He rang the doorbell, keeping his finger pressed on the button for nearly half a minute. Behind the flowery red curtains in the front bedroom window a light was eventually switched on, and he could hear voices. He rang the bell again, intermittently, and then he banged on the door and shouted out, ‘Davy Dorgan! Davy Dorgan! Come on out, you murdering whore’s melt! Come on, Davy, come and get what’s coming to you!’
In the bedroom windows of several neighbouring houses more lights were switched on and Bernie could see blinds being raised and curtains drawn back and people peering out.
‘Come on out like a man, Davy Dorgan, you cancery bastard!’
The light in the front bedroom window was switched off again, but when he looked up, Bernie thought that he could see the curtains parted and somebody looking out. He stepped away from the front door, cocked his shotgun and raised it to his shoulder.
He waited, but the house remained in darkness and nobody opened the front door. Maybe he shouldn’t have called out for Davy Dorgan and just waited until somebody came to see who was ringing and knocking at this time of night. If he had done that, though, he wouldn’t have known which member of the family was opening the door and he might have shot the wrong person.
‘Davy Dorgan!’ he shouted out again. ‘Come on out, Davy Dorgan, you narrow back, or are you too fecking jibber?’
A light was switched on behind the front door and he pointed his shotgun at the house numbers – 23 – because they were at about chest level and that would mean he would shoot Davy Dorgan straight in the heart. His own heart was beating hard, but he took a deep breath and held it to keep his aim steady.
The door was suddenly opened, but only two or three centimetres. Bernie tightened his trigger-finger, ready to shoot, but at that moment Davy Dorgan appeared from behind the wheelie bins at the side of the house, wearing a black towelling bathrobe. He was holding an automatic pistol in both hands and without hesitation he fired at Bernie twice.
The first shot hit Bernie in the right shoulder. His black nylon jacket was ripped up and a fan of blood sprayed across the side of his face. He staggered and dropped on to one knee on the concrete path, but he managed to keep his grip on his shotgun and twist himself around so that he could fire back.
As he tried to aim at Davy Dorgan, though, the second shot hit him in the chin, so that his lips burst apart in a wild tangle of bloody shreds and his teeth exploded out of his mouth like white shrapnel. He tilted backwards and sideways, but he squeezed the trigger of his shotgun as he fell and there was a deafening boom that echoed all the way up the street.
A few seconds passed. Then the front door was cautiously opened wider and Davy’s white-haired uncle Christy put his head around it.
‘Davy?’ he said. ‘Davy, are you okay, boy?’
Bernie was lying on his back now, with his arms wide apart and one leg bent under him. He was gurgling in his throat and blowing blood bubbles out of the mess that was all that was left of his mouth. But underneath the living-room window Davy was also lying down, grey-faced and shuddering. His bathrobe had been ripped away from his white left thigh and his skin was freckled with shotgun pellets.
Uncle Christy came out of the house in his maroon-striped pyjamas, looking up and down the street to make sure that Bernie had been alone and there were no other gunmen waiting. Bernie’s nineteen-year-old cousin Declan came out, too, wearing a Spiderman T-shirt and flappy red shorts. Doors were opening all the way up the street and more bedroom lights were being switched on. Davy’s uncle picked up Bernie’s shotgun, broke it open to eject both the spent and the live cartridges, and then laid it back on the path.
‘Declan,’ he said, ‘tell your ma to ring for an ambulance right away. Make sure they know that there’s two fellers shot so they need to make a bust.’
Then, stiffly, he eased himself down on to the paving slabs next to Davy and laid his hand on his forehead. ‘It’s all right, Davy. You’re not hurt too bad. That was self-defence that was. I’ll testify to that for you.’
‘Fecking Bernie Dennehy,’ Davy whispered. ‘That’s who it is. Fecking Bernie Dennehy. Holy Mother of God, this hurts.’
‘It’s only a few pellets, boy. The docs will get those out for you.’
‘Is he dead?’ asked Davy. ‘I can’t see him from here.’
