‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ said Katie. ‘We may not achieve very much today, I’ll grant you, but at least we’re showing these dog-fighters that we’re not turning a totally blind eye to what they’re doing.’
‘As if they’ll give a monkey’s.’
‘Well, I know,’ said Katie. ‘Frank Magorian’s right about this, I have to admit, even though he and I disagree about almost everything else. If the rank-and-file gardaí keep threatening to strike because of their pay, and we can’t afford to keep rural Garda stations open for lack of money, how can we justify spending X thousands of euros trying to stamp out dog-fighting?’
Three out of the seven ISPCA inspectors who covered the whole country had arrived to monitor the dog-fight – two men and a woman. One of them came over to Katie and held out his hand. He was a young, good-looking man with a black hipster beard and a wide toothy grin. He was wearing an official ISPCA cap and a navy-blue waterproof jacket with studded epaulettes, but also skinny jeans and brown Dubarry boots.
‘Peter O’Dwyer, South Tipperary ISPCA,’ he said. ‘You must be Detective Superintendent Maguire.’
‘Good to meet you,’ said Katie. ‘To be honest, I think you have some fierce bottle facing up to McManus and all the rest of his scum.’
Conor stepped forward and shook Peter O’Dwyer’s hand. ‘How’s it cutting, Peter? I haven’t seen you since I came up here looking for those four stolen Shar Peis, remember?’
‘Janey Mack! Conor Ó Máille the famous pet detective, how about that? What’s the story, Conor?’
‘I’m still finding missing pets for a living, Peter, but at the moment I’ve been roped in by Detective Superintendent Maguire here to help her to break up this dog-fighting racket.’
Peter O’Dwyer turned to Katie and said, ‘I want you to know how much we appreciate your support, ma’am, we truly do. This year we’ve been called to more and more dog-fights than ever, and the sheer bloody cruelty we’ve seen – that’s been getting worser every day.’
‘I thought the Animal Health and Welfare Act might have made a difference,’ said Katie.
‘Not at all. We’ve managed to stop fights in Sligo and Offaly and Leitrim and Laois, but it’s been like whack-a-mole – except I shouldn’t say that, should I, being an ISPCA inspector? Every time we get one dog-fighter into court, another two spring up, and we haven’t been clocking up nearly as many successful prosecutions as we should be.’
‘Well, I’m afraid we have to be realistic,’ Katie told him. ‘We’re not looking to make any mass arrests here today. We don’t have the manpower, to begin with. But we do want the dog-fighters to realize that they’re under Garda observation and that if they commit any extreme acts of cruelty we’ll have the video evidence. We could use that to support a possible arrest at a later date, or to give you the evidence to take out a private prosecution yourselves.’
She touched Inspector Carroll’s arm and added, ‘I will say one thing to you, though, Inspector. We know that McManus organized this dog-fight himself, to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. If I see or hear any clear evidence of that, I intend to lift him personally. I’m going to need your help and cooperation if it comes to taking him in. I know we won’t be able to hold him for long, but at least we can show these scumbags that we have the power to arrest the so-called Lord of the Dog-fighting Rings and that we’re not at all scared to do it.’
‘Lifting him is one thing,’ said Inspector Carroll. ‘Getting an indictment in court, that’s another story altogether. Technically, a court could give him a twenty-five-thousand-euro fine and six months in jail, as well as a lifetime ban from ever owning any kind of an animal ever again. Even a hamster. But... you know.’
‘Not a hope in hell,’ said Conor, shaking his head.
‘Even a five-hundred-euro fine would do,’ said Katie. ‘A successful prosecution would attract a whole lot of attention in the media, wouldn’t it, especially if it was the notorious Guzz Eye McManus? It might even make some would-be dog-fighters think twice about it.’
‘You know exactly how I feel about it, ma’am,’ said Inspector Carroll. ‘Dog-fighting sickens me down to my stomach and if I had the authority to do it, and the budget, I’d go after every dog-fighter everywhere and have them locked up and treated exactly like the dogs they’ve been training.’
