Red Light (30 page)

‘Oh, feck,’ said Detective Horgan, leaning back in his chair. ‘There’s so much here, ma’am, it’s going to take us all night and half of tomorrow, too.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘So far, there’s nothing that you could call directly incriminating. On the other hand, we might be able to link up some of the dates and times of the messages on here with cases that we haven’t been able to close yet. For instance, your man was told to go to Spur Cross at 5.00 p.m. on the fifth of June to pick up a shipment of computers. Now what’s in Spur Cross? Just a scattering of private houses, that’s all. But on the third of June fifty-five Acer computers were stolen from Lee Electronics and there hasn’t been a sniff of them since. So this could be a lead to who took them, and who fenced them, and where they went.’

‘Any mention of Michael Gerrety?’

‘Not so far. But there’s loads from “D” telling your man that “M” wants him to do something. Here, look, on the twelfth of May “D” says that “M” wants him to go up to the airport and pick up “R” and two other passengers off of KLM 3173. Now, KLM 3173 is an evening flight from Brussels, and as we know, Brussels is a regular staging-post for trafficking girls from West Africa. After he’s picked them up, your man is supposed to take them to Washington Street so that “M” can meet him there later to have a sconce.’

Detective Horgan sat back and stretched. ‘It’s all supposition, but that could well be an instruction from Michael Gerrety telling Bula to pick up a courier and two young girls, and that Gerrety will come along later to give them a once-over.’

‘You’re right,’ said Katie. ‘It
is
supposition. But keep at it. The more circumstantial evidence we collect, the better, and if there’s
anything
in that phone that proves that “M” is Michael Gerrety, I’ll buy you an iced doughnut next time.’

‘Oh yes. Thanks a million for the coffee. I was gasping.’

Detective O’Donovan had arrived by the time Katie returned to her office. On the large side table where she usually spread out her maps he and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán had laid out more than thirty large photographs. All pieced together, these formed a 360-degree panorama of the interior of the workshop, complete with Bula’s headless, handless body lying on the couch in the middle of it, like a giant beige slug.

‘That’s grand,’ said Katie. All of these photographs had been taken by the technicians to record any forensics they might have found – any blood spatters or fingerprints, any smudges or scratches – but Katie liked to use them to reconstruct the scene of the crime. To her, it was like an empty stage set after the play had finished and all of the actors had gone home. All except for Bula, of course.

She had often found that it was possible to work out what had happened, and in what sequence, by noting the position of the furniture, and where the bloodstains were, and other small details, like a knocked-over vase or a broken window pane. From the angle at which Bula had been shot in the knee, and the blood that had sprayed from the wound, she could see that the perpetrator must have been standing where the table saw had been located when she shot him. That meant that she must have dragged the saw up close to him
after
she had made sure that he was unable to escape.

She was still studying the photographs when Detective Ryan knocked at her door, looking more than ever like a schoolboy who has just finished all his homework. He was holding up half a dozen printouts.

‘Got her,’ he said.

He spread the pictures out on Katie’s desk. They showed the south side of Patrick Street in between Burger King and Oasis. In the first picture, Bula could be seen emerging from Burger King in his yellow floral shirt, holding his takeaway box. In the next, a nun was talking to him, but the young Nigerian woman was standing by the window of Claire’s fashion store, only a few feet away, and she obviously had her eyes on him. She was dressed in the same outfit of black T-shirt, black leather waistcoat and jeans that she had been wearing when she was tailing Mawakiya.

As Bula reached the corner of Mutton Lane, the young woman stepped up close behind him. He turned, and they appeared to be exchanging a few words. Although the image was fuzzy, Bula could be seen to be frowning. A man appeared from Mutton Lane and spoke to him, and then walked away. Bula then turned into Mutton Lane and the young woman followed him.

‘I don’t think there’s any question now who we’re after,’ said Katie. She pointed to the clearest picture of the young woman and said, ‘Have that one circulated as soon as you can, would you? I’ll make sure that the press office gets it.
Somebody
must know this woman, and where she’s staying. I mean, she’s striking enough. You wouldn’t miss her, would you, even in a crowd?’

