Katie stepped back and nodded to the gardaí. They pushed their way past the men surrounding McManus, took hold of his arms and wrenched them behind his back so that he dropped his cigar and his mobile phone into the grass.
‘What in the name of all the Christian saints do you bastards think you’re doing?’ he screamed at them. The gardaí said nothing, but clicked a pair of handcuffs on him. Then they pushed him as quickly as they could towards the Garda van, humping him up bodily every time his knees gave way.
‘Let him go!’ screamed a woman in the crowd, and then another woman screeched out, ‘Let him be, you sons of bitches! It’s his birthday!’ and yet another woman shouted, ‘You won’t be laughing when he takes a bite out of your arse!’
McManus twisted his head around and roared at Katie with his face almost maroon with anger, ‘You’re going to regret this, you fecking witch! You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life! Sean! Michael! Gearoid! Don’t just fecking stand there!’
The hard core of men who had been surrounding McManus started to jog forward, with their two dogs wheezing and straining at their leads. The boozy man in the denim jacket stumbled up to Katie and tried to snatch her arm, but she ducked sideways out of his reach and raised both of her hands in the bajiquan style that her martial arts instructor had taught her.
‘Don’t you even think about it,’ she warned him.
He staggered in the clumpy grass and tried to snatch her again, but this time she crouched down, whirling her arms, and gave him a short explosive fa jin punch in the chest. He dropped backwards without a sound and lay on the ground staring at the sky, stunned.
Now both of the men with Staffies let them off their leads. The two dogs came running towards Katie and Conor as fast as bullets.
Katie began to run towards the Toyota, but Conor took three or four quick steps backwards, almost as if he were dancing, and then stopped and stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. At first the whistle was low-pitched, but then it rose to a high piercing trill, and he kept it up for nearly a quarter of a minute.
The two Staffies froze, panting, with their tongues hanging out. They both seemed totally bewildered, as if they had forgotten who or what they were supposed to be chasing after, and had even forgotten that they were dogs.
One of their owners shouted, ‘Whitey! Whitey! What in the name of God’s got into you, you stupid fecking plonker? Kill, do you hear me? Kill!’
The dog called Whitey looked around, but when he did so Conor began to whistle again and this time his whistling was so shrill that Katie could hardly hear it. Immediately the two Staffies both made strange creaking noises in their throats and settled down in the grass with their heads resting on their paws. Katie could see that Conor’s whistling was having an effect on the other dogs in the crowd, too, almost all of which had pricked up their ears and appeared to be mesmerized.
Still bellowing and cursing, Guzz Eye McManus had now been shut up in the Garda van and the Tipperary gardaí were climbing back into their patrol cars. Inspector Carroll remained standing by his BMW, waiting to make sure that Katie was safe, while Detective Markey took hold of her elbow and hurried her towards the Toyota. Detective O’Mara stayed close behind her to shield her in case the crowd started throwing stones or beer bottles.
Conor caught up with her and said, ‘Let’s get the giodar on, shall we? Those two mutts aren’t going to stay hypnotized for very long.’
Katie was about to climb into the Land Cruiser when she heard a low roar of discontentment from the crowd. It sounded like the beginnings of an avalanche, or an ebb tide sliding over pebbles. It had obviously just got through to them that the Garda convoy was actually leaving, and that they were taking Guzz Eye McManus with them, and because of that there would be no celebratory dog-fight.
‘Come on, ma’am,’ Detective O’Mara urged her, holding the door open for her.
But Katie turned around and saw that the crowd was surging towards them and some of them had broken into a run. She had witnessed what had happened last year when there had been a riot outside the Cork County Council offices because of water charges. Two Garda patrol cars had been seriously damaged, with smashed windows, and a third had been set on fire. Five gardaí had needed hospital treatment and one sergeant had been burned so badly that he had been forced to retire.
Inspector Carroll clearly shared Katie’s concern because he stepped forward to face the crowd with two gardaí close beside him and held up both of his hands.
