by Sam Blake
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
For Shane, Sophie and Sam.
Who put up with a lot so I can follow my dreams.
Thank you xxx
1
Cathy was expecting the left jab; it was the speed of the kick that surprised her. He was bulked up, but he was fast.
Bastard.
She came right back, caught him under the chin with an uppercut that stunned him; her left hook followed it, then an explosive push kick right into the middle of his chest guard. He was still staggering as, spinning around, her back kick sent him towards the raw brick wall where he crumpled with a grunt.
‘What the fuck’s going on in here?’ The Boss’s voice echoed around the high-ceilinged gym, drowning the bass beat of Spin 1038, the Falls Road in every vowel. ‘I’m in the khazi for five minutes and all fucking hell breaks loose?’
Shaking her arms out, Cathy turned away from him, hiding her grin of satisfaction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the three lads who had been egging their mate to take her on shuffling nervously from side to side. They were right to be worried.
‘Nothing, Boss.’ Like choir boys. Only the lad on the floor was quiet, winded, struggling to his feet.
Turning back to them, shoving a stray corkscrew of raven hair from her face, Cathy smirked. One of them had had the cheek to leer at her cropped black Lycra top and loose wide-legged exercise pants, the waistband rolled down to her slim hips revealing the scars on her stomach that were still angry even after all these months. She would have given him the finger if she hadn’t been wearing boxing gloves. Like they’d never seen a girl in a gym before.
Niall McIntyre drew himself up to his full height, all five foot six of it, put his hands on his hips and gave her the full sergeant major routine, complete with a look that would have made litmus bleed.
‘You, girl, have got the semis at the end of the month. Where’s your safety gear? You’ve enough damage done, without breaking another rib.’ Turning to the lads, his pointed finger rammed home every word. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been allowed to get away with in Tallaght, but there will be no arsing about in my gym, do you hear? This isn’t junior infants. You want to improve your game, it’s by my rules. Understood?’
They nodded like five-year-olds caught on the rob. For a small man he could be pretty scary. Unshaven, a rat face cut from granite, he was a Belfast Catholic who’d spent his life in the British army. Knew how to make it sting. The lads kept their eyes on the ground. They weren’t much older than seventeen, their fake tans bleached right out by the overhead fluorescents, angry tattoos battling for space on their arms and chests – Dublin’s finest. They looked good, Cathy would give them that, but she was sure they were bulked up on steroids and that was a fool’s game.
‘You know who she is?’ McIntyre’s voice was sharp. They didn’t look like they were going to answer, but he didn’t give them a chance. ‘This is Cat Connolly.’ He didn’t need to add three times Women’s National Full-Contact Kick-boxing champion and decorated member of An Garda Síochána. As soon as he said her name she saw the recognition in their faces, watched their expressions change like the wind, from respect to hatred, like she had some contagious disease. Where they came from it didn’t matter how good you were in the ring, cops were scum, the enemy. And McIntyre knew it, would have her sparring with them before the end of the week when they’d only have one thing on their minds – drawing blood. That was one way to get match fit.
‘Bastard . . .’ Cathy muttered it under her breath, shaking her head.
‘Right, if you boys can’t spar without getting into shit, grab yourselves some ropes: twenty skips, twenty press-ups, nineteen skips, nineteen tucks. Keep going till you’re back to one. Cat, you’re with me. Where the hell’s Sarah Jane? She should be here by now. She’s not working in that restaurant tonight, is she?’
Cathy shook her head, ‘She never does Monday evenings – even The Rookery is quiet on a Monday.’ Cathy glanced at the clock high on the gym wall. It was after seven o’clock.
Where the hell was Sarah Jane?
It wasn’t like her to be late. Sarah Jane was always early. One of the most organised people Cathy knew, Sarah Jane managed to juggle a part-time job waitressing at one of the city’s swankiest restaurants, study for her masters, fit in training and still get all her assignments in on time. Cathy put that down to her being something close to a genius. Sarah Jane denied she was bright, reckoned she got As in everything because she worked hard, that she was ordinary, just like everyone else. That had made Cathy laugh. Cathy knew she was the one who was ordinary; her father was a barman, her mum had worked three jobs to keep her and her brothers in shoe leather – that was ordinary. Sarah Jane’s dad was a Norwegian Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and her mother had grown up in one of the smallest villages in Ireland, but had ended up the flame-haired poster girl for Greenpeace. That was going somewhere else well clear of ordinary.
She pressed her tongue against her gum shield. Sarah Jane was better organised than Cathy would ever be, which made it weird that she hadn’t turned up for the best bit of their whole week – the bit when they got to have a laugh with The Boss and beat the feck out of each other. Cathy trained six days a week, but sparring with Sarah Jane gave her a chance to focus on technique rather than power. Everyone needed a training buddy, and Sarah Jane was hers. In the past few months, though, with the championships on the horizon, she’d stepped it up, and was finally feeling she’d regained her form after the explosion that had nearly killed her almost a year ago. And Sarah Jane had been brilliant, was loving improving her own fitness alongside Cathy’s, keeping to her pace.
