Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  ‘You can do that from the office.’

  Eventually, O’Sullivan turned the car into a narrow residential road and then through a wooden drive to an old house set back in its own grounds. O’Sullivan parked and looked through the windscreen.

  ‘And this is the An Garda Síochána unit that deals with all the high-end white-collar crime that no bugger understands. I’ll see you to the door. I’ll pick you up later.’

  O’Sullivan tapped a code into the red painted door and ushered Drake inside. The building had the same tranquil intensity he’d felt in the unit headed by Super Adams, with its flickering monitors and air-conditioned luxury. The first floor was open plan with large boards and wide tables. Daylight filtered into the room through barred windows and Drake guessed there were cameras he couldn’t see, recording everything.

  O’Sullivan pointed to the far end of the room. ‘That’s Super Mallin. He’s expecting you.’

  When Superintendent Mallin got up from behind the desk Drake was surprised how small he was. His hair was cut short and the shirt sleeves, a single-cuff variety with long button-down collars, hung down past his wrists. He stood wide-stanced like a scrum-half in a rugby game, ready to catch the ball.

  ‘I’ll see you later.’ O’Sullivan nodded to Drake.

  Mallin pointed to a chair and Drake sat down.

  ‘You want to know about Tim Loosemore and John Beltrami?’

  ‘They’re suspects,’ Drake said immediately, regretting that he had made the case sound clear-cut.

  Mallin sat down and looked over at Drake. ‘We’ve got investigations ongoing with the WPS and the FBI into various companies involving Beltrami and one of our home-grown crooks – Fergal Connors. Beltrami owns a business with Collins, and Loosemore’s name crops up occasionally. So much of what goes on is shrouded in offshore trusts and front companies that the best we can do is hope they make the occasional mistake. I’ve got everything ready for you.’

  The door to the room had 4/A/C written on it in large letters and inside two large box files had been dumped on the desk. Mallin explained where Drake could make coffee and find the toilets.

  ‘Any questions, please ask me.’

  * * *

  Howick returned from a brisk walk, knowing that he had to concentrate. His career depended on it.

  After the first couple of hours of staring at a flickering computer screen, his concentration was lapsing. The last thirty minutes had passed in a complete haze. He was sure Winder didn’t feel this kind of urgency: Howick reckoned his colleague would be quite happy to finish his thirty years as a constable. But Howick wanted the promotion more than anything.

  Returning to the Incident Room with two mugs of coffee, double strength just in case the dose of fresh air needed assistance, he put one down on Winder’s desk.

  ‘Good walk?’ Winder yawned and stretched.

  ‘I needed the fresh air,’ Howick said. ‘Any progress?’

  Winder leant back and, folding his fingers together, and put his hands behind his head. ‘Hours of the bloody stuff. Never realised a ferry had so many cameras.’

  They’d widened the time frame suggested by Drake by ten minutes, but it had added over an hour to their work. By the end, Howick had drunk a second cup of powerful coffee and they had the beginning of a spider chart of who was where on the car deck and the approximate times. Cross-referencing whether any of the crew had left the car deck meant watching the coverage from other cameras nowhere near where Rosen’s body had been found.

  A call from Drake asking Howick to email the images of the female crew members to Ireland had been a welcome distraction.

  ‘I watched that film Murder on the Orient Express on Saturday,’ Howick said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, the Agatha Christie story, involving murders on the Orient Express train. Poirot knows the killer must be on the train. All he needs is the evidence.’

  ‘But we know Green killed Rosen.’

  ‘Can’t be certain.’

  ‘Come on. We’ve seen the earring – had to be him.’

  ‘And we know the identity of the person who took Rosen’s computer. Snag is that it could be one of twenty crew members.’

  ‘Isn’t Poirot French?’

  ‘Belgian,’ Howick corrected Winder.

  ‘I thought Belgians were really French?’

  ‘There’s Walloons who speak French and Flemings who speak Flemish. And Brussels – that’s bilingual.’

  ‘Bit like Wales then.’

