Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (22 page)

‘It’s more of a mess than you realize, Derek,’ said Katie. ‘We questioned Norman and Meryl Pearse yesterday about picking you up from the roadside at Ballynoe and taking you in. They denied it. In fact, they insisted that they had never even heard of you. This morning, though, I’m sorry to tell you – ’

She paused, deliberately. Derek Hagerty opened his eyes and frowned at her. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

‘This morning it seems that the both of them were taken away from their home by at least two men. At the moment we have absolutely no idea who those men were or whether the Pearses were taken against their will. They missed a regular coffee morning with a friend of Mrs Pearse and they left their house unlocked. Both of them left their mobile phones at home, so we have no way of locating them that way.’

‘Oh God,’ said Derek Hagerty. ‘Oh God, no.’

‘Derek,’ said Katie, leaning forward and staring him straight in the eyes, ‘you have to tell me the truth now, the
whole
truth, before anything happens to the Pearses. This isn’t a game any more. If the Pearses are hurt or murdered, then you’re going to become a suspect on more than one conspiracy charge. Extortion and homicide and God knows what else. You could be locked up for the next twenty years.’

Derek Hagerty tilted his head back and took several noisy breaths through his nostrils.

Katie continued, ‘I’m not going to mess with you any longer. Whoever it was who called us and said that he was dropping you off on Grand Parade, he also told us that he thought you were lying about being kidnapped. Maybe it was Norman Pearse, maybe it wasn’t. He claimed that you showed him some really bad bruises, but when he allowed you take a shower he saw that those bruises had mostly washed off. He also said that you still had a mobile phone on you, and that he heard you talking to somebody while you were in the bathroom, arranging to meet them. Now, it’s conceivable that what your man thought were bruises were nothing but dirt, but what I find impossible to believe is that any kidnappers would allow their victim to keep a mobile phone.’

Derek Hagerty said, ‘You’ve known all along, then, that I haven’t been straight with you?’

‘Yes. I was hoping that I could coax you to tell us what really happened voluntarily. But now that somebody’s taken the Pearses, there’s no more time for that. Come on, Derek, I need to know if you were genuinely kidnapped, and if you were, who by. If it’s all been some kind of a fraud, then I need to know that, too, and who’s involved in it.’

Derek Hagerty clenched his fists tightly and lowered his head, pressing his knuckles against his temples.

‘I’ve been such a fecking fool,’ he said. ‘I never knew that I could end up doing anything like this.’

‘Then tell me,’ said Katie. ‘You’ll feel so much better about it if you get it off your chest.’

‘I can’t. I can’t tell you. They’ll kill me, I know they will, but not just me. Shelagh, too, for telling you that I was kidnapped, and the kids, too, and who knows, my mother and father besides.’

‘
Who
, Derek? Who are they?’

Derek Hagerty was crying now. He lowered his left fist and it squashed into what was left of his boiled potatoes. He pushed the plate aside and scraped the potato off his hand on the edge of the table, but all the time he didn’t stop weeping.

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, at last. ‘I can’t tell you what they do to people who cross them. They’re not scared of the law. They’re not scared of nobody.’

Katie said, ‘Derek – listen to me. I’m deadly serious now. When a garda gets murdered, every police officer takes that personally and we make a special effort to track down whoever was responsible and bring them to justice. When Garda McCracken was killed,
I
took it personally, and let me tell you now that I’m going to find out who did it and make them pay for what they did, even if I have to hurt people like you. You think you’ve been a fool? You just wait until I’ve finished with you.’

Derek Hagerty could do nothing but sob. He opened and closed his scab-encrusted lips like some grotesque tropical fish, but he didn’t, or couldn’t, say any more.

Katie sat back, waiting for him to pull himself together, but as she did so her iPhone pinged. It was a text message from Ciara on the station switchboard. JUST HAD CALL 4 U. HE SD V. IMPORTANT. I TLD HIM U BUSY BUT HE SD HED RING BACK. HE SD HES HK OF E ??

Katie stood up. ‘Think on what I’ve said, Derek. I appreciate how frightened you are, but you have to face up to this. Otherwise, the rest of your life is going to be ruined. Your family, your business, everything.’

Derek Hagerty looked up at her miserably. ‘Chalk it down,’ he said. ‘Don’t I fecking know it.’

