Living Death (25 page)

He hitched his knapsack on to his shoulders, zipped the collar of his windcheater right up to his chin, and started to trudge west. The rain was blowing directly into his face and he kept coughing. He cursed himself for not bothering to refill his inhaler. His parents had plenty of spares but he had assumed that he would be home in Killarney before he needed it.

He turned around, just to make sure that the black Opel had gone, but he was disturbed to see that it had travelled no more than a hundred metres down the road. He walked on a little further but then he turned around a second time and realised that it had actually stopped. Its rear red lights were shining so it must still be in gear and Ger was keeping his foot on the brake pedal. What were they waiting for? Why didn’t they just drive off?

He started to walk faster, and then he broke into a jog. The road ahead of him was still deserted, although he could see a small car reversing out of the driveway of the furthest bungalow. He hoped that it would turn and head towards him, but once it had reversed it headed off in the opposite direction.

He looked around yet again. The black Opel still hadn’t driven away. Maybe he was panicking for no reason at all. Maybe they had just stopped to make a phone call. All the same, he kept walking and intermittently jogging as fast as he could, his chest whining and his knapsack slapping
thwack, thwack, thwack
against his back.

He had only managed to cover about a hundred metres when he heard a whinnying sound. He kept jogging, but when he quickly turned his head, he saw that the Opel was reversing towards him with its two nearside wheels on the pavement, and fast.

He gulped in air, and then he started to run. It would be suicidal to try and cross the road, and he couldn’t push his way through the bramble-hedge on his right-hand side, because he could see that there was a barbed-wire fence running through it. His only chance was to reach the derelict house, and escape through the metal gate.

He ran as hard as he could manage, his legs and his arms pumping, every breath squealing in his windpipe. He didn’t dare to turn around, although the Opel sounded as if it were almost on top of him.

He reached the gate, and pushed it, and it clanged, but it wouldn’t open. He saw almost at once that it was padlocked, with a chain. He grasped the top rail, preparing to heave himself over, turning towards the Opel at the same time to see how close it was, but it was then that it caught up with him. It hit him at an angle, at nearly 15 mph, so that his back was crushed against the concrete pillar on the left-hand side of the gate, and both of his knees were bent the wrong way underneath its rear bumper, with a complicated crackle like kindling catching fire.

The Opel drove forward a few metres, and then stopped. Kieran remained where he was, his eyes staring with shock, his jaw hanging open. There was no visible blood. His knapsack had cushioned his spine against the sharp edge of the concrete pillar, but after his legs had disappeared under the car, the rear bumper had split his pelvis in half.

Milo and Ger opened their doors and climbed out. Milo looked around but Model Farm Road was still deserted, and the rain was still dredging down, as heavy as ever. As they walked up to him, Kieran fell sideways, with his head in a puddle. The rain pattered on the hood of his windcheater and dripped off the end of his nose.

Milo squatted down close to him, still sucking on the end of his cigarette, and said, ‘Hey! You still with us, boy? Can’t have you dying on us now, there’s not a priest in sight!’

Kieran let out a groan that ended in a squeak, and a bubble of blood appeared between his lips, and then burst.

Milo stood up. ‘You’re a right fecking Footy McLoughlin sometimes, Ger, I tell you. You only had to knock the poor bastard off his feet. You didn’t have to knacker him completely! I just hope he’s still living and breathing by the time we get him back to Saint Giles, or Gearoid’s going to do ninety.’

‘Ah stop, he’ll be okay,’ said Ger, flicking his cigarette butt into the road. ‘Gearoid can just bend his legs back and he’ll be fit as a butcher’s dog.’

‘It’s not his fecking legs I’m worried about. Gearoid wants them with their legs broke as you know full well. Saves him operating on their knees – taking out their nutellas or whatever you call them.’

‘Well, it’s not doing his health a heap of good lying out here in the wet,’ said Ger. ‘Let’s stow him away and skirt on before anybody sees us.’

He opened the rear door of the Opel. Between them, he and Milo lifted Kieran up and manoeuvred him on to the back seat. His legs were both dangling at such awkward angles that Milo had to twist one of them sharply to get him in through the car door; and when they laid him down they could hear the two sides of his broken pelvis grating against each other, like a broken earthenware basin. He was still alive, though. He was breathing in a high-pitched whistle, and he whimpered when they laid him on his side.