  ‘Lots of controversy over language. Same the world over.’ Howick returned his attention to the screen in front of him.

  A spreadsheet entry was created for each deck officer and his movements tracked until they had a list of officers they knew were on the car deck in the half-hour before Rosen’s death.

  The exercise to track the catering staff took much longer as they moved around the vessel, darting from one area to another. Watching the crew swiping their entry cards was one thing, but not knowing where they might exit the secure area was quite another. And when Howick tried to follow one of the crew, he found himself having clicked from one camera footage to another for twenty minutes without knowing where the crew member had gone.

  ‘I’ve found this girl leaving one of the entrances to the crew quarters about an hour before the ship leaves,’ Howick said.

  ‘So about half an hour before Rosen was killed.’

  Howick scanned the photographs. ‘Vicky Church. Works in one of the cafeterias. She’s part of the permanent staff on the ferry.’

  ‘Think we should talk to her?’

  ‘No harm I suppose. Ask her what she was doing there?’

  Another couple of hours passed until they had two more names. Howick and Winder stood by the board, staring at the crew list, before pinning the small passport-sized photographs of the engineer Robert James and the deck officer Rhodri Owens underneath Rosen and Green.

  Howick tapped James’s image with his biro. ‘Robert James goes into the crew quarters when he should have been down in the engine room. One of the deck officers said something about Owens being late.’

  ‘He’s on that coverage from the car deck,’ Winder said, turning back to his computer screen and searching until he found the relevant section. ‘Hey bloody presto. Look at him,’ Winder said. ‘Holding out his arms. He’s late. Been somewhere he shouldn’t have been.’

  ‘Tick.VG,’ Howick said, mimicking Drake, and making the Nike-brand sign.

  * * *

  Sergeant Jeff Wallace stood under the shelter and regretted the day the politicians banned smoking inside buildings. It was cold and damp and having a smoke wasn’t a pleasure any more, not that he was considering stopping – just that he had loved the old days when smoking was a necessary qualification for being in CID.

  Political correctness gone mad, he had said at the time to anyone wanting to listen. He shivered and then fastened two buttons of his jacket against the chill of the afternoon – the shelter was on the north of the building, well away from any sunshine.

  He didn’t know Frank Rosen, but he’d guessed who was behind his death. It had taken Wallace a long time to get where he was and there was so much at stake that he didn’t want to contemplate the possibility of things going wrong. He had another ten years till retirement and his pension and the lump sum that would swell the nest egg he was accumulating. He fancied a place in the sun, somewhere where you could still smoke inside.

  Drake was out on a limb. Everyone knew that he was only the Deputy SIO on the case. If he carried on like this he’d soon be in Traffic. That would suit Wallace just fine.

  Chapter 34

  Normally, by late in the afternoon in his office Drake’s eyes would have felt gritty, his hands greasy, forcing him to visit the bathroom and clean, but he found the coolness of the air conditioning calming. By six o’clock Drake had read everything on the closely typed single sheet of A4 prepared by Mallin, cross-referencing to the files from the
various boxes. Drake knew that Rosen must have learnt or heard or just guessed something that had given him enough bargaining power with Loosemore or John Beltrami or now even Fergal Connors. There could always be a simple explanation; Frank Rosen could have got lucky on the horses at Leopardstown racecourse.

  Fergal Connors had perfect teeth that glistened when he smiled and, from the photograph on the cover of a glossy magazine, he looked healthy, his arm wrapped carefully around a pouting super-thin woman with skin like leather. Drake skimmed the magazine article on Connors, noting that his portrayal as a property developer and entrepreneur was more complimentary than the Garda description he’d read earlier. Connors had property all over Dublin and in the boom years had been able to extend his empire to London – a mews house in Chelsea – and various hotels and apartment blocks in Spain and Portugal. The latest venture to capture public attention was a film company that promised to bring in Hollywood blockbusters, creating hundreds of jobs. And there was a building company, a couple of golf courses and the freight business. ‘Impressive, don’t you think?’ Mallin said, leaning against the door, arms folded.

