Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (45 page)

She had nine e-mails waiting for her, but she ignored them and typed in
Kilshane Tarmac
.

The company’s website featured a photograph of a red Dynapac asphalt paver with two workmen in overalls standing beside it with their thumbs up. Underneath was the motto that Fergus O’Donnell had found so amusing, ‘We’re Streets Ahead’.

What caught Katie’s attention was that Kilshane Tarmac was based on Dublin Road, Mitchelstown, but their registered address was given as Crossagalla, in Limerick. At the very foot of the home page there was a line of tiny type that said, ‘A Division of Crossagalla Groundworks’.

She scribbled a note of that and then sat back, frowning at the screen. As Detective Horgan had discovered, Crossagalla Groundworks was the principal source of income for Flathead Consultants, and the majority shareholder in Flathead Consultants was Acting Chief Superintendent Bryan Molloy. So what in the name of all that was holy did this mean? A subsidiary of the company that had paid Bryan Molloy over a million and a half euros in the previous financial year had deliberately attempted to conceal the remains of a homicide victim. If the asphalt laying hadn’t been undertaken under cover of darkness, which was probably why the workmen hadn’t noticed that they had left the man’s fingertips protruding from the side of the road, nobody would ever have discovered what had happened to him.

The real question was, what kind of relationship did Bryan Molloy have with Crossagalla Groundworks, if any, and had he known that Kilshane Tarmac had sent out a team to obliterate any evidence of what had happened to Micky Crounan – assuming, of course, that it
was
Micky Crounan? Whoever the body belonged to, the workmen who had buried him in asphalt were all guilty of aiding and abetting a homicide, and it was highly likely that the directors of Kilshane Tarmac were equally culpable.

Katie could see that she needed to investigate the disposal of this body with extreme caution. There was a long chain of command to be followed, link by link, and she didn’t want to rattle that chain until she had found out who was at the end of it, and how dangerous they might be. She had to find Kenny Boyle first and see what she could get out of him, and then confront the owners of Kilshane Tarmac and the directors of Crossagalla Groundworks. She needed to do it quickly, too, before any public announcement was made that she had been suspended.

She sorely wished that she had a contact at Anglesea Street whom she could trust implicitly. She was reasonably confident that Liam Fennessy and Kyna Ni Nuallán and Patrick O’Donovan were all reliable, and that none of them had been tipping off the High Kings of Erin about their ongoing investigation – but at the same time, she couldn’t be entirely sure. In the past, she had known several senior Garda officers who had accepted pay-offs from crime gangs. Most of their service records had been exemplary, but they had run into money problems for one reason or another – gambling usually, or buying shares in companies that had collapsed in 2008 – and taking bribes had seemed like an easy way to get out of debt. If they turned a blind eye to a traffic violation, or a minor assault, or the selling of Es in nightclubs, who did it hurt?

She looked up the directors of Kilshane Tarmac. One of them – Lorcan Devitt – was also a director of Crossagalla Groundworks. She logged on to PULSE, the police computer, and was relieved to find that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly hadn’t yet thought of ordering her access to it to be blocked. Lorcan Devitt’s name appeared on PULSE three times. Each time he had been charged with threatening behaviour or assault, but all three charges had subsequently been dropped because of insufficient evidence. No witnesses could be found who were prepared to give evidence against him in open court.

The second of the three charges related to an incident in August 2011 outside Mickey Martin’s pub on Thomas Street in Limerick, when a young man had been slashed diagonally across the lips with a razor. The charge had been dropped, but it gave Katie the lead she was looking for. The twenty-year-old victim had been a member of the Dundon crime family, and Lorcan Devitt had not been charged alone: one of the three men arrested with him had been the late Niall Duggan. That was proof enough for Katie that Lorcan Devitt was closely connected to one of Limerick’s most notorious gangs. Of course, Niall Duggan was dead now, but it was common knowledge that his twin children, Aengus and Ruari, were still running the family business – drug-dealing and extortion and car-theft. Katie had seen reports that out of 805 cars stolen in Limerick in the past year, at least half were suspected to have been taken by the Duggans.

