Begging to Die

by Graham Masterton

  Aleks drove the Volvo south to the River Lee and then turned westwards on the Lower Glanmire Road. Katie sat back. She had no idea what Lupul intended to do with her and Ana-Maria, but she knew that she had to keep steely calm and clear-headed. There was one small consolation: Lupul had a cordless drill but it appeared that he didn’t have a gun. The pistol that Danut had used to shoot himself must have been his only firearm, and he had left it behind that night at Sutton’s Buildings.

  She was also confident that if Sadhbh had called 112 by now, Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick would soon be alerted and he would set up a pursuit that wouldn’t alert Lupul that he was being tracked.

  They had been driving only a few minutes, though, before they turned off the Lower Glanmire Road and into the car park of the Clayton Silver Springs Hotel. They went right to the far end of the hotel car park and stopped, and Aleks and the other man opened the doors.

  They had parked next to a metallic green Hyundai Tucson. They opened the doors of that, too, and Aleks said to Katie, ‘Come. Change car.’

  Mother of God, she thought, as she climbed up into the back seat of the Hyundai. Lupul has really planned this. He must have been following me everywhere I went. He must know where his beggars are, in St Dunstan’s church hall, and that was how he found out where Ana-Maria was being cared for.

  But the begging ring he’s tried to set up here in Cork, it’s all fallen apart. What’s the point of abducting me and Ana-Maria? He’s like Hitler in his bunker at the end of the Second World War, with Germany in ruins all around him, refusing to believe that it’s all over.

  ‘Dragomir,’ she said, as they drove out of the hotel car park and continued to head west, ‘why don’t you let us both go and give yourself up? You’ll be given a much better deal by the court if you do.’

  ‘Why don’t you keep your face shut, detective woman? You can prove nothing. What can you prove? Nothing. And when you and this girl are gone, nobody can prove nothing.’

  Ana-Maria started to cry again, a thin, hopeless whine. Lupul shook her and jabbed the drill at her and said, ‘Shut up! No noise! You hear me? Or, brrrrrrrrrr!’

  51

  Conor parked about twenty metres away from the front gate of Foggy Fields. He could see Blánaid’s silver Mercedes coupé parked outside, so he knew that she must be home. A mud-spattered Land Rover was parked beside it, with a large bull terrier sitting placidly behind the steering wheel.

  He felt strangely detached, as if he been smoking weed, or hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours. He could hardly believe that this was really him, Conor Ó Máille, doing this. But he had been feeling like another person ever since he had woken up after his operation and Mr Sandhu had told him that he was going to be impotent for the rest of his life. Other men are impotent. Eunuchs, or octogenarians, or men who have suffered from prostate cancer. Not me – especially not with a beautiful woman in my life like Katie.

  He sat in his Audi for almost twenty minutes. Then he switched on the radio. RedFM were playing ‘It Started with a Kiss’ by Hot Chocolate, and so instantly he switched it off again. That song had too many painful connotations. But he couldn’t stop himself from miming the words ‘…never thought it would end like this’.

  He left his Audi by the side of the boreen and walked up to the front door of the Foggy Fields farmhouse. He pulled the doorbell and waited, shuffling his feet a little so that he looked like any normal man kept waiting in the cold.

  He was about to pull the doorbell again when the door opened and there was Caoilfhoinn, holding a half-eaten chicken bap.

  ‘Holy Jesus,’ she said. ‘It’s you. What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to set things straight, that’s all.’

  ‘What do you mean, “set things straight”?’

  From inside the office, Blánaid called out, ‘Kee? Who is that?’

  ‘It’s that fellow that said he wanted a pug. The one that Shawn found poking around in the shed. MacSuibhne. The one that the law were after asking about. He says he wants to set things straight, like.’

  Blánaid immediately came to the door, in her black sweater and her black jeans and her bright red lipstick. She looked Conor up and down and then she said, ‘I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about, Caoilfhoinn. We never had nobody asking for a pug, and Shawn never found nobody poking around in any of our sheds. I told the guards that, and they believed me.’

  She turned to Conor again and said, ‘So – who are you?’