‘Depends what it was a crowd of,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘If it was nothing but African lashers, then maybe you would. By the way – talking of African lashers, I checked on the letting agents for Gerry O’Farrell’s furniture workshop – Carbery’s, on Grand Parade. There was an African girl working there and she was quite a looker. Red hair she had, almost the same colour as yours. She said that nobody could have had access to the keys to the workshop because all of their keys were kept in the office safe. So maybe O’Farrell was right and our suspect did take them out of his jacket and have copies made of them. I’ll check with Cunneen’s the locksmith’s later.’

John was deeply asleep when she eventually eased herself into bed. The digital clock on the bedside table said 2.52 a.m. She punched her pillow and tried to make herself comfortable, but she was feeling hot and restless, and the inside of her mind was like a fairground, with everything that had happened during the day going around and around like carousels and whistling and clanging and thumping like dodgems.

She was almost asleep when John put his arm around her and cupped her breast through her nightdress.

‘You’re back, then,’ he murmured. His voice was so rumbly she could feel it through the mattress.

‘Yes. I’m sorry. We had another murder.’

‘Tell me about it in the morning. I don’t want to think about murder right now.’

‘I’m sorry about The Rising Tide. I was really looking forward to it.’

‘We’ll do it next week. That’s unless somebody else gets themselves whacked. But we can go out for lunch tomorrow, can’t we?’

‘We should be able to. I’ll have to go in for an hour or so in the morning. I’ll need to talk to the media, and Dermot’s replacement has arrived and I have to get him up to speed.’

‘Oh yes? What’s he like, this replacement?’

‘If he was any more full of himself he’d explode. Bryan Molloy, his name is, from Limerick. He has a very low opinion of women, especially women gardaí, and women superintendents most of all.’

John gently squeezed her breast and rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb. She could feel his hardened penis against the small of her back.

‘Obviously the man has no taste whatsoever. Either that, or he’s a faggot.’

‘John …’ said Katie, taking hold of his wrist and moving his hand away from her breast. ‘You know I can’t, not tonight. Give it a couple of days and I promise you we’ll have an orgy.’

John kissed her shoulder and then he lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. ‘Okay,’ he breathed. ‘I guess everything comes to he who waits. Or he who waits eventually comes. Or something like that.’

He turned over on to his back. It was beginning very gradually to grow light, and Katie could hear wrens singing in the garden. She remembered that she had been taught at school that wrens were treacherous birds, because they had betrayed the Irish soldiers fighting against the invading Norsemen by beating their wings against their shields.

Treachery made her think of Ronan Lynch and Billy Daly, the two gardaí she would have to talk to tomorrow. She wasn’t looking forward to that at all.

John laid his hand on her hip and gave her a gentle shake. ‘You
will
find time to read my proposal for ErinChem tomorrow, though, won’t you?’

‘I’ll try, John.’

There was a long silence, interrupted only by the chirruping of the wrens outside. Then John said, ‘You know how much I love you, don’t you, Katie?’

She wrestled herself around and held him close and kissed him. His cheek was prickly and he smelled of himself and some woodsy aftershave. ‘I love you, too, John Meagher.
Tá mo chroi istigh ionat
.’

She found them sitting in their patrol car on Parnell Place, outside Mulligan’s pub, eating bacon sandwiches and drinking tea. She had been told where they were by central dispatch and it had only been a short walk from Anglesea Street.

She opened the back door and climbed in before they realized what she was doing. The driver twisted around and said, ‘What in the
name
of Jesus do you think you’re up to, girl?’ spitting out bits of sandwich as he did so, but then almost instantly he recognized her and said, ‘Oh. Sorry. Apologies, ma’am. Took me by surprise, that’s all.’

‘Just as well I wasn’t armed and dangerous, then?’ said Katie.

‘We was only having a bit of breakfast, like,’ said the garda in the front passenger seat. ‘Our shift started at six and the canteen’s cooker was banjaxed.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t expect you to go hungry. Not that I suppose you ever do.’

Before either of them could answer that, she turned to the driver and said, ‘You’re Billy, right?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Billy, frowning at his partner as if to say
what’s all this about
?

Billy Daly was black-haired, with heavy black eyebrows and blue eyes and a blob of a nose like Play-Doh. A double chin bulged over his collar and his uniform looked much too tight for him, as if he had to strain to button it up every morning.

