Maguire yawned. ‘I need a couple of hours’ shut-eye,’ he said. ‘You better get some sleep as well. You look banjaxed, the pair of you. Moss, is my brother still up at your place?’ Quinn nodded. ‘I’ll get home; let Pat get home himself. He’s been a star, Frank, a real trooper. And not just today: he counselled Eva for weeks.’
Maguire looked beyond him. ‘For all the good it did her.’ He lifted a hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It sounds defeatist: that’s not what I mean, and not how I feel at all.’ Quinn offered another shallow smile. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘we’re knackered the lot of us. Go home and get some sleep. There’s nothing more you can do tonight.’
Maguire indicated the file he had carried to the coast and back. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘It’s vital we don’t overcomplicate things. There’s no way Mary Harrington is connected with the other five, Moss. It’s like you said: she probably didn’t even know she was pregnant.’
Quinn nodded. ‘I’m taking the file home anyway, and I’m going to go through it. Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with something.’
He crossed the Liffey again on O’Connell Bridge, passing the statue where Daniel stood, together with his four angels, one of whom had taken an IRA bullet during the Troubles. He passed the old post office and the site where Nelson’s Pillar had mirrored the column in Trafalgar Square until it was blown up. Ten minutes later, he pulled up outside the house. He saw that Laura’s bedroom light was still on.
Patrick opened the door just as Quinn was fitting his key in the lock. ‘There you are,’ he said.
‘Pat, I’m sorry. I …’
‘For Christ’s sake, forget it. It’s the least I could do.’
Closing the door, Quinn went through to the lounge and, taking the decanter, poured a heavy slug of Jameson. ‘Sweet lamb,’ he muttered, ‘I could do with tying one on.’
‘You’d be hanging come the morning. It’d do you no good, Mossie, not with what’s going on.’
Quinn gave a half-laugh. ‘Are you lecturing me on my drinking, Patrick Pearse Maguire? For the life of me, you’re in no position to talk.’
He smiled then, glad that his buddy was there. ‘Boy, but we were the pair, weren’t we, back in the day? That turnover, the flying pass, and the drop goal to beat those deadbeats down in Kerry.’
Sitting down, he laid the file on the coffee table. ‘That was when we met Eva, remember? That tour, Listowel and Ballybunion, Ballylongford.’
Maguire nodded. ‘And you got in there before I had the chance, you horny old fucker. Paired me off with that Corin when I’d just told you how I felt about redheads.’
Quinn smiled. ‘There was a queue, Patrick, and I was at the front of it.’ He paused then. ‘Are the girls all right? I saw Laura’s light on just now.’
‘She’s asleep. She asked me to leave it on tonight; I don’t think she wanted to be alone in the dark.’
‘No, of course she didn’t. What about Jess, is she all right?’
‘They’re both fine. But they’re worried, Moss, of course they are. Both of them scared to death.’
‘The poor lambs, their brother in the ground, their mammy gone.’ Quinn took another glug of the whiskey.
‘Eva’s sister phoned again,’ Maguire told him. ‘She’s definitely coming up very early tomorrow. She says she’ll either stay here with the girls or take them back to their Nan’s house. Both your brothers phoned as well, Moss, and your mam and dad. They’re leaving you alone on your mobile, told me they don’t want to clog up the line.’
‘Thanks, Paddy. I appreciate you being here.’
‘You look exhausted. You ought to try and close your eyes for a couple of minutes at least.’
Quinn worked a palm across the stubble that laced his chin. ‘I’d not get a minute, would I? There’s no time, Patrick. There’s no time to sleep.’
Opening the file, he sucked a breath as if breathing was suddenly difficult and in some way he was taking a breath for his wife. It was only last night that he had been reading the abortive confession, and here he was with the same file again.
He could hear the voice still, like a rattle inside his head. He could see Conor Maggs in the dock, tears of pathos glistening as the judge was shown the hospital stills after Doyle had taken the hammer to him.
He considered the first few pages, determined to read the statements as if for the first time, and to fit the events together again to see if they told him anything he didn’t already know. The first one had been taken from Jimmy Hanrahan, who lived with his dad in the old house directly across the water from the ruins where they’d found Mary’s body. Jimmy the Poker; he claimed he’d seen Maggs that night talking to Mary, when Maggs claimed he’d never even set eyes on her.
