Brendan was about to say something else when Walter let out a plaintive yap, and then gave a miniature sneeze.
‘Oh, you poor little dote, I nearly forgot you, didn’t I?’ said Katie. She got up from her desk, went over to the window and lifted him out of his dog crate. ‘I expect you’re hungry and thirsty, aren’t you, and you could do with a tissue. Just look at you, snotty boy!’
‘And who’s this?’ asked Brendan. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve added a sniffer dog to your team.’
‘This is Walter, sir. He’s a pug and sad to say he can’t breathe well enough to be a sniffer dog. He was stolen from a young woman who works for the council and my Conor tracked him down to a pub in Ballincollig. His problem is that he’s been overbred to have this cute squashed-looking face but his airways are far too narrow and his eyes are in danger of popping out. He needs several operations, apart from vaccination and worming, and that’s going to cost a small fortune.’
Brendan came up and stroked Walter’s head. Walter snuffled at him and licked his lips and sneezed again. ‘And what if he doesn’t have the operations?’
‘He’ll have to be put to sleep. He’s suffering now but his suffering will only get worse as he grows older – that’s if he survives for more than a few months. He was bred illegally, sir, and he should never have been born at all.’
‘Well, that’s a heartbreaking story and no mistake. His owner – can she afford all this treatment?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll be taking Walter back to her tomorrow and I’ll ask. If she can’t – well, this is the last time you’ll see him.’
Katie gave Walter a reassuring little jiggle in her arms.
‘Moirin!’ she called out. ‘Could you fetch me in a bowl of water for our boy here?’
As she turned back, she saw that Brendan wasn’t looking at Walter, but at her, and it was that thoughtful, concentrated look that she had seen in men’s eyes before. That look that said: What can I do to make her want me?
16
Late in the afternoon, when it was dark outside, and sparkling raindrops were clinging to her windows, Bill Phinner came up to see her, accompanied by Detectives Markey and Scanlan.
Moirin had gone out earlier and bought a packet of Barking Heads puppy food so that she could feed Walter, and now he was asleep on one of the sofas, snoring like a two-tone whistle.
‘What’s this, ma’am?’ asked Bill Phinner. ‘Got yourself a guard dog?’
‘That’s right,’ Katie told him. ‘His name’s Walter. One bold word out of you and he’ll bite your leg off.’
‘Oh, he’s so cute,’ said Detective Scanlan, kneeling down on the floor beside him and stroking him.
‘He’s cute, but he’s not too well. I’m hoping that we don’t have to have him put down.’
‘You can’t! That would be tragic!’
Katie shrugged. ‘It depends if his owner can afford to have him operated on. But I agree with you, yes, it would be tragic.’
Bill Phinner said, ‘I was going to text you but I was up here anyway. We’ve had all but one of the results from Buckley’s the butchers.’
‘And? Have you found out where that ring came from?’
‘No, ma’am. The samples of mince we took from Eamon Buckley’s fridge were all pork or beef, a bit on the fatty side but nothing else. A couple of cuts of meat looked suspicious, but they turned out to be goat. There’s a crowd of Somalis living down the lower end of Shandon Street and it turns out they love their goat.’
‘No other traces?’
‘Blood spatters everywhere, like you’d expect in a butcher’s. They’d been wiped off with disinfectant but it didn’t look as if there’d been any deliberate attempt to eradicate them completely, not like painting over them or anything, and of course they all showed up with the luminol. And all of them were pig or cow or chicken blood. No human blood at all.’
‘So the shop was clean and there was nothing to indicate that poor Ana-Maria’s mother might have been disposed of there?’
‘No, ma’am. We even took the mincer apart to see if there were any scratches on the cutters that might match up with that ring. The mincer was fairly new, too, so the blades were hardly marked at all.’
Katie frowned. ‘When you think about it, though – even if the ring was dropped into the mincer, surely it couldn’t have gone through all those little holes at the end?’
