Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (27 page)

He looked across to the other side of the road, to the cream-painted facade of the Panda Mama Chinese Restaurant on the corner. The carroty-curled young man had told him to walk slowly over towards it. The plan was that a car would pull up in front of him, two men would climb out, and they would snatch him. Parnell Place was never too crowded, so it was unlikely that anybody would come to his assistance, but there were bound to be at least three or four witnesses.

As he stepped off the kerb, a dark blue Ford Mondeo that was parked outside Mulligan’s pub started its engine and reversed out into the street. It stopped for a second as the driver changed gear, then started driving towards him with its headlights on full.

He was suddenly gripped by the thought, This is sheer fecking madness. What the feck am I doing this for? These people are criminals and I’m allowing them to take me away?

The Mondeo slithered to a halt right in front of him. Its doors were flung open and two bulky bald-headed men climbed out of it. He turned around and started running away, back along Oliver Plunkett Street, running in the road because the pavements were too crowded. He ran as fast as he could, not even looking behind him to see if the men were coming after him.

He dodged an elderly couple crossing the road in front of him and almost lost his balance, staggering like a man running too fast down a steep hill. A green An Post van blew its horn at him and a cyclist shouted something abusive that he didn’t catch.

He wasn’t fit. He had only recently given up smoking and he had been drinking far too much since the business had started to lose money. And just as he passed the Ovens Bar, gasping, the crimson-faced man in the black rubber raincoat stepped out in front of him, as if from nowhere at all, and seized the sleeve of his jacket. He slewed around, panting, with clear snot running from his nostrils and rain dripping from his chin. He was too breathless to speak, but he tried to wrench his arm away. The crimson-faced man clung on to him, his eyes staring and fierce, not smiling or friendly at all now, and wouldn’t let him go.

‘I had a feeling you might lose your bottle, boy. That’s why I’ve been waiting here for ye.’

‘Get the – get the feck off of me – ’

‘I will in me bollocks.’

A few seconds later, the two bouncer-types arrived and immediately seized Pat’s arms. Several passers-by stopped to stare at them, but nobody made any attempt to come over and ask what was going on. It was raining too hard, and in any case they didn’t look like the sort of men who would take kindly to being challenged.

‘You came to a solemn agreement,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘You can’t go back on a solemn agreement.’

‘I didn’t agree to nothing,’ Pat protested, as the bouncer-types tugged him back along the street, half marching and half hopping. The Mondeo had followed them, even though Oliver Plunkett Street was a pedestrian-only zone after eleven in the morning. One of the bouncer-types opened the back door and pushed Pat inside, climbing in next to him, while the other walked around the car and wedged himself in on the other side. The crimson-faced man sat himself in the front passenger seat. ‘Right,’ he said to the driver, ‘let’s get the fuck out of here.’

The driver was a young man with spiky blond hair and a red spot on the end of his nose and sunglasses, in spite of the gloom. He twisted around in his seat and reversed at speed all the way back to Parnell Place, the gearbox whining in protest.

‘I want you to let me out,’ said Pat, his voice quaking. ‘I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve come to a decision. I don’t want any part of it.’

‘A bit late now, Pat,’ said the crimson-faced man, without turning round.

‘I won’t say a word to nobody, I swear to God.’

‘Too right you fecking won’t. You won’t get the fecking opportunity.’

‘Just let me out. I can deal with my financial problems on my own.’

‘You’re too late, Pat. I told you. Now shut the front door, would you?’

‘Listen – ’ Pat began, but one of the bouncer-types took hold of his right ear and twisted it around so hard that it felt as if he were tearing it off.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, pressing his hand to the side of his head.

‘It’s like you were told,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘Either you cooperate willingly or else we’ll have to
force
you to cooperate, and we don’t want to have to do that. It only makes for bad feeling.’

‘Jesus Christ, that hurt.’

‘I’m sure that it did, like. Now let’s have some peace and quiet, shall we, unless you want more of the same.’

