It was Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘He’s not here, ma’am.’
‘Come here to me? Who’s not where?’
‘Davy Dorgan, ma’am. We’ve just raided the Dorgan house on Mount Nebo. He’s not here and neither is his little sister.’
‘How can he not be there? We’ve had the house under surveillance for the past twenty-four hours.’
‘His car’s still outside, but he’s not inside. He must have slipped out somehow. Either out through the back yard, or disguised as his aunt. The last shift who were watching him say that some old one left the property around nine and she hasn’t come back.’
‘What about the two fellows who took Cissy from the hospital? Did you go to their houses, too?’
‘Liam O’Breen and Murtagh McCourt, yes. The barman at the Templegate gave us their surnames and McCourt’s address in Wellington Road. When we got there, though, neither O’Breen nor McCourt were at home. O’Breen’s landlady hadn’t seen or heard him since early yesterday morning, and the young woman who lives on the same landing as McCourt said she saw him go out at half-past seven and she hasn’t seen him again since.’
‘Right,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll be in to the station in a couple of minutes or so. We need to set up a systematic full-scale search, starting with all known members of Dorgan’s gang. We also need to check up on all the CCTV from the Wilton area around the time that Cissy was abducted. I’ll have Mathew McElvey put out an urgent appeal to the media for anybody who might have seen her.’
She paused as she turned in to the Anglesea Street car park, but then she said, ‘You don’t think Dorgan might have gone up to this Joe Knucklecracker’s house, do you, to meet up with his hit men?’
‘That crossed my mind, too, ma’am, but the Ghost Team have had them under constant surveillance and there’s been no sign of him.’
‘Sean – we had him under constant surveillance ourselves and he gave us the slip. Are we sure that he hasn’t managed to sneak in through the back yard or maybe go in through the front door dressed up as some Fair Hill brasser, or I don’t know – a nun, even?’
‘I should think the Ghost Team have had their eye on the back of the house as well as the front. They’ve assured me that nobody has been in or out since the three AIRA men arrived, not even a reverend mother or a local dirtbird.’
‘Hmm,’ said Katie. ‘Now that Dorgan knows that Ni Nuallán is wise to his plan to shoot Bowthorpe, he’s probably worked out a completely different way of doing it. Ni Nuallán thought that he might call it off altogether, but I’m not so sure about that. Dorgan’s fierce political by the sound of it and he doesn’t care who he hurts to get what he wants. Maybe if he knew for sure that Ni Nuallán was a garda and that the ERU were on to him, he’d think twice, but I don’t think he will. I’ve known villains like him before. They’re dangerous enough even when they’re not fighting for some cause. Remember Bobby Quilty.’
Katie locked her car and went into the station, still holding her phone to her ear.
‘What’s the craic, then?’ asked Detective Sergeant Begley.
‘I don’t see that we have much of a choice. We’ve lost sight of Davy Dorgan, and we don’t have any idea how he’s changed his plan to shoot Ian Bowthorpe – or even if he’s changed it – so we’ll just have to stamp on this now. Maybe he still intends to take a shot at Bowthorpe at the Opera House this evening... maybe he’s found some secret vantage point in the building where a sniper can get him in his sights. On the other hand, maybe he’s thinking of shooting at him when he’s visiting Haulbowline during the afternoon, or when he’s going for dinner at the Hayfield Manor after the feis. Who knows?’
‘Does that mean you’re going to lift these Authentic fellows right now?’
‘Like I say, Sean, I don’t see what else we can do. I would have preferred to have caught Dorgan red-handed with them, him and all the rest of his crew, the whole netful of rotten fish, but I think we’ll have to content ourselves with saving Ian Bowthorpe’s life. We can track down Dorgan later. He can’t escape for ever, and by that time with any luck we may have collected more admissible evidence against him.’
‘I’ll start setting up this search, ma’am,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘We have plenty of pictures of the little girl, don’t we?’
‘We do, sure... I’ll have Scanlan make a selection and get some printed off. As for me, I’ll have a word with the DS in charge of the Ghost Team and wake up Superintendent Pearse. I’d like to go in and scoop these characters before it gets light.’
