Mary Maguire had turned up at the Garda station in Galway soon after Gerry had arrived. A female Garda had been found to look after her while her husband was being processed. She was in a terrible state, claiming that her husband was a good man, and was absolutely incapable of harming another person, let alone a woman.
Hays had telephoned the superintendent to let him know of the developments. He was pleased with the outcome and congratulated both Hays and Lyons and the rest of the team for their good work in bringing the matter to a close. He told Hays to make sure that the forensics were in good shape, adding, “You know how difficult it is to get a conviction solely on the basis of a confession these days.” Hays assured him that they had enough on Maguire to convict even without the confession, but that he would of course ensure that all the evidence was preserved in preparation for the trial.
“I think he’ll probably plead guilty when it comes to it, to be honest,” said Hays.
Back in his office, Lyons and Hays cracked open a bottle of whiskey to drink to the successful closure of what had been a very challenging case for both of them. There was no sign of O’Connor and Flynn – they would be able to celebrate tomorrow, they agreed.
“What do we do with the Polish lad?” Lyons asked. “Are we going to fly him back to Krakow?”
“Not bloody likely. This isn’t Thomas Cook you know,” Hays said smiling. “We’ll give him fifty euro and let him go in the morning. He’ll find his own way home. Oh, and remind me to call Kowalski and give him the good news. I suspect he’ll want to tell the family that their son is innocent.”
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, 10:00 a.m.
Piotr Palowski had been released from the cells in Galway’s police station shortly after eight o’clock. He had been given the fifty euro that Hays had promised, and the desk sergeant gave him directions to the bus station where he could get a coach directly to Dublin Airport. They had even looked up the times of the flights back to Krakow that day for him, and he was going to comfortably make the five o’clock Ryanair flight with time to spare.
Outside the courthouse down by the Corrib river there were several photographers and even a TV crew awaiting the arrival of Gerry Maguire. Word had got out during the night that a man had been charged with the murder of Lisa Palowski, and the reporters knew that he would be brought to court that morning to go before a judge.
The white Garda van arrived just before the hour and drove into the yard at the side of the courthouse. Maguire was escorted from the van with a grey coat covering his head, and led into the court by two Gardaí, one of whom was handcuffed to him.
The hearing lasted all of four minutes. Maguire confirmed his name and address for the court, and as there was no bail application, he was remanded to appear before the court again in two weeks’ time.
Tradition has it that prisoners are taken from the courthouse by the front steps and walked around to the side yard before being loaded back into their transport and taken off to the remand centre at Castlerea Prison. As Maguire left the courthouse, again escorted by two uniformed Gardaí, photographers crowded in around him, although his face was mostly covered by the same grey coat.
In the melee, suddenly, a man with fair curly hair pushed through the crowd and faced Gerry Maguire. Maguire felt the blade pierce his skin, and the cold steel entering his torso. It went in deep, puncturing his heart, so by the time anyone realized what was happening Maguire was slipping to the ground, pumping blood out onto the cold granite steps.
Panic ensued amongst the crowd, with photographers not knowing whether to try to assist, or just to get the best photos for the evening papers. In the confusion the assailant slipped away and was gone. He dumped the knife in the river and walked off, hands thrust deep into his pockets mingling with the other pedestrians heading up town.
Hays and Lyons came out of the courthouse next and were greeted by a scene of total chaos. Maguire lay bleeding on the ground, the Garda who was handcuffed to him desperately struggling to release himself from the victim, shouting, “For heaven’s sake will someone call an ambulance – he’s been stabbed!”
Mary Maguire emerged behind Hays and Lyons and dashed to her husband’s side, holding his head in her hands and wailing, “Gerry, Gerry, what have they done to you? Oh God, Gerry, don’t leave me.” The ambulance arrived, and a gap was cleared through the throng to allow the paramedics to bring through a stretcher. Maguire was unconscious, though the ambulance men had managed to stem the bleeding for the most part. He was loaded into the ambulance and given oxygen. Mary accompanied him as they set off to the Regional Hospital with sirens blaring, but by the time they arrived in front of the building, Gerry had stopped breathing. All attempts by the hospital staff to revive the man were of no use, and soon afterwards he was pronounced dead.
When Hays and Lyons got back to the station, any sense of celebration had dispersed. News had travelled back quickly, and as they walked through the building to Hays’ office, various Gardaí passed them and muttered their sympathy.
“He’ll either be on the train or the bus back to Dublin,” Lyons said. “My guess is the bus that goes directly to the airport. I’ll have them set up road blocks outside Athlone, and we can put some men on the trains just in case he decides to go that way. He can’t do anything else – he has very little money, and he’ll want to be getting out of here.”
* * *
The phone on Hays’ desk rang. When he finished the call he said to Lyons, “He was sitting in the fourth row of the airport coach, just like you said. He didn’t resist. The boys in Athlone have him, and he’ll be back here by teatime. I’ll call Kowalski again and bring him up to date.”