  Drake turned to look at Mallin. ‘He seems to be everywhere. This freight company is just small beer for him.’ Drake patted the file on the table.

  ‘For a man who came from Athlone fifteen years ago with nothing he’s built one hell of an empire.’

  ‘Where is Athlone?’

  ‘Middle of nowhere.’ Mallin stepped towards Drake. ‘But it was the year he spent in the States that made the difference.’

  Drake flicked through the papers, knowing that he’d seen a timeline for Connors.

  ‘We have no idea what he did or really where he went. But what we do know is that when he came back Fergal Connors had enough money to make himself a fortune, marry a trophy wife, etc. etc. Did you read about his Easter holiday?’

  Drake shook his head.

  ‘Fergal Connors hires a one-hundred-foot yacht in the Caribbean, complete with crew, including a captain and a five-star chef. Just a touch under one hundred thousand euros a week. But instead of flying economy class or taking a charter like the rest of us, he hires a private jet.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘It’s all drugs. That’s where all the money comes from. Every little smack head, every lawyer or journalist sniffing their cocaine and every homeless heroin addict from here to Belfast and Cork is contributing to Fergal Connors’s lifestyle.’

  ‘How near are you to building a case?’

  Mallin grunted. ‘Who knows? Sometimes it feels like we’ll never get him.’

  Drake’s mobile beeped. Mallin picked up one of the sheets from Drake’s file, printed with Rosen’s codes. A knot of worry crossed Drake’s mind when he read the message – ferry cancelled collect you in twenty.

  ‘They’re the printed records we found on Rosen’s data stick,’ Drake said, looking at the mobile and wondering whether he should reply. ‘We can’t make any sense of them.’

  ‘Looks easy enough to me.’

  * * *

  Drake’s initial excitement when Mallin declared he could decipher the code waned when he realised that it was only part of the problem. But Drake’s exasperation was tested further when O’Sullivan arrived and announced. ‘That is so fucking obvious.’

  Interspersed with the single letters and numbers were sets of Irish registration numbers, and Mallin sat by the desk assembling a full list. O’Sullivan clutched the sheet of paper, giving it a studious stare.

  ‘The first number, 04, is the year of registration – 2004 and the letters afterwards are for the county of registration. C is for Cork, D for Dublin and LH for Louth. Do you get the picture?’

  ‘How many counties are there?’

  ‘Twenty-nine, but some won’t have many vehicles registered.’ Mallin carried on scribbling.

  ‘And the numbers?’

  O’Sullivan piped up. ‘They’re sequential numbers. Shame about your ferry. You’ll either have to stay overnight or take the ferry in the middle of the night – quarter past two. Jesus, that’s no fucking time to be travelling.’

  Drake couldn’t afford to lose another day. ‘I think I’ll go back on the ferry tonight.’

  ‘Let’s find out something about these plates,’ Mallin said, turning to the computer screen.

  He tapped the numbers and letters into his keyboard, stopping occasionally and hitting the print key. Drake heard the muffled sound of a printer in another room. Once he’d finished Mallin got up and trundled out to the adjacent office, returning with a handful of papers. Drake could barely contain his excitement that this was some sort of progress. Mallin slumped into his chair and started flicking through the sheets, blowing out a lungful of breath as he finished.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Are they cars or lorries or what?’ Drake said.

  ‘Most of them are lorries owned by a haulage company in County Cork. This could be very useful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The company is another small part of the Connors empire.’

  Mallin set the papers down on the table. ‘You’ve got your connection to organised crime, Ian. All you have to do is work out why he kept this list.’

  Drake didn’t have time to reply before O’Sullivan piped up. ‘And I think it’s about time we visited another part of the Connors empire.’

  * * *

  Drake rang Caren first but her messaging service clicked on; he called Howick but the number was engaged, before he finally succeeded in speaking to Winder.

  ‘We need to get a full list of all the vehicles that have passed through the port in the last twelve months. Find someone in the ferry company who can get you the data.’

