The Nameless Dead (8 page)

Dunne stood again. ‘You need to do something. She’s balling her eyes out constantly, hearing a baby crying in that thing.’

‘Someone hurt it,’ Christine said.

‘What?’

‘Last night. I heard the baby crying,’ she explained. ‘I heard him crying. I thought he was Michael. I asked Andrew to check but he wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t
check.’

‘It wasn’t Michael crying, Chrissie,’ Dunne said. ‘I told you that.’

‘He cried on and on. Then I heard someone shout at him. I think they hit him. He didn’t cry after that. I’ve been listening all night, but he won’t cry.’

‘And you’re sure it’s not your baby.’

‘It’s not our baby,’ Dunne replied tersely, gritting his teeth. ‘I told her that. It won’t go in.’

Joe McCready wandered back into the room. He looked at me and shrugged lightly.

‘Where is Michael now?’ I asked again.

Dunne shook his head.

‘He’s sleeping,’ Christine said.

‘Jesus,’ Dunne snapped, suddenly leaving the room.

‘Are you okay for a second, Christine?’ I asked. ‘Garda McCready will take a statement from you.’

I nodded to Joe, who moved over and sat on the edge of the sofa beside Christine. She smiled wanly, lifting the monitor and cradling it in her hand, her eyes fixed on the display.

Dunne was in the kitchen when I went out, lighting a cigarette.

‘Is there something I’m missing?’ I asked.

‘She’s the one with something missing. A fucking screw,’ he said, pointing towards the living room.

‘Maybe keep your voice down, sir,’ I said. ‘You might wake the baby.’ I had meant the final comment to be light hearted. It had the opposite reaction.

‘There is no fucking baby,’ Dunne spat, flecks of saliva catching in the faint moustache of hair on his upper lip.

‘What?’

‘She lost her baby. Stillborn. There is no baby, there’s no crying, there’s nothing. She lost the baby, now she’s lost her fucking mind.’

‘Why is she listening to the baby monitor, if you don’t have a baby?’

‘Because she’s nuts,’ Dunne stated, as if talking to a child. ‘She bought it before the baby came. I came in one night and she’s sitting with it on. In case Michael
cries; I’m up and down those fucking stairs every ten minutes checking on an empty room for her.’

He stared at me plaintively, a thin column of ash dangling from the end of his cigarette. It dropped onto the floor, shattering lightly on the linoleum.

‘I never signed up for all this . . . shit, you know,’ he said, his anger spent now. ‘I just wanted to do right by her.’

He slumped heavily onto the seat by the table, propped up his head on his hand, his elbow resting on his knee. He took one drag from the cigarette, then stubbed it out on the saucer he was using
as an ashtray.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Everyone’s sorry,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Doctors, nurses, priests, everyone’s sorry.’

I stood a moment before excusing myself to go back in to Christine who, no doubt, had heard the entire exchange.

‘I didn’t mean none of that,’ Dunne said behind me. ‘Sorry I took it out on you.’

I nodded, then moved back into the living room as Christine wiped her eyes free of tears. Joe McCready looked little better and I realized that, for a man worried about his pregnant wife, this
call-out might not have been the best for assuaging his fears.

‘I’m sorry for your loss, Christine,’ I said. ‘I truly am.’

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, sniffed loudly. A final tear trickled down her cheek and she wiped it away, too.

‘I’m not mad,’ she said. ‘I did hear crying. Someone hurt that baby. You believe me, don’t you?’

She looked from Joe to me and back, willing us to believe her.

‘Of course,’ I said.

But she must have read something different in my eyes, for she turned from me.

‘I’m sorry I bothered you,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d care.’

Dunne stood at the doorway with us. The darkness had thickened, but the street lights along the pavement outside offered no light, being little more than decapitated poles with
occasional wires hanging loose from the top of them.

‘This place doesn’t help,’ he said, raising his chin slightly as he gestured towards the estate beyond.

I could understand his concern. Island View, where they lived, was one of a number of ghost estates along the border; housing developments begun just before the property bubble burst and never
completed. The skeletal outlines of the houses standing around us were not the only unfinished element of the estate; the road was potholed and weedy, the pavements loosely comprising hard-fill but
no tarmac.

