Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (41 page)

Aengus shook his head. ‘Not with that phone they won’t. Now, get on with it.’

Pat dialled his home number and waited for Mairead to answer. The phone’s speaker was switched on so that Aengus and Ruari and Lorcan could hear it, too.

‘Hello?’ said Mairead. ‘Who is this?’ She sounded out of breath and very close to tears.

‘It’s Pat, May. It’s me.’

‘Oh, Pat! Oh, God! Are you all right? I had these terrible things in the post this morning! There was a letter with them saying they’d been cut off of you! Tell me they haven’t really done that!’

‘They did, May. They took me yesterday when I was leaving the shop and now they have me locked up. They said they had to cut something off of me to prove that they really had me,’

‘Oh, God, I can’t believe it. Are you all right?’

‘Well, I’m hurting still, of course, but I’m okay otherwise. You haven’t told the Garda, have you, or anyone else?’

There was a moment’s pause. Pat could hear his Mairead trying to suppress her sobs, and he looked up at Aengus and Ruari with undisguised hatred. Aengus smiled, but Ruari remained expressionless. The strong smell of her perfume was already filling the room.

‘May – ’ Pat repeated, ‘you haven’t told the Garda, have you?’

‘No,’ said Mairead. He had never heard her sound so deeply miserable, even when her back pain was at its worst. ‘This fellow rang me yesterday and said that if I told the guards that you’d been kidnapped he couldn’t guarantee what might happen to you. He said I had to find two hundred and fifty thousand euros by Saturday midnight or else I might never see you alive again, or they’d do something terrible to you like amputate your arms and legs. And after what I got in the post this morning, I believe them, Pat. I believe they’ll do it if I can’t find the money for them. I do.’

‘But how are you going to find so much money?’

‘I don’t know, Pat. My sister Maureen has a bit put aside and the father has a pension I can lend a borrow from, although I’d have to pay him back.’

‘Of course, pet. We’ll find a way, tell him. And don’t give up hope. These people who took me, they call themselves the High Kings of Erin like the old kings of Ireland. They say that they’re punishing all the small businessmen like me because we ruined the country by spending money that we didn’t have. Well, no, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, either, but that’s what they say. They’re not criminals, they say, they’re patriots.’

‘Pat – ’ Mairead began, and for one moment Pat thought that she was going to admit that she had contacted the Garda after all. He prayed that she had, because he was completely convinced now that when the High Kings of Erin had said that they would mutilate or murder him if they didn’t get their ransom money, it had been no empty threat.

‘May,’ he said. ‘The leprechauns.’

‘What?’ she said, but then she obviously understood what he was telling her. When their children had been small, they had cautioned each other when they were having an adult conversation and they thought that the children might be able to overhear them by saying ‘sshh … the leprechauns’.

Aengus took the phone out of his hand and switched it off. ‘Leprechauns? What’s all that about?’

‘Nothing at all. Just a pet name. Nothing.’

‘What did I say to you?’ grinned Aengus. ‘Women are shite when it comes to telling lies. You could tell that she’s contacted the shades already.’

‘She swore that she hadn’t. You heard her for yourself.’

‘Of course she did. She was trying to keep you alive, as any good wife would. But she will, if she hasn’t already, and you can thank your lucky stars for that, Pat.’

Wincing with pain, Pat eased himself back on the mattress. ‘How can you know that?’

‘Because we’re the High Kings of Erin and there’s nothing in our kingdom that we don’t know about, that’s how.’

Ruari came up close to the side of his bed and looked down at him coldly. ‘You did well, Pat,’ she said. ‘Not long now and this should all be over.’

Pat looked back up at her, breathing in that musky perfume with every agonizing breath, so that he could actually taste it. He didn’t find her words reassuring at all. All he felt was utter hopelessness, like the time when he was five years old and he had lost his mother in the English Market and thought that he would never see her again.

By the time Katie left the house to take Barney for his morning walk, David’s Range Rover had already gone from the driveway next door. The clouds were low and grey, but there was a fresh, salty south-west breeze blowing in from the harbour and that helped to wake her up. She hadn’t managed to fall asleep until well past three o’clock in the morning, thinking about David and how he had attacked her.

