When Eithne had gone she started to leaf through all the notes and folders that had been left on her desk. After a while, though, she sat back, staring at nothing at all. She still couldn’t stop visualizing Gerry Barry’s smile, and she still couldn’t stop herself feeling responsible for his death.
She had insisted all along that trying to cripple Bobby Quilty’s tobacco-smuggling business by arresting his dealers was a waste of their time and resources. Most of the dealers were so young they couldn’t be prosecuted anyway, even if they were caught, and Quilty was smuggling in so many cigarettes that the loss of a few hundred cartons was hardly any inconvenience to him at all. Two months ago, he had abandoned five lorryloads when he discovered that Revenue had attached tracking devices to them.
She flicked through most of her paperwork, folding down the corners of the reports she wanted to read more thoroughly. Then she finished her coffee and went along the corridor to see Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. She knocked and he called out, ‘Yes, what is it?’ He sounded impatient, as if he were busy, but when she entered his office she found him standing by the window staring out at the rain.
‘Oh, Katie, it’s you,’ he said.
‘Patrick O’Donovan’s just called me. They’ve found the Land Rover that knocked down Gerry Barry, near Boycestown. It was totally burned out, but the number plates match. It was stolen from a farm in Armagh about six weeks ago.’
‘Well, that’s a start, I suppose,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostágain, turning away from the window. ‘Are you going to put out a press release?’
‘No, not yet,’ Katie told him. ‘I want to keep this under wraps at least until the PSNI send us their crime sheet on it and we have more evidence as to who might have taken it.’
‘It’ll be Bobby Quilty or one of his scummers, I’ll bet you money on it.’
‘Of course. But we can’t prove that there’s a link, not yet, and if I put out a press release, then Quilty will know that we know. Right at this moment I want to keep him in the dark about what we’re doing, as much as we possibly can. I want him to believe that he’s clear got away with it.’
‘That Quilty. I swear to God, sometimes I wish I could send half a dozen uniforms to drag him into a back alley and kick the tripes out of him. Mind you, I’ve said nothing.’
‘So what’s our plan of action now?’ asked Katie. ‘I don’t want to see any more of my team getting themselves killed, not for any amount of smuggled cigarettes.’
‘Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly’s just been on the blower. He wants to hold a general conference tomorrow morning about how we’re going to tackle this whole tobacco-smuggling trade.’
‘He’d better have some pure brilliant ideas, then,’ said Katie. ‘The way we’re going about it at the moment is having no effect at all. In fact, it’s making the situation worse. Bobby Quilty must be laughing his head off at us.’
‘Well, it isn’t easy, Katie. Smoking cigarettes isn’t illegal, not like shooting up drugs.’
‘Of course not, but the government isn’t helping either. Every time they hike up the price of tobacco, more and more smokers start buying smuggled cigarettes and Quilty gets richer. Did you see those figures that came in this morning from the tobacco manufacturers?’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin nodded towards the folders on his desk and said, in an oddly sad voice, ‘No, I haven’t. Well, I haven’t had the time yet.’
‘I’ve only just read them myself,’ said Katie. ‘But they reckon that since the last budget the proportion of illegal cigarettes smoked in Ireland has gone up to 32 per cent. I don’t exactly know how they’ve worked that out, but that means that nearly one in three cigarettes is NIDP.’ By that she meant Non-Irish Duty Paid.
‘I totally agree with you,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘But the government have the cancer pressure groups to contend with, don’t they? And they might not openly admit it, but they need the money. It’s going to be fierce difficult, though, trying to go for Quilty himself. As you know well enough, Katie, he has a crowd of politicians in his pocket, both north and south, as well as plenty of local sympathizers.’
Katie was well aware how difficult it was going to be to break up Bobby Quilty’s tobacco empire. She knew he was using the huge profits he made from cigarette smuggling to finance a new republican splinter group who called themselves the Authentic IRA. Like the Real IRA and the New IRA and the OnH, they were bitterly opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and believed that the Provisional IRA were not nearly aggressive enough in their continuing fight for Irish independence. Quilty had been described by the media as chief of staff of the Authentic IRA, but he had always denied it, saying that he simply believed in ‘Ireland as one country, as God had created it, and had always meant it to be, and who the feck are we to argue with God?’
That was his political justification for cigarette smuggling, anyway, although he wasn’t doing too badly out of it himself. Katie had recently been sent a report by the Police Service of Northern Ireland that estimated that in the last eighteen months alone Quilty had enriched himself by close to 30 million euros. He had so much cash he was burying it in barrels.
‘Well, I do believe that Jimmy O’Reilly has some kind of a new strategy in mind,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Myself, I think it’s like pissing in the wind, if you’ll excuse me.’
Katie said, ‘I also wanted to update you on those remains that were found in Blarney.’
‘All right, the family under the floorboards. I understand they’ve been there quite a while.’
‘My best estimate so far is the early 1920s. But Dr Reidy’s sending Mary Kelley down to examine them, and she’s like second to none when it comes to historical pathology. Remember that little boy’s body they found stuffed up a chimney in Macroom? That was one of her cases.’