‘The last dog-fight we stopped was two months ago, in Westmeath,’ said Peter O’Dwyer. ‘The dogs who lost their fights – those that were still alive, that is – they had clips connected to car batteries attached to their ears and then they were thrown into a big zinc bath full of water.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I wish to God I wasn’t. I never saw dogs scrabbling and screeching like that in my life, and all the crowd were standing around laughing their heads off. It’s not just individual acts of cruelty we’re trying to change here, it’s a whole social mentality, do you know what I mean?’
‘Let’s do our best anyway,’ said Katie. She checked her watch and then she said to Inspector Carroll, ‘Zero hour.’
*
They drove fast, even though the roads between Dundrum and Goolds Cross were so narrow and overgrown. One of the two patrol cars from Tipperary Town headed up the convoy, followed by Inspector Carroll in his BMW and then Katie and Conor and the two Cork detectives in their Toyota, with the ISPCA inspectors close behind them and the second Tipperary patrol car riding shotgun.
They soon came across the first vehicles parked along the roadside and then they began to slow down. Cappamurra Bridge was the name given to a network of roads that criss-crossed the fields here and every one of them was lined nose-to-tail with Mercedes and camper vans and Range Rovers and even builders’ lorries with scaffolding stacked on them.
‘If we could call up enough tow trucks, we could give all of them a ticket for obstruction and tow them away,’ said Detective Markey.
‘Sure like,’ said Detective O’Mara. ‘But if my grandpa wore a mini-skirt and lipstick, I still couldn’t call him granny.’
Eventually they reached an open five-bar gate which led to a long muddy track with high hawthorn hedges on either side. They turned into the gate and drove along the track at a crawl because fifty or sixty men were walking in front of them. Several of them had dogs on leads, pit bulls and boxers and mastiffs, and almost all of the dogs were muzzled.
Usually, the driver of the patrol car at the front would have bipped his horn so that the walkers would stand aside and let them through, but as soon as they heard them coming some of the men turned around and glared at the Garda vehicles with such hostility that it was almost laughable, and two or three of them openly gave them the finger, so he contented himself with creeping behind them at their own pace.
As Katie’s Toyota passed him by, a tattooed man shouted close to her window, ‘I smell bacon!’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Conor. ‘You can always count on a heartfelt welcome when you come to a dog-fight.’
The muddy track widened out into a rough grassy field, which was already crowded. Most of the crowd were men, although Katie could see a few young Pavee women with skimpy tops and gold hoop earrings, two of them pushing babies in buggies. There were children skipping around, too, laughing and throwing apple cores at each other. Katie knew why the children had been brought here – to act as bookies’ runners when money began to change hands. The dog-fighters used them because they were too young to be arrested and to give evidence to the gardaí.
‘Great way to bring up your kids, don’t you think?’ said Conor. ‘Fetch them to watch some starving dogs ripping each other’s tripes out, and tell them it’s hilarious.’
Katie said, ‘Look – over there! There’s McManus.’
In the centre of the field a circular dog-fighting ring had been built out of bales of hay, three bales high. A small group of hard-looking men were gathered at one side of it, two of them holding the collars of white Staffordshire bull terriers, which were snapping and twis
ting themselves from side to side in a struggle to get free from their owners and attack each other.
Guzz Eye McManus was standing in the middle of this group, smoking a cigar. He was short and fat and totally bald, although this afternoon he was wearing a black peaked cap. As well as being bald he had no eyebrows, and thick rubbery lips, so that he looked like Buddha’s evil twin. He was wearing a grey sheepskin coat with the collar turned up and black tracksuit bottoms that would have been baggy on a man whose legs weren’t swollen like two giant drisheen. He had tiny feet, though, like a child’s, and was wearing white Nike runners which were probably no bigger than size four.
Katie could see McManus staring at their procession of vehicles as they came slowly jouncing into the field and drew up alongside the trees that bordered it on the south-eastern side. Although he was still thirty metres away, and it was always difficult to read his expression because one of his eyes looked off to the right while the other looked at ninety degrees to the left, she could tell that he was both disbelieving and furious. He took his cigar out of his mouth and said something, and whatever it was made even the hard-chaw men around him back away.