There was something else that Katie knew about the Duggans. In 2009 they had pretended to kidnap two members of the Ryan family and demanded sixty thousand euros for their release. What nobody had known at the time was that the Ryans and the Duggans, once sworn enemies, had agreed to make up and share the city’s drugs’ trade between them, as well as protection rackets and ATM robberies. A stool pigeon had later exposed the ‘abduction’ as a fake, but by then the ransom money had been paid over and, presumably, split between the kidnappers and the kidnapped.

Katie went over to the drinks table and poured herself a glass of vodka. It was too early to drink and she knew that she needed to keep a clear head, but the ramifications of what she was discovering were overwhelming. She had never relied on hunches. Even if they proved to be correct, they invariably led to corners being cut and bad police work, and it was no good standing in the witness box in the Criminal Court and telling the judge that a defendant was guilty of manslaughter ‘because I feel it in my water’.

All the same, from that one casual remark that Fergal O’Donnell had made that afternoon, she now believed it highly probable that the Duggans were the High Kings of Erin, or at least some of them. And it also seemed highly probable that Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was connected to them somehow, even if it was only financially. He might not be directly involved in the kidnappings and killings, but it was conceivable that he was being generously remunerated to look the other way.

If he was, that would explain his bullying and his persistent attempts to undermine her authority. If she were to find out that he was being bribed by the High Kings of Erin, then he would have to go the way of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and justice minister Alan Shatter, and at the very least resign.

‘Oh, Barns,’ she said, stroking Barney’s ears. ‘What in the name of Jesus am I going to do now?’

She had started to search for more information about Flathead Consultants when her doorbell chimed. Barney ran to the front door and barked, while Katie picked up her gun from the coffee table and tucked it behind one of the cushions. Then she went into the hallway and called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ said a familiar voice. ‘It’s David. I need to talk to you.’

***

Katie opened the door. David was standing in the porch in a navy-blue suit, complete with waistcoat, and a pink silk tie. His hair was neatly combed and she could smell a strong musky aftershave. As smart as he was, though, his right eye was plum-coloured and so swollen that he could hardly see out of it.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you need to talk about?’

‘I’d find it a whole lot easier if I could come inside.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Katie. ‘I can hear you perfectly well where you are.’

‘I went to the Garda station this morning and filed a complaint against you, for assaulting me.’

‘I know that, of course.’

David took two or three deep breaths, and then he said, ‘I want you to understand that I didn’t do it with malice.’

‘Oh, is that right? You tried to attack me, David, and I defended myself as anybody would, man or woman.’

‘Well, that’s your interpretation. I wasn’t attacking you, Katie. Far from it.’

‘What else would you call pushing me over and attempting to rape me?’

David lifted up both of his hands in exasperation. ‘Why do women always say that?’

‘Why do women always say what?’

‘Why do women always call it rape just because they’re not exactly in the mood for it? You know how I feel about you, Katie. That time we first made love, that was amazing. You can hardly blame me for assuming that was the beginning of something special. I know you’ve had your period and everything, and you’re stressed about work, this High Kings of Erin thing. But you did lead me on.’

Katie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t work out if he was deluded or manipulative or simply stupid.

David hesitated for a few moments and then he leaned towards her with his left arm raised and his hand resting against the door frame, as if he wanted to say something affectionate and confidential.

‘The thing of it is, Katie, I’m more than ready to withdraw my complaint.’

‘Oh, I see. You’re prepared to admit that you did try to rape me, after all?’

‘Of course not,’ said David. ‘But I am willing to say that it was nothing more than a lovers’ quarrel.’

‘
What
? Are you cracked?’

‘Not at all. If you and I are lovers, then that’ll be the truth, won’t it?’

Katie said, ‘Let me get this straight. What you’re actually saying is that you’ll withdraw your complaint against me if I agree to have sex with you?’

‘“Have sex” doesn’t make it sound very romantic, does it? But okay, if you put it like that. I really like you, Katie. You’re a very attractive woman. You and I could be fantastic together.’