She had a hectic day ahead of her and she had to be at her most alert. It was likely that the High Kings of Erin would contact Mairead Whelan sometime later and give her their final instructions for handing over the ransom money. Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly would only authorize the payment, however, if Katie could convince him that she had an effective plan for making an arrest and recovering the cash before it was shared out and laundered. The serial number of every single note would have been recorded, even though the High Kings of Erin had insisted that they be non-sequential, but once a note had been through pubs and grocery stores and betting shops it was almost impossible to trace who had handled it.

She had the beginnings of an idea of how she might trap them, although ultimately it would depend on where and when and how they wanted the drop to take place. What worried her was that their informer inside Anglesea Street could well tip them off about what she planned to do before she could put it into action. She didn’t know who she could trust and who to keep in the dark.

On a more positive note, she had already worked out how to set up Roisin Begley. She needed Roisin to admit that she was offering sexual intercourse as well as massage, and that at least some of the money she was making she was paying to Michael Gerrety. It was vital that they didn’t make the same mistake as the gardaí in County Louth last year, who had entered a brothel without identifying themselves as police officers and subsequently had their case thrown out of court. She wanted to see Michael Gerrety convicted so much that it was almost like a constant headache, but he had the best lawyers in Cork and it would take only one procedural error to see him go free again.

She went into the Day Today store on the corner of Grove Garden to buy herself a cheese and tomato sandwich and a newspaper. As she untied Barney on her way out, her iPhone rang. Barney looked up at her and made that disappointed noise in the back of his throat, as if he knew that she would have to hurry him back home and go rushing off to Anglesea Street.

It was Inspector Fennessy calling her. ‘Good morning, ma’am. Sorry to ring you so early.’

‘What is it, Liam? I’ll be leaving the house in fifteen minutes tops. Can’t it wait?’

‘I just thought you should know that Mairead Whelan received a package in the post first thing this morning.’

‘Oh God. What? Not teeth.’

‘A bit grislier than that. Nipples.’

‘You’re codding me.
Nipples
?’

An elderly man who was walking past her turned his head and gave her a look of alarm.

Inspector Fennessy said, ‘There’s a note with them claiming that they were cut off her husband, to prove that they have him, and that he’ll be contacting her later this morning. She has no way of telling for sure if they’re his, but she reckons they are.’

‘All right, Liam. I’m out with the dog right now, but I’ll come in directly. Where are these nipples now?’

‘Bill Phinner’s sending one of his technicians around to collect them, and the note, too. He can take blood and DNA samples and send them off to the deputy state pathologist for further tests if he has to.’

‘Jesus. This gets worse by the minute. No news about Eoghan Carroll, I suppose?’

‘Not yet, no. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that they haven’t barbecued him like the Pearses.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you in a half-hour so.’

***

When she walked into the station from the car park, she found Detective O’Donovan waiting for her by the front desk, blowing his nose.

‘Pat Whelan’s rung his missus,’ he said, stuffing his handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘We haven’t been able to pinpoint where the call came from exactly, but it was close to the city, northside. We have it recorded, though.’

‘How does he sound?’

‘Not too good, I’d say. Sick as a box of frogs, in fact. From what he said, I think we can be sure those nipples they sent to his missus are actually his.’

They went upstairs in the lift to the second floor. ‘She hasn’t heard from the High Kings of Erin again?’

‘Not yet, no. But I don’t doubt that she will. Pat was insistent, though, that she shouldn’t tell us or anyone else that he’d been kidnapped. She swore blind that she hadn’t, but I don’t know whether he believed her or not. Or if
they
did, whoever they are.’

They walked together along the corridor to Katie’s office. Detective O’Donovan said, ‘I have to say I’m totally puggalized by them warning the victims’ relatives not to contact the Garda. They pick on people to kidnap who are practically bankrupt. How do they think their relatives are going to raise so much money unless they come to us for help? Nobody else is going to hand them two hundred and fifty thousand yoyos with not a hope in hell of ever getting it back.’

