Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (35 page)

‘Oh, get it for me, Patrick, would you? Whoever it is, tell them I’m not here.’

Detective O’Donovan picked it up and said, ‘Patrick O’Donovan here. The DS has left for the hospital. You can probably get her on her mobile.’

He listened for a moment, but then he put his hand over the receiver and said, ‘I think you’d better un-leave for the hospital, ma’am. It’s Inspector Fennessy. There’s a woman who’s just come in to report that her husband’s been kidnapped.’

Katie hung up her raincoat again and went across to take the phone out of Detective O’Donovan’s hand. ‘Liam?’ she said. ‘Where is she? Okay, grand. Thanks. I’ll be right down.’

***

The woman who was sitting in the interview room with Inspector Fennessy was tall and angular, with choppy grey hair that looked as if she had cut it herself. She wore no make-up and her eyebrows were unplucked and she reminded Katie of her history teacher from school. She was wearing a light green trench coat with the belt tightly twisted around a very thin waist, and green lace-up shoes.

‘This is Mrs Mairead Whelan, ma’am,’ said Liam Fennessy, standing up. ‘Mrs Whelan, this is Detective Superintendent Maguire, and this is Detective O’Donovan.’

‘They
warned
me not to come to you,’ said Mairead Whelan, in a voice that was almost a whine. She stood up, too, clutching a large brown leather handbag with curled-up straps. ‘They said that they couldn’t be held responsible for what would happen to Pat if I did tell the guards. But I didn’t know where else to turn. They said they’d do all sorts of horrible things to him if I didn’t pay up, but how can I pay up? Pat’s way over his overdraft limit and I only have sixty-seven euros left in my Permanent Bank account.’

‘Please, Mairead, sit down and try to be calm,’ said Katie. ‘If your husband’s missing and there are people demanding a ransom from you, you did the right thing coming here.’

‘But what if they
hurt
him? What if they murder him? I can’t pay them two hundred thousand euros! Where in the name of Jesus would I get two hundred and fifty thousand euros?’

She sat down, still clutching her bag tightly, and Katie sat down, too, with Detective O’Donovan sitting on her left. Liam Fennessy remained where he was, standing, with his arms folded. Katie glanced up at him and she thought he had that haunted look again. She badly needed his support at this moment, and she didn’t want him cracking up. Ever since Bryan Molloy had taken over as Acting Chief Superintendent she had felt that fault lines had been opening up in the structure of Anglesea Street and that all of the officers in the station were acting more cautiously, watching their backs, working less as a team.

‘What’s your husband’s name, Mairead?’ Katie asked her.

‘Pat – Patrick Whelan, the owner of Whelan’s Music Store on Oliver Plunkett Street.’

‘Well, I know it, of course. In fact I know him. He helped to organize that music festival last year, didn’t he, in aid of the Good Shepherd Services? When did he go missing?’

‘He closes the shop at six sharp and he’s always in for his tea by half past. Once or twice he used to come in later because some old musician friend of his might have come into the shop, you know, and asked him out for a drink. But he always called me if he was going to do that, and of course these days he hasn’t been able to afford to go to the pub.’

‘So he didn’t come in last night?’

‘No, and I was fierce worried I can tell you. I kept ringing his mobile but there was no answer at all. When he didn’t come in by midnight I was going to ring you anyway. But then about a quarter to twelve I got this phone call.’

Mairead Whelan’s lower lip was trembling and she was very close to tears. Katie reached across the table and said, ‘Go on, Mairead. You’re doing really well.’

‘I thought it was Pat, but of course it wasn’t Pat. It was this fellow who said that Pat had been kidnapped and that I had three days to come up with two hundred and fifty thousand euros or else I would never see Pat again, or at least I would never see him again the way that I was used to seeing him.’

‘Did he say what he meant by that?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

Tears had been filling Mairead’s eyes but now they suddenly dropped down her cheeks. ‘He said that I would either see him in a coffin, dead, or else he’d be alive but not kicking, because he’d have no legs, and no arms either, and he wouldn’t be able to tell me what had happened because they would have cut out his tongue with a straightrazor.’

‘Come on, don’t get too upset. Your man was only trying to scare you. Did he tell you where to deliver the money?’