***

Only ten minutes after she had returned to her office, Katie’s phone warbled. She picked it up and said, ‘Ciara?’

‘He’s calling back, ma’am. The HK of E fellow. Do you want to take it?’

‘Please, Ciara, put them through.’

She waited a moment and then she cleared her throat and said, ‘DS Maguire. Is that who I think it is?’

‘Well, that depends entirely on who you think it is.’ It was the same hoarse, slurred voice that she had heard before. ‘I know more about you, Detective Superintendent Maguire, than you could ever imagine possible, but even I have to admit that reading your mind is somewhat beyond me.’

‘What do you want? You left a message that it was important.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll agree with me that it’s important all right. I gather that you’ve been concerned about Norman and Meryl Pearse.’

‘What if I have?’

‘Give me some credit, Superintendent. It was Meryl Pearse who found Derek Hagerty by the side of the road, and it was Norman Pearse who shopped him.’

‘That’s what you say.’

‘That’s right, and I say that because I know for a fact that it’s true, even though they wouldn’t admit it to you, would they?’

Katie reached across for a ballpen and scribbled on her big yellow notepad,
HK knew that Pearses denied helping DH? How?

‘Whether they admitted it to you or not, Superintendent, they did it, but they could have saved themselves a heap of grief if they had just kept quiet about it.’

Katie was sorely tempted to ask,
Have you taken them?
What have you done with them?
but she didn’t want to give the caller any indication that she suspected the Pearses of having tipped off the Garda about Derek Hagerty. The High Kings of Erin might have the Pearses in captivity and they could be trying to trap her into giving them the justification for punishing them.

‘Well, I know what you’re thinking, Detective Superintendent,’ said the hoarse voice. ‘I said I couldn’t read your mind, but maybe in this instance I have an inkling. You’re thinking that we’ve abducted Norman and Meryl Pearse, and that we intend to teach them a lesson for squealing to the law. But that’s where you’re wrong. We
did
abduct them, and the reason for me calling you now is to put up my hand and admit it.
But
– we have absolutely no intention of teaching them a lesson. The road to hell is paved with intentions, both good and bad. No – what we set out to do to the Pearses, we’ve already done it.’

Katie still said nothing. She was now almost positive that the High Kings of Erin really were responsible for all the crimes for which they were claiming credit. They knew far too much about them to be hoaxers. But there was still a possibility that Norman and Meryl Pearse were still alive and unharmed, and a wrong word from her could change that instantly.

‘If you want to find them, go down to Rocky Bay Beach. You know Rocky Bay Beach? It will take you only twenty minutes or so. The sea’s on the turn, but it won’t be high tide again till ten o’clock tonight, so you shouldn’t have any trouble locating them. Good luck to ye.’

Katie said, ‘Whatever you’ve done, or whatever you’re thinking of doing, I can tell you now that you’ll pay for it.’

‘Oh, how many times have I heard that before? My mammy always used to threaten to smack me a clatter, but you don’t frighten me, Detective Superintendent Maguire, not a bit more than my mammy ever did! Let me tell you this, the sooner you learn to rub along with us, the happier we’re all going to be. You do your thing and we’ll do ours, and Ireland will have its pride restored before you know it.
Éirinn go Brách
.’

With that, the caller hung up.

The bell above the front door of Whelan’s Music Store jangled as the carroty-curled young man stepped inside. Outside on Oliver Plunkett Street, the two bouncer-types in black suits stood on either side of the entrance, their eyes hidden by wraparound sunglasses, their hands clasped over their genitals in the classic pose of bouncers everywhere.

The carroty-curled young man walked slowly through the store, pausing for a moment to tilt his head sideways and admire the electric guitars hanging on the right-hand wall, and then the Roland and Yamaha keyboards arranged in a serried line on the left-hand side. He stopped by a drum kit and flicked his index finger against one of the crash cymbals, so that it made a soft pish!

Pat Whelan was standing with his elbows on the counter, frowning at his laptop. He looked up when the carroty-curled young man flicked the cymbal and said, ‘All right there? Anything I can help you with?’

The carroty-curled young man smiled and looked around the shop as if he were roughly calculating what all of this stock was worth.

‘I hear you’re thinking of closing down,’ he said, in his hoarse, thin voice.