  ‘You’re not a very good liar, Ms McQuaide,’ said Conor. ‘You know full well who I am and you know full well what your sham-feen did to me. I didn’t break my nose and my cheekbone walking into a door and you know it.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Now that I’m on the mend, I’ve been talking with my solicitor about a private prosecution. The Garda may not have found enough circumstantial evidence to charge you, but my doctor can supply plenty of medical evidence. On top of that, I have enough witnesses to my movements that day to be able to prove that I could only have been here when I was assaulted.’

  Blánaid said, ‘You’re trying to pull a fast one. Up the yard with you, whatever your name is, or I’ll be after setting Shawn on you again.’

  She started to close the door, but Conor said, ‘Not so fast, Ms McQuaide. I’m not pulling a fast one at all, as you’ll find out if you slam that door on me. My solicitor believes I have a fierce strong case, and that I could sue you for hundreds of thousands.’

  Blánaid kept the door half open. ‘So what’s this about “setting things straight”?’

  ‘We could come to some kind of arrangement, that’s what I was thinking. Nothing so punitive as I’d be expecting from you if you forced me to go to court. But maybe a small sum by way of compensation for my injuries, and possibly a modest percentage of your income here from Foggy Fields. Nothing eye-watering, do you know? But enough to make up for what I’ve suffered.’

  ‘Why don’t you come inside and we’ll discuss it?’ said Blánaid. ‘It’s pure freezing with the door open.’

  Blánaid went into the office and Conor followed her. Caoilfhoinn closed the front door behind them. The fire in the office was crackling, and sitting next to the fire was Shawn, bulky and bald and bearded, with that Y-shaped scar above his eye. He smelled just as strongly of alcohol and body odour as he had when he had beaten and kicked Conor. He said nothing, but glared at Conor with his piggy little eyes as if Blánaid would only have to say the word and he would happily beat him up all over again, and kick his head in this time, just to make sure.

  Conor closed his eyes for a moment and gave a smile that was almost beatific. Thank you, Lord. I was confident that both McQuaide sisters would be home this afternoon, but I hadn’t dared to hope that the sham-feen who kicked me into impotence would be here with them. If I have never given you adequate praise in my lifetime, then please O Lord I beg you to forgive me, because today you have rewarded me with justice beyond all my expectations, amen.

  ‘You know Shawn,’ said Blánaid.

  Conor didn’t answer that. He didn’t want to end his prayerful thought to the Lord with the foulest obscenity that he could think of.

  ‘Do you want to take off your coat?’ Caoilfhoinn asked him. ‘It’s like an oven in here.’

  ‘No, no thanks. I won’t be staying for long. All I want to know is whether you agree to pay me for my injuries, and how much.’

  ‘You realize you were trespassing,’ said Blánaid.

  ‘Oh. I thought you told the guards that I wasn’t here at all.’

  ‘I’d be interested to know what you were looking for, poking around in our shed. Were you looking to steal yourself a breeding bitch, was that it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t steal one of your breeding bitches if they were the last breeding bitches on the Planet Earth, Ms McQuaide. They’re all sick, half-starved, wormy and worn out. You and your sister are a stain on the name of Irish dog-breeding. Worse than a stain. You’re a
fungus.’

  Blánaid sat bolt upright. ‘If you’re going to speak like that to us, whoever you are, you can forget about any kind of recompense. Foggy Fields is one of the most profitable puppy farms in Munster.’

  ‘Profitable, I agree with you. Oh, yes, profitable. Sanitary, no. Nurturing, certainly not. Loving and kind and happy – I don’t think either of you have the first notion what any of those words mean.’

  Now Blánaid stood up. ‘I thought you came here to talk about a legal settlement, not to insult us. You’d best be out the gap before I ask Shawn to throw you out.’

  Conor stood up, too. ‘I have a better idea,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t we all go together?’

  With that, he detonated the pound of Semtex that he had flattened out and attached to his belt. He had filled his coat pockets with ball bearings, too, so that he was blown apart in a fountain of blood and ribs and shredded flesh. Blánaid was standing right in front of him, so that the blast blew her head off and looped her intestines up to the ceiling for a second like a rearing serpent from some hideous Greek myth. Caoilfhoinn’s head was blown off, too, along with both arms and both legs, and her torso blasted out of the window, so that it rolled down the driveway like a bloody beer keg.

