he’s given you twenty thousand euros.’

  ‘You’re dreaming, girl – you’re dreaming. All I can say is, dream on.’

  Katie leaned forward and said, ‘If you admit this now, Maureen, the law will be very light on you. In fact you’ll probably get off scot-free for being co-operative.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘But you did tell me about this arms shipment, didn’t you? All these AK-47s and Skorpion machine pistols and Semtex? That was how you were going to get your revenge on your father and your sister Bree?’

  ‘That’s right. They told me all of these arms were coming in, but if they didn’t, that’s not my fault. That’s what they told me, that’s all. You can’t blame me for believing something that I was told.’

  ‘They told you they’d murdered Branán O’Flynn, didn’t they? And you believed that, too, did you? Although you could have checked if they really had murdered him, just by ringing him?’

  Now Maureen was beginning to realise that Katie was talking her into a corner, and she said nothing.

  Katie took out her iPhone, found the photograph of Kyna sitting at the bar in Las Palmas Airport, with Branán O’Flynn sitting directly behind her, and held it up in front of Maureen’s face. Maureen glanced at it, and flinched, and then looked away.

  ‘That’s your dearly beloved Branán sitting there, isn’t it, chatting away on his mobile? Can you guess when that picture was taken, Maureen? And where?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Maureen. ‘You’re heartless, you are. I’m grieving for him.’

  ‘That picture was taken yesterday evening in Gran Canaria. If your father and sisters have murdered Branán, they could only have done it after five past seven this morning, after he got back from Las Palmas.’

  Maureen took a deep breath. ‘You said if I co-operated, like, you’d let me off.’

  ‘I said that the courts would probably go easy on you, that’s all.’

  ‘I will co-operate, but only if you don’t press any charges against me at all. You couldn’t charge me with theft, any road, because you can’t be guilty of stroking something when you was given it.’

  ‘So you’re admitting that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly gave you the briefcase with twenty thousand euros in it?’

  ‘Only if you don’t charge me with nothing.’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘You have a deal, conditional on what you tell me.’

  ‘O’Reilly calls me and says that he wants me to meet you and spin you that story about Branán being done for, and how I wanted my revenge for it, and the arms shipment
and all.’

  ‘You and Branán – are you really doing a line?’

  ‘We’ve been going out together for yonks there.’

  ‘And your father and sisters don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all, like, because it’s a way of keeping our two families in touch with each other, even if most of them hate each other’s guts, and wouldn’t piss on each other if they was on fire. Like if the Callahans have some deal in mind and the O’Flynns happen to have the same deal in mind, we both get to know about it and so we don’t tread on each other’s toes, like, do you know what I mean?’

  ‘You mean if you’re both thinking of robbing the same charity shop, you don’t both turn up there at the same time?’

  ‘I’m admitting to nothing like that. My family never robbed a charity shop and never would. Holy Mary, what do you take us for?’

  ‘I’m just giving you a hypothetical example, Maureen. But go on.’

  Maureen looked dubious for a moment, but then she said, ‘Okay... O’Reilly offers me ten thousand euros to tell you that story. I say twenty, and he says fifteen, but I stick to twenty and in the end he says yes, he can just about scrape that up, because it’s worth it. So the rest you know.’

  ‘So you never spoke to any undercover detective from the SDU?’

  Maureen shook her blonde bob, but Katie said, ‘Would you just say “no” out loud, please, Maureen, because we’re recording this.’

  ‘No. I never met nobody like that, and do you think I’d tell them goms anything if I did? All I did was tell you what O’Reilly told me to tell you.’

  ‘So there is no arms shipment?’

  ‘We was out of that business a long time ago, after the Good Friday Agreement. Not that I’m admitting that we was ever in it.’

  ‘But this arms shipment that you told me was delivered this morning to Sarsfield Court Industrial Estate – that doesn’t exist?’

  ‘No, it does not.’

  ‘So nobody’s coming from Armagh this afternoon to make you an offer for Skorpion machine pistols?’

  ‘No, nobody at all.’

  ‘So what’s the significance of half-past three? Surely if Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly was trying to get me to set up an abortive raid on an empty warehouse, any time would have done.’

  ‘I have to admit that was my idea,’ said Maureen. She stopped looking so petulant and actually managed a self-satisfied little smirk. ‘It was my idea but O’Reilly went for it big time. We’ve only just taken over the lease of the warehouse, like, and at the moment it’s empty. But my sister Saoirse has the twin boys Tom and Patrick and it was their birthdays this week, so we decided that the warehouse would be a grand location for a party, seeing as how there’s thirty or forty kids to entertain. Inside there’s tables set up and the place is all decorated with balloons and paper chains, and there’s going to be clowns and magicians and O’Brady’s performing dogs.’

  Katie sat back. ‘I have to hand it to you, Maureen. That was a stroke of genius. I can see the headlines now. “Armed Gardaí Raid Kiddie’s Birthday Party”. I would have been lucky not to have been sacked on the spot and lose my pension.’

  ‘O’Reilly did give me the impression that he wasn’t too fond of you, like, I have to tell you.’

  ‘That’s the understatement of the century.’

  Detective Ó Doibhilin raised one eyebrow as if to say ‘That just about wraps that up, then, doesn’t it? Don’t ask me what in the name of God how you’re going to handle this now.’

  ‘That’s all I can tell you,’ said Maureen. ‘Are you going to let me go now?’