There wasn’t a day that went by when Cathy didn’t wish she’d curbed her curiosity all those months ago. It had been a routine break-in until she’d found those bones, the tiny grey shards a whisper of something much more ominous hidden deep within the hem of a vintage wedding dress. The story that had unravelled had gotten far bigger and more complex than any of them had ever expected, and while she might be heading towards match fitness again now, she didn’t know if she’d ever be quite the same person she’d been before.
She hadn’t known Sarah Jane that well then – she’d been the year below Cathy in school. It was a small school, so they’d known each other, had played on the same hockey team, but hadn’t been cl
ose friends. Then Cathy had gone straight into the Guards. Actually she’d been the only girl in her year not to go to uni or college, but she hadn’t been able to wait. She knew she’d learn more on the job in a day than she’d learn in a year of a degree course, and she could study at night – which was exactly what she had done.
Cathy was sure ‘the accident’, as half the people in her life seemed to call it, was one of the reasons she and Sarah Jane clicked when they’d bumped into each other again at the gym. There weren’t many people who understood Cathy’s world, and Sarah Jane had the same problem. Cathy’s working class family and private girls’ school education, her boxing, getting shot on the job, made her different. Sarah Jane’s norm was in a place where being held at gunpoint on your tenth birthday or being evacuated by helicopter was just a thing that happened on holiday. But then she’d spent her school holidays with her dad when he was assigned to the Middle East – and as a journalist he was never really ‘on holiday’. Sarah Jane found it hilarious, if ironically so, that he attracted trouble like Cathy seemed to. But she never called the bomb blast an accident.
It hadn’t been a fecking accident.
A Russian mafia don called Kuteli had organised a hit on her, pure and simple; had deliberately tried to kill her and there was nothing accidental about it.
Cathy shook her head, still thinking about McIntyre’s question. ‘When I saw her on Friday she said she’d see me here tonight. I was working all weekend.’ Cathy felt McIntyre looking at her hard as she tried to hide the flicker of concern in her voice. ‘I don’t know why she didn’t ring if she needed to cancel.’
His tone softened fractionally. ‘Well she’s late, and you can’t train without a sparring partner. What does she think we’re running here, a holiday camp?’
‘Maybe she’s got car trouble . . .’
‘I’ll give her car trouble. I keep telling her that Micra is a heap of shite. We’ll do some pad work instead. Let’s see you warming up properly. Bet you didn’t think of that before you belted Twinkle Toes there?’
Cathy shook her head, grinning. McIntyre was a total bastard, but he was the best in the business and he’d shaped her from a shy ten-year-old to a champion. He was her friend and mentor, a part of her family. And he’d been the one who had put in the extra time, coaching her every day, helping her to focus on getting back in the game as she fought her way back to fitness.
He didn’t know the whole story, not like Dawson O’Rourke, her DI, but she’d never be able to thank McIntyre enough for his steely determination, his refusal to let her give up. The blast had left her on life support, had almost derailed her career as a detective and as a boxer, and had murdered the new life within her. Back then, before the bomb, she might have been confused, uncertain about the future, but it had been her life, her baby, and that loss would never go away. It was a pain deep inside that could still ambush her. But in the aftermath she’d learned what amazing friends she had. Between them, O’Rourke and McIntyre had shown her how to survive.
And now, after the bomb, after everything, she was heading for the top again. Recovery had taken longer than she’d ever thought it could – months and months – but she was physically ready now and she was going to take her title back. And that feeling of being in control physically was helping her mentally too. The scars ran deep, and sometimes she wondered if they would ever heal. They affected her when she least expected it, her emotions seesawing from extreme anger to the darkest despair, triggered by something she saw on TV, at work, or sometimes simply by hearing a song on the radio. One of the things she’d had to learn since it happened was how to become a very good actress, hiding how she really felt, trying to keep everything on a level, outwardly at least. At work there was no room for mistakes, and if she wanted to stay in the job she had to find ways to cope. Nobody wanted to hear her whining or to have to pick up the pieces when she flew off the handle.
It had only happened once; she’d gone back to work too early, of course. She might have been physically mended – after months of surgery and plastic surgery, physio and rehab, after running hundreds of miles, she was fit enough to persuade them she could get back out there – but her first week of nights had been a disaster. A heavily pregnant teenager had been beaten up by her boyfriend, and as she lay rolling in agony on the hall floor, waiting for the ambulance, her baby, her wanted baby slipping away, the boyfriend had made some smart comment and Cathy had snapped. It had taken two officers to haul her off him.
He wouldn’t be hitting a woman again anytime soon.
Grabbing a skipping rope, Cathy kept one eye on the clock as she started her warm-up, her bare feet silent on the padded matting as the rope whirled. Press-ups next. Squats. Star jumps. The thick black minute hand ticked on, shaking with each increment. Where was Sarah Jane? She’d hardly have forgotten. They trained together every Monday night, the only exception being if Cathy was on a case and couldn’t get away from work. Cathy glanced at the double swing doors leading to the changing rooms, looking for the bright flash of Sarah Jane’s smile through the wired glass. She would have phoned if she was sick, or had been delayed.