It was suddenly fresh in Quinn’s mind: so fresh he could hear music lifting from the various bars; he could see Doyle supping milk stout in Jett O’Carroll’s; he could smell the fetid stench of Mary’s body when they eventually found her.
‘What have you got there?’ Patrick asked, indicating the paperwork.
‘The file from the Mary Harrington case – the fleadh cheoil,’ Quinn told him. ‘I had another call, Pat; another Dublin phone box. That’s twice now. The first time he was talking about a clock ticking, the next he was talking about Mary.’
Maguire looked puzzled. ‘Why would he call you at all? And why would he mention Mary?’
‘I don’t know.’ Quinn shrugged. ‘I’ve always thought Mary’s death was a one-off. But whoever it was, he talked about Mary, and indirectly he talked about Maggs too. So I have to look, don’t I?’
Sitting back, he lifted a foot to rest on the table. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘it’s late, and you’ve been here forever. Don’t feel as though you have to stay. I’m a big lad: I’ll be all right. I’m just going to sit here and work through what happened, see if I missed anything.’
He could feel fatigue beginning to haunt his eyelids. Hunting in his jacket pocket, he found a cigarette.
‘On the phone, you said he wasn’t in Ireland, but do you think this is Maggs?’ Maguire asked him.
Quinn narrowed his eyes. ‘As far as we know, he’s in London.’
‘Who else then?’
‘Whoever killed Mary Harrington; and for all I know, five other missing women maybe.’ Quinn lit the cigarette. ‘Though if it’s one and the same man, why they should want to abduct my wife is beyond me. And as you say, why get in touch now after being silent for all these years?’ He made a face. ‘On the other hand, if you spoke to a forensic psychiatrist, he’d tell you that if you’re on a killing spree and nobody knows you’re doing it, then eventually you’re going to ask yourself: where’s the fun?’ He sipped his whiskey. ‘I’ve always been a street copper, followed my guts too much maybe, like Joe Doyle – though perhaps my interviewing technique is a little subtler.’ He gestured with an open palm. ‘I’m not sure about all the profiling stuff, you know? I suppose it has its place, but who’ve we had in this country that could be classed as a serial killer – apart from Shaw maybe, the Englishman back in the 1970s.’ He pursed his lips. ‘This isn’t the States, is it? But talk to someone like Liam Ahern down there on the quays, and he’ll tell you that there’s a part of every psycho that wants to get caught. They want to stop killing maybe, I don’t know; but they sure as hell want someone to know they did it. Recognition, Pat: it’s human nature.’
Maguire lifted his eyebrows. ‘Is that what you think this is, then: a serial killer who wants you to know he’s out there? I thought you and Doyle discounted those other five abductions when you were investigating Mary.’
‘We did.’ Quinn worked the points of his fingers into his eyes. ‘If you’re asking me, then no, I don’t actually think it is the same man. I still don’t think Mary’s murder had anything to do with those other five, but it looks like it’s everything to do with what happened to Eva.’
Maguire got to his feet. ‘Maybe now’s not the time though, Moss
, eh? You look deadbeat. You should shut your eyes for an hour or so and look at the file in the morning.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Quinn shot a concerned glance at the clock. He was acutely aware of the knot tightening in his belly once more. ‘But we only have till Wednesday night; after that, it could be too late.’
‘You don’t know that for certain.’
‘I don’t,’ Quinn said, holding up the file, ‘but according to whoever called me, Mary does, doesn’t she.’
Tuesday 2nd September 1 am
Maguire left him lying on the settee with his eyes closed. As if in testament to his mood, the half-empty whiskey bottle sat before him on the coffee table and the stubs of a couple of cigarettes lay crushed in a glass ashtray. He took a last look round the stripped-pine lounge, at the Victorian fireplace and pastel prints on the walls. He thought about the delicately inspired way Eva decorated. She was that kind of woman: gentle, subtle. There was a beauty about her that lingered even after she was gone. He thought about how they’d sat together so intimately in the kitchen; how she’d confided things to him she had never confided in anyone. With another quick glance at her husband, Maguire let himself out and, crossing the road to his VW, headed south to his flat.