They had just climbed back into their seats when a Garda patrol car slowly drove past. They could see the gardaí looking at them, but the patrol car kept on going. Milo turned to Ger and said, ‘There you are. Remember that fortune cookie I had at Panda Mama last week? “
You will have a narrow escape from bad luck.
”’

Ger waited until the patrol car was out of sight and then pulled away from the kerb. ‘Yeah – but you remember what mine was? “
You will meet the lover of your dreams
.” That hasn’t happened yet, has it?’

Milo took out two more cigarettes. ‘Maybe if you stopped drowning yourself in that fecking Lynx aftershave and shaved off that scobe ’tache.’

‘Oh yeah? I’ve never seen the girls falling over you, boy. I’ve never even seen the sneaky butchers giving you the eye.’

Kieran, in the back, let out a quivering little scream of pain, and then fell silent.

Katie had only just sat down at her desk when Detective Scanlan knocked at her door. Pádraigin was wearing a plain long-sleeved dress in charcoal-grey wool and her hair was tied back with a grey satin ribbon, but Katie thought the severity of her appearance made her look unusually attractive, like a sexually repressed bunscoil teacher.

‘It took a while, ma’am, but I’ve found out at last who ordered that taxi that picked up Gerry Mulvaney.’

‘Good work. Who was it? Or did he order it himself?’

‘No, no, he didn’t. It was ordered on account, but the controller at Tuohy’s Taxis who took the call was off duty last night when I rang them. He’d left no note about that particular job, and nobody at the taxi office knew where he was – out on the lash, as usual, so they said – so I had to wait until he came in this morning. He told me the taxi was ordered by a woman called Grainne Buckley. It seems like she orders nine or ten taxis a week, sometimes more.’

‘Really? Where does she live?’

‘Tuohy’s always send her invoices care of McMahon’s solicitors in South Mall, and they pay them online. But almost every taxi she orders is either
from
or
to
St Giles’ Clinic – that’s on the Middle Glanmire Road in Montenotte, not too far past Lover’s Walk.’

‘St Giles’ Clinic? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them.’

‘They have a website but it doesn’t tell you very much. It says that they’re a private care and rehabilitation home for patients with severe disabilities, that’s about all. It doesn’t list any of the staff or describe exactly what they do.’

‘Have you checked them out? Are they registered with the HSE?’

‘It says they are, on their website. It also says that they’re registered with the UK Department of Health. I haven’t yet double-checked that, though.’

Katie prised the lid off her coffee and sat back.

‘Why would a private clinic in Montenotte send a taxi to pick up a scumbag of a dog thief from Riverstick?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘It’s like that Sherlock Holmes story, isn’t it, about the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time.’

‘Well, there was a reason why the dog in the story didn’t bark, wasn’t there?’ said Katie. ‘The dog in the story knew the villain, that’s why it didn’t bark. So – it might sound unlikely – but maybe the people at St Giles’ Clinic know Gerry Mulvaney.’

‘What’s the next step, then?’

‘God knows. This dognapping enquiry is taking up more and more time and we already have more on our plate than we can handle. Maybe you and Dooley could shoot up to Montenotte and see if you can find this Grainne Buckley. All you have to do is ask her why she provided a taxi for Gerry Mulvaney and see where it goes from there. It could be that she and him are nothing more than friends, or acquaintances. Maybe he has a relative who’s a patient up there. Who knows?’

‘All right, we’ll do that,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘And by the way, Conor Ó Máille will be here at eleven-thirty or thereabouts. The pet detective.’

‘Oh Jesus, yes. The pet detective. I just hope it was a good idea, calling him in.’

‘You never know. He could take over some of this dognapping enquiry, and give us a bit of a break.’

‘I’ll believe that when I meet him. He’ll probably have a magnifying-glass in one hand and a cat-basket in the other.’

Detective Scanlan said, ‘I’ll see if Dooley’s free now, any road. I should be back here before Conor Ó Máille turns up.’

‘Good. Make sure you are. It was your idea, after all, calling him in.’

