Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (46 page)

Her father eased himself painfully down in his high-backed armchair, as if his joints were seizing up. She noticed that the seat cushions were thick with biscuit crumbs and the carpet all around was spotted with stains. She sat down on the sofa close to him and Barney sat down beside her, with a whine in the back of his throat.

‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’ Katie asked her father.

‘No, I’m grand, thanks. I just had one. At least I think I did. Anyway, I’ve run out of tea bags.’

‘I thought Moirin was doing the messages for you.’

‘Yes, well, she does. But I forgot to put tea bags on my list.’

‘She could have checked.’

‘Oh, well, yes. But fair play to her, she has her hands full looking after Siobhán, and that husband of hers is like a lighthouse in the Bog of Allen.’

‘Listen, I’ll go to the shop and buy you some tea bags before I go back home. Is there anything else you need, apart from a new housekeeper?’

Her father shook his head. She didn’t want to say anything to him but he smelled. For him to lose Ailish was the most disastrous thing that could have happened because, apart from making him happy, she always took good care of him. There was almost no possibility that he would find another woman who would love him as much as Ailish had, especially the state of him now.

‘So, how’s things at Anglesea Street?’ he asked her. ‘Have you heard from Dermot O’Driscoll at all?’

Chief Superintendent Dermot O’Driscoll had been a sergeant when Katie’s father was an inspector. He had championed Katie’s promotion to detective superintendent, against fierce hostility from other officers, simply because he had believed in her professional abilities and female intuition. Earlier this year, however, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was presently on extended sick leave.

‘He called into the station two weeks ago,’ said Katie. ‘They’re still giving him radiotherapy and hormone treatment at Bon Secours, but he was cheerful enough. I have no idea if he’ll ever be able to come back to work.’

‘Dermot’s a good man. He was always a good man. When you see him again, tell him I wish him the best, won’t you?’

Katie’s father sucked at his teeth for a while, his eyes focused on the past. Then he looked across at Katie and said, ‘What’s this kidnapping then? You did say kidnapping?’

‘Haven’t you seen it on the news? It’s been the top story almost every day.’

‘I haven’t watched the telly since Ailish passed. She always had the telly on, morning till night, whether she was watching it or not. It reminds me too much of her, just the sound of it.’

As briefly as she could, Katie told him about the abductions of Micky Crounan and Derek Hagerty and Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll. She told him about the bomb at Merchants Quay that had killed Garda Brenda McCracken and the shooting in Carrigaline of Detective Garda Nessa Goold. She also told him how the Pearses had been incinerated on the beach at at Rocky Bay.

‘Mother of God,’ said her father. ‘Do you know who’s behind it?’

‘They call themselves the High Kings of Erin. One of them has rung me to claim responsibility for everything they’ve done. They’re proud of it, would you believe? They say that they’re patriots. They want to restore Ireland’s pride after the collapse of the economy and they’re doing it by punishing all of those small businessmen who borrowed more money than they could ever afford to pay back.’

‘The High Kings of Erin? That’s who they say they are? Really?’

‘Why? Does that mean something?’

Katie’s father reached into the pocket of his cardigan and took out a scrumpled-up tissue to wipe his nose. ‘I should say it means something. It was the High Kings of Erin who forced me to retire early.’

‘What? You never told me. I always thought you retired early because of your heart.’

‘No, there was never anything wrong with my heart. That was just the story that they made me agree to. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, these kidnappers of yours using the same name, like. After all, there’s that folk band, too, isn’t there, the High Kings? But the High Kings of Erin as I knew them – they were all gardaí.’

‘What, like a secret society? Like the Knights of Saint Columbanus or the Fenians or the Freemasons?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But why did they force you to retire early? What were they up to?’

‘They always claimed that they were being charitable, and I suppose they were, in a way. But they were running a scam that wasn’t so different in its way from the penalty points racket that Martin Callinan and Alan Shatter had to resign for.’

‘So they were wiping points off driving licences for people who could do them favours?’