  ‘Yes, Maureen,’ Katie told her, ‘you can go. I have one stipulation, though: you’re not to mention any of this to anybody. Especially the media. Like, ever, for the rest of your life.’

  ‘My father and my sisters know all about it. I had to warn them that the guards were going to come bursting in when they were all singing “Happy Birthday to You”.

  ‘Well, tell them to keep it to themselves, too, or I’ll pull you straight back in again for wasting police time and any other charge I can think of.’

  Maureen nodded towards the briefcase. ‘What about my twenty thousand?’

  ‘I hope you’re not serious. That money is evidence. And you didn’t exactly earn it, did you, because you got found out.’

  ‘That wasn’t my fault. O’Reilly knew that Branán was on his holliers but he said I should tell you that he was dead.’

  ‘Me and the moth went to Gran Canaria for a week once,’ put in Sergeant Daley. mournfully, taking off his glasses. ‘There isn’t too much difference between that and being dead.’

  *

  After Maureen Callahan had left, Detective Ó Doibhilin took the briefcase back to the Technical Bureau to have the money and the interior lining tested for any signs of fingerprints or DNA that might prove that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly had handled it.

  Katie meanwhile went back up to her office to check if Lorcan Fitzgerald had rung Conor back. As she was walking past Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s office, she saw that his door was open, and she could hear somebody moving around inside. She wondered if Jimmy O’Reilly had seen Maureen Callahan being arrested by Detective Ó Doibhilin, and had come back to the station to find out if she had told Katie about him paying her off. She knocked, and opened the door wider.

  Nobody answered, so she went inside. Standing behind Jimmy O’Reilly’s desk she found his former civilian assistant, James Elvin. He had the looks of a young Leonardo DiCaprio, with brushed-up blond hair, and before she had discovered that he was Jimmy O’Reilly’s lover, Katie had quite fancied him. He had a black waterproof jacket draped over his arm and he was holding a pair of yellow leather boots. With his free hand he was leafing through Jimmy O’Reilly’s desk diary.

  As soon as Katie came into the office, he quickly closed the diary and stepped away from the desk – grinning guiltily, because he knew that he had been caught in the act.

  ‘DS Maguire!’ he said. ‘How’s it going on?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t work here any more,’ said Katie.

  ‘No, I don’t. But Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly said I could come by the station and pick up this jacket and these boots I left behind.’

  ‘What, and look through his diary, too?’

  ‘I was curious to know how long he was going to be away, that’s all.’

  ‘Monday he’ll be back. Why?’

  ‘I need to talk to him face-to-face.’

  ‘I see. I won’t ask you what about.’

  ‘I’m leaving Cork, that’s all. As a matter of fact I’m leaving the country altogether. I’ve found myself a job with a law firm in Amsterdam that’s desperate for an English-speaking secretary.’

  ‘I wish you luck, then.’

  James Elvin hesitated for a moment, and then he said, ‘I don’t want to hurt him, like. But I thought it best to make a clean break, you know. Rather than pretend that things could go on like they were before.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘You know full well that he was borrowing money from Bobby Quilty so that I could settle the debts that I’d run up gambling. The things he said about you, I wouldn’t repeat them to a priest in confession.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s said plenty to my face. I think “witch” was about the least worst name that he called me.’

  ‘I can’t change my ways,’ said James Elvin. ‘I’ve tried, believe me. I’ve even been to the Gamblers Anonymous. But I suppose you could say that I’m hopelessly addicted. The problem is – now that Bobby Quilty’s gone to meet his Maker – Jimmy has nobody else that he can borrow the money off. Sorry, I didn’t mean any disrespect – Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly.’

  Katie could see that he had tears in his eyes. He wiped them with his sleeve, and then he said, ‘I asked him for ten thousand only a few days ago. I begged him, like. I was almost on my knees. There’s fellers from the Diamond Club who say th
ey’re going to break my legs if I don’t pay at least half of what I owe them. But he said no, he couldn’t manage it, he needed the money for something more important. We had a real fierce argument about it. I said to him, what’s more important to you than me? But he wouldn’t say. So afterwards I thought, I’m glad to be going. The feller that runs the law firm in Amsterdam, he says he can help me financially, if you follow me. And all the debts I’ve run up in Cork, I can leave them behind and forget about them, because they’ll never find out where I’ve disappeared to.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Katie. ‘You’re some chiselling little bastard, aren’t you?’

  James Elvin sniffed, and shrugged. ‘I know that, DS Maguire. You don’t have to tell me. But that’s me, that’s the way I am, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The only thing is, I’m shitting myself about telling Jimmy because I know he’ll do ninety, and then he’ll probably cry, and I don’t want to leave him like that.’

  Katie said, very quietly, ‘Why don’t you write him a note, James, telling him that you have started a new life? Tell him how much you appreciate everything that he’s done for you, and that you’re going to miss him, but you’re sure that he’ll soon be able to find somebody else to take your place. Write him a note like that, and I’ll give it to him, and then you won’t have to face him raging at you or bursting into tears.’

  ‘You’d do that for me? Even though I’ve been such a bastard?’

  ‘James, there’s such a thing in this world as forgiveness. Write the note and bring it along to my office. Then off you go to Amsterdam and forget about Cork and your gambling debts and Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said James Elvin, although he was so choked up that he could hardly get the words out.

  Katie walked along to her office feeling treacherous, in a way, but also triumphant. She couldn’t wait to see Jimmy O’Reilly’s face when she presented him with his own briefcase, with his twenty thousand euros still in it, and a note from James Elvin saying that he was leaving him.

  *