Davy’s uncle turned around to look at Bernie. He was still gurgling and bubbling, although he was whistling now, too, as if he couldn’t breathe properly.
‘No, he’s still with us. I can tell you something, though. He won’t be singing “The Fields of Athenry” any time soon.’
‘Take my gun, Christy. Give it a good wipe and then squeeze it into his hand to put his prints on it. Then give it back to me.’
‘What’s the point of that, then?’
Davy winced with pain, squeezing his eyes tight shut. After a few seconds, though, he managed to croak, ‘Bernie shot me with his shotgun, so he did, but I knocked it out of his hand.’
‘Oh yeah? Then what?’
‘It was then that he pulled out the pistol on me, but I grabbed that away from him. I told him to cool his jets, but he picked up his shotgun again, so I had no choice but to use his own pistol against him. Self-defence, like you said.’
‘That’s some fecking story, Davy. You should have been a writer.’
Davy didn’t answer that. All he knew was that the shades would run tests on the bullets they would take out of Bernie so it was essential that they were led to believe the pistol was his.
He laid his head back on the concrete and stared up at the sky. The drizzle had stopped and a milky moon was just visible behind the clouds. His leg felt as if he had been bitten by a shark – not that he had ever been anywhere in the world where sharks might have bitten him. Larne and Cork, they were the limits of his travels, although he had once visited a cousin in Coleraine.
‘Don’t get any of that mixed up, Christy. You saw it all for yourself.’
‘Don’t you worry, boy. Even if the pigs beat me I won’t say any different. Us Dorgans always stuck together till the death.’
‘Oh, thanks. You’ve made me feel better already.’
25
Kyna reached Katie’s house at Carragh View a few minutes after midnight. Katie was expecting her, so she had switched on the light in the porch. As she was paying the taxi driver the front door opened and Katie appeared, with Barney excitedly trying to push his way past her.
‘Come along in,’ said Katie. ‘Holy Mother of God, what’s happened to you? You look like you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards!’
Of course, Katie knew that Kyna had been dressing herself up so that she would look the part of a Gurranabraher barmaid, but she wasn’t prepared for seeing her with her hair messed up and her face so white and her mascara streaked from crying. Without any regard for the protocol they had established between them in the station, she opened her arms and hugged her tight. Kyna clung on to her for almost half a minute and Katie could feel her trembling and her shoulders shaking underneath her jacket. Barney circled around and around them, snuffling and tail-waggling.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kyna at last, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I was going to be so brave about it. I’d rather he’d have shot me, to be honest with you.’
‘Who? Why? Look, come inside and sit down. Can I fetch you anything to drink maybe?’
Kyna followed Katie into the living room. To her surprise, Conor was sitting in one of the armchairs, wearing a mustard-coloured cable-knit sweater and a pair of black jeans, although his feet were bare.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, ma’am. I didn’t realize you had company. I could have just texted you.’
Conor stood up and smiled and said, ‘Hallo, Kyna. It’s not a bother at all. Here, sit yourself down and make yourself comfortable. Work always comes first with Katie, I know that. She’s always made it clear that I’ll be playing second fiddle to half the criminals in Cork.’
Kyna sat d
own on the sofa and Katie passed her a box of tissues so that she could dab at her messy make-up.
‘Conor came over to brief me about the dog-fight tomorrow,’ Katie told her. ‘Inspector Carroll has promised me half a dozen officers from Tipperary Town to back up the ISPCA inspectors in case they find themselves threatened, but Frank Magorian won’t sanction a full-scale operation and Denis MacCostagáin can’t approve it, either. We just haven’t the budget.
‘So – ’ she shrugged, ‘all we can hope to do is try to keep the cruelty to a minimum and take as much video footage as we can as evidence in case the ISPCA want to prosecute McManus privately.’
She sat down next to Kyna and took hold of her hands between hers. ‘Anyway, that’s enough of that. What on earth is the story with you?’
Kyna gave her a wobbly smile. ‘I think I’ll have that drink now, if you don’t mind. A whiskey would be perfect.’