  Shawn’s sweater and half his face were ripped off by a hailstorm of ball bearings and he was thrown sideways into the hearth as if an invisible giant had picked him up and flung him. The fireplace and the chimney breast collapsed on top of him, with a clatter of hot bricks and a shower of sparks. Seconds later, the whole ceiling collapsed, and Conor and Blánaid and Caoilfhoinn and Shawn were all given a temporary burial under lumps of plaster and splintered joists.

  Gradually the dust settled and the smoke drifted away. Foggy Fields was too far from the nearest farm for anybody to have heard the explosion. The only sound now was the plaintive yelping of breeding bitches and puppies waiting to be fed. The bull terrier behind the wheel of the Land Rover could smell blood in the air, and he sniffed and licked his lips.

  52

  It was dark by the time they drove up the narrow boreen and turned into the courtyard of what looked to Katie like a farm. She could see a farmhouse, with its windows lit up, and a large barn off to the right, with a corrugated-iron roof.

  They had been driving for over an hour-and-a-half, mostly down side roads. The last town they had been through was Skibbereen, and when they had passed the West Cork Hotel and crossed the bridge over the River Ilen, Katie had guessed that they were being taken to the same place that Eamon Buckley had been heading for when Detectives Markey and Scanlan had been following him.

  Aleks opened the Hyundai’s door and jerked his thumb to indicate that she should get out, and she needed to take only one breath to know that she had guessed right. The chilly evening air smelled strongly of pigs.

  A fat man in a brown padded jacket came waddling across from the house to meet them. His double chins were prickly with white stubble and his face was cratered with acne scars.

  ‘Well, this is some kind of an honour,’ he said, in a thick country accent. ‘Cathal Kilmartin at your service. Why don’t you come along inside?’

  ‘I hope you understand what a heap of trouble you’re getting yourself into, Mr Kilmartin,’ said Katie, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘What d’ye say? Trouble? Oh, sure like. I’m always getting meself into trouble. Me whole fecking life has been one hape of trouble from beginning to now, so one hape more trouble can’t hurt.’

  ‘You’re aware that I’m a detective superintendent with An Garda Síochána in Cork city?’

  ‘Oh sure like. I’ve seen you on the telly, like. That’s why I said it’s an honour. But in real life I have to say that you’re smaller than I thought. Do they make you wear special shoes when you’re appearing on the telly, like, so that you look taller?’

  ‘We go inside,’ said Lupul, impatiently. He was still gripping Ana-Maria’s shoulder, and pointing the drill bit to the side of her head.

  ‘Dragomir – I think we need to call a halt to this pantomime right now,’ said Katie. ‘Like I said before, if you let us go and give yourself up, any judge will give you a much lighter sentence.’

  ‘And like I say before, shut up your face. You polițiști can’t prove nothing, so I don’t get no prison. Now we go inside.’

  They all made their way over to the farmhouse and stepped inside. It was an old building, with thick damp walls and brick flooring in the hallway, and it smelled of burned sausages and disinfectant. As they filed through to the back of the house they passed an open living-room door, and Katie saw a blowsy, plump woman sitting on a sofa smoking a cigarette and watching television, with a brindled cat sitting in her lap. The woman turned and looked back at Katie and blew out smoke. There was no expression in her eyes at all. She might as well have been looking at pigs being led to the slaughter.

  Cathal Kilmartin unlocked a door at the end of the hallway and went inside, switching on a bare overhead bulb. The room smelled damp, like the rest of the house, but it was carpeted with cheap blue carpet and furnished with two beds, a single and a double, both of them covered with damp beige blankets. A small framed poster hung on the wall, blotched with damp and faded with age. It had an engraving of a pig on it, and the words ‘Kilmartin’s Famous Drisheen’.

  Cathal Kilmartin switched on a small electric fire, only one bar of which was working. ‘Hope you’ll be comfy,’ he said. ‘There’s tea if you’d like some, missus, and I’ve lemonade if the kid has a throat on her.’

