Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (32 page)

‘All right, Bryan,’ said Katie. ‘I might even take you up on that.’

He picked up his phone and started to prod out a number, but just as she turned to leave, Katie said, ‘By the way, Clearie O’Hely’s been seen around the city.’

Bryan Molloy stopped dialling, although he didn’t look up.

‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ Katie added. ‘You know, considering his reputation with bombs and all. Unusual to see him here in Cork.’

‘It’s a free country,’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘A man can go wherever he pleases, even if he does have a reputation.’

‘I just wondered if you’d heard anything, that’s all. You know, the old Delmege Park telegraph.’

Now Bryan Molloy raised his eyes. He was still smiling, but his smile looked tight now, and forced, as if he were trying hard to stop it from turning into a scowl. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a
whisper
.’ He whispered the word ‘
whisper
’, which for some reason made it sound threatening.

‘Right you are, then,’ said Katie, and left his office. She almost collided with his secretary, Teagan, as she came in carrying a mug of coffee and a plate of Kimberley biscuits.

Purely out of mischief, Katie took one of his biscuits and bit into it as she walked along the corridor back to her office. As she did so, though, an inexplicable feeling of unease began to come over her. It was the same unease she felt when she wasn’t sure whether she had double-locked the front door before she left home, or had left a candle burning in the living room. She stopped and turned round, frowning. Something unsettling had happened in that encounter with Bryan Molloy, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

When she reached her office, she dropped the half-eaten biscuit into her waste bin. Outside it was still dark, and the rain was lashing against her windows harder than ever, like mad people flailing their arms against the glass, trying to break in.

When Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán and Detective Garda Goold turned into The Grove, they saw that there were three vehicles parked outside the house named Crannagh – the Avis rental car that Eoghan was using while he was visiting his parents, a tan-coloured Volvo estate, and a black Volkswagen people carrier with tinted windows.

The rain had eased off now. The sky was still grey but as bright as a migraine, and the pavements were starting to dry.

‘Looks like they have visitors,’ said Detective Garda Goold.

‘Yes,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, narrowing her eyes. She was trying to focus on the two bulky men in black suits and white shirts who were standing in the porch of the Carroll house, talking to somebody in the open doorway. The men’s heads were both white, as if they were bandaged like the Invisible Man. She wished that she had worn her glasses – her eyesight had been getting worse lately. She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door of their silver Toyota before Detective Garda Goold had even brought it to a halt.

The Grove was a quiet cul-de-sac of two-storey, four-bedroom properties, painted white, with low hedges in between them. As Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán reached the concrete drive in front of the Carroll property she could hear a woman inside the house screaming shrilly and a man shouting, ‘Get off me! Leave go of me! Get the hell out of here!’

The man was mid-thirtyish, with brown hair and a bottle-green sweater, and he was wrestling with the two bulky men in black in the hallway. Now that she was nearer, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán could see that both of the bulky men had plastic shopping bags tied around their heads, with holes torn open for their eyes and mouths. They were like a thuggish and frightening version of the Rubberbandits, the hip-hop duo from Limerick who wore the same kind of plastic-bag masks. She guessed that the man who was shouting was Eoghan Carroll. One of the bulky men had clamped one hand around the back of his neck and seized his right wrist with the other hand, and was trying to tug him off balance and out of the hallway.

‘
Garda
!’ shouted Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, hurrying forward. ‘Garda – let him go!’

The bulky man ignored her, heaving Eoghan into the porch and swinging him around so that he collided with the front of the Volvo estate. Eoghan fell sideways to the ground, in between the Volvo and his rented Opel Insignia, but the bulky man reached down and dragged him up on to his feet again.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shouted, ‘
Garda
! Let him go or I’ll arrest you!’

She tried to seize the collar of the bulky man’s jacket, but his companion stepped over, gripped the sleeve of her coat and wrenched her away. As she stumbled, he pushed her so hard in the chest that she toppled into the hawthorn hedge behind her, hitting her head against the wall of the house.

