Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (28 page)

‘They were taken to the beach at Rocky Bay. They were half buried in the sand, and then they had petrol poured all over them, and they were set alight. We’re not one hundred per cent sure if they were still alive when they were burning, but it seems unlikely that anybody would go to the trouble of burying them up to their chests if they were already dead, don’t you think?’

Derek Hagerty pressed his hands to his ears as if he couldn’t bear to hear any more.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh Jesus, dear Jesus, what have I done?’

Katie leaned forward. ‘I’ll tell you what you’ve done, Derek. You’ve got yourself mixed up with some very evil and heartless criminals. You can’t blame yourself entirely. I don’t think you had any conception of how vicious they could be. You were naive, and you were foolish, and now Norman and Meryl Pearse have both been murdered because of your naivety. But you do have a chance to redeem yourself.’

‘I can’t tell you anything! I can’t! What if they take my Shelagh and set fire to
her
? What if they catch up with me one day, which they will, and burn me to death? Oh God, I can’t stand this any more! That poor, poor woman! And her poor husband! God! All they wanted to do was help me!’

‘Derek, you said that Meryl had a friend with her when she found you by the roadside.’

Derek Hagerty pulled a tissue out of the box on the table and wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘She did, yes,’ he sniffed.

‘Do you have any idea who he was? We’re worried that if we don’t protect him, he could be in danger, too. It’s quite clear that these people are determined to eliminate anyone who could testify against them.’

Derek Hagerty shook his head. ‘I don’t know for sure. I think he might have been an old boyfriend of hers. They’d been out together for a drink or something, so far as I could tell. I heard them arguing about what she was going to tell her husband. She dropped him off at Anderson’s Quay before she drove me back to her house.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Not really. Not bad-looking. Brownish hair. He was wearing a dark blue coat with a light blue sweater underneath it. She called him Eoghan.’

‘Eoghan? You’re sure about that?’

‘She said something like, “Nothing happened between us, did it, Eoghan?” Something like that.’

Katie said, ‘Good. That’s a start. Now tell me how you first got involved with these people who were supposed to have abducted you. Did you know any of them before this was all fixed up?’

‘I’m not saying any more. I’ve told you about Mrs Pearse’s friend, but that’s only in case they try to kill him, too. If I tell you any more, and they find out about it, I won’t stand an earthly.’

‘You know that I could arrest you now and charge you with conspiracy? You could be facing years in jail.’

‘At least I’d be safe.’

‘Safe? In jail? I hope you’re not serious. You don’t know how many friends your co-conspirators have in jail – friends who might be only too happy to do them a favour and stick a chiv in you, or cut your throat with a razor-blade glued to a toothbrush.’

Derek Hagerty said, ‘No! I’m not saying another word! You can threaten me as much as you like, but I’m not telling you anything more! Look what happened when I let it slip about the Pearses. Mother of God – they did that? They really burned them alive?’

‘Yes,’ said Katie. ‘They really did. You’ll see it on the news this evening.’

‘Holy heart of Jesus. I can’t bear it.’

‘Derek, I’m giving you one last chance. Tell me who these people are who kidnapped you. Even if you’re afraid to tell me their names, at least give me
something
to go on. It needn’t come out that it was you that told me. Otherwise I won’t have any alternative. I’ll have to arrest you.’

‘Then arrest me. And tell the media that you’ve arrested me. And tell them why – that I’ve refused to give you any information about the gang who abducted me.’

‘Derek,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve no doubt at all that they’re going to do the same thing to somebody else, and that more innocent people are going to be killed as collateral damage, like the Pearses, and like poor young Garda McCracken. Do you want to have
those
people on your conscience, too?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Derek Hagerty. ‘I can’t be persuaded. Nothing that you can do to me would be as bad as what those fellows could do. They pulled out my teeth with pliers, for Christ’s sake, with no anaesthetic at all except for half a bottle of Paddy’s, and that almost fecking killed me. And that was when I was cooperating with them.’

‘So you
were
cooperating with them?’

Derek Hagerty looked up again, startled at his own admission. ‘I never said that. I never said that I cooperated. I didn’t cooperate.’