‘No. He said he’d ring me this afternoon sometime and see how my fund-raising was coming along. Then, when I had the whole two hundred and fifty thousand, he’d give me instructions on when and where to hand it over.’

One of her tears dripped on to the back of Katie’s hand, and then another, but Katie didn’t take it away. ‘Did the man tell you who he was? Or who he represented?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What I mean is, did he say that Pat had been kidnapped by any particular gang?’

‘No, he didn’t give me any names.’

Katie said, ‘Patrick, would you fetch that latest recording for me? The one about the Pearses. It’s on my desk, next to the clock.’

Detective O’Donovan left the interview room. Liam Fennessy sat down now and said to Mairead Whelan, ‘So Pat’s overdrawn at the bank? Has business been going badly?’

‘Terrible bad. Disastrous. He’s having to close the shop at the end of the month. Everybody buys on the interweb these days. I don’t know how we’re going to manage.’

Liam glanced at Katie as if to say
there’s definitely a pattern here
. Micky Crounan with his bakery and Derek Hagerty with his auto workshop. Now Pat Whelan and his music store. All of them bankrupt or near-bankrupt, but all of them kidnapped for ransom.

Detective O’Donovan came back with the DVD recording of Katie’s last conversation with the man who claimed he was speaking for the High Kings of Erin. He slotted it into the interview recorder and switched it on. Katie used the remote control to fast-forward it until she came to a part that was appropriate for Mairead Whelan to hear.

‘Let me tell you this,’ said the husky-voiced caller, ‘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
.’

‘That’s him!’ said Mairead, firmly. She took out a tissue and smartly wiped her eyes, and sniffed. ‘That’s the cancery bastard who called me!’

Katie was taken aback by her vehemence. ‘You’re sure about that? You don’t want to listen to any more?’

‘No, I don’t have to. That was him all right. God rot him.’

Katie said, ‘All right, Mairead. What I have to do now is talk to my superior officers to see what we can do about the ransom money. But, please – you must
not
breathe a single word of this to anybody, not even your closest relatives or your closest friends. If Pat’s been kidnapped by the people I think he’s been kidnapped by, they’re likely to go after anybody who can identify them, or give even the smallest scrap of evidence against them. I’m not going to beat around the bush, Mairead, they’ll kill them, and not pleasantly. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.’

‘Mother of God,’ said Mairead Whelan. ‘I shouldn’t have come here, should I?’

‘What choice did you have?’ Katie asked her. ‘How else could you have hoped to find enough money to pay them off? Besides, I’m going to make sure that you have close protection from now on. It’ll be discreet, plain-clothes protection, so that the kidnappers won’t realize that you’ve contacted us. Where do you live?’

‘The Lodge, Ard na Laoi, just off the Middle Glanmire Road.’

‘All right, then. Detective O’Donovan here will make a note of your phone numbers and all your particulars. When the kidnappers ring you again, we’ll be recording your conversation and with any luck we may be able to trace where they’re calling from, too. Meanwhile, when you
do
talk to them, Mairead, try your very best not to sound angry and resentful, no matter how you really feel. You’ll have a detective with you the whole time to help you through it. Just tell them that you’re doing everything you can to get hold of the money, and you’re hopeful that you’ll be able to pay them off well within the three days.’

‘Are you sure I’ve done the right thing? What if they find out that I’ve come here and they kill Pat? How am I ever going to forgive myself?’

Katie stood up. ‘You’ll get him back, Mairead. I promise you that. Patrick – if you can make a note of all of Mairead’s details and run through any of her husband’s business background that she knows about. You know – aggressive creditors, outstanding court orders, things like that. I have to go and brief Chief Superintendent Molloy.’ She paused, then she added, ‘
Acting
Chief Superintendent Molloy.’

***

Halfway along the corridor to Bryan Molloy’s office, Katie’s mobile phone rang. She saw that it was Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán calling. She was probably wondering why she hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet.

‘Kyna? I won’t be too much longer. Something’s come up. Another broke businessman’s been kidnapped, would you believe? Pat Whelan, the owner of Whelan’s Music Store. His wife’s here now. I just have to talk to Molloy and then I’ll be with you.’

‘You don’t have to hurry,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She was silent for a very long time, and then she said, ‘Nessa passed away five minutes ago. Father Buckley from the hospital chaplaincy came up to give her the last rites.’