Katie and Conor stepped down from the Land Cruiser while Inspector Carroll and his Tipperary gardaí climbed out of their cars, although they stayed where they were, under the trees, to set up their video cameras.
‘I don’t think His Guzzship is exactly overwhelmed to see us,’ said Conor.
‘Well, it’s his party, after all,’ said Katie. ‘Let’s go over and wish him many happy returns, shall we?’
‘I’ll say one thing for you, Katie. You have some nerve.’
‘He’s a fat raging old man, that’s all. Come on.’
She walked across the grass towards the dog-fighting ring, with Conor beside her and Detectives Markey and O’Mara close behind. Most of the crowd in the field were staring at them now and she heard some whistles and shouts of ‘Feck off, razzers! You’re not wanted here! Get away with yourselves! Go and feck a cow!’
As Katie and Conor approached, McManus took his cigar out of his mouth, blew out a stream of smoke, and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Well, hit me on the arse with a banjo,’ he said. ‘Redmond the dog-breeder and his scrubber Sinéad. Except that you’re not really a genuine scrubber, are you, Sinéad, you’re a banner. And as for you, Redmond, I don’t know what you are, except that you’re a fecking treacherous piece of shite.’
‘Happy birthday, Mr McManus,’ said Katie.
‘I don’t want no birthday greetings from the likes of you,’ said McManus. ‘That’s worse than a curse. Now, this is private land and this is a private party and you’re not welcome, so why don’t you and your friends just fecking do one.’
‘I’m Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire from Cork and this is Conor Ó Máille, a licensed private animal detective who has been helping me in my enquiries.’
‘I don’t care if you’re the Virgin Mary from the wrong end of the bathtub and your pal here is Judas the fecking Iscariot. I’m breaking no laws here, so just get the hell out of my face.’
‘Mr McManus – dog-fighting is an offence under section fifteen of the Animal Health and Welfare Act and anyone who holds a dog-fight can be fined and possibly sent to prison.’
‘Do you see dogs fighting here? Come on, show me one single dog fighting! This is just a birthday party and if a few people have brought their pet pooches with them, where’s the harm in that?’
‘Mr McManus, I didn’t come up the River Lee in a bubble. Pet pooches? Don’t make me laugh. All of these dogs are quite clearly fighting dogs and I have reliable information that you have been arranging a fight with fifty dogs to celebrate your fiftieth birthday.’
‘Who was it told you that? Tell me who it was and I’ll give him a fecking pruning, I can tell you!’
‘Mr McManus, it’s not only an offence actually to hold a dog-fight, it’s an offence to arrange or promote or advertise a dog-fight, and it’s also an offence for anyone to allow their land or premises to be used for the purposes of dog-fighting. On top of that, any betting on dog-fighting is also against the law.’
McManus puffed at his cigar two or three times and then spat out a fragment of leaf. ‘I’m not telling you again, Detective Superintendent Whatever-the-feck-your-fecking-name-is, there’s no dog-fighting going on here and I recommend that you toddle off before we have to assist you to toddle off, if you get my meaning. Go on. Up the yard with you.’
While he and Katie had been talking, the men around McManus had shifted in closer and were glaring with undisguised menace at Katie and Conor and the two detectives. The owners of the two white Staffies repeatedly yanked at their leads so that the dogs were jerked up and back, almost choking, foaming at the mouth and snarling at Katie and Conor as if they couldn’t wait to rush up and attack them.
Katie looked around the field and saw that the rest of the crowd were beginning to gather around them, too, with more vicious-looking dogs. There were several pit bulls, as well as boxers and mastiffs and a huge Rhodesian ridgeback. The mood of the crowd was so threatening that she could almost feel it in the air, like a storm approaching.
One of the men beside McManus came limping close up to Katie. He had bristly grey hair and a diagonal scar on his left cheek and was wearing silver earrings in both ears. His faded denim jacket was embellished with studs and chains and skull brooches.
