Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (26 page)

‘David,’ said Katie, ‘I need to be alone tonight. Thanks for bringing round the champagne, and thanks for the offer of an omelette, but really – no thanks.’

David frowned. ‘What’s the matter with you? I thought you and me were getting along famously.’

‘Nothing’s the matter with me, David. It’s just that I need to unwind and I need to do it in peace and quiet, by myself.’

‘I’ll just sit there. I won’t say a word.’

‘David – no.’

‘There is something wrong, isn’t there, and it’s not just the monthlies?’

‘No. Nothing’s wrong. Now, please – I have to take Barney for his walk and it’s getting late.’

David’s eyes narrowed, as if he suspected that she was lying. ‘Last night you couldn’t get into bed with me fast enough. Now you don’t want to know. Don’t tell me
you’re
bipolar, too. Jesus. That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it? Both my wife and my mistress, manic depressives!’

‘David, I’m not your mistress, and I never will be. If you really want to know, I’m quite happy to be friends with you, but I don’t want to sleep with you again.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘You can’t tell me that wasn’t the best sex you ever had in your whole life?’

‘I can, as a matter of fact. But that’s not the issue. The simple reality is that I don’t want to have an affair with you, no matter how casual it is.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yes. I’m serious.’

‘And that wasn’t the best sex you ever had in your whole life?’

‘No.’

David lowered his head and slowly stroked his chin, like a man pondering a deep mathematical problem, or a cryptic crossword clue. Then, with no warning at all, he swung the Bollinger bottle around and smashed it against the porch railing. The floor was covered in shards of shattered green glass and fizzing champagne.

David pointed his finger at Katie and said, ‘You know what you are, don’t you, Katie? There’s a word for women like you.’

‘Go away out of here,’ Katie told him. ‘Go home and look after your wife.’

‘You’re in your flowers right now, but you’ll miss me. Tomorrow night when you’re in bed alone you’ll remember what I was like, and you’ll regret it.’

‘Go home, David. Either you’re langered or you’ve been snorting something.’

‘God, you’re so high and mighty. Just because you’re a detective, you think you have the right to treat me like I’m some kind of dirtball.’

‘David, go home. If you don’t go home now I’ll arrest you for harassment and threatening a police officer.’

David closed his eyes for a few moments, as if he were consulting some inner advisor, and then he said, ‘Okay, Katie. I’m sorry. I apologize. I lost my temper, that’s all. I’m not really used to women saying no.’

He looked down at the broken glass and said, ‘Do you have a dustpan and brush? I’ll sweep this all up for you. I’m sorry.’

‘Just go home, David. I can clear it up myself in the morning.’

‘We can still be friends, though, can’t we?’

Katie started to close the front door. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it. Now, please, go.’

David hesitated, and then he went. Katie closed the door, bolted it and slid on the security chain. Barney was standing in the hallway looking up at her expectantly, ready for his walk.

‘Sorry, Barns. Not tonight. You’ll have to make do with the back yard.’

After she had let him out of the kitchen door, she returned to the living room and sat down. It was only then that she realized how quickly her heart was thumping. What made her feel so stressed was not just the way in which David had lost his temper so suddenly, but the fact that she still found him sexually attractive. His violent show of frustration had alarmed her at the time, but in retrospect it had aroused her, too. She hadn’t known many men who would smash a 70-euro bottle of champagne just because they wanted to go to bed with her so much.

Even though she hadn’t forgotten the disinterested look on his face as he had pushed his way in and out of her, there was a lot about him that aroused her. That bald penis, almost sculptural, and the way that it had felt against her own bare skin. That self-possession and those secretive smiles, as if he knew something about her that even she didn’t know. Maybe that came from years of working as a vet and learning to understand creatures that couldn’t express themselves in words, only with their eyes.

She finished the dregs of her vodka and was considering pouring herself another one when Fionnuala Sweeney appeared on the TV screen, with Rocky Bay Beach behind her. The sky was growing dark, so this report must have been recorded about half past six. Katie could see that the blue Technical Bureau tents were being dismantled and the tide was already sluicing in as far as the rocks.