‘In that case, ma’am... let’s see... you have exactly four hours and twenty-six minutes.’
*
Superintendent Pearse had been suffering from indigestion all night after a takeaway curry and hadn’t been able to sleep so he wasn’t at all disgruntled when Katie rang him to tell him that she was setting up a raid on Joe Keenan’s house.
‘I’ve had dealings with that gowl before. It’ll be a pleasure and it’ll take my mind off this fecking vindaloo. Is there a limit to the number of Alka-Seltzers you can take at any one time?’
‘Well, I’d go easy, Michael. You don’t want to be after needing a comfort break right in the middle of an armed raid.’
‘So what time do you have in mind?’
‘0530, if you can have your team up there by 0500. I’ll contact DS Boyle from the Ghost Team right now to coordinate with him. He has six in his unit, all of them armed, of course.’
‘Okay. I’m just trying to picture the location. Knockpogue Avenue, where it meets with Fairfield Avenue. I think four cars should just about cover it – eight officers altogether. I’ll get on to Sergeant Mulroney right now.’
‘Can you make sure we have an ambulance standing by, too? Just in case.’
Next, Katie called Detective Sergeant Boyle. He had a very husky voice, as if he were getting over a cold.
‘We’ve seen no sign of life since about half-past midnight,’ he told her. ‘We’ve intercepted a fair number of mobile phone calls but none of those have been relevant to Ian Bowthorpe. Sure, it would have been ideal if we’d been able to take this Dorgan fellow and the rest of his gang in the one fell swoop. But – I agree with you, ma’am, it’s best to be safe. You can imagine the diplomatic row if we allowed the British defence secretary to be shot while he was sitting in the Cork Opera House watching step-dancing. I mean, Holy Name of Jesus.’
‘Superintendent Pearse will be in touch with you in a few minutes,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll be coming up there myself, too. I want to see these AIRA fellows face to face – get some sense of who they are and what they’re about.’
‘In my experience, ma’am, they’re nothing but a bunch of gougers. They wouldn’t know a political cause if it gave them a toe up the hole, excuse my French.’
*
Detective Sergeant Begley returned to the station a few minutes later, along with Detective Ó Doibhilin. It was well past time for them to go off duty but they both volunteered to come up to Fair Hill with Katie.
‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘It’s only because you want the overtime. I don’t even think that I can afford you – not now that every other garda has been given a pay rise.’
She didn’t really need to go to see the AIRA men arrested, not in person. Superintendent Pearse’s uniformed officers were more than capable of bringing them in, especially since they were accompanied by the heavily armed Ghost Team. She was conscious that Frank Magorian’s criticisms of her might have some truth in them, that she did tend to interfere too much in day-to-day operations. But she had seen too many high-ranking Garda officers become detached from the reality of policing on the street, instead spending all their time on administration and attending policy meetings at Phoenix Park and going to Masonic dinners. Like her father, Katie didn’t believe she could enforce the law effectively unless she knew the lawbreakers as intimately as she knew her fellow officers, and kept up to the minute with every new twist they devised to extort money, or sell dru
gs, or pimp girls, or steal anything at all – from old people’s pensions to combine harvesters.
‘I need to look them in their evil eyes,’ her father always said. ‘I need to get close enough to smell the stolen money in their wallets and the halitosis they get from telling so many lies.’
The sky was beginning to lighten as they drove up to Fair Hill in their unmarked Toyota Prius. When they arrived at the corner of Fairfield and Knockpogue Avenues everything appeared to be quiet and there was no indication that a major Garda raid was about to take place. They parked outside the closed-up frontage of The Plaice 2B fish-and-chip shop, in the layby directly opposite Joe Keenan’s house, and Detective Sergeant Begley checked his watch.
‘Red One in position,’ he said, into his r/t mic.
‘Roger that,’ said Detective Sergeant Boyle’s clogged-up voice. And then, ‘Roger,’ said Sergeant Mulroney from Superintendent Pearse’s squad.