‘They were, yes, but a whole lot more than that,’ said Katie’s father. ‘They weren’t just erasing penalty points. They were dropping all kinds of charges – fraud, rape, drug-dealing, you name it – so long as the offenders paid them enough. Sometimes they were paid thousands. You remember Kieran Beasley?’

‘Kieran Beasley? Yes, that rings a bell. He was charged with running some kind of Ponzi scheme in computer software, wasn’t he? Whatever happened to him?’

‘Absolutely nothing happened to him, Katie. He was charged with fraud but before he was due to appear in court he paid the High Kings of Erin nearly quarter of a million punts and all the evidence against him mysteriously vanished. I think your friend Michael Gerrety paid to have some sex charges dropped, too. The same thing happened again and again, quite regular, like, for years.’

‘So what was charitable about that?’ asked Katie.

‘The High Kings of Erin donated at least two thirds of the money to various needy causes, like the ISPCC and the L’Arche Community. The rest they kept for themselves, as “expenses”.’

‘That’s unbelievable.’

‘Well – they justified what they were doing by saying that it was better for the money to go to the poor and the needy rather than the state, in fines, and if any of the offenders had been jailed it would only have cost the country more money to keep them in prison – nearly eighty thousand euros a year, at the last estimate. Well, you know that.’

Katie shook her head. ‘I suppose there’s some kind of twisted logic to it. But what happened? Why did they make you retire?’

‘Because me and another inspector, Tom Keaveney, we found out what was going on. We were investigating a drug-running gang that was based in Limerick but were smuggling cocaine through Ringaskiddy. We arrested three mules from Eastern Europe and confiscated nearly one and a half million pounds’ worth of drugs that they had hidden in their shoes. But two days later we were approached by this fellow from Limerick who said that he’d happily pay us if we forgot all about the charges and let the mules go.

‘Of course, we told him there was no chance at all, and that we could arrest
him
for attempting to bribe two police officers. But he just laughed at us and said that he’d paid to get members of his gang off charges a rake of times. If we didn’t accept his offer, he’d go public and tell the newspapers and TV the names of the gardaí who had taken his money before.’

‘So what did you do?’ asked Katie.

‘Me and Tom told him that we didn’t believe him. We were worried, of course, that this was some kind of a set-up by the Garda Ombudsman and that we were being secretly filmed or recorded, and that if we took money off him we’d be charged ourselves with corruption. But he said that he’d paid money at least five times to a group of gardaí who called themselves the High Kings of Erin, and that these High Kings of Erin had assured him that it would all go to charity. He had taken it for granted that every Garda officer was involved in this same racket, which was why he had offered to pay us.

‘Again, we told him that we didn’t believe him, but he said that we should go and ask the officers he had done business with.’

‘So he told you who they were?’

Her father wiped his nose again, and nodded.

‘Well – who were they? Aren’t you going to tell me?’

‘I swore that I would never mention this to anybody, ever again. The High Kings of Erin said that they would burn down my house if I did, with me in it, and that they would hurt my family, too – especially you, Katie, because you were a garda yourself. Has it never occurred to you why you faced such fierce opposition when Dermot wanted to have you promoted? It wasn’t just prejudice because you were a woman. They were afraid that I might have told you who the High Kings of Erin were. And that was one of the reasons I never told you why I retired before my time. I was protecting you, pet, as well as myself.’

For a few moments Katie said nothing. Her father’s words gradually sank into her consciousness like a leaky rowing boat. As chilly and damp as it already was, his house now felt even chillier, and gloomier, and more oppressive. It was so hard for her to accept that he had been living in fear ever since he had retired from the force. She had worshipped him ever since she was small, and boasted about him at school, and the stories he used to tell her about arresting notorious Cork criminals had been one of the reasons why she had decided to make a career herself in An Garda Síochána.

Now he was telling her that he had discovered that some of his fellow officers were corrupt – but because they had threatened his life if he exposed them, he had never had the nerve to face up to them. She had always believed that he was afraid of nobody and nothing.