The Portobello Hotel was silent: no music this late on a weeknight. They had bands playing at the weekends but his place was far enough down towards Charlemont Street not to be disturbed by this. An avenue of grass divided the Georgian homes and the canal: bordered by trees, it gave the area a suburban air that Patrick liked.
He thought about tomorrow morning and the visits he had scheduled at Mountjoy before he headed for ‘stab city’ and the back of Shaws. He thought over this morning and Karl Crame from the Kilmahon estate, how he’d promised to go and speak to his girlfriend.
After the conversation just now with Quinn, he could not help but think about Conor Maggs – and that took him to Quinn’s tout on the inside, the one who hung out with Christian Brothers incarcerated for abusing children.
The Crawthumper; so named because not only did he hang out with monks and priests, he defended the church like an old soapbox preacher. Quinn didn’t know that Maguire knew about him, because Maguire kept what he did in the prison confidential, but he was in and out all the time and he picked up all kinds of information. There were a couple of hard cases he spoke to who were sure the Craw was informing. If he was, they left him alone, though, because he was a number-cruncher who had taken the fall for Lorne ‘the Thorn’ McGeady, and that bastard rivalled only the General in his cruelty. One of the old school –and long dead at the hands of the IRA – Martin Cahill, aka the General, had nailed one of his lads to a snooker table when he thought he’d been stealing from him.
Upstairs in his flat, Patrick saw that his mail was piled neatly on the table and knew his brother had been there.
A little suspicious now, he had a look round to see whether any of his stuff had been moved. He went into his bedroom and opened the drawer in the bedside table. He checked the shoebox he kept under the bed and he checked his cupboards. Nothing had been touched. He told himself there was nothing malicious, it was just that after all these years Frank still came and went as he pleased; as if he didn’t quite trust his little brother, Patrick, to be able to take care of himself. He fussed over him, mothered him, as he always had.
In the living room, he noticed that the photograph had been moved and then put back – but not quite in the spot it normally occupied. Frank hated that picture and he was always asking Patrick why he kept it. All the same, he could imagine him standing there with the frame in his hand, peering at their mother’s face.
‘Frankie,’ he muttered. ‘Frankie, Frankie. It’s over, lad. Why don’t you leave it alone?’
He stared into her eyes then, and the muscles tightened around his mouth. ‘Did he come to see you, love? Did he? Somehow I doubt it.’
Tuesday 2nd September 5 am
Quinn had been awake for a couple of hours already and, with a cup of coffee at his elbow, he was poring over Mary’s file.
The Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the annual Irish music festival; two years ago, it had taken place in Eva’s home town of Listowel.
That was where he’d met her, years before, when he and Paddy were in the south-west for the three-match rugby tour against a combined Kerry XV. They had won the first game by a single point, Quinn kicking the drop goal they’d talked about last night.
*
Ten of them gathered in Jett O’Carroll’s, a pub in the centre of Listowel, afterwards, with a few pints already in their bellies and a few more settling on the bar. A TV fixed to the wall was showing highlights from the game between Munster and Leinster the day before, though one toothless old guy kept switching it over to the racing.
Quinn had been in the guards for about a year and was stationed in Rathfarnham with Joe Doyle. This was the Doyler’s home-town local, and everyone knew the big man. His parents still lived in the area, as did his brother Cahal, who had affiliations with some people that Doyle didn’t talk about.
He had a pint in one hand, and a Jameson with a drop of port in the other, and he was propping up the bar with a local copper called Martin McCafferty, as well as a couple of other lads who now and again would duck across the street to the bookies. Pat Maguire was regaling those who’d listen with how good the match had been and how game the Kerry side had been. He explained that it had only been his moment of brilliance at scrum-half that had allowed Quinn to kick the goal that won it.
Quinn rested an elbow on his shoulder, taking time out from the craic to consider two girls sitting with a young man at a table under the window. One of the girls was stunning: Quinn couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was sitting almost demurely, sipping wine. Green eyes; her hair looked burnished in the sunlight. The lad with them looked out of place, though. Diminutive, with sloping shoulders; his hair a shaggy mop that covered his skull like an ill-fitting hat. Though they weren’t being rude, it was obvious that the girls didn’t want him around them. He felt Doyle’s mighty mitt come to rest on his shoulder. ‘What do you think you’re looking at?’ he said gruffly.