‘C’m’ere to me, girl,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘The Guzz is asking you polite-like to leave, so my advice to you and the rest of these razzers is to do what he asks and go. This is his birthday party, got it, and it took him weeks of time and trouble to fix up the dog-fight to end all dog-fights, but there’s nobody going to get hurt except you if you stay here.’
Katie looked up at him. His eyes were jaundiced and he smelled strongly of drink.
‘Did McManus tell you to say that?’ she asked him.
‘I’m telling you myself, girl. So do us all a favour and fecking feck off.’
Katie turned to Detectives Markey and O’Mara. ‘Did you catch that, you two?’
‘We did so,’ said Detective Markey, giving her the thumbs up.
Katie walked back to Inspector Carroll who was still waiting with his officers beside their cars.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Inspector Carroll.
‘McManus is denying that there’s going to be any dog-fight here today, but his skanky henchman has just openly admitted that there is, and that McManus arranged it. Both of my detectives heard him say so and I’ve recorded him on my lapel mic, as well as McManus making threats against us.’
‘So what are you aiming to do now?’
‘I think we need to be out the gap now as quick as we can because this crowd is starting to get ugly and I don’t want anyone hurt. But I intend to arrest McManus and he’s coming with us. They won’t carry on this dog-fighting without him. It’s supposed to be his birthday celebration, after all.’
Inspector Carroll looked at the gathering crowd with his eyes narrowed.
‘You thought this out beforehand, didn’t you, ma’am?’
‘What? Killing two birds with one arrest? It was one of the options I was thinking about, I have to admit. Under the circumstances, though, I don’t think we have any alternative.’
‘It’s health and safety I’m bothered about, ma’am. I don’t know. There’s over a hundred and fifty here, I’d say, and they don’t look like they’d hesitate to assault a garda or turn a patrol car over. And I’m speaking from bitter experience.’
‘I’m arresting McManus,’ Katie told him. ‘If your officers can, please come with me.’
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to question the wisdom of this, ma’am,’ said Inspector Carroll. ‘You know how I feel, but given the situation I think the wisest course of action is for us to withdraw and leave the ISPCA inspectors to record what they can and file a report.’
Katie closed her eyes for a moment to restrain herse
lf. She could hear dogs yapping and people shouting and amplified music playing. Then she opened her eyes and said, ‘I’m arresting McManus, Jerry, and you and your officers are going to assist me. If you have any doubts about it, that’s an order. You can make a complaint to the Ombudsman after, if you feel that you have to.’
Inspector Carroll looked grim, but he didn’t answer back and he beckoned to his seven burly uniformed gardaí in their yellow high-viz jackets. Once they were gathered around him, he said, ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire has decided that she has sufficient cause to bring in McManus. You’ll escort her while she does so and do what’s necessary to ensure her safety. We’ll take McManus directly to St Michael’s Road and hold him there.’
Peter O’Dwyer said, ‘What about us?’
‘To be honest with you, Peter, I recommend that you leave, too,’ said Katie. ‘If I’m right, there’ll be no dog-fighting here once we take McManus away, but I think the punters are going to be more than a little thick about it.’
‘These people don’t scare us. Neither do their dogs. Especially not their dogs.’
‘All the same. Go.’
With the Tipperary gardaí flanking her on either side, as well as Detectives Markey and O’Mara, Katie walked back to Guzz Eye McManus. He was counting out fifty-euro notes into the hand of a man with slicked-back grey hair and a green bow tie and a ginger three-piece suit.
She went right up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘Mr McManus, I’m arresting you for setting up a dog-fight, contrary to section fifteen of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2014, and in particular to paragraphs one, two and four of that section. Would you come along with me, please?’
Guzz Eye McManus ignored her and carried on counting out the money.
‘There,’ he said, ‘four hundred and fifty on Henchy’s mutt.’
‘Mr McManus, you’re under arrest,’ said Katie even louder.
‘Will you ever feck off and stop bothering me,’ McManus retorted. ‘Dermot, what are the odds on that Presa Canario? Holy Jesus, that’s a killer dog and a half!’
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