‘Oh no,’ said Katie. ‘Dear God in heaven.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She remembered a consultant psychiatrist at Templemore telling her group of trainee gardaí, ‘Much more often than most people, you will find yourselves being hit unexpectedly and devastatingly hard by emotions such as fear, and disgust, and pity, and grief. I am not suggesting for a moment that you could or should make yourself immune to such emotions. You wouldn’t be human if you did. But while you are on duty, you must keep calm and rational and level-headed. Learn to suppress any reactive outbursts until later. Shout or weep or break things by all means, but wait until you get home.’

‘I’ll come over as soon as I can,’ she told Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, and then she continued along the corridor to Bryan Molloy’s office. Before she knocked on his door, though, she took a deep breath to steady herself, and held it.
Wait until you get home
.

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was standing behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, going over his diary appointments with his secretary, Teagan.

‘Now, look here, girl,’ he was saying, ‘how can I show up for that meeting of the Southern Law Association if at one and the same time I’m supposed to be giving an after-dinner speech to the Cork Business Association? Mind you, if only these people would stop associating with each other, we’d all have a quieter life!’

He looked up when Katie came in. ‘Katie! How’s that young detective of yours? Any news?’

‘I just heard from DS Ni Nuallán at the hospital. She died a short time ago. It may have been a blessing, considering that she would have been paralysed for the rest of her life.’

‘Ah well, I’m sorry to hear it. Very sorry. I’ll be writing a letter of condolence to her family.’

He was about to go back to his diary, but then he realized that Katie hadn’t just come to tell him that.

‘You haven’t found that witness fellow, have you? The fellow from Carrigaline?’

‘Not yet, no. But a woman has just come in to tell us that her husband’s been kidnapped. Mairead Whelan – her husband Pat owns Whelan’s, which is one of the oldest music stories in Cork.’

‘Has she heard from the kidnappers at all? He hasn’t just walked out on her?’

‘Oh no. They’ve called her. They want two hundred and fifty thousand euros, they said, or else they’ll kill him or amputate his arms and legs and cut out his tongue.’

‘Holy Mary! Did they say who they were?’

‘No, but I played Mrs Whelan the recording of the last call I received from the fellow who said that he was speaking on behalf of the High Kings of Erin. She swore blind that it was one and the same as the fellow who rang her.’

Bryan Molloy turned to his secretary and said, ‘Teagan, would you give us a moment, please?’

Teagan gave Katie a quick, sympathetic smile, as if she could guess what she was in for, picked up the diary and left the office, closing the door very quietly behind her.

‘Sit down,’ said Bryan Molloy.

Katie sat down opposite his desk and crossed her legs, but said nothing.

‘What am I going to tell the media?’ Bryan Molloy asked her. ‘More important than that, what am I going to tell Jimmy O’Reilly?’

‘For the time being, you should tell the media nothing at all,’ said Katie. ‘The kidnappers warned Mairead Whelan that if she reported her husband’s abduction to the Garda they’d kill him at once. As for Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, you can tell him the truth, that the so-called High Kings of Erin have taken another bankrupt businessman and want nearly a quarter of a million euros for his safe return.’

‘No, no, Katie, I don’t think you have me. What am I going to tell him about our hopeless inability to stop these High Kings of Erin? How am I going to explain that we are making absolutely no progress at all in identifying who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing?’

‘Bryan, we
are
making progress,’ Katie insisted. ‘We have witness descriptions of at least two of the offenders, and their vehicle, and I don’t think it’s going to be long before we get a breakthrough. It certainly doesn’t help that they seem to be receiving inside information from somebody here in the station.’

‘Oh, that again! You’re sure about that, are you? I’m beginning to think that’s nothing more than an excuse for your incompetence. You don’t seem to be able to get a handle on this at all, Katie. You say you’ve made progress, but at what price? We have two young gardaí dead now, as well as three known homicides – Micky Crounan and the Pearses. We’ve lost a whole heap of public money paying for the freedom of a man who already happened to be free. Now it looks like we’re going to pay almost as much again to get this Whelan fellow released – even if he manages to escape, too, which he may very well do – although I doubt if you’ll get know about it before it’s too late. And where is our last surviving witness to Derek Hagerty’s abduction, I ask? Bundled away by the High Kings of Erin before we could ask him even a single question.’