‘The badly burned bodies of a man and a woman were found today on the beach here at Rocky Bay. Gardaí were tight-lipped about their identities and how they had died, but we understand that they were a married couple from Ballinlough, Norman and Meryl Pearse. Norman Pearse was a manager at Faraway Travel in the city centre, and his wife worked for Eason’s bookstore.

‘Mrs Pearse is believed to have found Derek Hagerty, the owner of Hagerty’s Autos at Looney’s Cross, after he had managed to escape from being abducted by the now-notorious kidnap gang calling themselves the High Kings of Erin. Mr Hagerty was in a poor condition by the roadside, but Mrs Pearse and her husband took him into their home to recover.

‘Before Mr Pearse dropped off Mr Hegarty in Cork City centre, however, he informed the gardaí and Mr Hegarty was taken into protective custody, where he remains today. Reliable sources suggest that Mr and Mrs Pearse may have been punished for notifying the gardaí, and because they knew too much about Mr Hagerty’s abduction, and who might be responsible.

‘The same sources say that Mr and Mrs Pearse were buried up to their armpits in sand and then doused in petrol which was set alight.

‘Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire who attended the scene today refused to confirm or deny the identities of the victims or how they had met their deaths. She also declined to comment on the suggestion that the murders may have been committed by the High Kings of Erin, who netted a quarter of a million euros in ransom money for Derek Hagerty even though he had already escaped.’

Katie could only sit and watch this report with a growing feeling of helplessness and frustration. But Bryan Molloy had been right. It was up to her to ferret out these ‘reliable sources’ who were leaking so much confidential information to the media. After all, he had made it clear that
he
wasn’t going to do it, not the great Acting Top Cop.

She poured herself another drink and went into the kitchen. Barney was scratching at the door, so she let him in, and he brought with him the smell of damp dog hair and fog. She went to the fridge and took out three eggs, which she cracked into a Pyrex jug. The third egg crushed to pieces in her hand and all the shell dropped into the omelette mixture.

She started to fish out the fragments of broken shell with a teaspoon, but then she suddenly lost patience and threw the jug into the sink. The jug didn’t break, but bounced up, so that egg was splashed all the way up the right-hand curtains and halfway across the window.

Katie didn’t cry, but stood there watching the egg sliding slowly down the windowpane.

***

That night, she was woken up by the sound of shouting from next door, followed by screaming and the loud slamming of doors.

She lifted her head from the pillow and squinted at her bedside clock. It was 3.07. So much for Sorcha sleeping until morning.

The shouting and screaming went on for at least ten minutes. Katie lay there in the darkness, wondering if she should go next door and intervene, but in the end she decided it would be wiser not to. God knows what an angry David Kane would tell his wife if she tried to stick her nose in, especially after tonight’s performance on the porch.

After ten minutes there was absolute silence, which in some ways was more disturbing than all the arguing. Katie remained awake for nearly an hour afterwards, but eventually she slept. She dreamed that she was back in Knocknadeenly, talking to John, trying to persuade him to come and take Barney for a walk with her, but he kept his back to her and wouldn’t turn around.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘
Don’t
come. See if I care.’

He still wouldn’t turn to face her. ‘I’ll be gone by the time you get back,’ he told her, and even in her dream she was sure that she would never see him again.

Next day, the sky was slate-grey and it was raining hard. Shoppers hurried to and fro past the windows of Pat Whelan’s shop as if they were fleeing from some major disaster.

Only one customer came in all morning, at ten minutes to twelve, when Pat was almost ready to close. He was a fiftyish man with a crimson face and wet grey straggly hair. When he had closed the shop door behind him, he stood on the mat and shook his old-fashioned black rubber mackintosh with a rumble like distant thunder.

He approached the counter and said, in a slurry accent, ‘The Broad Black Brimmer.’

‘The Broad Black Brimmer?’ asked Pat. ‘What of it?’

The crimson-faced man leaned closer, and his breath was sour with last night’s Guinness. ‘The sheet music, if you have it, on account of me and my friends are holding a republican evening.’

‘Oh yes?’

The crimson-faced man spoke with the precision of somebody who knows that he’s still under the influence of drink. ‘We’re commemorating the amnesty that the Free State offered to the soldiers of the IRA in October 1922.’