‘That’s right. He was so well preserved, wasn’t he, they thought he’d only been up there a couple of months, but how long was it? Eighty years, if I remember rightly.’
Katie was about to tell Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin about the Manchester cap badge, but he suddenly turned back towards the window and pressed his finger and thumb against his eyelids, as if he had a sudden headache. She hesitated, and then she said, ‘Is something wrong, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin shook his head, but he didn’t answer.
‘Should I come back later?’ asked Katie. She could clearly see that something was distressing him.
He gave a snort and took a deep breath and dragged a handkerchief out of his pocket. He dabbed at his eyes and then turned back to Katie with a sad, puckered-up smile.
‘I’m sorry. It’s an anniversary, that’s all. They say it takes four years to get over your grief but it’s five now and it’s still just as painful. I apologize. I shouldn’t be burdening you with my sorrows, should I? Or anybody else, for that matter. It’s not very professional, is it?’
‘Your wife,’ said Katie, and Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin nodded.
‘I know how you feel, sir. I’ve lost people, too. And you’re right, I’m afraid. You don’t get over it in four years, or even in forty, I suspect, or ever. It’s a pain that never goes away.’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin stood silent for a few moments, and then he sniffed again and briskly chafed his hands together and said, ‘Listen, tell me more about these bodies in Blarney. Francis says that you’re reluctant to tell the media about them, in case they were murdered for some kind of sectarian motive.’
‘We have to consider it,’ said Katie, and told him about the cap badge and the letter. ‘I don’t want the press to start making wild speculations, that’s all – not before we know for sure who the family were and before we have at least some idea of why they were executed like that. They may very well have been killed for some personal grudge, or some falling out over business, we don’t know yet. Sure, they were murdered nearly a hundred years
ago, but if they were killed for political reasons then you know yourself it could be like prodding a hornets’ nest.’
‘Well, you’re right about that,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘A hundred years ago is like yesterday afternoon to some of your rebels.’
He paused, and then he said, ‘How about Detective Barry’s funeral? Have you had the chance to talk to his family yet?’
‘They want it private,’ said Katie. ‘I told them that we could arrange for him to have a state funeral, but they’d prefer it very quiet. They’d like it if his fellow officers attended, but they don’t want a show.’
‘All right,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. He sat down at his desk, looking more mournful than ever. ‘I can understand that. The way you feel when you lose somebody, it’s fierce strange, it’s almost the same as when you have your first child. You’d think you’d want to go shouting out to everybody about it, but you don’t, not to begin with at least. You want to keep it to yourself.’
‘I know,’ said Katie. She waited for a moment, but he said nothing more and didn’t even look up at her, so she left his office, closing the door quietly behind her.
*
When she returned to her own office, she found Inspector O’Rourke waiting for her, although he was talking to his wife on his iPhone.
‘Yes, Maeve. I have you. Yes. No, I won’t forget. I’ll do it. I have to go now. Yes.’
He ended the call and then he said, ‘Sorry. Just taking orders from the petticoat government.’
Katie raised her hand to tell him not to worry. But then he said, ‘Guess who we just hauled in, literally five minutes ago? Only Denny Quinn. Two guards spotted him crossing the Shaky Bridge on his way back to Blackpool. He’s downstairs now in the interview room with DS Begley and Detective Dooley.’
‘Has he been arrested?’
‘Yes, on a charge of assault, and cautioned. He’s said nothing so far, though, except effing and blinding.’
Katie and Inspector O’Rourke went down to the interview room. Denny Quinn was slouching back in a beige plastic chair, his eyes darting in every direction around the room except towards Detective Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley, who were facing him across the table. His cockerel’s-crest hair had been tilted to one side and he had the crimson swelling of a bruise on his left cheek.
Detective Dooley stood up so that Katie could have his chair and brought over another one for Inspector O’Rourke. Denny briefly glanced at Katie and then continued to look up at the ceiling, and then at the opposite wall, and then at his shoes.
‘Denny,’ said Katie.
Denny didn’t answer, but drummed his fingers on the table.
‘Denny, I’m talking to you,’ Katie told him. ‘You understand why you’re here, don’t you?’
Denny frowned and said, ‘I’m sure there’s a fecking mouse in this room. I can hear something squeaking, any road.’
Katie thought: You can talk. Denny’s voice still had the uncontrolled pitches of late adolescence, deep and growly one second and almost falsetto the next.
‘Denny, you’re in serious trouble,’ said Katie. ‘You were caught at the Flea Market selling illegal cigarettes – cigarettes that had been smuggled into the country without paying the appropriate tax. When you were challenged you resisted arrest, you assaulted a detective garda, and we can also charge you with being an accessory to the murder of a second detective garda.’
Denny suddenly blinked at Katie and said, ‘Oh, sorry. Were you talking to me, like?’
‘There’s nobody else in this room who’s under arrest.’
‘Oh, then you were talking to me.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think I give a shite?’ asked Denny. ‘There’s no law against selling fags.’
‘There’s a law against assaulting a detective garda and causing her harm.’
‘How the feck was I supposed to know she was a shade? She didn’t show me no badge, she didn’t tell me who the feck she was. I just thought she was some cracked old whore who was trying to rob me gold chains off of me.’
