Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (49 page)

‘Do you still have that letter?’ asked Katie. ‘Is that what you were going to give me?’

‘Yes, I still have it, and yes, I’ve brought it for you. But I’ve brought something else besides.’

Underneath the table she had a large hessian bag and out of it she pulled out a plastic Aldi shopping bag with a brown padded envelope inside it. Again she looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then she passed the shopping bag over to Katie. ‘The letter’s in there, too, girl.’

From the weight of the brown padded envelope, Katie immediately guessed what was in it. It wasn’t stuck down, so she opened it a little and took a quick look inside.

‘Molloy told him to throw it off the Thomond Bridge into the river, that’s what he says in his letter. But he didn’t, because he was afraid that Lorcan Devitt would be coming for him and he would need to keep it to defend himself.’

‘Does he say in the letter where he got it?’ asked Katie.

‘Molloy gave it to him. Like I say, Donie himself never even carried a penknife, let alone a gun.’

Gary Cannon leaned forward across the table and spoke in a low voice so that nobody in the Cauldron bar could overhear him. ‘I found out that Molloy had paid Donie to kill Duggan the very next day after he shot him,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘It wasn’t the most difficult piece of police work I ever did. One of my snouts said that he’d met Donie in Lorcan Bourke’s bar and he was mouldy drunk and crying like a babby. He told my snout what he’d done and that Molloy had given him the money and the gun to do it.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Like an eejit, I went to Molloy and asked him about it. Well, he was a good cop and he’d sorted this city out like no cop had ever managed to do before him. But I shouldn’t have done, should I? I should have taken it straight to the top. Molloy really lost it. He told me that I was talking shite. When I said that my snout was always reliable and that maybe I ought to bring Donie Quaid in for questioning, he told me right out of the blue that he was going to dismiss me for taking bribes from drug-dealers. When I asked him what bribes I was supposed to have taken, and who from, he said that he could produce multiple witnesses, no bother. He also said that if I made any kind of a protest to Chief Superintendent Meehan, or anyone else, I’d regret it for the rest of my days. In fact, if I ever said anything to anybody
ever
to suggest that he’d been responsible for Niall Duggan being shot, I’d better phone a priest and ask him to give me the last rites urgent-like.’

‘So what’s changed your mind?’ asked Katie.

‘Hearing from Terry ó Nuallán that Molloy had suspended you, that’s what did it. Kyna told him that you were always a brilliant cop and she thought that there was something fierce fishy going on. The way Kyna tells it, Molloy has been working ever since he was sent down to Cork to pull the rug out from under you, and it’s not just because you’re a woman. He’s up to something, and he doesn’t want you finding out what it is.

‘I thought to myself, if I had a senior cop like you on my side, there would be a chance now of getting my revenge on Molloy. That’s not the only reason, though. I’ll confess to you now that I’ve lost my job with the council and I’m serious skint. If I could get my full Garda pension retrospective like I should have got it, plus maybe some compo for wrongful dismissal, that would just about save my life.

‘That’s why I went looking for Jilleen, to see if she could help me at all. And lo and behold, she still had the letter and the very shooter that Molloy gave Donie to do away with Niall Duggan.’

Katie said, ‘What you’ve given me, this is very important evidence – especially ths gun. It looks like a SIG Sauer P226, which is one of the pistols issued to the Garda Emergency Response Unit. We can check the serial number to find out where it came from, and if it
is
a Garda-issue weapon, we can check who it was signed out to, or when and how it went missing.

‘More than that, we can check the striations on the bullet that was used to kill Niall Duggan against the rifling of the pistol barrel. That’s always presuming we still have the bullet, which I would guess that we do.’

‘You can do
what
?’ frowned Jilleen. ‘I’m sorry, what you said then, that was all Greek to me.’

‘All gun barrels have unique imperfections,’ Katie explained. ‘When you fire a bullet through them the imperfections scratch the bullet and our forensic technicians can match them together. It’s a bit like a barcode on your shopping.’

‘What will you do now?’ Gary Cannon asked her.

‘Nothing hasty, Gary,’ Katie told him. ‘I’m not going to make the same mistake as you and ask Bryan Molloy about this to his face. As you and I have both found out to our cost, he’s not to be messed with. He has a lot of friends and allies in the force, and in County Hall, too. Now, if you and Jilleen will excuse me, I have to get back to Cork to see my lawyer.’

She stood up and shook Gary Cannon’s hand. As she did so, though, Jilleen looked up and said, ‘There’s one more thing.’

‘Go on,’ Katie coaxed her.

‘Not in here, though. Let’s go outside.’

Gary Cannon went to fetch Jilleen’s purple raincoat for her and shrugged on his own cheap waterproof windcheater. They left the Cauldron and went outside on to Nicholas Street. Jilleen immediately reached into her bag for a packet of cigarettes, took one out and lit it.

‘Sorry, but I’ve been dying for a fag.’

They walked together down towards St Mary’s Cathedral, with Gary Cannon walking in the road because the pavement was so narrow. Jilleen blew out smoke and said, ‘I think the Duggans have found out that Donie shot Niall. That’s the reason I told Gary here about it, in case they gave me any trouble.’

