Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (7 page)

‘He said that if I contacted the Garda or the newspapers or the TV, and he found out about it, that would be the end of Derek immediately. But I don’t know how I’m going to raise two hundred and fifty thousand euros, even if I sell all my jewellery. We don’t have anything else much of value. We used to own a caravan but we had to sell that when business started going downhill.’

Katie picked up the jam jar again. ‘Do these look like your husband’s teeth?’

‘I don’t know for sure. But I think so. There’s one gold one in there and Derek has a gold one.’

‘Who’s your dentist?’

‘Dr Michael Lynch, in Patrick Street.’

Katie stood up and gave the jam jar to Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Kyna, take these to Bill Phinner in the technical lab, would you, please, and then ask Dooley to go round to Dr Lynch, fairly lively if he could, and ask for Derek Hagerty’s dental records. He can explain that Derek Hagerty’s missing and we urgently need to identify his teeth.’

‘Supposing Dr Lynch won’t release them? I mean, he’s going to plead patient confidentiality, isn’t he?’

‘Have him call the Dental Protection people and discuss it with them. They should tell him that it’s okay if they’re required by a police officer. If he still won’t let us have them, we’ll have to apply for a warrant, but I don’t want to waste time doing that if we can possibly help it.’

Once Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán had left her office, Katie sat next to Shelagh Hagerty and took hold of her hand. ‘You said that your business had been going badly, Shelagh. Does Derek owe anybody a lot of money?’

Shelagh Hagerty nodded. ‘The bank most of all, AIB, but I think he’s been borrowing money from his friends, too – right, left and centre. I told him almost a year ago that he should think about declaring himself bankrupt, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Hagerty’s Autos was started by his father and it’s been going since the 1960s. “It’s not a business,” he always says, “it’s a family tradition.”’

‘We’ll need to see the company accounts, and the order books, too,’ said Katie. ‘They might give us some clues. But do you know if any of his creditors has been threatening him at all?’

‘There’s Sean O’Grady, who’s one of his suppliers. He was all sweetness and light, Sean, when things were going well, but as soon as Derek was a month late with his payments he started to say he was going to take him to court. Worse than that, he spread it around that we were in the height of loberty, which wasn’t at all true, but of course it made Derek’s other suppliers very reluctant to give him any more credit.’

‘And the man who called you – I know his voice was muffled – but there wasn’t anything about it that you recognized?’

Shelagh Hagerty shook her head. ‘The only thing I’d say is, he wasn’t local, like. Tipp, I’d say, or Limerick maybe.’

‘Well, we can check all your recent phone records,’ said Katie. ‘If your man knows what he’s doing, though, he’s probably calling you from a pre-paid mobile or one of those stealth phones that changes its identification number with every call.’

‘Dear God, please find Derek and save him,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘I know this fellow said that I shouldn’t come to you, but what else could I do?’

‘When did you last see Derek?’ asked Katie.

‘On Tuesday morning, around seven-thirty, when he left for work.’

‘Did he appear at all worried about anything? Did he say anything that struck you as unusual?’

‘All he said was, “I wouldn’t mind chops for my tea.” Oh – and he asked me to call Danny Rearden the plumber for him, because the upstairs toilet cistern’s been leaking. Then he kissed me, and went.’

‘Did he phone you at all during the day?’

‘No … I tried to phone him myself to tell him that Danny couldn’t come until Thursday, but his mobile was dead and when I called the workshop Fergal said that he’d gone to the bank.’

‘And what time was that?’

‘Three-thirty, four o’clock, something like that.’

‘So what’s happening at the workshop? Is it still open?’

‘Fergal’s running the business for now. He’s the chief mechanic and he mostly runs it anyway these days. I told him that Derek had gone to Macroom for a few days to take care of his elderly ma because his pa’s in hospital, may the Blessed Virgin forgive me for telling such a lie. His pa’s been dead these five years but his ma … well, she’s still tipping away like a small tractor.’

‘Did your man say when he was going to ring you next, or how to get in touch with him if you managed to raise the money?’

‘He said he would call me this evening, at six o’clock, to see how things were going.’