The houses were in varying states of completeness. Island View was begun during the final yelps of the Celtic Tiger by a speculator who convinced the banks to loan him enough to build eighty
houses. The money had run out halfway through, the contractors folded, the developer long since fled to the North, where he had claimed bankruptcy to avoid having to pay any of the men who had
worked on the houses. It was just as well; the development had been built on the expectation of the continued influx of immigrant workers to bolster an Irish workforce wealthy enough to be choosy
about the employment they would seek. The death of the Tiger had seen the workers leave again, and the jobs no one would take became the jobs everyone wanted but no one could get anymore.

Only thirty of the houses had ever been fully finished; they sat along the first street of the estate, near the road, completed early to attract potential buyers to set deposits on the houses
further back, out of view, squatting spectrally in the dark. In addition to the €400,000 each of the thirty buyers had paid for their homes, there were unforeseeable additional costs: the
empty houses further back in the estate were a magnet for couples seeking quiet spots for half an hour, or kids, too young to get into the bars, looking for shelter as they drank their carry-outs
on a Saturday night.

‘It’s a rough-looking spot, all right,’ McCready said.

‘It’s a shit-hole,’ Dunne said. ‘The builder used the cheapest stuff he could get in the houses. We were in a month and the plaster started falling off the ceilings. The
bloody door locks were so cheap we found out our door key could open all the neighbours’ houses as well, and theirs ours.’

‘Builds neighbourly trust, I’d imagine,’ I said.

‘Can they do nothing to get it finished?’ McCready said.

‘Who? The Council?’ Dunne snuffled into his hand, rubbing his nose vigorously. ‘They won’t even fix the shitters.’

Of all the problems facing the inhabitants of Island View, the worst by a stretch was the fact that the sewage-pumping station had broken soon after the developer had fled the jurisdiction,
meaning that the effluent of the households pumped out of a pipe to the rear of the estate into a mound in the corner of a field. In autumn, sodden nappies and the detritus of each household
floated in the pools created by the heavy rains. Even that, though, was preferable to what happened to the same area in the heat of summer.

‘It’s not right,’ Dunne added. ‘Christine shouldn’t have to live in a place like this. I wanted better for her. You know?’

I nodded, my estimation of the man rising significantly.

As we reached the main road, having left Christine Cashell’s, a red BMW pulled in past us and continued on towards the back of the estate. I was fairly certain I
recognized the driver.

‘I want to check something for a minute, Joe,’ I said, doing a U-turn and following the car.

The driver of the BMW was a local thug named Peter O’Connell. We’d been aware of O’Connell for months now; he’d slotted into the gap left by Lorcan Hutton, one of our
most proficient drug dealers, who had been murdered a year previous.

We followed at a distance, helped somewhat by the fact that I was driving my own vehicle rather than a marked squad car. Finally we saw the flash of the brake lights as the car pulled up outside
number 67, one of the unoccupied houses to the rear of the development. It was in relatively good repair in comparison with the shells surrounding it; notably it was one of the few unoccupied
houses that had managed to maintain all its windows unbroken.

O’Connell climbed out, shutting the door and locking it with his key fob. He was a tall fella, just shy of 20, his face still red and pock-marked from adolescent acne, his hair spiked and
tipped. He glanced around, then placed one finger tight against his left nostril and snorted the right one clear of mucus onto the pavement. Pinching his nose between finger and thumb, he wiped it
clean, then rubbed his hand against his trouser leg. He hoisted at his belt, pulling his trousers fractionally closer to his waist. Such was their style, they dropped again towards his hips,
exposing the white of his underwear. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his top, then sauntered towards the front door of the house, exaggeratedly rolling his shoulders as he walked.

At the front door he withdrew a bunch of keys from his pocket, selected one and opened the door. A moment later the room to the rear of the house illuminated. The houses had not been wired for
electric this far into the estate, which meant he had lanterns in the house.

‘Do we go in?’ McCready asked.

‘Let’s give it a moment,’ I said. ‘I want to catch him in the act.’

‘Are you waiting for Morrison?’