She tried to struggle to her feet, but the bulky man kicked her in the shin, and then the hip, and spat at her and snapped, ‘Next time, mind yer own fecking business, ya bitch!’

Again she tried to get up, but he kicked her shin yet again, even harder this time, and her blue woollen coat was hopelessly snagged by the hawthorn spikes. Her head felt as if it had been cracked in half. She looked up at him, but all she could see was his eyes staring at her out of the holes in the plastic shopping bag, and his thick red lips. There was a pale red C across the side of his face, but that was only C for Centra supermarket.

The two of them started to drag Eoghan away from the house. He was still struggling and shouting, ‘Leave go of me! Leave go of me, you bastard!’ and now his father had emerged from the house, brandishing an aluminium walking stick, while his mother continued screaming in breathless panic.

Now, however, Detective Garda Goold came forward and stood between the two bulky men and the Volkswagen people carrier. She held up her right hand almost as if she were directing traffic in the middle of Patrick Street and she cried out, ‘Stop! Garda! Stop right there! I said
stop
!’

Even Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán wouldn’t have taken her for a police officer. She was so young, and what with her brown wavy hair and the mole on her upper lip and her duffel coat she looked more like a sociology student.

One of the bulky men went straight up to her and pushed her out of the way. He opened the rear door of the people carrier and his associate started to force Eoghan inside. By now Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán had managed to tug herself free from the hawthorn hedge and pull her phone out of her coat pocket to call for backup. Eoghan’s father had caught up with the bulky man who was manhandling his son and started to hit him across the back with his walking stick. The other bulky man punched him on the cheek and he spun wildly away, as if he were dancing a jig, and tumbled heavily on to the pavement.

Detective Garda Goold caught hold of the open door of the people carrier and wouldn’t allow the bulky man to close it. He wrestled with her and hit her on the shoulder with his fist and swung the door violently from side to side, but still she clung on.

‘
Nessa
!’ shouted Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, limping down the driveway to help her. ‘
Nessa, let them go
!’

But Detective Garda Goold held on to the door handle and wouldn’t loosen her grip. Inside the back of the people carrier Eoghan was struggling, too.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán shouted, ‘Nessa! Leave it! We have backup coming! They won’t get away!’

But then the bulky man stopped trying to force Detective Garda Goold to release her hold on the door, and instead he turned round and drew out a large grey automatic pistol from underneath his jacket.

He pointed it first at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, directly at her face. ‘Hold it dere, girl,’ he warned her, in a thick Limerick accent. ‘Don’t ye be movin’ a muscle.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stopped beside the Volvo estate and lifted both hands. ‘Nessa,’ she said.

‘Yeah, come on, Nessa, let go of the feckin’ door,’ said the bulky man with the pistol, without looking round at her.

‘Let this fellow out and then I will,’ said Detective Garda Goold.

‘Nessa,’ the bulky man repeated. ‘Would you ever let go of that feckin’ door?’

‘Nessa, let it go,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

‘We’re Garda detectives,’ said Detective Garda Goold. ‘You’re under arrest, both of you, for public order offences and assault.’

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s head was banging so loudly she thought that everybody around her must be able to hear it. What made it bang even harder was the dread of what was certainly going to happen next, unless Detective Garda Goold immediately backed away.

She was about to say, ‘Nessa,’ one more time, but the bulky man turned round and without any hesitation at all shot Detective Garda Goold point-blank in the mouth. The noise of the shot was deafening and the lower part of Detective Garda Goold’s face exploded like a huge scarlet chrysanthemum. She pitched backwards on to the pavement and lay there with her arms and her legs spreadeagled, her eyes staring up at the grey clouds, twitching and jerking.

The bulky man kept his pistol pointing at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán as he opened the front passenger door of the people carrier and heaved himself in. His companion slammed the rear door, walked round, and climbed in behind the wheel.

Without any hurry at all, they drove off, turning left at the end of The Grove to head north, towards Douglas and Cork.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán rushed over and knelt down beside Detective Garda Goold. Her jaw had been completely blown away and her tongue was hanging down like a tattered scarlet scarf, but she was still breathing bubbles of blood.