‘That’s called a mesh plate, ma’am. The holes are usually only six millimetres in diameter, so you’re right, it wouldn’t have gone through. When they’d finished mincing, though, they would have unscrewed the mesh plate to clean it, and maybe it dropped out then, mixed up with any minced-up meat that was still left inside. We don’t have any way of knowing.’
‘Ah well,’ said Katie. ‘It’s a fierce pity that woman flushed the mince she’d bought down the toilet. If you’d been able to analyse that, maybe you could have proved it conclusively, one way or another.’
‘I’d love to prove that Eamon Buckley was guilty of something – anything!’ Detective Scanlan put in. ‘The disgusting threats he made to me, I tell you! The biggest pig in Eamon Buckley’s shop is Eamon Buckley himself!’
‘I’m afraid we can’t haul him in just for being gross,’ said Katie. ‘If being gross was an arrestable offence, we’d have half the men in Cork downstairs in the cells.’
Detective Markey was looking thoughtful. ‘I was struck by one thing,’ he said. ‘Maybe it means nothing at all, like, but that’s only a small butcher’s, Buckley’s, and he can’t be making too much of a profit these days. After all, he’s having to compete with Tesco’s and Dunnes and all them butchers in the English Market, too – you know, like Bresnan’s and O’Mahony’s – and even they say that life isn’t easy these days.’
‘What are you getting at, Nicholas?’
‘He has a brand-new Mondeo parked outside his house, and the house itself is fresh-painted and the double-glazed windows look like they was only recently put in. I’d say that the fridge in his shop is new, too, and he has a shiny glass counter that looks as if it was fitted not long ago, because you can still see the marks where the old one was. And like you say, Bill, that mincer was new – or almost new.’
‘Maybe he’s doing a roaring trade in goats,’ said Bill Phinner.
‘He could have got the grade from anywhere, couldn’t he?’ said Katie. ‘Maybe one of his relatives passed away and left him an inheritance. Or maybe he won the lotto.’
‘Sure like,’ Detective Markey agreed. ‘But if a fellow’s well minted and has nothing to hide, why should he act so aggressive? That’s what struck me. You don’t often get that level of hostility, not from somebody who knows they’ve done nothing wrong. They might get narky and give out a bit, but they don’t start saying that they’ll hunt you down and cut you up into pieces, like Eamon Buckley did with Padragain here.’
‘I know what you’re saying, but unfortunately that doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he’s just a hard chaw, and he behaves like that all the time.’
‘I did a background check on him,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘He’s been cautioned three times for domestic abuse in the past two years, but each time his wife wasn’t prepared to press charges.’
‘Well, even if he is a natural bully, I’m still not going to let this drop,’ Katie told her. ‘Ana-Maria’s mother disappeared and she still hasn’t been found and her ring turned up in mince bought from Buckley’s shop. Even if Eamon Buckley had nothing to do with it, I still want to know how it got there. I believe in a lot of things – God, and the afterlife – but I don’t believe in magic.’
‘So what’s the next step?’ asked Detective Markey. ‘Maybe we should stake out his shop for a day or two, and see who comes and goes.’
‘What about that sexual assault case you’re working on? The one at Flynn’s Hotel? How’s that progressing?’
‘We’re still waiting for one of the principal witnesses to come back from Gran Canaria. We have some video
evidence but nothing that you’d call conclusive. A lot of shouting and hollering and blurry images that might be the accused but then again might not. The phone got dropped on the floor at the crucial moment, so we have five minutes of footage of the victim’s left tackie and some grunting noises but that’s about it.’
‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘Let me think about a stake-out. This whole Romanian thing is breaking my melt, I can tell you. If the autopsy proves that Matty Donoghue was killed by the same drill as Gearoid Ó Beargha, I may have to pull our coffin-maker in for questioning, but I’m fierce anxious not to alert this Lupul and his gang or whoever’s responsible. If they think we’re on to them, they could vanish, just like that, poof! and then we’d never have a hope on God’s earth of catching them.’
*
Before she went home, Katie rang Conor. He sounded slurred and drugged-up, but he assured her that he was feeling no pain.