  Katie was tempted to tell him what he could do with his tea and lemonade, but she didn’t want Ana-Maria to go thirsty.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she said.

  ‘You want sugar, or are you sweet enough already?’

  Katie still managed to keep her mouth closed, but if her eyes had been lasers she would have killed him where he stood.

  ‘Sit on bed,’ ordered Lupul, once Cathal Kilmartin had left the room. ‘Aleks! Gheorghe!’

  The two black-jacketed men came in. Aleks was holding two lengths of nylon washing line. He lifted his hands in front of him to indicate to Katie that she should do the same, and then he tied her wrists tightly together with a double handcuff knot. He did the same to Ana-Maria, and once he had done that, Lupul sat down on the single bed opposite and laid down his cordless drill.

  ‘What do you want from us, Dragomir?’ asked Katie. ‘Like, what is the point of you holding us like this?’

  Lupul took a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit one. ‘You think I run, yes? You think you take all my beggar from the street, you think I give up, go back to Romania?’

  ‘I was hoping that Ştefan Făt-Frumor might have cremated you, if you must know. Burned you to death in your house. That would have saved me a rake of problems, I can tell you.’

  Lupul spat on to the carpet. ‘Ştefan Făt-Frumor murder my stepfather in that fire, and my sister, and my sister husband. Făt-Frumor is dead now and in hell where he belong.’

  ‘Of course you know that he’s dead. You killed him. You, or one of your gowls. But you’ll still be charged with murder yourself. It’s all the same in the eyes of the law.’

  He waved his hand. ‘Not me. I don’t kill nobody. You can’t prove nothing.’

  Katie watched him smoking. He looked so complacent that she realized then that he genuinely believed he had committed the perfect murders, and that they hadn’t discovered how Gearoid and Matty and Vasile and Ştefan Făt-Frumor had been killed with a drill.

  It was understandable. She hadn’t released the details of the post mortems to the media, and in Romania he might easily have got away with it. He might even have got away with it in Cork, if Katie hadn’t insisted on autopsies and Dr Kelley hadn’t been so scrupulous. After all, the only outward sign of what had been done to them was a small scab on the back of the neck, and the rough sleepers had already been covered all over with scabs.

  ‘Fair play,’ she said. ‘I can’t prove any
thing. So what is it you want from us?’

  ‘I want garanție. I don’t know the word English.’

  ‘I understand. You want a guarantee.’

  ‘That’s it, garanție. You don’t arrest. You don’t take me to judge. You let my beggars go back on to streets. I need – I need – Aleks! How do you say îmi dai imunitate faţă de urmărire penală?’

  Aleks appeared in the doorway. He was carrying a bottle of Paddy’s whiskey and a can of Barr’s cloudy lemonade, and he too was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘You immunitate me from the law,’ said Aleks.

  Katie blew Lupul’s cigarette smoke away from her face. ‘So what you’re telling me is, you want An Garda Síochána to allow you to carry on running your begging ring, without any interference? Is that it?’

  Lupul nodded.

  ‘And if I don’t agree?’

  ‘You agree! No question! You agree because I keep Ana-Maria. If you arrest – if you give me trouble – then brrrrrrrrrrr! You understand? Brrrrrrrrrr, before you can save her.’

  Katie stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re some head-the-ball, do you know that? You might be able to get away with pulling a stunt like this in Romania, but you don’t stand an earthly here in Cork.’

  ‘Oh, no?’ Lupul tapped his forehead and said, ‘I think about it careful. You want something bad to happen to Ana-Maria? Of course no. And anyway what problem is it for you, if I have beggars in Cork? No problem at all.’

  ‘And you really believe that we’ll let you do this?’

  ‘I tell you this, too, police woman detective. You listen. When we come to Cork first, I speak to my men about my plan for beggars and for Ştefan Făt-Frumor. I don’t know then that Ana-Maria is in next room, and she hear me, all what I say. She tell her mother what is my plan. Then her mother come to me and say to pay for her and Ana-Maria to go back to Târgoviște, or she will tell police my plan.’

  Katie glanced quickly at Ana-Maria. Then, with her voice lowered, she leaned towards Lupul and said, ‘Are you admitting that you were responsible for her mother disappearing?’