‘All right, Shelagh, I want you to ring Fergal and tell him that you’re sending an accountant to collect all of your books, because you’ve been asked to do an audit for the revenue commissioners. Actually it will be a plain-clothes detective, but we don’t want him to know that.’

‘You don’t think Fergal’s involved in this, do you?’

Katie shook her head. ‘I’m not suggesting that at all, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. When you’ve done that, I want you to go back home and carry on doing what you can to raise the money this man’s asking for. We don’t know what contacts he has and it’s important that you look as if you’re still trying to meet his demands. I’ll be after sending Detective Horgan or Detective Dooley round to your house a little later, and also one of our technicians to record his voice when he calls you this evening, to see if we can’t trace where he’s calling from. I’ll also be assigning two gardaí to keep your street under surveillance, but nobody will know that they’re there.’

‘Oh God, you will find Derek, won’t you?’ Shelagh begged her. ‘I haven’t made a terrible mistake, have I, coming here? Supposing they followed me here without my knowing?’

Katie laid a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Shelagh, you’ve been very brave coming here. It was the best thing you could have done. We’ll do everything possible to get Derek back for you, safe and well.’

All the same, she couldn’t help thinking about Micky Crounan and how his abductors had probably killed him even before his wife had begun to raise the ransom money. Derek Hagerty’s kidnappers had sent only some of his teeth, not his head, but that was no guarantee at all that he was still alive. They could have been wrenched out of his jaw after he was dead.

‘I bought the chops for his tea,’ said Shelagh, dismally. ‘I went to Coughlan’s specially.’

Katie stood beside her for a while, until she had dabbed her eyes and recovered her composure. Then she said, ‘It’s all right. I’m grand altogether. Let me phone Fergal.’

***

When Shelagh Hagerty had made her call and left for home in a taxi, Katie walked along to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy’s office.

He was talking loudly on the phone, pacing up and down as he did so, and letting out bursts of his harsh, abrasive laughter. He beckoned Katie to come in and sit down, but she went over to the window and looked down at the rain-slicked car park. It was always interesting to see which officers spoke to each other in the car park, when they didn’t think they were being watched or overheard. Katie could tell by their body language when they were sharing confidences, or affection.

‘Well, okay, Ryan, you old langer, I’ll let you go,’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday afternoon three o’clock at the Lee Valley Golf Club. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to beating the dust off you again!’

He put down the phone, sniffed loudly, looked at his watch, and then said, ‘Well?’

‘There’s been another abduction,’ said Katie. ‘Derek Hagerty, the owner of Hagerty’s Autos. He went missing two days ago and his wife Shelagh has received two phone calls demanding a quarter of a million euros for his safe return.’

‘Jesus. They haven’t sent her his head, have they?’

‘No, but she found a jam jar on her doorstep this morning with teeth in it and she believes they might be his. I’ve sent Dooley to get hold of his dental records.’

‘His
teeth
? That’s a new one.’

‘I didn’t count them myself but I’d say there was at least ten, including one gold crown. Bill Phinner’s looking at them now.’

‘His
teeth
,’ repeated Bryan Molloy. ‘Gives me the shudders to think about it. I hate the dentist. Usually when some poor soul gets kidnapped they cut off an ear, or a pinkie, and send that along as proof that they’ve got him. Mind you, in Limerick, the Duggan gang once pulled out some fellow’s toenails, all ten of them, with pliers, and send them to his missus in a Jiffy bag. Shows how stupid they were. They could have been anybody’s toenails. How do you recognize your husband by his toenails?’

Katie said, ‘I may be way off but I have a feeling that Derek Hagerty could have been taken by the same people who killed Micky Crounan.’

‘Have they allowed Mrs Hagerty to talk to her husband at all? Does she have any idea who might have snatched him, and why?’

‘No. They haven’t identified themselves in any way, although Shelagh Hagerty said that the man who called her had what sounded like a northside Limerick accent. The manager at the Montenotte Hotel who signed for the wedding cake said that the fellow who brought it also sounded like he came from Moyross.’

‘That’s almost a criminal offence in itself, talking with a Moyross accent.’