“Thank God that’s over,” Lyons said. “Now we can get back to a bit of ordinary burglary. Oh, by the way, I got some more vouchers.” She smiled at her boss.
Chapter Seventeen
Superintendent Finbarr Plunkett sat on a stool at the bar in the Connemara Golf Club enjoying a pint of Guinness and a small whiskey chaser.
James McMahon stood beside him clutching a gin and tonic. It was eight o’clock at night, and the two had enjoyed a pleasant round of golf, playing in a four-ball with two other members of the club. After the golf, they had polished off a good-sized steak apiece, and were now on their after-dinner drinks.
“That was a queer business with that Maguire fellow after all, wasn’t it Finbarr?” McMahon said.
“It was to be sure. I hope our fellows weren’t too hard on you while all that was going on?”
“Ah not really. They had their job to do, and I’m very glad that we managed to keep it from Jennifer and the family, that would have been very difficult for me,” McMahon said.
“God, it would. I had a word with Hays at the time, told him to go easy with you. I didn’t say we were friends, but he knows which side his bread is buttered on all the same.”
“That girl he has with him is a bit of a terrier,” McMahon said.
“You can say that again. She’s a damn fine detective, but a bit unpredictable, and to be honest she’d be a lot harder to rein in than Hays. That’s why we keep her a sergeant – don’t let her have too much power,” Plunkett said, smiling.
“And what happened with the young fella that did away with Maguire anyway? It was like bloody Dodge City round here for a while. Two murders in two weeks!”
“Ah the lad was destroyed with grief and remorse. He reckoned it was his fault that his sister was killed. Could be right too, it was a damn stupid thing to do, leaving her out in the rain like that and driving off. When we let him go, he went and got a knife and decided to take his revenge for his sister’s death out on the man who killed her. Almost biblical if you like,” Plunkett said. “He got done for murder of course and was given twelve years with the last three suspended, but he won’t serve much time here. The Polish authorities have been badgering us to let him go back to Poland to serve it out, and to be honest, with the state of our prisons, one less to look after would
be a blessing. But the politicians have got hold of it now, so anything could happen.”
“And what about you, James?” Plunkett went on. “That was a pretty close call for you too. Are you still seeing someone from time to time?”
“Now, Finbarr, that would be telling. But if I am, and I said ‘if’, then I’d be a damn sight more careful in future,” McMahon replied.
“Be sure you are James. We can only help each other out to a certain limited extent these days. There’s all sorts of people watching us, waiting for us to slip up. After that McCabe thing, we get no peace at all.”
The little black phone vibrated in McMahon’s pocket, indicating that he had received a text message.
* * *
After Palowski had been removed from the Dublin coach he was taken back to Galway Garda station. It didn’t take him long to make a lengthy, tearful confession. He was very mixed up and kept confusing the death of his sister with the death of Gerry Maguire. Eventually, Hays and Lyons got a coherent confession from him, enough to bring him to trial in any case and ensure a conviction.
His brother Jakub had travelled to Galway when the news got back to the family. The Palowski parents were in an awful state having virtually lost two of their children in the space of a couple of weeks.
Jakub negotiated the release of Lisa’s body, and had it taken back to Poland where she was buried with a full funeral. The nature of her employment in Ireland remained largely undisclosed, and the family turned out in numbers to mourn her passing.
Soon after the burial, her father had a stroke, and died in hospital. Mrs Palowski reckoned that the trauma of the whole thing had been too much for him, and he didn’t want to go on living with the dreadful memories of his two children, and the shame that he felt had been brought on the family in any case.
Piotr pleaded guilty at his trial, so very little of the long and complicated story actually got out. The judge was a little sympathetic to the lad. He understood the emotions that had led him to commit his crime, but at the same time had to hand down a stiff sentence as a deterrent to others, and to be seen to be doing the right thing. Piotr served a year in Castlerea jail, and was then transferred to Poland to serve the rest of his sentence in Areszt Prison in Krakow.
Hays heard later from Inspector Kowalski that the lad had been found dead in his cell during the third month of his incarceration there. Kowalski said that they were treating it as suicide, but that he wasn’t sure that it really was. Piotr had been given a pretty rough time by his fellow inmates, but it was easier for the authorities to write it off as suicide than to launch a big investigation, and as Kowalski said, “He’s dead anyway, no investigation will bring him back to life, so we had best leave it alone.”
* * *
You would think that the paint salesman would have learnt a lesson from his encounters with Lisa and the Galway Gardaí, but not a bit of it. After just a few weeks he had sought out another escort girl in Galway and was back in his old routine of visiting her every fortnight when he stayed over in the city.
It went well for a while, but then the girl, who was not as good natured as Lisa had been, began to blackmail him. He had been careless, and one night when he had fallen asleep in her apartment, she found his phone and had copied down the numbers of his work and his home. She had also seen a number of photographs of Gerry, the family man, with his wife and two kids that were stored on the phone.
At first the amounts of money that she asked for were small, so Gerry paid them, not quite knowing how to deal with the situation. But then, as could have been predicted, the girl got greedy, and soon he was being sent demands that he couldn’t easily meet.