‘We have to talk some more, though, sweetheart,’ he told her.
‘Let’s wait until you’re out of hospital. I can arrange to take some time off and we could go down to Parknasilla maybe. A couple of quiet days by the sea would take the stress off both of us.’
‘Oh… I meant to tell you this afternoon… I drove myself to the hospital, so my Audi’s still here in the car park.’
‘That’s all right, Con. I’ll send somebody over tomorrow morning to pick it up and take it down to Cobh.’
‘Katie…’
‘What is it, darling? Stop fretting for the moment and concentrate on getting yourself well. That’s all that matters.’
‘But I’ll never get well, will I? All the doctors in the world can’t give me back what I’ve lost. I’d have been better off having my legs cut off. Jesus – I’d have been better off having my head cut off. At least that would have put an end to me, and I wouldn’t have to suffer for the rest of my life.’
‘Con, shush. I stopped off at the vet’s and picked up Walter. He’s here with me now and I’ll be taking him home tonight. If you can give me his owner’s address I’ll take him round there tomorrow.’
‘What did Domnall have to say?’
‘The poor little dote needs several operations, mostly to help him breathe more easily. But it’s going to cost three thousand euros at least. Otherwise the kindest thing is to have him put to sleep.’
‘Three thousand? Yes – that doesn’t surprise me, although I can’t see his owner affording that much. Maybe the kindest thing would be for Walter and me to be put to sleep together.’
‘Con, for the love of God, don’t talk like that. There’s all kinds of amazing surgery they can do these days. Look at that fellow who had a whole new face put on him.’
‘Don’t think I didn’t ask Mr Sandhu about that. He said it might be possible technically, do you know what I mean, but they can’t do it ethically. If you fell pregnant, it would mean that I’d given you some other man’s child.’
Katie was silent for a few seconds. Perhaps he too had been thinking about them having a baby, although he had never suggested it to her. The tragedy of his injuries seemed to become more unbearable every time she spoke to him.
‘You sound beat out,’ she said. ‘Try and get yourself a good night’s sleep.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he told her. ‘But even if I sleep as long as Rip Van Winkle, it won’t make any difference, will it? When I wake up I’ll still be a eunuch.’
‘Don’t let me hear you use that word again, Con. Not ever.’
‘All right. Gelding.’
‘Goodnight, Con. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
*
She left a note for Moirin that she might be late in tomorrow morning, and then she carried Walter in his dog crate down to the car park. It had stopped raining but the temperature had dropped and she could see her own breath. The city was unusually quiet, except for the sizzle of tyres on wet tarmac and the occasional distant parp of a car horn.
As she steered her Focus out of the Garda station car park, her attention was caught by a car behind her switching on its headlights and pulling away from the kerb. She had to stop at the traffic lights at the end of Old Station Road, and she frowned at this car in her rear-view mirror. There were double yellow lines on Old Station Road, which meant no stopping at any time, but it had been parked with its nearside wheels up on the pavement, so that it hadn’t caused too much of an obstruction. But who would risk parking on double yellow lines right outside Cork’s main Garda station, and who would suddenly switch on their lights and come nudging up behind her as she started to drive home?
She kept glancing at the car in her mirror as she drove up Albert Street and crossed over the south channel of the Lee on the Éamon De Valera Bridge. It stayed close behind her as she passed over Custom House Quay and then crossed the Michael Collins Bridge. It was still less than a car-length on her tail as she turned eastwards on the Lower Glanmire Road, the main route that would take her back to Cobh.
She tried to make out what model of car it was. She was fairly sure it was a Toyota SUV but it had dazzling halogen headlights and it was too close and too bright for her to be able to see it clearly. It was also too close for her to be able to see its number plate.