‘And what about Sorcha?’

‘What about Sorcha? She’s a mentaller. She doesn’t need me. She needs a psychiatrist.’

Katie looked at him for a while, leaning against her door frame, confident and casual as if he were chatting her up in a bar. He gave her a small ‘how about it?’ kind of a smile and then grinned at her, baring his teeth.

‘Do you know something?’ she said. ‘What you have just suggested to me comes close to being an arrestable offence. I wish to God it was. Now, get off my porch and never come anywhere near me again. I wish I had never set eyes on you.’

David took his hand away from the door frame and stood up straight. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said.

Katie looked back at him with contempt. Then, without saying another word, she closed the door in his face.

‘Well,’ he said loudly. ‘That’s pretty unequivocal, I’d say. At least I know my position now and it’s certainly not on top of you, is it, Detective Superintendent?’

Katie leaned back against the coats that were hanging in the hallway. Although she wasn’t physically afraid of David, she still found that she was trembling.

After a moment she went back into the living room and switched off her laptop. She could continue her research into Flathead Consultants later. As soon as Barney saw her do that, his tail started wagging briskly and he jumped up at her.

‘Come on, Barns,’ she said. ‘Let’s go out and get ourselves a breath of fresh air.’

When she opened the front door she saw that David’s Range Rover had already gone from the next-door driveway. She let Barney jump up into the back of her Focus and then climbed into the driver’s seat herself. She held on to the steering wheel tightly for a while, willing herself not to think about David any more and not to be angry. He was worse than scum. He didn’t deserve to be spat on. Yet she still felt that she had been in a fight with him, even if it was only a verbal fight, and lost. He had a way about him of making her feel worthless.

She drove up to the Passage West ferry terminal and joined the queue of cars to board the
Glenbrook
. It took only four minutes to cross over to Monkstown but she climbed out of her car and stood by the rail, feeling a sense of relief that she was leaving an unpleasant experience well behind her. The sky was cloudy but bright, lending a dull shine to the River Lee, like tarnished silver. A smug, damp breeze was blowing from the south-west, as if it were telling her that this dry weather wasn’t going to last very much longer and that it was soon going to rain, and heavily, and persistently.

Her father had been planning to move from his tall Victorian house in Monkstown but that was when he and Ailish were going to be married. The house would have been far too large, even for the two of them. and it was damp and run-down and badly needed new slates on the roof.

After Ailish had died, however, her father had chosen to stay. The house had already been crowded with memories of Katie’s mother and now the ghost of Ailish was there, too, and he couldn’t bear to sell it. ‘They left me, the both of them,’ he had told Katie. ‘But I’m not going to leave them, not ever.’

Katie parked in the driveway and went up the steps to the front door. The ivy that clung to the front of the green-painted house was beginning to turn crimson and yellow and it rustled in the breeze. Katie shivered, thinking of David.

Her father opened the door and stood looking at her as if he didn’t know who she was. He had lost weight, so that his face was drawn and sallow and his nose looked even more prominent, and he was unshaven. He was wearing a drooping beige shawl-collar cardigan that needed a wash and baggy brown corduroy trousers and slippers that were frayed as if a cat had been clawing at them.

‘Kathleen!’ he whispered.

‘Well, I’m glad you recognized me,’ said Katie. ‘How are you, Dad? Can me and Barney come in?’

‘Of course you can. How have you been? I’m sorry, but the house is a bit of a tip at the moment. I keep meaning to advertise for a new cleaner, you know, but the days go by. How long is it now since I last saw you?’

Katie followed him into the living room. The house was chilly and smelled damp. There was dust on the window sills and a vase of dead roses hanging their heads on a side table. The kitchen door was open and Katie could see plates stacked in the sink and at least half a dozen dirty teacups. A loaf of Brennans bread was standing on the table but had fallen sideways so that several slices were hanging out of the bright yellow packet.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I meant to come and see you last week,’ said Katie. ‘The trouble is, I’ve been up the walls with these kidnapping cases.’