Eventually, he decided the best course of action was to contact one of the Gardaí that had interviewed him during the business with Lisa. He was put through to Lyons and asked to meet her in a coffee shop in Galway, on the pretext that he had some information that could be useful to the Gardaí.
Lyons went along, but when he told her what his problem was, she was furious. What did he think the Gardaí were for – some sort of counselling service for men who can’t keep it in their trousers!
Anyway, she calmed down a bit and took the details of the girl, where she lived, and the address of the web page that she used to attract business.
A few days later, Lyons called on the girl. She was a lovely looking Lithuanian who had come to Ireland thinking she would get work easily, but after a few meaningless jobs as a server in some of the coffee shops in the city, found that it was a much more lucrative business to sell her body, and so she had become an escort like Lisa.
Lyons made it clear to her that she had crossed the line when she had extended her enterprise into blackmail. She was told in no uncertain terms to leave the country without delay, otherwise she would be arrested for soliciting and locked up or deported.
Gerry Byrne continued to play happy families, and no doubt continued with his philandering as well. The detective wondered how long it would be before he got himself into real bother. She had no doubt that their paths would cross again at some stage.
* * *
Ciara continued to drive out to Clifden through the rest of the winter months to see her mother. It was a hard winter, but the woman survived it well, and when the weather improved in spring, she became more agile. The new curtains looked really well in the spare bedroom. Ciara didn’t drive along the old bog road anymore. She had been very shaken up by the discovery of a dead body on that awful October night, and didn’t want to be reminded of it. Ciara continued to work at About the House, and was soon made up to full manager.
* * *
Mary was the one who came off worst of all out of the double murder. After her husband had been buried, she went back to the cottage on the bog, but couldn’t settle there. The tourist office in Clifden had closed for the winter, and she was at a loose end all day with nothing to do but contemplate her situation.
Gerry owned the cottage outright. He had inherited it from his parents a few years before he met Mary, and had spent time doing it up, but she was very uneasy living there with the memories that it held. Gerry of course, believing himself to be invincible, had no life insurance, so not only was Mary left without her man, the father of her two children, but she had no visible means of support either, and no nest egg to fall back on.
In early December that year, she decided to move back to her parents’ house in Galway, and lock up the cottage with a view to putting it on the market the following spring when the weather had improved. She gave the hens to a neighbour, and made the place as tidy as she could before leaving it behind, along with the memories of the times she had spent there with Gerry, some of which were very happy ones. Her father couldn’t keep his counsel, and chastised her for marrying Gerry in the first place saying, “I told you he was no good, but of course you didn’t listen to me. I knew it would all end in tears.”
The winter that year was harsh, with several very strong Atlantic storms blowing in from the west. The first bad one had torn five or six slates off the roof of the cottage, and then the rain had got in. With damage to the roof, it wasn’t long before the back door of the property blew off its hinges, and after that the house began to disintegrate with remarkable speed.
Mary went to a solicitor in Clifden to arrange the sale of the property the following March. After a bit of research, it transpired that the title to the property had never been transferred from Gerry’s parents to him, and there was no title at all to the little dirt track leading down to the house. With the house in a poor state of repair, and with the legal complications, it was virtually unsaleable.
By this time Mary had got a job in a tech firm out in Ballybrit, and her mother was looking after the two kids during the day. She was popular in her new job and had several offers from the men folk to go out on dates, to dinner or to parties, but turned them all down. She was heartily sick of men by now and the damage they could do, so she remained a rather sad widow, focused on her job and the r
earing of her two kids. She didn’t visit the old bog road ever again.
List of Characters
Detective Inspector Mick Hays – the senior officer in the Galway Detective Unit with many years’ experience in crime detection. A confirmed bachelor, Hays is building a strong team in anticipation of an expansion of the unit in the near future.
Detective Sergeant Maureen Lyons – Hays’s ‘bagman’ in Galway, Maureen is constantly trying to prove herself while wrestling with loneliness in her private life. A feisty, ambitious and tough woman with powerful instincts who has a knack of being in the right place at the right time.
Detective Garda Eamon Flynn – known for his tenacity, Flynn wanted to work as a detective since he was a small boy. He develops his skill while working on the case and proves invaluable handling some tricky customers.
Garda John O’Connor – the nerdy and modest junior member of the team is a technical wizard. He loves working with PCs, mobile phones, cameras and anything electronic.
Sergeant Séan Mulholland – happy to take it easy in the quiet backwater of Clifden, Mulholland could have retired by now, but enjoys the status that the job affords him. Not to be hurried, he runs the Garda Station at a gentle pace.
Garda Jim Dolan – works alongside Mulholland and has little ambition to do anything else.
Ciara O’Sullivan – a confident girl from an upper-class Galway family, Ciara has a degree in Retail Management.
Lisa Palowski – a Polish student studying in University College Galway. Lisa has found a way to make extra money in the city, much to the dismay of her family back home.
The Galway Homicides Box Set Page 12