They were driving along Merchants Quay now, alongside the river. The crimson-faced man turned around in his seat and held out a black woollen scarf. ‘Right now, Pat, we’re going to put a blindfold on you. You won’t mind that, will you? It’s entirely for your own protection, like, so we can be sure that you can’t tell anybody where we’re taking you. It wouldn’t be like a real kidnap, would it, if you knew where you were?’

Pat said nothing, but closed his eyes as one of the bouncer-types tied the scarf tightly around his head. It smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, and even though he kept his eyes closed it still made them water.

When Katie left for the city at seven-thirty in the morning David Kane’s Range Rover was still parked in the next-door driveway, so she hadn’t gone to see if Sorcha needed any help. If his tantrum on the porch last night was anything to go by, she was beginning to ask herself if he had been telling her the whole truth about his marriage, and Sorcha’s violent rages. She thought that if she ever found herself married to a man who smashed champagne bottles when he was denied sex, she would probably end up doolally, too.

It was so dark in her office that she had to switch on the lights, and her desk lamp as well. The rain pattered against the windows like somebody throwing handfuls of currants at them.

She had only just started to leaf through the messages on her desk when Detective Horgan appeared at her door.

‘Morning, ma’am. Miserable old day today.
Drawky
, my grannie would have called it.’

‘What did you want?’ Katie asked him. ‘I have to go and interview Derek Hagerty again in a minute.’

Detective Horgan held up a green manila folder. ‘It’s Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy, ma’am. I’ve been checking with the Companies Registration Office in Dublin and I’ve discovered that he’s the majority shareholder in a limited partnership called Flathead Consultants.’

‘
Flathead
Consultants? And what do they do?’

‘Construction consultants, apparently, whatever that means. They haven’t yet lodged their accounts for last year, but in the previous year they had a turnover of one and a half million euros and made a profit of six hundred and seventy thousand.’

‘Construction consultants?’ said Katie. ‘What on earth would Bryan Molloy know about construction?’

‘I suppose “construction” could cover a whole multitude of things to do with building. Getting planning permission, that kind of thing. Molloy has very close contacts with lots of politicians, doesn’t he? Goes to all their fancy banquets, plays golf with them regular. They’re all Masons, too.’

‘Maybe you’re right. So where did all of this turnover come from?’

Detective Horgan opened the file and turned over the first two pages. ‘Most of it came from a company called Crossagalla Groundworks. They’re a civil engineering company based in Limerick.’

‘And what do we know about Crossagalla Groundworks?’

‘Not much. The names of their directors and not a lot else. They have a website, but all it gives you is a list of what projects they’ve been involved in, like the wastewater works at Carrigrenan.’

‘Okay,’ said Katie. ‘Why don’t you get in touch with Henry Street and see what they can tell you about them? Meanwhile – look – I have to go. We’re holding a media conference at eleven and apart from talking to Derek Hagerty I have to get up to speed on these Rocky Beach murders.’

Detective Horgan turned to leave the office and as he did so he almost collided with Bill Phinner, who was still wearing his lab coat, as well as his usual mournful expression. He always looked to Katie as if his dog had just died and he had lost a bundle of money on the races at Mallow, both on the same day.

‘Good morning to you, Bill,’ she said. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Oh, good morning,’ he said, looking over at the rain that was dribbling down the windows. ‘Not that good, though. I have a leaky attic roof at home that needs fixing.’

‘What about our victims? Have we identified them yet?’

‘We’re still waiting on the DNA. We should get the results of that in an hour or two. But the female had three fingers of her left hand curled up tight against her palm, so that the fingertips weren’t burned, and we were able to take some good prints off of them.’

He laid the printouts of two sets of fingerprints on her desk, both of which had been marked with red felt-tip pen.

‘We compared them with all the prints that we lifted last night from the Pearse house, and they matched all right. So the female is definitely Meryl Pearse. We’ll be double-checking, of course, with the hairs we’ve taken from their combs and brushes, and the residue from Norman Pearse’s electric razor, but I don’t think there’s very much doubt as to the male’s identity.’

‘How about the footprints?’ Katie asked him.