Jumping up, Cathy started her stretches. Maybe Sarah Jane’s phone was dead again.
By 7.45 p.m. she still hadn’t shown up.
‘Come on, girl, you’re not concentrating!’ McIntyre grabbed the punch bag out of Cathy’s reach and slapped the side hard, the sound explosive, ricocheting off the brick walls like a car backfiring. It made her start more than McIntyre could know. But then maybe he did. He’d heard bombs go off more than once. As she tried to still her heart rate, the Tallaght boys looked up from their squats, startled. Out of the corner of her eye Cathy could see them smirking, enjoying her getting bawled at.
‘You’ve got to focus. Remember, eyes on the prize. Let me hear it.’
‘Jesus, Boss.’
‘You worrying about where Sarah Jane is isn’t going to get this session over any quicker. Let me hear it.’
Cathy danced backwards, her gloves beneath her chin, steadying her breathing. ‘McIntyre’s mantra’, Sarah Jane called it . . . Well, he asked for it . . . She smashed her glove into the bag. Left, right . . .
‘I will be national champion.’
McIntyre steadied the bag as he took the force of the punch through it. Cathy was already saturated with sweat from the session, droplets flying as she went in with a right uppercut.
‘I will be European champion . . .’
Left uppercut. She didn’t look at McIntyre, but could hear him exhale with each strike. It would be a while before she was ready for the Europeans, but he was all about positive thinking and she knew it worked. He’d taught her how to focus, taught her how to win, and that’s what she was going to do.
‘And the rest, girl, let me hear it, you won’t be at this your whole life – what else?’
Cathy danced back again, catching her breath, punched hard ‘I will get my masters.’ Her push kick sent the bag into McIntyre’s chest.
‘What are you working so hard at, girl? What do you want? Let me hear it!’
Hard again with a left jab, another left jab, followed by a right. ‘Forensic psychology. A first.’
‘And?’
She said it under her breath, conscious of the audience, ‘I will be the first female Garda profiler.’
McIntyre grunted, ‘Good. That’s good, girl. Put it here.’ He pushed the bag towards her, bracing himself behind it, ‘Just watch that right, you’re dropping a bit.’
From across the gym Cathy could hear laughter, then the choir boys chimed in, their voices high pitched, ‘I do believe in fairies, I do, I do.’
McIntyre turned on them, his voice echoing through the styrofoam ceiling, ‘Showers. Now. All of you.’
Scattering like rats, they didn’t have to be told twice. It had been a long time since Cathy had seen anyone move that fast.
‘Now, girl, a couple more for me. Push kick, back kick.’ Cathy cau
ght the glint in McIntyre’s eye. She danced back, smiling to herself, imagined the lippy one’s face on the bag, and smashed her left foot straight at it, pivoting to kick the bag again with her right foot, putting all her weight behind it.
‘Not bad, girl. Not bad.’ McIntyre pursed his lips as Cathy pulled at the Velcro on her gloves with her teeth. ‘Keep this up and you’re in with a real shot at getting your title back. That Jordan one is your only worry.’ Striding to the benches running along the wall, McIntyre picked up her towel and threw it at her. She caught it one handed, rubbing the sweat off her neck and chest, spitting out her gum shield.
‘Her brother’s inside for rape; she alibied him. Tried to, anyway.’
McIntyre raised his eyebrows, ‘All the more reason for you to give her a pasting.’
Cathy let a glimmer of a smile creep out. McIntyre had trained all of her brothers, even Tomás, who spent more time at the poker table than in the gym, and Pete who had had to fit classes around school and the early-morning sandwich run that had grown into a restaurant empire. Aidan, the eldest, had gone into the job ahead of her, but he’d learned as much in the ring as he had in uniform on the street.
Before Cathy could answer, her phone rang.
‘Bet that’s Sarah Jane . . .’ Dashing over to the bench where she’d tossed the phone, Cathy could feel her abs burning. Sparring partner or not, McIntyre had given her a hard time. Flipping open the cover, she was about to answer when it stopped ringing.
‘Damn.’
Behind her McIntyre was tidying up, pairing the spare gloves on the shelves beside the weights, untangling the skipping ropes.
Cathy checked her missed calls. Sarah Jane’s mum’s number flashed up. Cathy’s stomach suddenly felt hollow.
‘If it’s Sarah Jane, you just tell her her organisational skills are slipping.’
Cathy looked up, frowning, her blue eyes clouded, ‘No, no, it wasn’t her. It was her mum.’
She punched out 171 with her thumb and put the phone to her ear. The message was short, Sarah Jane’s mother’s voice catching at the edges like she was trying not to panic:
‘Cathy, when you get this, can you call me? I’ve been trying Sarah Jane’s phone all afternoon and her dad couldn’t get hold of her yesterday. He tried to call me earlier but we got cut off – they’ve had some sort of row. I really need to talk to her . . . is she with you?’