They sat and waited while the time ticked by and the sky gradually grew paler and paler. Apart from a low bank of dark clouds to the south-west it looked as if it might be a fine day.
Joe ‘Knucklecracker’ Keenan’s house was at the left-hand end of a terrace of three. It was pebble-dashed, painted salmon pink, with a scarlet door. All its curtains were drawn, although the living-room curtains were sagging in the middle where the hooks had broken. Two cars were parked outside: a grey BMW and the safari yellow Volvo estate in which the AIRA men had driven down from the North.
‘You’d have thought they would have chosen a vehicle that was a little less conspicuous, wouldn’t you?’ said Detective Ó Doibhilin, leaning over from the seat. ‘It’s a wonder they didn’t come down here in an ice-cream van like, with all the chimes going.’
At 5.30 exactly, Detective Sergeant Boyle coughed and shouted, ‘Go-go-go!’
Two black Audi saloons came squealing around the corner of Fairfield Avenue and stopped in front of Joe Keenan’s house, blocking the front driveway. As their doors opened and six men in black jackets and black balaclavas scrambled out, two Garda squad cars came around the corner and parked close behind them, their blue lights flashing. Two more squad cars came speeding down Knockpogue Avenue side by side and slithered to a stop about thirty metres short of the house, blocking the road. Gardaí in protective vests climbed out of all of the cars, but stood well back. They were there to prevent any suspects from trying to run away or anybody else from approaching. Katie climbed out, too, so that she could watch the raid from behind the Toyota.
She heard knocking on the front door, and shouting, ‘Armed Garda! Armed Garda! Open up now!’ This was followed almost immediately by the banging of a battering-ram.
As the front door burst open, though, she heard shots from inside the hallway – three quick single shots and then a brrrrrppp! of sub-machine gun fire. Katie thought she could see one of the Ghost Team men pitch backwards into the front driveway, collapsing behind the BMW. The others ducked down and retreated from the front step. One of them reached around the side of the door and fired two automatic pistol shots into the house, but this was met with another brrrrpp! of sub-machine gun fire. Less than two metres behind Katie’s head, two bullets smashed star-shaped holes in the front window of the fish-and-chip shop and another bullet hit the driver’s door of the Toyota.
Katie didn’t need to be told to crouch down. She pulled out her revolver, too, and held it high.
She could hear shouting and running feet, and then suddenly a prolonged crackling of shots. When it had subsided, she cautiously raised her head and saw that one of the upstairs windows in Joe Keenan’s house had been opened and the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle was poking out from behind the curtains – an AK47 probably, or a Czech vz.52. The Ghost Team men were now kneeling down behind the low front walls of the house, and every time one of them tried to raise his head the AIRA man in the bedroom would take another shot and pink concrete shrapnel would spray in all directions.
Katie beckoned to Detective Sergeant Begley, who was crouching down behind the Toyota’s front wheel.
‘Tell DS Boyle to back off,’ she said. ‘And Sergeant Mulroney, too. Tell them to back off completely.’
‘What?’
‘One of our people’s been shot there, Sean, by the looks of it, and who knows how long it’s going to be before we can drag him away? He could be bleeding to death for all we know.’
‘You’re not serious. You want us to back off and let those scummers go free?’
‘Listen, this is not the right time nor the right place for a siege situation. Who knows how many guns and how much ammunition those fellows have with them? They could well have explosives, too. If Dorgan’s behind this, they could have some of that TPA stuff. There’s neighhours living next door, and there’s other people in that house besides those three.’
‘Well, that’s for sure. There’s good old Joe Keenan, too, the Knucklecracker. If anything bad happens to him, then so much the better, that’s all I can say. He got away with murder the last time we had him up in court – or manslaughter, anyway.’
‘Sean, however much of a whore’s melt he is, he’s married, so his wife is probably in there. And take a sconce next to the garage.’
Detective Sergeant Begley looked across the street and saw what Katie was pointing at. Almost out of sight behind the BMW was a child’s red-and-blue tricycle.
‘And see there, too?’ said Katie. ‘That small bedroom window over the porch.’ Now that the day was growing lighter the pattern on the curtains was visible – pale blue with circus elephants.