‘They were a bit of a jumble, I have to admit, but I put young Phelan on it and he has a very sharp eye for detail, that boy. Apart from the victims, there were four other people on the beach, all of them men, judging by the size of their feet and what they must have weighed. One was wearing Irish Setter RutMaster rubber boots, size ten. Another was wearing Cofra Somalia safety boots, size eleven. A third was wearing a standard pair of Dunlop wellingtons, also size eleven. The fourth was wearing an ordinary smooth-soled leather shoe, but with quite a distinctive pointed toe.’

‘So if we found the people who were wearing them, you could positively identify those boots and shoes, and match them to their owners?’

‘No trouble at all. Every boot and shoe impression has its own unique markings, caused by wear and tear. And every boot and shoe has perspiration inside it, and perspiration gives us DNA, just like mucus and earwax and urine and faeces and vomit – and even tears.’

‘Yes, thanks a million, Bill, I know all about that, but I’ve not long ago had breakfast. What about the cigarette butts?’

‘We’ve tested those for DNA, too, but like I say, we’ve not yet had the results back and I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful that we’ll be able to make a match – not until you bring in a suspect we can match them with. We’re still checking the Saint Nicholas medallion, but again I don’t think that can help us much until we have a suspect who might have been seen wearing it. Even then … you know, there are thousands of them.’

‘Well, thanks, Bill,’ said Katie. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’

‘Not at the moment. Once we’re able formally to say for sure that it’s Mr and Mrs Pearse, we’ll be able to go through their house inch by inch for forensics and that may give us some more.’

Bill Phinner picked up his printouts and left. Katie quickly finished sorting through her messages, but there was nothing urgent that she had to attend to. An update from Detective Dooley, telling her that he had interviewed the last of the wedding guests from the Gallagher–O’Malley ceilidh, but hadn’t been able to glean any more information about who might have brought the cake with Micky Crounan’s head in it. An invitation to talk to the sixth-year students at Christ King Girls’ Secondary School in Douglas about women’s careers in law enforcement. A lengthy memo from Finola McFerren, the state solicitor, about the Michael Gerrety hearing, with a list of proposals for future prosecutions.

There was also a report from Sergeant Ni Nuallán about the continuing search for Roisin Begley. Three members of the public had reported seeing a girl who answered her description – one in Togher, on the south side of the city, and two in the city centre. This increased the possibility that she was still alive, and unharmed, but they were no nearer to discovering what had happened to her or where she might be.

She switched off her desk lamp, but before she left her office she went over to the window and stared through the raindrops at the Elysian Tower, the tallest building in Ireland, pale green and almost ghostly in the gloom. Only a few of its windows were lit up, because so many of the apartments were still unoccupied, but the lights near the top were shining. That was where Michael Gerrety lived. She could imagine him up there, talking and laughing, and she found herself breathing more deeply and narrowing her eyes, like a predatory animal. She would get him one day.

***

Katie went downstairs to Interview Room Two where Derek Hagerty was waiting for her. He was sitting at the table in the centre of the room with a polystyrene cup of tea in front of him, looking weary and unkempt, an old dog that no longer has the energy to groom itself.

In the corner of the room, a young female garda was tapping at her mobile phone, but as soon as Katie came in she dropped it in her pocket and stood up.

‘That’s all right,’ Katie told her. ‘You can take a bit of a break, if you like. I’ll call you when I’ve finished.’

She drew out the chair opposite Derek Hagerty and sat down. He glanced up at her once, and then lowered his eyes again, staring at his cup of tea.

‘Hello, Derek,’ she said.

Derek Hagerty grimaced and nodded, although he didn’t say anything and he didn’t look up.

There was a long pause, but eventually Katie said, ‘Well? Aren’t you curious to know what’s happened to the Pearses?’

Still he didn’t look up. ‘Have you found them?’ he asked, with phlegm in his throat. He coughed to clear it, and then he said, ‘Are they back home now?’

‘Oh, we’ve found them all right, but they’re not back home. They’ll never be going back home now, except if their families decide to hold a wake there.’

Now Derek Hagerty did raise his eyes. ‘They’re
dead
?’ he said.