‘End of the month,’ said Pat. ‘There’s twenty per cent off everything till then. What are you looking for?’

‘Nothing special,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘To be truthful with you, nothing at all. Whelan’s has been in business for ever, hasn’t it? A real Cork institution.’

‘My grandfather opened it in 1933,’ Pat told him. ‘Guess who bought his first guitar here?’

‘Rory Gallagher.’

‘That’s right. Kim Carroll, too. His first bowed mandolin, anyhow.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve done a little research on you, like.’

Pat stood up straighter, although he didn’t close his laptop. He was short and plumpish, with a mass of curly black hair that was beginning to turn grey, and which badly needed a cut. His face was podgy with a button of a nose and thick lips and broken veins in his cheeks. He was wearing a frayed green jacket, a crumpled-looking orange shirt, and speckled maroon bow tie. At a glance, in the back of a badly lit pub, he could have been mistaken for Dylan Thomas.

‘Research?’ he said. ‘What was that for? Just curiosity, like?’

‘You could say that,’ replied the carroty-curled young man, He ran his fingernails with a soft rattle along a Korg Arranger keyboard, and then turned round to face Pat, still smiling.

‘That keyboard comes with a free stand and amp, if you’re interested,’ said Pat.

‘Well, no, Pat, I’m not really interested in buying an instrument. What I’m really interested in is keeping you in business.’

‘What do you mean? I’m practically bankrupt. Why do you think I’m closing the shop down?’

‘I know that you’re stony broke, Pat, and I also know how much you’re in for. Three hundred and forty-two thousand yoyos, and then some. You’ll be sleeping with the tramps at St Vincent’s House before you know it.’

‘Listen, who are you?’ Pat demanded. ‘You’ve got a brass neck poking into my affairs like that.’

‘No need to get yourself agitated. I’m a friend. In fact, one of a number of friends, you might say. You know about Kevin McGeever?’

‘Of course I know about Kevin McGeever. He was the stupid eejit who pretended that he’d been kidnapped so that his creditors would get off his back. What an eejit.’

The carroty-curled young man raised his gingery eyebrows in agreement. ‘You’re right, Pat. He
was
an eejit. An eejit of the first water. But, you know, his basic idea was sound. He thought that if he disappeared for a while, and then came back looking like he’d been badly mistreated, barefoot and clatty and his fingernails grown all long, none of his creditors would press for their money, on account of they wouldn’t want to be suspected of abducting him.’

‘What was sound about that?’ asked Pat. ‘He got himself arrested for wasting Garda time, didn’t he?’

‘Ah! But that’s because he didn’t plan things right. It’s no good pretending to be kidnapped if you don’t have any kidnappers. All that McGeever did was to disappear off to the west of Ireland somewhere and have his girlfriend report him as missing. There was no ransom demand from any third party, no threats made on his life. That didn’t ring true at all. On top of that, like, he didn’t anticipate that when he was found wandering by the roadside the people who found him would take him directly to the nearest Garda station. Thick, or what? Where else did he think they were going to take him?’

‘So what does any of this have to do with me?’ asked Pat.

‘It has
everything
to do with you, Pat,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘Right now, you are in the same unenviable position as Kevin McGeever. Granted, he was a millionaire property developer and you run a one-horse music shop, but you both owe more money than you can ever hope to pay back.’

‘Go on,’ said Pat, slowly closing his laptop. He had been looking through the online catalogue of the Sound Shop. Almost every price that they were offering undercut the lowest prices that he could afford to charge, and that was why his business was going under. Some days recently he had sold nothing but a harmonica or some sheet music or a single packet of guitar strings; other days, nothing at all.

‘Just supposing you left your shop tomorrow evening, Pat, and a couple of fellows jumped on you? Just supposing they blindfolded you and drove you off and locked you into a room somewhere? Just supposing they contacted your wife and your sons and demanded two hundred and fifty thousand yoyos for your safe return?’

‘That’s ridiculous. Where would my wife and my sons get half a million euros from? My wife’s not well and my sons are still at college.’

‘Now that’s where this little plan works so well, unlike Kevin McGeever’s. Your wife goes to the Garda and informs them that you’re being held hostage, although she tells them the kidnappers have warned her not to, on pain of something horrible happening to her. The Garda come up with the necessary money because they can hardly refuse if your wife has been threatened and your life is at stake.’