Katie came away from the window. ‘I think the most effective way of dealing with this is for Shelagh Hagerty to tell the abductors that she’s managed to raise the full ransom and arrange for a drop somewhere. So long as they don’t suspect that she’s contacted us, we should be in with a fair chance of putting a tail on them. It’s our best hope for keeping Derek Hagerty alive, wouldn’t you think? Always assuming that they haven’t killed him already.’

Bryan Molloy sat down at his desk and pressed his hand over his mouth, as if he were trying to stop himself from saying something that he was going to regret. Katie stayed where she was, saying nothing, watching him. This was a complicated man – irascible, prejudiced, but not a fool.

After a few moments he took his hand away and nodded, and kept on nodding. He reminded her of a toy bulldog on the back shelf of a car. ‘I agree with you,’ he said.

‘You do?’ said Katie. ‘Well, there’s a first.’

‘No, fair play to you, what you’re saying makes absolute sense. We don’t want this Hagerty fellow getting himself topped and, like you say, if we play our cards right we could nail these scummers. We’ll have to plan it real careful, though. They’ll be wanting to count the money before they let Hagerty go. We can’t just jump on them as soon as they show up to collect it, and we can’t palm them off with a bundle of cut-up newspaper.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Katie. ‘But that means we’ll need to indent for two hundred and fifty thousand in real banknotes.’

‘Let me sort that out. Jimmy O’Reilly’s in Dublin at the moment but I’ll give him a call and see how quick he can authorize it. As soon as he gives me the go-ahead I’ll let you know, and you can contact Hagerty’s wife. Meanwhile, if you can do whatever you can to confirm that those teeth really
do
belong to him.’

‘Of course,’ said Katie. She hesitated for a moment, and was tempted to say that maybe the two of them might be able to work together in harmony after all. But she knew that Bryan Molloy would immediately take that as a sign of female weakness. He would probably tell her that they would never be able to cooperate closely unless she kept her nose out of his private financial affairs, and joined his golf club, and the Masons, and grew a dark red beard – and a penis.

He picked up his phone and said, ‘Get me the assistant commissioner, would you?’ Then he looked up at Katie. ‘Was there something else?’

She gave him the slightest shake of her head, and left. As she walked back to her own office, she smiled at herself for thinking that she and Bryan Molloy could conceivably find a way to rub along together. He had been so effective in his fight against the criminal gangs in Limerick because he understood completely how some people can detest each other for no rational reason at all except that they do, and he detested her.

Or then again, she thought, maybe he didn’t.

She had finished all of her paperwork by five-thirty, so she left the station and drove to Tivoli Estate, which overlooked the River Lee to the east of the city, to see how Shelagh Hagerty was coping. It was on her way home to Cobh in any case.

The Hagerty house was hidden from the steeply sloping road behind a high beech hedge, but to avoid attracting attention she parked at the bottom of the hill and walked the rest of the way, letting herself into the garden by the side gate. She could see the white Ford van parked further up the road with
O’Keefe Double Glazing
emblazoned on the side. There were two armed gardaí sitting in it, allegedly keeping a watchful eye on the property, although from Katie’s experience one of them was probably asleep and the other was likely to be reading the sports pages in the
Irish
Sun
.

All the same, they must have noticed her and alerted Detective Horgan. As she came through the garden, he opened the kitchen door for her and said, ‘Didn’t expect to see you, ma’am.’

‘I just thought I’d see how Mrs Hagerty was bearing up.’

‘Well, she’s trying to put a brave face on it so. But I think the strain is getting a bit much for her.’

Katie followed him through the kitchen into the living room. Shelagh Hagerty was standing by the tall French windows with a bunched-up handkerchief in her fist. Outside the clouds were growing darker, and the room was becoming gloomier and gloomier. A young technician with brushed-up Jedward hair and headphones around his neck was sitting beside the telephone, to which he had attached a Vidicode voice recorder. On the table beside him were two laptops loaded with spy software for tracking and listening in to mobile phone calls.

‘Nobody rung yet, then?’ asked Katie.

‘One wrong number and one feller wanting to sell me double glazing.’

‘Double glazing? That’s ironic. His name wasn’t O’Keefe, was it?’

Katie went over to Shelagh Hagerty. ‘I won’t ask you how you’re feeling because I can guess,’ she said. ‘I just want you to know that the assistant commissioner has approved the release of the ransom money.’