In contrast, Ronan Kelly was fair-haired and thin, with pale eyes and angular cheekbones and a sharp triangular nose. He appeared almost lipless, and he barely opened his mouth when he spoke, like a ventriloquist.

Katie said, ‘You know about that Nigerian feller who was found murdered in Mutton Lane yesterday afternoon? Both of his hands cut off, and his head blown to kingdom come with a shotgun?’

‘Of course, yeah, we had the full briefing this morning,’ said Billy. ‘What’s the story on that, then?’

‘The victim was an illegal immigrant named Owoye Danjuma, better known as Bula. He worked as a general dogsbody for Desmond O’Leary, better known as “Mister Dessie”.’

‘Yeah … that’s right,’ said Billy. His tone was growing increasingly cautious.

‘As you know, we have a fair idea who the perpetrator is, especially since she doesn’t seem to be going out of her way to conceal herself. Twice now we’ve caught her on CCTV. In fact, the pathologist suggested that she might have a reason for doing this all so openly. He thinks she wants to get her revenge on these scumbags, but at the same time she wants to make a show of the Garda for being so useless in bringing them to justice.’

‘Well, that’s one theory,’ said Ronan Kelly. ‘It could be that she’s simply thick, like most murderers are, and doesn’t realize she’s making herself so fecking conspicuous. If most people knew how many CCTV cameras we have in Cork, you’d never get them walking down the street scratching their arses the way they do.’

‘We have her picture, like, and we’re keeping a lookout for her,’ said Billy Daly. ‘There’s not a whole lot more we can do than that, is there?’

‘You can keep tabs on your friend Mister Dessie,’ said Katie. ‘So far this Angel of Revenge has killed three of Michael Gerrety’s people, and if she carries on, there’s a strong possibility that Mister Dessie will be next. Maybe she even has her eye on Michael Gerrety himself.’

‘What do you mean “keep tabs”?’ asked Ronan Kelly.

‘Make sure that you know where he is, twenty-four hours a day, and make sure that
I
know, too. He may be a piece of shite, but it’s still our duty to protect him if we think he’s in danger of getting himself murdered.’

‘He won’t be happy about that,’ said Ronan Kelly.

‘He won’t be happy about what? Being kept tabs on, or being murdered?’

‘He’s not too keen on people knowing where he is, like, or who he’s with.’

‘Because why? Because he’s wheeling and dealing all the time for Michael Gerrety, and Michael Gerrety likes to make out that his hands are clean?’

Neither Ronan Kelly nor Billy Daly answered that, but they looked at each other warily.

Katie leaned forward and rested her elbows on the backs of their seats. ‘I don’t expect you to
tell
Mister Dessie that you’re keeping tabs on him. I want you to do it
discreetly
. But from now onwards, and I mean from
now
, today, this morning, I want to know his exact location, and as far as possible what he’s doing there.’

‘I don’t mean to be disrespectful, ma’am, but how in the name of Jesus are we going to do that?’

‘Don’t try to play innocent with me, Garda Kelly. When I called Mister Dessie your friend, I wasn’t joking. Mister Dessie gives you two money and women and in return you conveniently fail to notice that Mister Dessie is trafficking underage girls and running all of Michael Gerrety’s so-called massage parlours and health clubs for him. You two knew everything that Mawakiya was up to, and you knew immediately that it was him who’d been murdered on Lower Shandon Street. I imagine you knew that the second victim was Mânios Dumitrescu, too.’

Ronan Kelly and Billy Daly stayed silent, but continued to stare at each other, as if they were trying to communicate telepathically what they were going to do next.

‘There’s no point in your trying to deny any of this,’ said Katie. ‘I have too many witnesses and too much evidence against you. I’ll have to file a full report later, but meanwhile you can mitigate your misdemeanours by keeping a close watch for me on Mister Dessie. I also expect you to report back to me anything you might hear him say, whether you think it’s illegal or not.’

‘What if he’s ordering a pizza?’ asked Ronan, bitterly, through that slit of a mouth.

‘You’re in no position to crack jokes, Garda Kelly,’ said Katie. ‘I’m talking about him calling for taxis to take women around the city, or arranging to meet flights from the airport, or booking doctors’ appointments, that kind of thing. And, of course, anything that directly relates to sex trafficking or prostitution. And anything at all that relates to Michael Gerrety.’