‘Dad,’ she said, reaching across and taking hold of his hand. His fingers were icy-cold and gnarled and he had semicircles of black dirt under his nails. He was still wearing the wedding ring that he had first put on when he married Katie’s mother and had never taken off. Ailish had told him that he could keep it on after he was married to her. ‘You don’t stop loving people just because they’re dead.’

‘Dad, you have to tell me who they were, the High Kings of Erin.’

‘No, Katie, I can’t. I don’t care about myself any more, but I’m not having you or any of your sisters put at risk.’

‘Dad, I’ve been suspended. I’ve been making hardly any progress at all with these kidnapping cases and now somebody’s made a complaint against me and Jimmy O’Reilly has used it an excuse to pack me off on gardening leave.’

‘What? Jimmy O’Reilly? He can’t do that, surely.’

‘Dad, he’s the assistant commissioner now, not a superintendent like he was when you knew him. He can pretty much do what he likes. The complaint came from my next-door neighbour, who’s been acting the maggot, to put it mildly. I’m going to see my solicitor when I leave here and I’m sure I can get it all sorted out. But if I can find out who these High Kings of Erin are, it will really help me to get back my credibility. Even the media have been suggesting that I’m not up to my job.’

She paused and squeezed his hand, trying to transfer a little warmth. ‘It just seems to me like too much of a coincidence that your High Kings of Erin were extorting money and that my High Kings of Erin are doing the same, even though they’re doing it by kidnapping people rather than dropping charges against them.’

Her father looked at her with eyes as grey and watery as the River Lee outside. ‘Thomas Keaveney and I went to the Garda confidential recipient and reported what was going on. He said that he’d set up an investigation, but after only two weeks he came back and said that he’d found no evidence of any wrongdoing.

‘We could have taken what we knew to the Garda Ombudsman, but by then we were both getting so much stick for turning Turk. Nobody would sit next to us in the canteen. My car was scratched almost every day and the tyres let down. One night in the middle of the night the doorbell rang and when I went to answer it I found a dead rat tied to the door handle.’

‘Dad, I need every scrap of evidence that I can get,’ Katie persisted. ‘I’ve already discovered that Bryan Molloy may have some financial links to the tarmac company that tried to bury Micky Crounan’s body under the road. He may be totally innocent. Paul and I had shares in Lee Waterside Developments when they were doing a babs and never had a clue what they were up to. But this needs to be looked into, Dad. It’s urgent. Two young gardaí have already lost their lives, as well as four civilians at least.’

There was a long, long silence. Barney heard cats mating in the back garden and immediately trotted to the French doors at the other end of the living room and stood there wuffing in disapproval, misting up the window with his breath.

Katie let her father take his time. He may have been vilified by his fellow officers and eventually forced to retire, and it must have been almost unbearable for him to become a whistleblower, but he still retained his old loyalties.

At last, he turned his head away, as if he were addressing some imaginary board of inquiry sitting in front of the fireplace.

‘I’m only repeating what I was told, and the fellow who told me wasn’t what you might describe as reputable, so I can’t vouch for it one hundred per cent.’

‘I understand that and of course I’ll take it into account,’ said Katie, equally formally.

Her father hesitated even longer, still staring at the black and empty grate. Katie was about to prompt him again when he said, ‘Superintendent Stephen Fitzgerald. Do you remember him? The High Kings of Erin was his idea, according to this fellow from Limerick, and he was like the ringleader.’

‘I remember Stephen Fitzgerald,’ said Katie. ‘We always called him Superintendent Shouty.’

‘He did have a very short fuse,’ agreed her father . ‘Of course, he’s dead now. Aortic aneurysm on the golf course. In his time, though, he was one of the best officers we had. Very good with protests and demonstrations, always had everything planned out right to the very last detail, although woe betide you if you made a bags of it. He’d shout the head off your shoulders.’

‘I wonder what made him start the High Kings of Erin,’ said Katie.

‘He started to have serious money trouble, as far as I know. His wife was very ill, cervical cancer I think, and her treatment was very expensive. Apart from that, he lost a packet with bad investments on the stock exchange. I suppose he thought that if he gave most of the money to charity then it wouldn’t be so immoral.’