‘Oh, Nessa,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Oh, Nessa you poor, poor darling!’

Eoghan’s father had managed to get back on to his feet now. ‘I’ll call for an ambulance right away,’ he said.

‘And can you bring me some warm blankets, please,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Warm blankets and some gauze if you have any, to try and stop the bleeding. Or a face cloth, or a towel, anything.’

By now, neighbours had started to emerge from their houses to see what was happening. They stood a little way away, as if they were figures in a religious tableau, while Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán knelt beside Detective Garda Goold and held her hand tightly, and prayed for her.

***

Katie was still halfway through her paperwork when her phone rang.

‘It’s Kyna here, ma’am. Nessa Goold’s been shot.’

‘What? When?’

‘Only a few minutes ago. She was shot in the face, but she’s still conscious and we’ve called for an ambulance.’

‘Who shot her?’

‘There were two big fellows already at the Carroll house when we arrived there to talk to Eoghan. They were taking Eoghan away with them, forcibly like, but Nessa tried to stop them. That was when one of them pulled out a gun and shot her point-blank.’

‘Mother of God. I’ll come out there now. What kind of vehicle did they have, these fellows? I don’t suppose you got their number, did you?’

‘So far as I could see, they didn’t have one. But they were driving a black VW Touran and the windows were all black, so it sounds very much like the black people carrier that Horgan’s witness saw outside the Pearses’ house when
they
were abducted. They took a left at the end of the road, heading towards the city, although of course they could have turned off in any direction.’

‘What did they look like, these two fellows?’

‘Well, like I say,
big
. But they both had plastic shopping bags over their heads, like the Rubberbandits, so I couldn’t see their faces. They were both wearing the same – white shirts, short black coats. They looked like the kind of fellows you’d see on the door of a pub or a nightclub on a Saturday night.’

‘I’ll have a bulletin put out for them right now. How’s Nessa doing?’

‘Still about the same, but the ambulance has just turned the corner, thank God.’

‘Listen, Kyna,’ said Katie. ‘Wait till the first patrol cars arrive to cordon off the place where she was shot, then go to the hospital and stay with her. I’ll have Patrick contact her next of kin for me.’

She put down the receiver and punched out Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin’s number. Oh dear Jesus, she thought, Detective Garda Goold is so young. Please don’t let us lose another one, not like Brenda McCracken.

And as she waited for Superintendent MacCostagáin to answer, she couldn’t help but wonder what Eoghan Carroll had in store for him.
Not another live cremation
, she prayed.
Not another beheading. Not another self-congratulatory act of pure sadism by the High Kings of Erin
.

***

Two Garda patrol cars were already at The Grove when Katie arrived, although the ambulance had just left. Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was standing beside her own car with the door open, ready to follow it, but she was still talking to one of the gardaí.

As Katie came up to her, she could see how shocked she was. Her face was pale and she was trembling, and her mouth was puckered like a child who is just about to burst into tears.

‘I’ll be going to the hospital now,’ she said. ‘The paramedics said it was touch-and-go, like. They couldn’t be sure, but they thought that the bullet might have severed her spinal cord. Even if she survives, there’s a strong possibility that she’s going to be totally paralysed.’

Katie gave Kyna’s arm a reassuring squeeze. Her instinct was to hold her close and allow her to let out all of her distress by sobbing, but she was a superintendent and Kyna was a sergeant, and this was a crime scene, and other officers were watching.

One of the gardaí came up and said, ‘I’ve located the spent cartridge case, ma’am. Just over there, by the fence. I’ve put a marker next to it so. Looks like 9mm Parabellum.’

‘Well, that narrows it down to sixty per cent of every handgun in the world,’ said Katie. ‘Have you found any other forensics?’

‘There’s a white shirt button which looks like it’s been torn off, but that’s all. I’ve marked that, too.’

‘Okay. Good man yourself,’ said Katie. ‘The technical boys will be here soon, but keep looking around.’