Katie stopped at her office door. She looked up at Detective O’Donovan, with his rusty-coloured hair and his sea-green eyes and his tie all crooked, and from the expression on his face and the question he had just asked her she felt that she could trust him.

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ she said. ‘I think the High Kings of Erin are fully aware that their victims’ relatives will get in touch with us. In fact, I believe they want them to. They’re vicious, but they’re also very cute, and I think the only mistake they’ve made so far is to bungle Derek Hagerty’s so-called escape. They killed him to keep him quiet, but I think they would have killed him anyway, eventually, just like they killed the Pearses, and Micky Crounan, too, and unless we can find a way to stop them I think they’re going to kill Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll.’

‘So you don’t think that they’re going to let Pat go free, even after they’ve collected their ransom?’

‘No, I don’t. And I think the only reason they warn their victims’ relatives not to contact us is to hamper our investigation. Think about it: it deters us from making an immediate appeal for witnesses after somebody like Pat Whelan has been snatched. It restricts our surveillance on the victims’ homes and it makes it much more difficult to set up an ambush when the money gets handed over.

‘Not only that, but if anybody gets hurt or killed, then we get the blame for being incompetent because we knew that the relatives had been warned not to get in touch with us. Whatever happens, we can’t win.’

Detective O’Donovan followed her into her office. ‘We could refuse to pay the ransom, couldn’t we? Then what would they do?’

‘I think you know that as well as I do. They’d kill their victims anyway and we’d still get the blame. They’d call us heartless as well as incompetent.’

Detective O’Donovan took out an Olympus voice recorder and laid it down on her desk. ‘This is Pat’s call to Mairead, any road. There’s one or two voices in the background and the sound boys are trying to enhance them, like.’

He switched the recorder on and Katie heard Mairead Whelan saying, ‘
Hello
?
Who is
this
?’ and then Pat saying, ‘
It’s Pat, May. It’s me
.’

Before she could listen to the rest of the conversation, however, her phone rang. It was Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy’s secretary, Teagan.

‘DS Maguire? The Chief Superintendent says could you come to his office, please?’

‘Yes, okay. Tell him five minutes, would you? I’ve only just got in.’

‘I think he wants you to come now, ma’am.’

‘Well, whatever he wants, he’s going to have to wait. I’m busy at the moment.’

She put down the phone, but after less than ten seconds it rang again. This time it was Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy himself.

‘Katie? I need to talk to you right now.’

‘Bryan – I’ve just told your secretary that I’m busy. I’m listening to evidence. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

‘No, you won’t, Katie. There’s been a complaint made against you and I need to discuss it with you immediately.’

‘A complaint? From whom? What kind of complaint?’

‘I’ll tell you when you come to my office, and I’d very much appreciate it if you’d do that now.’

Katie said to Detective O’Donovan, ‘I’m sorry, Patrick, I’m going to have to leave this for now. Molloy wants to see me. I’ll come and find you and listen to the rest of it when I’m finished with him.’

She could see that Detective O’Donovan badly wanted to ask her what was wrong, but she simply gave him a quick, tight smile and left her office.

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy’s door was open, which was unusual for him. He was sitting at his desk with his fingers steepled and his forehead furrowed, as if he were a judge at a tribunal.

Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly was there, too, standing by the window, so that all Katie could see of him was his lean silhouette, with his slicked-back hair and his aquiline nose.

‘So what’s this complaint?’ Katie demanded. ‘You do realize how much I have on my plate today, Bryan?’

Bryan Molloy picked up a sheet of notepaper and leaned back in his chair. ‘At ten forty-seven this morning a thirty-six-year-old male came into the station to lodge a formal complaint against you, namely of assault with intent to cause bodily harm.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘Oh, I’m serious all right. The complainant’s name is David ó Catháin, a veterinary surgeon of Lee Vista, Carrig View, Great Island. As I understand it, he’s your next-door neighbour.’

‘And he’s complained that I’ve assaulted him?’