Driving along beside the River Lee, which was black and glittering in the darkness, she deliberately slowed down, until she was going no faster than 28 kph. The Toyota continued to follow her, but slowed down even more, widening the gap between them until she could see only its headlights. She carried on crawling until she reached the Dunkettle Roundabout, where the Lower Glanmire Road connected with the main N8. As she steered around the roundabout she saw in her mirror that the Toyota was having to give way to a cement lorry turning north. She jammed her foot down on the accelerator, speeding over the Dunkettle Bridge and undertaking three other cars as she slewed around the N8 roundabout to join the N25, which would take her due east, to Cobh Cross. She ignored an angry barrage of horn-blowing and kept on going with her foot pressed down hard on the pedal, weaving out into the outside lane and overtaking a bus and an Amber petrol tanker.
By the time she reached Harper’s Island she was driving at over 150 kph. She kept glancing in her mirrors in case the Toyota driver had seen where she was going and was coming after her, but no headlights appeared to be gaining on her, or even keeping up. She slowed down only when she reached Cobh Cross and turned down towards Fota Island, and even then she was going fast enough to make her tyres scream out like a chorus of panicking schoolchildren.
17
Before she turned into her own driveway at Carrig View, she drove half a kilometre further down the road and turned into the narrow entrance to Dock Cottages, a terrace of flat-fronted houses that led down to the river. She turned her Focus around at the end of the terrace and sat waiting to see if she was followed. An oil-tanker blared out a low, mournful hoot as it passed behind her, which almost put her heart crossways, but after nearly five minutes she guessed that she had successfully given the Toyota the slip.
As she drove back to her house, though, her mind was whirring. Had that Toyota really been tailing her? Maybe it had simply been driving in the same direction, at least as far as the Dunkettle Roundabout. Yet if it hadn’t been tailing her, why would it have been waiting outside the station, illegally parked, and why had it only started moving off when she came out of the car park? She was almost sure it had been tailing her, from the way it was being driven. But who had been trying to follow her, and why?
She was always alert to the fact that there were plenty of criminals in Cork who bitterly resented her for having arrested them, or who were anxious to prevent her from investigating the rackets they were running. Because of that she always looked under her car in the morning before she climbed into it, and she kept her eyes open for anybody who might be following her or watching her. When she was on duty she was always armed, too, with her Smith & Wesson Airweight revolver.
Despite the ever-present threat to her life, though, she always tried to li
ve a normal or even a mundane existence, if only for the sake of her own sanity. She went out to pubs and restaurants with Conor and she took Barney and Foltchain for walks along the seashore, and she tried not to think that there might be a bomb planted under her chair in The Roundy or that she might be walking unknowingly into the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle.
She parked outside her house and lugged Walter’s dog crate inside. Barney and Foltchain greeted her with their usual overexcitement, their tails whacking against the radiator in the hallway. Before she took off her coat she let Walter out of his crate, and they snuffled around him as fussily as if they were asking him, Walter! It’s you again! You’re back! Where in the world have you been, boy?
‘Right, dog people,’ she said. ‘The number one priority is for me to light the fire. Once I’ve done that, I’ll feed you.’
Katie had already laid the fire early this morning with crumpled newspapers and kindling, so all she had to do was put a match to the firelighters. Once they were flaring up, she switched on the television, although she turned it to mute, and then she went over to the window.
She had almost closed the curtains when she saw a white SUV glide past her driveway and come to a stop behind the dry brown beech hedge at the front of her house. She waited, and watched, and after a few moments she saw its lights switched off.
She couldn’t have been sure, because the streetlights all along the Lower Glanmire Road were sodium, but the Toyota that had been following her out of the city had also appeared to be white.
‘Wait here, you three,’ she said to the dogs, but they started to follow her out of the living room and into the hallway and she had to snap, ‘Stay! Ná bogadh!’
Before she opened the front door, she turned off the hallway light and the outside light, too, so that when she stepped out on to the porch she wouldn’t be silhouetted, or lit up, and present herself as an easy target. She walked up to her driveway gate and cautiously looked around the hedge. The SUV was still there, with its engine running. Its interior was in darkness, but she thought she could see two men inside it, and the glow of a cigarette. Its nearside window must have been open, because after a few moments smoke billowed out of it, and was snatched by the chilly breeze, and blew away.
Begging to Die Page 13