The shooting had stopped for the time being, but the Ghost Team men were still sheltering behind the front wall. Detective Sergeant Boyle waved to Detective Sergeant Begley and shouted, ‘What’s Plan B?’
Detective Sergeant Begley turned to Katie. ‘What is Plan B? We let them go and then what?’
‘We follow them at a discreet distance until they’re well away from any innocent bystanders. Then we stop them.’
‘And supposing they manage to shake us off? They’d only have to be out of our sight for a second or two and they could abandon their car and we’d never see them again. Well, maybe not never. Not until they took a shot at our friend Ian Bowthorpe.’
‘Sean – I don’t want any more people hurt. I know what the textbook procedure is for a siege, but this is Davy Dorgan we’re dealing with here and Davy Dorgan doesn’t commit textbook offences. We back off, we let them get out of there, and then we go after them.’
‘All right, ma’am, if that’s the way you want to handle it.’
Detective Sergeant Begley called Detective Sergeant Boyle and Sergeant Mulroney on his r/t. He told them what Katie had ordered, and Katie could tell from the lengthy silence before he received a response from either of them that they were very reluctant to call their men off.
She heard Detective Sergeant Boyle’s croaky voice saying, ‘Serious?’ He pulled down his balaclava and frowned across the road at Katie with a deeply dubious expression on his face. Katie turned away. She felt that if she allowed this siege to go on any longer it would only escalate into a tragedy. If there was one lesson she thought that her male colleagues needed to learn, it was that sometimes there was greater strength in allowing themselves to appear to be weak.
Detective Sergeant Begley called in the ambulance that had been waiting in Close’s Green, around the corner and out of the line of fire. It appeared within seconds, lights flashing, but silently.
Detective Sergeant Boyle ran over to it, his back hunched to make himself less of a target. He talked to the paramedics for a moment and then came back across the road waving a white pillowcase that he had taken from one of stretchers.
‘Listen!’ he shouted up to the bedroom window. ‘We’re leaving! We’re letting you be! We don’t want any more shooting here, do you hear me?’
He stood in full view in the driveway, still flapping the pillowcase from side to side. There was a lengthy pause and then the barrel of the autom
atic rifle was drawn inside and the bedroom window was closed. As soon as that happened four of the Ghost Team hurried across to the ambulance so that they could escort the two paramedics back to the narrow gap between the garden wall and the BMW where their wounded colleague was lying.
Katie came out from behind the Toyota and chivvied the rest of the uniformed gardaí back into their patrol cars. ‘Crush, boys, quick – come on now,’ she told them. ‘But don’t be going any further away than a couple of streets in each direction. Upper Fairhill to the west, Farranferris Green to the south, Fair Green to the north, and Rathpeacon Road to the east – that’ll be far enough to take you out of sight, but not so far that you can’t keep them in a box. The NSU boys here can follow them closer.’
Detective Sergeant Boyle came up to her, looking sour-faced.
‘How’s your man?’ asked Katie.
‘Flesh wound in the upper right arm and his chest badly bruised. But his vest saved his life, no doubt about that. One of those new PPSS vests, fantastic. You hardly know you’re wearing them until somebody shoots you.’
‘Thank God. That’s a relief.’
Detective Sergeant Boyle looked up at the bedroom window and then at the doorway. The red front door was tilted at an angle on the floor, but there was nobody in sight in the hallway.
‘Do you really think this is the right way to play this?’ he said. ‘This goes against all of our usual procedure, and all of my instincts, too.’
‘I know it’s fierce tempting to go charging in with all guns blazing when your blood’s up,’ said Katie. ‘But think about it. These eejits have nowhere to go. What’s the point in shooting them and risking the lives of anybody else in the house? There’s at least one wain in there by the look of it.’
‘Do you seriously think they’re stupid enough to make a run for it?’
‘I don’t know. I hope they see the light and surrender.’
Detective Sergeant Boyle thought for a few moments and then he said, ‘Okay. But what happens if they don’t make a run for it, and don’t surrender, and stay here in the house?’
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