Katie got up and went over to the drinks table. She poured her a large measure of Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy, which usually cost €140 a bottle but had been given to her as a gift by Cork County Council.
‘Erm... if there’s any more of that going, I wouldn’t exactly say no to a glass myself,’ said Conor, raising one eyebrow.
Before she swallowed it, Kyna swilled her whiskey between her teeth as if it were mouthwash. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. Is it all right if I talk to you alone?’
Conor stood up again and raised his glass. ‘No bother at all, Kyna, like I said. I’ve a rake of emails to catch up on in any case. Slainté!’
He went through to the spare bedroom, which Katie still called the Nursery, and closed the door. Katie sat down beside Kyna again and said, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Haltingly, Kyna explained how she had gone out for a drink with Liam, and how she had pretended to find him attractive so that he would tell her what Davy Dorgan was up to. Katie listened without interrupting her. She could tell that even kissing Liam on the lips had made her feel sick.
‘Davy Dorgan is a total fanatic when it comes to the cause, not like Bobby Quilty used to be,’ said Kyna. ‘Liam says that when the British defence secretary comes to Cork on Saturday he’s arranging for three republican hit men to come down from Ulster and shoot him while he’s attending the dancing feis at the Opera House.’
‘You’re codding me, aren’t you? He must be stone-hatchet mad! Doesn’t he have any idea what the security’s going to be like?’
‘Sure, he must know. I don’t think he’s stupid. But from what Liam was saying, I got the feeling that he’s planning to set up some kind of diversion and he’s expecting Liam to help him do it. The trouble was, Liam started to get windy that Dorgan would find out that he’d been talking to me, so he never got around to telling me what the diversion was actually going to be. I don’t know. I can’t say I totally blame him like. The reason Dorgan stabbed him in the hand was to warn him to keep his bake shut. Keep Zippo, that’s what he said.’
‘Dorgan said that? “Zippo”?’
‘Yes, he did. Why?’
‘That was exactly what Adeen’s visitor wrote on the card that came with the flowers he fetched her.’
‘Well, it could have been Dorgan, but I’ve heard other people use it.’
Katie took Kyna in her arms and hugged her again. ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she said, sitting back and stroking Kyna’s fringe. ‘It seems like every time I assign you a case to investigate, you end up getting hurt. You didn’t have to do what you did. I don’t think I could have done it myself. I would have understood if you’d refused and just walked out on him.’
Kyna said, ‘I know. But how do you think I would have felt if that politician had got shot and I’d found out later that I could have saved his life?’
‘Well, what I’ll do now is set up twenty-four-hour surveillance on Dorgan,’ Katie told her. ‘Then, first thing in the morning, I’ll have DI Mulliken get in touch with Superintendent Mitchell in Belfast and ask him to contact the SRR. There’s a chance they’ll have some background details about Dorgan and his contacts in Ulster and they can give us some notion of who these hit men might be.’
‘Sure, good idea,’ said Kyna. ‘If anybody knows who they are, the SRR will.’
It was officially denied that there was any SRR presence in the province, but Katie knew that a small active unit was still based at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, County Antrim. They were a detachment from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment of the British Army and they had taken over covert operations against Irish terrorists after the Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent disbanding of 14 Intelligence Company, usually known as ‘The Det’.
Like The Det, today’s SRR operatives kept constant tabs on dissidents with some of the most sophisticated listening and recording techniques available, and they had occasionally taken lethal steps to prevent the kind of assassination attempt that Davy Dorgan was planning. Mostly, their victims simply disappeared, or were made to look as if they were casualties of a gangland shooting, like the Kinahan–Hutch feud in Dublin.
If Davy Dorgan had even tenuous links to a republican splinter group in Ulster, the SRR would almost certainly have information about him. Detective Ó Doibhilin said that all you needed to do was hum a couple of verses of ‘The Bold Fenian Men’ while you were sitting on the toilet in the morning and the SRR would have you logged on their database as a potential terrorist.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ Katie asked Kyna. She had finished her whiskey but she was still pale and shaky.