‘Let’s all calm down now!’ he shouted. ‘We want no trouble and nobody hurt! McManus has been lawfully arrested and he’ll be treated fairly, I can promise you that! Don’t make it necessary for me to arrest anybody else!’
‘Let the Guzz go, you bastards!’ yelled one of the men at the front of the crowd. ‘If you don’t let him go, we’re coming over there to get him out!’
‘We’re not letting him go!’ Inspector Carroll shouted back at him. ‘You know as well as I do that dog-fighting is illegal! I’m asking you all peacefully to leave this field and take your children and your dogs with you! Like I say, McManus will be treated with the greatest of respect and he will probably be released on station bail by this evening!’
‘Fecking let him out, you manky razzer!’ screeched one young woman. ‘This is a free country, right? If a few dogs want to have a play together, it’s no fecking business of yours!’
An empty Tanora bottle came flying out of the crowd and hit the Garda van with a loud clonk. Then another bottle, and another, and three or four wooden pallets.
‘Calm down now, settle Ballyduff!’ Inspector Carroll called out. ‘We’re catching all of this on our video cameras, all right, so anybody who causes a breach of the peace is liable to be identified and charged! So break it up, do you hear me? Break it up and leave quietly!’
29
More bottles were tossed and one of them struck Inspector Carroll on the shoulder. The gardaí who had already climbed into their patrol cars now piled out again and the two gardaí beside Inspector Carroll drew out their ASP extendable batons.
Katie went over to Inspector Carroll. ‘It looks like I’ve badly misjudged this,’ she admitted. ‘I thought that once we’d lifted McManus the rest of them would call it a day.’
A Murphy’s bottle bounced on the ground next to her and knocked her on the ankle.
‘Let the Guzz go!’ the crowd began to chant. ‘Let the Guzz go!’
Now an uprooted fence post landed next to her, still wound around with barbed wire. This was followed by more bottles and then a triangular lump of concrete. Five or six young men ran up to the Garda van and tried to pull open its doors. When they found that the doors were locked, they began to pummel on the van’s side panels and rock it from side to side.
‘I’m calling for backup,’ said Inspector Carroll. ‘There’s no way these gowls are going to calm down. And I think we’ll have to let McManus go.’
The crowd had almost completely encircled them now and although they were still keeping a cautious distance they continued to chant ‘Let the Guzz go! Let the Guzz go! Stinking razzer bastards, let the Guzz go!’ Although it was only mid-afternoon, Katie could see that some of them were very drunk and eager for a fight. She knew that it would only take one bold character to run up and start attacking them and the rest of the crowd would follow. She and Conor and the gardaí could be very badly beaten, or even killed.
Inspector Carroll raised his hands again and shouted out, ‘All right! Listen up, will you! We’re letting McManus go! Do you hear me? For the sake of keeping the peace, we’re letting him go!’
At that moment, though, quite unexpectedly, the two white Staffies came tearing out from between the legs of the crowd, heading straight towards him with their teeth bared and barking so harshly that they sounded as if they were screaming. They had snapped out of the trance that Conor’s whistling had induced and now they seemed even more aggressive than before.
Katie didn’t have
time to think of alternatives. Both dogs would have been trained from birth to be killers – not only killers of other dogs, but of any animal or person that they were ordered to attack. If they didn’t, their owners would punish them with hours of agony – beating and burning and whipping – and that was what made them so relentless.
The Staffies were almost within leaping distance when Katie reached under her jacket and tugged out her Smith & Wesson Airweight revolver. She aimed it with both hands and fired. The first dog she hit when it was still in mid-air and half of its face burst open in a spray of blood and bone splinters. It rolled and pirouetted like an Olympic diver and then dropped with a heavy thud into the grass, its legs shuddering with shock.
She half-turned and shot the second Staffie twice, once in the chest and then point-blank between the eyes. It flopped over sideways, its lip curling as if it were smiling sardonically. The entry wound in its head was round and neat, like a third eye, but the back of its skull had been blown off and its brains were plastered all the way down to its tail.