Quinn indicated the girl with the auburn hair. ‘Mine’s the one on the left, Doyler. You’ll have to make do with the tug.’
Doyle’s grip tightened a little. ‘Mossie,’ he said softly, ‘the one on the left is my niece.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Eva, my brother’s youngest, so keep your sweaty mitts to yourself.’
‘Your brother Cahal’s daughter?’
Doyle shook his head. ‘No, Cahal has no children. Eva was Tom’s babby: Tom who was killed in a car accident north of Ballybunion.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So was I, and so was she. She’s been like my own ever since.’ His eyes fixed on the lad with them.
‘And talking of which, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve warned that little ciaróg to keep away from her.’
Quinn looked quizzical.
‘It means maggot, lad,’ Doyle explained, ‘in the old language. The boy’s name is Maggs, and he reminds me of one – which is close enough. Remember, when I joined An Garda Síochána you still had to be a native speaker.’
Quinn laughed. ‘Doyler, when you joined, “Lugs” Brannigan was still taking his fists to anyone who’d lip off to him.’
At the window, Maggs was staring at them, conscious perhaps that they’d been talking about him.
‘It doesn’t look like your man’s your biggest fan,’ Quinn commented, ‘and it seems to me he’s taking precious little notice of you not wanting him around your niece.’
‘He’s trouble,’ Doyle whispered. ‘I’ll tell you why some day. Eva’s a sweetheart, Moss; she’s the soul of Bernadette, she has. I want him away from her, but I can’t go over there and shift him, not without embarrassing her.’
Quinn was smiling now. ‘You want me to make my move then; is that what you’re saying to me?’
; ‘I’d appreciate it, only don’t be making any more than the one move or you’ll find out how Lugs got his reputation.’
Behind them, Patrick Maguire had finished his story, and he thrust another pint into Quinn’s hand.
‘Jesus, but she’s the beauty, isn’t she?’ he muttered, indicating Eva.
‘Joe Doyle’s niece, Patrick.’ Quinn motioned to where Doyle was back at the bar. ‘The lad there with them … Doyle’s not a fan, and he’d appreciate it if we found a way to move him on.’
‘I can think of a way; I can think of lots of ways. I’ve always had a thing for redheads, and you know what Bruce Springsteen says about them.’
‘No, Pat, what does he say?’
‘That they always get the dirty job done.’
‘Well get yourself in line, son. That dirty job is mine.’
Together they wandered over to the window and Eva looked up, wineglass to her lips, and smiled at Quinn. ‘Hello, Eva,’ he said. ‘I don’t know your friend’s name.’
‘Corin,’ she told him.
‘Hello, Corin, this here is Patrick Pearse Maguire, the most notable scrum-half to ever venture west from Dublin. He’s a bit of a coward, though, and he asked me to ask you if you’d mind if we sat down.’
Corin laughed. Eva laughed. Maguire just wagged his head.
Maggs sat there looking awkward, angry even: they’d completely ignored him. Pulling out a stool, Quinn sat down. ‘Joe Doyle told me you were his niece, Eva. I’m Moss Quinn, I work with him up in Dublin.’
‘So you’re Moss: he’s talked about you.’ Her eyes seemed to light up, and for an instant Quinn felt his heart quicken. Next to them, Maggs shifted in his seat and Eva gestured. ‘This is Conor, by the way.’
Quinn offered his hand, working Maggs’s knuckles with a little squeeze. ‘Nice to meet you, Conor,’ he said. ‘Joe Doyle told me all about you.’
*
Quinn went through to the kitchen to refill his coffee cup. Outside in the garden he sucked on a cigarette, thinking back on that day and thinking again about what Doyle had told him later. In a way, he’d felt sorry for the lad, and knowing his wife as he did now, he could understand how she’d sort of befriended him. Eva was like that, she only had to look at a stray puppy to want to adopt it. The trouble was that this stray puppy followed her home; this stray puppy thought she was his mistress; and according to Doyle, this stray puppy had sharp teeth.
The Gathering of Souls Page 11