Pat went across to the racks of sheet music and started to sort through the section devoted to the Wolfe Tones. ‘And – ah – why would you be commemorating
that
, like?’

‘Because the boys told them to
shtick
their amnesty, that’s why. They stayed true to the cause. And because of that, a lot more of them died. It’s them we’ll be honouring.’

Pat found him the sheet music of ‘The Broad Black Brimmer’, but as he went over to the till he couldn’t stop himself from glancing apprehensively towards the street outside. Shortly after a quarter past seven that morning he had received a phone call from the carroty-curled young man, advising him in that hoarse, throaty voice to step out of his shop at noon precisely, and lock it, leaving a sign on the door saying ‘Back in 5 Minutes’. That would indicate that he had intended to return, and that he hadn’t been a party to his own kidnapping.

He felt tingly with nerves but at the same time felt an underlying sense of relief. For over three years now, he hadn’t been able to see any way at all to clear his debts and the future had appeared unrelentingly grim. He had already accepted that he would probably have to sell his house, and his car, and all his stock for a knock-down price. He wasn’t at all sure that his marriage could survive him going bankrupt. Mairead had already talked about going to live with her sister in Waterford, and he could hardly blame her.

‘You should come along,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘We’re holding it at Quinlan’s, tomorrow night. We’ll be singing all the good old favourites – “Come Out Ye Black and Tans”, “The Boys of Fair Hill”.’

He broke into song, waving his hands as if he were conducting a choir. ‘The smell on Patrick’s Bridge is wicked, how does Father Mathew stick it? Here’s up them all, say the boys of Fair Hill!’

He cackled and snorted and shook his head.

Pat said, ‘Thanks for the invitation, but I can’t.’

‘You’d have a whale of a time. At least think about it.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Oh, pity. Are you going away, then?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Off on your holliers?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Oh yes? Where are you going, like?’

Pat hesitated. Then he said, ‘Nowhere in particular. In fact, I just might come to Quinlan’s. I could do with a night out.’

If the guards manage to trace this fellow, he was thinking, seeing as how he’ll probably be the last person I talked to before I went missing, that will confirm that I had no idea at all that I was going to be kidnapped.

The crimson-faced man rolled up the sheet music and stuck it into his raincoat pocket. Pat followed him to the door to let him out.

‘I’ll be seeing you at Quinlan’s, then, most likely,’ said the crimson-faced man. He leaned out into the street and stuck out his hand, palm upwards, squinting up at the sky. ‘The fecking angels are crying again. Don’t know what they’re so fecking sad about.’ Then he teetered off down the street, stumbling over one of the high raised kerbstones and nearly falling in front of a taxi.

Pat checked his watch. Three minutes to twelve.
Oh well, deep breath, Pat,
now’s the time
. He went to the back of the shop to collect his khaki waterproof jacket and switch off the lights and set the alarm.

Before he left, he looked around the shop and had a strange feeling that he would never set foot in it again, although there was no logical reason why he shouldn’t. Once he had received his share of the ransom money, he would at least have a chance to arrange some kind of repayment plan with his creditors, and maybe he could find a way to save the business from closure.

He locked the front door and started to walk eastwards along Oliver Plunkett Street towards Parnell Place, as he had been instructed on the phone. The rain was lashing down now and he gripped the collar of his jacket and kept his head down. A young woman in a red raincoat collided with him and almost poked out his left eye out with the spokes of her umbrella, but when she said, ‘Jesus, I’m sorry!’ he simply waved one hand to show her that it didn’t matter, and carried on walking.

He reached the corner of Parnell Place and hesitated, looking south towards Parnell Bridge, blinking against the raindrops on his eyelashes. Parnell Place was one-way, with traffic coming from his right, but at that moment there was no traffic at all, only parked cars.

Now that he had locked the shop and was out on the street, he was beginning to doubt that he was doing the right thing. Perhaps by agreeing to this mock-kidnapping he was being a coward rather than a realist. All right, he was up to his ears in debt, and this ginger-haired young feen had threatened him with God knows what if he didn’t play along. But he was still his own man and he had always prided himself on being afraid of nobody or nothing. Apart from that, faking his own abduction to extort money was a serious crime. If he were found out, he could face a long stretch in jail.