I shook my head. ‘Morrison won’t turn up here,’ I said. ‘He’s too smart to get his hands dirty. But I’d guess O’Connell is using this as his office, so
we can expect callers.’

‘Even if we get O’Connell, Morrison’ll have someone else out here selling tomorrow,’ McCready said.

I nodded. ‘Perhaps. But for tonight, O’Connell getting taken will royally piss him off.’

McCready smiled, but I could tell he was questioning the value of what we were doing. O’Connell was selling drugs, but he was doing so with the permission of, and paying commission to,
Vincent Morrison. Morrison had cleared the decks of drug dealers along the border in a previous case I had worked, persuading a dissident paramilitary group to take out his competition, so that he,
ultimately, controlled drugs in the borderlands. Two factors complicated things: firstly, we could not prove that he was behind the drugs. Secondly, and more problematically for me, Morrison had
saved my daughter’s life following a riding accident, by taking her to hospital. The depth of gratitude I felt for his having so done was surpassed only by my determination to bring him down
over his drug dealing.

A few moments later a Ford Fiesta pulled up in front of the house. As best we could tell, despite the mist of condensation on the windows, there seemed to be three young men in the car, the
thumping of the bass beat from the radio audible even from our distance. They parked up and one got out, glanced around, then swaggered up to number 67, banging on the door with his fist three
times, then stepping back. O’Connell came to the door, his rolling gait visible in silhouette against the lantern he’d lit when he entered the house. He opened the door, and the two
slapped hands then slid them apart, tugging one another’s fingers before separating. They banged shoulders lightly in embrace, then both went into the house.

‘I’ll go in,’ I hissed. ‘You take the two in the car. Keep them quiet; we need O’Connell with drugs.’

We got out of my car, which I’d parked around the curve in the road from number 67, our approach hidden from the Fiesta’s occupants by the condensation of the car’s windows. I
headed straight for the house, the door lying slightly ajar where the visitor had neglected to pull it shut behind him; he wasn’t planning on staying long.

We were just drawing abreast with the car when the rear door opened.

‘I’m going in for a slash,’ a voice said, and a youth stood up from the car, his hands already reaching for his fly. He stared at us stupidly for a minute, his eyes glazed, the
opened door releasing a waft of cannabis smoke into the night air.

‘The guards!’ he shouted, struggling to get back into the car.

‘Take him down,’ I shouted to McCready, heading for the house. As I anticipated, before I had reached the door, the driver of the car had begun blaring the horn.

I pushed open the door and moved into the hallway, my gun drawn, though I had no expectation of using it; O’Connell didn’t strike me as the type to pull a gun on a garda. Morrison
wouldn’t want that kind of heat, for a start.

‘An Garda, on the floor!’ I shouted.

In the kitchen two figures stood at a table on which sat a battery lantern. O’Connell looked up at me, a plastic bag in his hand. The younger man, who had only just arrived, looked around
in panic. O’Connell pushed him to the ground, in effect blocking the doorway for a moment, then turned and ran.

I clambered over the young man, who lay prone, his hands pulled up in front of his face for protection. I had initially assumed that O’Connell was making a run for the back door, but he
ran past it into the small room to the rear of the house. The door slammed. I ran at it, putting my weight against it. The door gave enough for me to see that O’Connell was standing legs
apart, one trying to hold the door shut, while he stuffed the plastic bag down the toilet. I shoved again, though by now he had shifted his own position and was leaning against the back of the
door. I heard the flush then shoved a third time, almost falling into the room as O’Connell stepped back, his hands now empty.

I shoved him against the wall, patting him down in the hope that he had secreted some of the drugs on himself, the flushing of the toilet a bluff, but his pockets were empty save for a wad of
bank notes in his trouser pocket.

I pushed him ahead of me towards the kitchen, where McCready was pulling the other youth, now cuffed, to his feet. McCready held a small plastic bag of pills in his hand.

‘I’ve never seen them before,’ O’Connell said, before anyone spoke.

‘He says you sold them to him,’ McCready replied.

‘He’s a lying sack of shit. I never sold him nothing. He tried to sell them to me an’ I said no.’