When Detective Scanlan had gone, Katie asked Moirin to ring the Special Detective Unit in Dublin for her so that she could speak to Superintendent Matthew O’Malley. He answered immediately, and sounded very brisk and attentive. She could picture him: white-haired, bull-necked, strong-chinned, sitting to attention.

‘Kathleen, yes, how are you? Last time we met was at that annual superintendents’ conference in Naas, wasn’t it? What a hoolie that was and no mistake! What can I do for you today?’

‘I don’t need very much, Matthew, just a little information. It’s about that detective of yours who met Maureen Callahan.’

Superintendent O’Malley didn’t answer immediately, and she thought that he might not have heard her, so she added: ‘The one you told Jimmy O’Reilly about, so that he could tell me.’

‘Oh, yes – yes of course,’ said Superintendent O’Malley. For some reason he sounded more wary now, as if this was something that he didn’t want to talk about.

Katie said, ‘Anyway I met Maureen and she told me that her family are due to receive a very large shipment of contraband guns.’

‘Well, guns, that’s mainly the business they’re in, isn’t it, the Callahans? But it would be a real bonus to catch them at it, I must say.’

‘The shipment’s supposed to be arriving in Cork on Friday night, although she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me exactly where. She said she’d text me as soon as she found out.’

‘I see.’

Katie hesitated for a moment. ‘
I see
?’ Was that all he had to say? If their positions had been reversed, her immediate response would have been ‘
Why? What earthly reason would Maureen Callahan have for betraying her own family about a shipment of guns? Apart from the treachery of it, breaking the criminal code of silence, doesn’t she realise the appalling risk she’s taking with her own life?
’

‘As soon as Maureen tells me that the weapons have been delivered, and where, I’ll obviously set up a raid,’ she said. ‘Before I consider mounting
any
kind of operation, though, I really would like to talk to this detective of yours, the one who met Maureen. I’d like to hear what his opinion is.’

‘His opinion of what?’

‘Well, his opinion of Maureen’s motive for giving us incriminating information about her own family, for starters.’

‘Did
she
tell you her motive?’

‘Yes. She said she was convinced that her family had murdered her boyfriend, Bradán O’Flynn, because they couldn’t tolerate a Callahan doing a line with an O’Flynn.’

‘That sounds like a strong enough motive to me.’

Again, Katie thought,
How incurious can he be?
He was a senior detective, and yet he hadn’t asked what had led Maureen Callahan to believe that Bradán O’Flynn had been murdered. Neither had he asked if
I
had prior knowledge that he might have been killed, or was missing; or when this murder was supposed to have taken place, or how; or if there was a body. All the same, she didn’t challenge him. She had seen Superintendent O’Malley in arguments before, and she knew that it was easy to put his back up.

‘I’d still like your detective to know what Maureen told me about the arms shipment,’ she said. ‘He seems to have won the Callahan family’s confidence, so he’s bound to have some thoughts about it. I mean, he may think that for some unknown reason she’s just stringing me along.’

There was a very long silence, and then Superintendent O’Malley said, ‘I’m sorry, Kathleen. I can’t share his identity with you. As you well know, all SDU detectives operate deep under cover – they have to if we’re going to be effective. We can’t even tell quite senior officers who they are. Sometimes our investigations involve what you might call transgressions by the Gardaí as well as organised criminals – bribery and blackmail and so forth.’

‘Like wiping penalty points off driving licences, you mean?’

‘Well, yes, that kind of thing. And worse. So if I told you who our man was, his usefulness in Cork would be totally compromised, and that would mean months if not years of subterfuge going to waste.’

‘Oh, you don’t trust me, is that it?’ said Katie. ‘A member of one of Cork’s most wanted criminal families trusts me, but you don’t?’

‘Kathleen, you know that’s not the case. But I have to think of our man’s personal safety, too. If his cover was blown, you know as well as I do that he’d be floating in the Lee within the hour with a bullet in the back of his head.’

‘Does Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly know who he is?’

‘I can’t answer that, Kathleen. I’m sorry. It’s simply a question of security.’

‘I’m only asking you if Jimmy O’Reilly knows your man’s identity, that’s all.’

‘Why should that make any difference? But if you really must know, he doesn’t. Absolutely not.’