‘You’d already been told that you were under arrest.’
‘I didn’t hear nobody say that.’
‘Why did you run away then?’
‘I was late for my tea. My ma would have given me all kinds of grief if I’d let it go cold.’
‘You seriously expect me to believe that you were totally unaware that you were being arrested for selling illegal cigarettes?’
‘I didn’t know they was illegal. They was just fags.’
‘Jin Ling brand? You know where they come from, don’t you?’ put in Detective Sergeant Begley.
‘No fecking idea. I don’t smoke, as it happens, so I don’t know one fecking fag from another.’
‘Russia, they come from, for your information. They’re made specially for smugglers. Most of the time they have industrial chemicals and asbestos in them, and human faeces, as well as tobacco.’
‘I wasn’t going to smoke them so why the feck should I care? There’s no fags that’s good for your health, any road.’
Katie said, ‘On top of that, you want me to believe that you had no idea that the detective garda who arrested you was chasing after you? He was only a few metres behind you all the way along MacCurtain Street and over the Brian Boru Bridge.’
Denny slowly shook his head. ‘No idea at all, missus. You can believe whatever you fecking like, but that’s the God’s honest truth. I never knew that I was arrested and I never knew that there was nobody running after me.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘You fecking well know where I live. The law comes round so often my ma’s thinking of charging them rent.’
‘Just for the record, Denny. Tell me where you live.’
‘O’Connell Street, Watercourse Road, Blackpool. Just along from Galvin’s Carry-Out.’
‘So if you were late for your tea, why were you running in the opposite direction to Blackpool?’
‘I was going the long way round, that’s all. I had to work up an appetite, like, because me ma’s not that good a cook. You have to be starving to eat the shite that she dishes up.’
Katie took a deep breath and then she said, ‘Who gave you the cigarettes that you were selling?’
‘Nobody give them me. Some feen sold them me in a pub. But like I say, I don’t smoke, you know, and so I thought I’d flog them.’
‘What feen? What was his name?’
‘How the feck should I know? Just some feen.’
‘What pub?’
Denny shook his head. ‘I don’t fecking remember, do I? I was langered at the time.’
‘Why did you buy the cigarettes from him if you don’t smoke?’
‘I don’t know. Just to help the feller out. He said he needed the grade, like.’
‘So it wasn’t Bobby Quilty who gave you the cigarettes?’
‘Who?’
‘Bobby Quilty.’
‘I never heard of nobody of that name, never.’
Katie questioned Denny for another twenty minutes, but the questioning just went round and around, with the same denials and the same pointless answers. In the end she stood up, beckoned to Inspector O’Rourke to follow her and walked out of the interview room.
‘Goodbye, then, missus!’ called out Denny as she left. ‘Nice to talk to you! G’luck to you so!’
Katie said to Inspector O’Rourke. ‘We have him for assaulting Aislin, but I can’t see that we can make any of the other charges stick. It’s not like he was selling heroin or crack.’
‘Crack?’ said Inspector O’Rourke. ‘I’d like to give the little gobdaw a crack round the head.’
Eight
Katie was over half an hour late for her meeting with John at the Hayfield Manor. She had tried ringing and texting him to say she was going to be delayed, but he hadn’t picked up his phone or responded to her text messages. When she parked outside the front of the hotel she couldn’t see hi
s car there, either.
She went inside, crossed the lobby and went into the bar. There was a party of local businessmen in there, who had obviously lunched rather well and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking. She also recognized a county councillor sharing a bottle of Prosecco with a bosomy young brunette in a red dress who, to Katie’s certain knowledge, wasn’t his wife. He glanced up and saw Katie and immediately half shielded his face with his hand, as if that was going to make him unrecognizable. But there was no sign of John.
She sat down at a table by the window. One of the bar staff came over and asked her what she wanted to drink, but she smiled and said not just yet, she was waiting for someone. Five minutes passed and she texted John again, telling him that she had arrived, but he still didn’t reply. The businessmen were shouting and bellowing with laughter so raucously that she couldn’t hear herself think. She waited five minutes more, then she stood up and walked out. It was clear that John wasn’t coming. Maybe he had never had any intention of coming. Maybe he had contacted her simply to punish her. You let me down, Katie. Now I’m going to let you down. If that was the reason, though, it was ridiculously petty and all that he had managed to do was waste her time.
*
It was almost ten to eight when she arrived home at Carrig View. The river estuary was the colour of tarnished steel and the sky was piling up with bruised-looking clouds. Rain was forecast overnight, but clearing by the morning. She hoped so. She hadn’t taken Barney for a really long walk for weeks, and she felt as if she really needed some fresh air and exercise herself, and a chance to think about nothing at all.
When she reached her house she saw that a huge black Nissan Navara pickup was parked with two wheels on the pavement outside. She guessed it must be somebody visiting the Tierneys. She should have gone next door and told them that their guest had left hardly any room for anybody trying to walk past, especially old Mr O’Halloran in his mobility scooter, but it was late and she was tired and she didn’t want to upset them, especially since they had volunteered to feed and walk Barney whenever she was late back home from the city.
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