Katie lifted up her iPhone. ‘You did so. I have it on here.’

‘Well, I didn’t. I deny it. I totally deny it. I was taken by force against my will and it was only by a pure miracle that I escaped with my life. That’s all. From now on, I’m keeping my mouth shut, and you can’t force me to incriminate myself. If you’re going to arrest me, I want to call my solicitor.’

‘Have it your own way,’ said Katie. ‘Derek Hagerty, I am arresting you under Section Seventeen of the Criminal Justice Act 1994, for conspiracy to demand money with menaces. You are not obliged to say anything, but if you wish to do so whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’

Derek Hagerty said nothing. Katie sat staring at him for almost half a minute, giving him one more chance to change his mind. The only sounds were the rain pattering against the window and the distant echoing of somebody shouting. A door slammed. Somebody walked along the corridor outside, whistling, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking. Another door slammed.

Katie stood up. ‘I don’t exactly know what you’ve got yourself into, Derek, but I can promise you that this is not the way out of it. An officer will be with you shortly to read the charge sheet against you.’

Derek Hagerty remained silent and completely motionless. Katie had the feeling that he wanted to stay like that for ever. If time stood still, then he would never have to suffer the consequences of what he had done. But the minute hand of the clock on the wall behind him shuddered to twelve – and at that moment Pat was locking the door of his music shop on Oliver Plunkett Street and stepping out into the rain.

***

Katie found Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán in the canteen, eating a messy corned-beef sandwich and talking to Detective Garda Nessa Goold, who had joined Katie’s team only three weeks before. Detective Garda Goold was a dark-haired girl, pretty but slightly plump, with dark brown eyes and eyebrows that could have done with some plucking, and a dark brown mole on her upper lip. She stood up as Katie approached their table, but Katie waved her hand to indicate that she should sit down again.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán held up her half-eaten sandwich. ‘This is my last night’s supper,’ she explained. ‘
And
this morning’s breakfast,
and
my lunch, too. I was wallfalling with the hunger.’

‘How’s it going?’ asked Katie, smiling at Detective Garda Goold.

‘Oh, surviving, ma’am! I think I may be getting somewhere with Roisin Begley. I have a fair description of the fellow that her school friend saw her with, or his car anyway, because they were involved in a bit of an altermacation with another driver who was coming out of the car park on Patrick’s Quay. The fellow in the pay booth said it was a silvery-green Renault Mégane with a dinge in the rear offside door. All I have to do now is locate it.’

‘Well, good luck with that, because Jim Begley’s been ringing about every ten minutes, accusing us of gross incompetence. When I told him that we were devoting as much time as we possibly could to finding his daughter, he said we couldn’t find the time in a clock shop. Well, I can hardly blame him. He and his wife must be worried sick.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán finished her mouthful of sandwich and said, ‘Did you have any luck with Derek Hagerty?’

‘I’ve formally arrested him on a charge of conspiracy to demand money with menaces. I don’t think it’s going to persuade him to talk, though. He’s so scared of these High Kings of Erin that he’d rather face jail than tell us who they are – especially now he knows what they did to the Pearses. But … he did give me one little bit of information that might give us a lead. Meryl Pearse had a friend with her when she found him by the side of the road, and from what Hagerty heard them saying to each other, it sounds like he was an old boyfriend of hers. She dropped him off at Anderson’s Quay before she drove Hagerty home, so that her husband wouldn’t find out that she’d been out with him.

‘His name was Eoghan, but that’s all Hagerty heard. Brown hair, medium build. Quite good-looking. That’s not a whole lot to go on, I know, but if he was a former boyfriend, it’s likely that her family knows who he is. We’ve already warned them, haven’t we, that the dead woman on Rocky Bay Beach was probably her?’

‘Yes,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Her widowed mother lives in Glanmire and one of her brothers in Douglas. Sergeant Devitt went round to visit them first thing this morning and had a word with them.’

‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘As soon as she’s been formally identified, pay them a visit yourself, would you, and offer your condolences, of course, but make sure you ask them about this Eoghan. I’m not saying that he’ll have anything new to tell us, even if we can find him. The odds are that he won’t. But on the other hand, he might have noticed some detail when he and Meryl Pearse picked up Hagerty – something that seemed like nothing at all at the time, but that might really assist us to make a breakthrough. You never know.’

‘Okay,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘But what happens if I
do
find him, and he
does
have some really vital clue?’

‘In that case, he’s going to need us to give him some close protection. If he saw anything at all that could help us to convict the High Kings of Erin when we bring them to court, then, of course, we’ll have to declare it in the Book of Evidence, and that could put him at extremely high risk. But don’t let’s be dancing till the music starts up.’

They drove for about fifteen minutes, mostly uphill, which led Pat to guess that they were heading north. The acrid tobacco on the blindfold made him sneeze twice, but he had nothing to wipe his nose on except the back of his hand. The bouncer-type sitting on his right-hand side shifted uncomfortably and said, ‘Don’t be blowing any of your gulliers on me, boy, I just had this suit cleaned. Fecking twelve ninety-nine it cost me.’

It was still raining hard and the car’s windscreen wipers squeaked monotonously. The car lurched left, and then right, and then left again; then its tyres were crunching over shingle and they came to a stop. The bouncer-type took hold of Pat’s arm and helped him to climb out of the car, into the rain, and then led him across the driveway by his elbow. He tripped twice on the shingle, but each time the bouncer-type gripped his arm tighter and prevented him from falling,

‘There’s a step up here, boy, that’s it. Then another one.’

They had entered a house now. It was warm inside, although there was a musty smell of damp wallpaper and of dust that had been heated up on rarely used radiators. The front door closed behind them and the crimson-faced man said, ‘You’re all right now, Pat. Let’s take that blindfold off of you.’

He untied the knot at the back of Pat’s head and dragged the scarf away. Pat blinked and looked around. They were standing in the gloomy hallway of a large old house. The floor was covered with rumpled Indian carpets, red and blue originally, but mostly worn down to the string. There were pale rectangular patches on the yellowish walls where pictures had once hung, and the outline of a clock, too. On the opposite side of the hallway a wide staircase led up to a half-landing, dimly illuminated by a tall stained-glass window. The window had a picture of a distant grey castle on it, with rooks flying around its turrets, and a river, with bulrushes.

A side door suddenly opened and the young carroty-curled man appeared, wringing his hands together in apparent satisfaction. ‘Well, Pat, you made it, then!’ he said, in that high, throaty voice. ‘Good man yourself!’ He was wearing a speckly grey polo-neck sweater and tight black jeans that emphasized how skinny his legs were.

Behind him, Pat could see a high-ceilinged living room, sparsely furnished with an antique ottoman and two tub-like armchairs. Through the living-room windows he could see only oak trees with their wet leaves turning rusty, so it was impossible for him to tell where they were. From the time they had been driving, he guessed they were close to Watergrasshill, but he had never seen a house of this size or age around that area, only farms and bungalows. This was more like the houses you would expect to find in Montenotte or Military Hill, but they were only minutes away from the city centre.

‘He was a shade reluctant, like,’ said the crimson-faced man. ‘Said that he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to be kidnapped after all. But we managed to persuade him otherwise.’

‘I still don’t want to go through with this,’ Pat interrupted. ‘I don’t see how we have any chance at all of getting away with it, and I don’t want to be ending up in jail.’

‘Pat, Pat – I wouldn’t have taken you for such a pessimist,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘Besides, like I told you before, you don’t have a choice. Well, you
do
, like, but I wouldn’t really call the graveyard much of a choice, would you?’

‘So if I don’t pretend to be kidnapped, you’re going to kill me, is that about the size of it?’

‘You have me. That is exactly the size of it.’

‘Well, screw you, that’s all I have to say. I’m not afraid of you, no way.’

‘Listen to me, you handicap,’ said the carroty-curled young man, stepping up close and prodding Pat in the chest. ‘I made you a once-in-a-lifetime offer to get you out of all your financial woes and you accepted it. But now you’re going back on yourself? Sorry, boy, but it doesn’t work like that.’