The crowd fell utterly silent. The only sound now was the amplified music on the other side of the field, playing ‘Dicey Reilly’. The young men stopped thumping on the sides of the Garda van and retreated. Two or three people in the crowd dropped bottles on to the ground, deterred from throwing them.
Katie raised her revolver so that the muzzle pointed skywards, but kept it raised.
‘Time we left now, Inspector,’ she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady.
Inspector Carroll nodded to the gardaí around him and they collapsed their ASP batons and returned to their patrol cars. Conor and Detectives Markey and O’Mara climbed back into the Land Cruiser.
Katie was the last to climb aboard. She stood facing the crowd with the two bloodied white Staffies lying dead at her feet, and even though the crowd stared back at her as if they were willing her to drop down dead beside the dogs, none of them made a move towards her, and they all stayed silent.
You need to stay composed, Kathleen. But you also need to look grim – as if you’ll shoot anyone without hesitation if they try to attack you or set a dog on you.
She was sorely tempted to tell the crowd what she thought of them for showing up to a dog-fight like this, and that the Staffies had at least met a quick and painless death, rather than being ripped to pieces in the ring. However, she decided it was prudent to say nothing. She didn’t want to risk breaking the spell.
She took her seat in the Land Cruiser and slammed the door, but she lowered her window and kept her revolver in full view as they turned around and followed the van and the other cars out of the field. They bounced back along the track to Cappamurra Bridge and then turned south towards Dundrum. As soon as they reached the R661, which led straight into Tipperary, the patrol cars put on their flashing lights and sirens and drove as fast as they could, occasionally touching 90 kph.
‘Well, I made a hames of that all right,’ she said to Conor.
Conor frowned and cupped around his ear. ‘What?’
‘I said I made a bags of that. Thank the Lord none of the media showed up.’
‘Oh, right! Sorry – I’m still deaf from those gunshots. I wish I’d known you were so determined to arrest McManus.’
‘I thought, well – he’s the ringleader, after all.’
‘Katie – I know how sick he makes you feel, but you underestimated how popular he is and how much power he has. He’s always handing out money to help sick people and giving sweets to the kids. Last Christmas he gave five and a half thousand euros to Saint Vincent de Paul. Even the tax commissioners leave him alone.’
‘We’ve scooped him now, though,’ said Katie.
‘Sure, yes, but he’ll be out again in five minutes flat. You know that as well as I do. In one way, though, I’m not too sorry – not from my point of view, anyhow, as a pet detective.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s put it like this: at least he’s the devil I know. When somebody’s pedigree Pomeranian disappears, the Guzz is the first person I go to, to see if he knows who’s hobbled it. He’s like the clearing house for stolen dogs – either for fighting, if they’re suitable, or for ransom, if they’re not, or for selling on for breeding. Nine times out of ten he’ll be able to find it for me.’
Katie shook her head. ‘Just because he makes life easier for you, Conor, that’s no excuse. That’s like me saying that I should let the Callahan and Creasey gangs carry on shooting each other because at least they’re saving me from having to arrest them for drug-smuggling and they’re harming nobody else.’
Detective Markey turned around from the front passenger seat and said, ‘You can’t be after blaming yourself, ma’am. A dog-fight on that scale – Jesus, we should have been able to set up a major operation to lift everybody there. If it had been my decision, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment to collar McManus. And you’re a fantastic shot. Hitting that dog when it was right in the middle of jumping – that was amazing.’
‘You’re not angling for promotion by any chance, are you, Nick?’ asked Detective O’Mara.
*
Katie and Inspector Carroll entered the interview room together. Guzz Eye McManus was sitting at the table with Sergeant Kehoe. In the far corner, with his arms folded, sat another uniformed garda, at least six foot five inches tall, with a blue-shaven Neanderthal chin. He looked quite capable of picking up McManus like a big fat wheezy baby, putting him over his knee, and spanking him with a wooden spoon.