  ‘Do you realise the time, boss?’

  ‘I don’t care what time it is. Contact that runt Mortlake and if he fails to cooperate, then tell him I will personally arrest him for obstruction. I’ll be back in the morning. And Gareth, nobody except our team gets to hear of this.’

  Drake heard the silence on the other end of the telephone. Being unable to explain to his team that he’d had specific orders not to involve any other department was going to raise eyebrows, maybe even already had.

  O’Sullivan stood by the front door waiting for Drake and Mallin.

  ‘Are you coming, sir?’

  ‘You must be joking. Connors would recognise me, and the Garda Commissioner would think I’d gone mad.’

  Drake was developing an uneasy feeling that visiting the Blue Parrot might not be such a good idea. But O’Sullivan had insisted and he had hours to kill before the ferry.

  ‘We need to see Harrison,’ Drake said, as they stood outside by O’Sullivan’s car.

  ‘Jesus, almost forgot.’

  O’Sullivan drove the car too quickly around the streets of Dublin until they found themselves outside Harrison’s home.

  The door opened as O’Sullivan raised a fist.

  ‘Heard the car,’ Harrison said.

  The remains of a chocolate bar and an empty packet of crisps were the only evidence of activity in the flat since their earlier visit. Drake sat down uninvited and passed over the photographs from his papers. O’Sullivan walked over to the desk.

  ‘So what are you writing? Is it like that Stieg Lawson guy from Norway?’

  ‘He was Larsson,’ Harrison said, without looking up. ‘And he was from Sweden.’

  O’Sullivan didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you recognise any of these?’ Drake said after a couple of minutes.

  Harrison stopped at one photograph and tilted his head slightly. ‘She’s the one.’ He pointed at the page.

  * * *

  Drake had dialled Winder’s number before they reached the car.

  ‘Vicky Church,’ Drake said.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You’re not making sense, Gareth.’

  ‘She’s on the CCTV leaving the officers’ quarters.’

  ‘And I’ve spoken to an eyewitness who saw her staying i
n Rosen’s flat. Find out if she’s working on the ferry from Dublin tonight. If not, find her. Quick.’

  ‘Sounds like she could be in trouble,’ O’Sullivan said, leaning over the car door.

  Drake nodded.

  After a journey of half an hour, they reached the suburbs and O’Sullivan drew the car to the kerb by a fish and chip shop.

  ‘My expense account wouldn’t buy a salad leaf at the Blue Parrot,’ O’Sullivan said. ‘So we’re eating in my favourite restaurant.’ He nodded towards the queue on the pavement.

  Drake waited in the car, hoping Winder would reply and cursing the weak signal. O’Sullivan returned with the containers of food. Drake picked at the salty, fatty food without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Now I’ve got one powerful thirst,’ O’Sullivan said, wiping the back of his hand over his lips once he’d finished.

  O’Sullivan turned the car into the long driveway that curved its way towards the front entrance of the Blue Parrot. He parked next to a dark-blue Mercedes. They paid their entrance fee to a tall girl with long earrings and a hangdog appearance and walked past bouncers with enormous chests and cables hanging from their ears.

  ‘Eastern Europeans,’ O’Sullivan said under his breath.

  The main room was a large oblong shape with a sunken area to the right that had an array of gaming tables. Thin women with high heels and perfectly manicured faces hung off men in dark suits.

  ‘Jesus, place is full of hookers tonight.’

  At the far end, behind a narrow screen, were tables policed by an officious-looking man in a dinner jacket.

  ‘There’s yer man.’ O’Sullivan nodded to the far end of the restaurant.

  Drake searched the diners for the face of Fergal Connors. He was smiling at a group of young women on the table with him. O’Sullivan reached the bar and caught the attention of the barman. After ordering his own drink, O’Sullivan turned to Drake.

  ‘What’s your poison?’

  ‘Guinness.’

  ‘Very sensible.’ O’Sullivan turned to the barman and mouthed the word ‘two’.