‘Call a taxi and go home so. Try to get some sleep. Try not to have nightmares about Liam. God, that was so mank. I can still taste him now. Like bleach-flavoured yogurt.’ She stuck out her tongue and pretended to spit.
‘You can stay here if you like,’ said Katie. ‘Have a shower and borrow one of my nighties. Come on, you’re in no fit state to be going home alone. You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you? I don’t snore, or at least nobody’s ever complained about it.’
Kyna nodded towards the Nursery door. ‘What about—?’
‘Conor? He’ll be grand altogether. I’ll admit that we’ve been seeing each other, but he’s right in the middle of divorcing his wife and we’ve agreed to take things easy between us until everything’s settled.’
‘Is it serious, you and him?’
‘I’m not one hundred per cent certain. It could be. Barney adores him. He has such a way with dogs. You’d think they were telepathic, the two of them.’
‘Well, I’m so glad you’ve found somebody. I’m hoping that I have, too. There was a singer called Sorcha at the Templegate and there’s only one word for her – munya.’
They talked a little longer and then Katie sent Kyna off to the bathroom to have a shower. She went into the bedroom to lay out a long white cotton nightdress for her, with small blue forget-me-nots on it, and then she went to the Nursery to see Conor. He was sitting up in bed, still in his sweater and jeans, tapping on his Apple notepad.
She went up and kissed him and then rested her hand on his shoulder. ‘Would you mind sleeping in here tonight? Kyna’s totally stressed out and she badly needs some comforting.’
‘Well, I was hoping for another cuddle with you, to be honest.’ Conor smiled. ‘But that’s okay. She’s in a state all right, isn’t she? What happened to her?’
‘I’ll tell you in the morning. Right now I don’t even want to think about it. I’m sorry.’
Conor closed his notepad. ‘I’d best be getting some sleep then. I had another email earlier from that ISPCA inspector, Derek O’Donnell. He’s almost certain now that the dog-fight’s scheduled to start at three o’clock in the afternoon just where we thought it was, by Cappamurra Bridge.’
‘I’ve been having some thoughts about it,’ said Katie. ‘Even if we can’t raise the manpower to arrest all of the dog-fighters who show up there, we can at least lift Guzz Eye McManus. He’s the ringleader, after all.’
‘McManus? Are y
ou serious? That’ll be taking your life into your hands. Apart from the fact that he has some of the most expensive lawyers in the country.’
‘I can try at least, even if I can’t get a conviction. We have to start breaking up these dog-fighting gangs somehow. We’ll get ourselves a heap of publicity if nothing else, and maybe we can get some questions asked in the Dáil.’
‘So who’s going to lift McManus if you can’t get Frank Magorian or your chief superintendent to back you up? The Tipp guards won’t do it, will they? They’ve already said that they’re only going to show up to keep the peace and take videos.’
‘I’ll do it myself,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll take Markey and O’Mara with me. They’re both hardy.’
Conor smiled again and slowly shook his head. ‘You’re a mad scone, you are, Katie Maguire. No wonder I love you so much.’
Katie kissed him again and said, ‘I’ll see you for breakfast. Sleep well.’
*
Kyna was already lying with her head on the pillow when Katie came to bed. By now it was 1.35 a.m. and it had started to rain harder outside, but Katie found the sound of it quite soothing. She snuggled under the duvet and put her arm around Kyna and kissed her on the forehead.
‘I hope this isn’t your side of the bed,’ said Kyna.
‘I don’t care what side I sleep on. It’s been a while since I slept with anybody else. How are you feeling?’
‘Slightly langered, to tell you the truth. My stomach’s empty and that whiskey went straight to my head.’
They held each other very close. In their different ways, they both needed the love they felt for each other. They knew that it would be impossible for them ever to be partners, not without abandoning their careers and their commitment to the Garda. But just for tonight they were sharing a warmth and affection and physical attraction that needed no words, and for which no words could ever be found – no words that anybody else would understand, anyway.
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