Katie sat down opposite McManus and laced her fingers together. ‘Mr McManus, you’ve been formally charged now with three offences under the Animal Health and Welfare Act. Inspector Carroll will be forwarding the paperwork to the Tipperary South state solicitor first thing tomorrow morning. Have you anything to say for yourself at this stage?’
‘I have, yes,’ said McManus, fixing Katie with his left eye and slowly stroking the septum of his nose with the ball of his thumb as if it were some kind of mafia-style gesture. ‘Póg mo thóin.’
‘I see. “Kiss my arse.” Is that all?’
McManus nodded.
‘Very well, then,’ said Katie, standing up. ‘If that’s everything, I’ll be seeing you in court.’
McManus closed his eyes for a moment, and let out a dismissive pfff!
*
On the steps outside the Garda station, Conor and Detectives Markey and O’Mara were comparing notes with the ISPCA inspectors before they left for Cork. Inspector Carroll took Katie aside.
‘What happened today at the dog-fight... who knows for sure like... but there could be some repercussions. It depends if the dog owners make a complaint, although I doubt if they will.’
‘I’m aware of that, Inspector, but I believe I can justify everything I did.’
‘All the same, if the Ombudsman starts looking into it, I’d like you to know that you’ll have my support, one hundred per cent. In my opinion it was far too risky, arresting McManus, but you went ahead with it anyway. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t disagree with you, but it’s too late now. If nothing else, he’ll be given a hefty fine, or at least have to drop some money into the court poor box.’
Katie shrugged. ‘That won’t exactly make his guzzy eyes water, will it? But it would be something, I suppose.’
‘As for the dogs you shot, ma’am... there’s plenty of evidence that they were a lethal threat to all of us. If you hadn’t hit that first dog when you did, it could well have torn my throat out.’
Katie gave him the faintest smile. ‘Thank you for everything, Inspector. Don’t worry. We’ll catch those scummers one day. I only hope that when they die and go to hell all of the dogs they’ve ever tortured and killed are waiting for them, and that they’re starving.’
30
Detective Ó Doibhilin rang the doorbell for the second time but there was still no answer. He turned to Garda Bryony Leary and said, ‘Wherever she’s got herself to, it doesn’t seem like she’s he
re. I reckon we’ll have to come back later.’
Garda Leary was plump and pale, with a brunette bun and a beauty spot, and a businesslike air about her. She nodded towards the house next door. ‘I noticed the curtain twitching like. Maybe her neighbour knows where she is.’
Detective Ó Doibhilin leaned back from the porch so that he could see next door’s living-room window and was just in time to see the curtain hurriedly tugged back.
‘Come on,’ he said, and they walked around and knocked at the door. The door knocker was in the shape of a gnome, or a leprechaun, with a leering grin on its face. He knocked again and this time the door was opened up and an elderly woman in a flowery apron and nylon curlers appeared.
‘Yes? What are you after? I don’t buy nothing on the doorstep.’
Detective Ó Doibhilin showed her his ID card. ‘I don’t mean to disturb you, ma’am, but would you have any notion where Mrs Dennehy is from next door?’
‘Maggie Dennehy is it you’re looking for?’
‘That’s right. Would you know where she is and what time she might be coming back?’
The elderly woman said, ‘She’s not gone out.’
‘You’re sure about that? We’ve been ringing at her doorbell and there’s no reply so.’
‘She’s not gone out, I can assure you of that. Her husband Bernie, now he’s out. He came in last night and then he went out again and he’s not back yet so God alone knows where he’s gone gowling off to.’
‘She couldn’t have nipped out without you seeing her maybe? Just to get the messages or something like that?’
The elderly woman shook her head emphatically. ‘If I don’t see her, I can always hear her banging her front door twice, because it gets stuck when the weather’s damp, and then I know for sure that she’s gone. I haven’t seen or heard her since all those fellers came around to see her.’
‘What fellers was that?’ asked Garda Leary.
Dead Girls Dancing Page 29