‘How did the Duggans find out?’

‘I’m not
totally
sure that they know, but I told Donie’s son Sean about it, about a month ago. Sean’s just thirteen now.’

‘What made you do that?’ asked Katie. The rain had eased off now and a strong, fresh wind was blowing up the street from the river. Katie was thankful for it because it blew away the smell of Jilleen’s perfume and her cigarette smoke.

‘I never meant to tell him, ever,’ said Jilleen. ‘But the poor kid was getting bullied something terrible at school. I told him if his da was still alive he would have gone around to the playground and knocked those bullies’ heads together. Sean said his da never would have done, because what he had heard about his da, he was a softie and never got into any fights or nothing.

‘So I told him that his da had been a stronger man than all of those bullies put together, not to mention any other Moyross scummer. I told him that his da had single-handed finished the fighting between the Quaids and the Duggans and made this city a better place for everybody to live in altogether.’

‘And you told him how Donie had done that?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did you tell him about Bryan Molloy giving him the gun?’

‘I might have done, yes.’

‘So you did?’

‘Yes. No. Well, yes. I think I probably did.’

‘So you think that Sean might have boasted about to it to the Duggans? Any boy would, especially if he was being bullied.’

‘He doesn’t know any of the Duggans. The Quaid and the Duggan boys might not be throwing petrol bombs at each other any more, but that doesn’t mean that they’re bum-chums. But there’s a lad in Sean’s class who’s the son of Lorcan Devitt’s younger brother, Phelim. This boy was one of the worst of the bullies and I think Sean might have told him.’

They had reached St Mary’s now and turned right so that they were walking beside the cathedral wall. High above them, the cathedral’s tower had all the grey ruggedness of a castle in a fantasy novel. Jilleen finished her cigarette right down to the filter and then flicked it across the street.

Katie could feel the heavy weight of the SIG Sauer automatic in the Aldi bag she was carrying. Gary Cannon was saying something about the cathedral being the oldest building in Limerick, if not the entire world, and that Oliver Cromwell’s men had used it to stable their horses, but her mind was racing and she was only half listening to him.

They stopped at the corner of St Augustine’s Place. Katie said, ‘I really must get back now. But thank you for what you’ve told me, Jilleen, and thank you, Gary. Do you have an e-mail address or a mobile number so I can keep in touch with you?’

‘Not exactly at the moment,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘I can tell you my home number, though.’

Katie entered that into her iPhone, as well as Jilleen’s mobile phone number.

‘Good luck to you so,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘Let’s hope that justice is done at last.’

Katie gave them both a wry smile. ‘That’s my job,’ she said. ‘Justice.’

At least it was before I was suspended, she thought, as she walked back up Nicholas Street. Now my job is getting my own back.

Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán knocked on the half-open door of Inspector Fennessy’s office, but there was no answer. She pushed it open wider and saw that he wasn’t there, although his computer was still logged on and there was a cup of coffee beside it, with the lid still on.

She walked over and dropped on to his desk the folder that she had been preparing for him on drug-arrest statistics. As she was turning to leave, his phone rang. She reached over and picked it up and said, ‘Inspector Fennessy’s office.’

Ciara on the switchboard said, ‘Is that DS Ni Nuallán? The caller wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the High Kings of Erin case. He says he’s in a phone booth with not much change and it’s desperate.’

‘Okay, put him through,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

Almost at once, a panicky voice said, ‘Is it you who’s investigating the High Kings of Erin?’

‘The senior officer is Inspector Liam Fennessy, but he’s not in his office just now. My name’s Detective Sergeant Kyna Ni Nuallán. I can help you.’

‘Listen, I’m calling you from a phone booth. I have to be quick because I don’t have much money and I think they might be watching us. This is Pat Whelan of Whelan’s Music Store who was supposed to have been kidnapped by the High Kings of Erin, and I have Eoghan Carroll with me. He was taken in Carrigaline when that garda was shot.’

‘I can send a patrol car round to you directly,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Which phone booth are you calling from?’

‘Don’t do that, just listen. Eoghan and I escaped yesterday from the house where they were holding us. It’s somewhere up near Bridestown. We’ve both been beaten a bit, but nothing too serious. I’ve told my wife to find somewhere safe to hide herself and Eoghan’s done the same for his parents.’

‘Pat, please, tell me where you are. We can come and pick you up and give you protection.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not telling you where we are until I hear that the High Kings of Erin have either been arrested or else they’ve been paid their money and got away with it. It’s not that I don’t trust you personally – it’s just that Eoghan thinks that somebody tipped them off that he was there when that fellow Hagerty was found and that you wanted to question him about it. He’s sure that’s why they came for him. Serious, who could have known about that? You have to admit that it could only have been a guard, or somebody who works at the Garda station.’

‘You’re safe, though, and reasonably well?’ Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán asked him. ‘Is there any way I can contact you?’

‘Not until we hear that the High Kings of Erin are safely locked up, or that they’ve taken their money and run. If you don’t manage to catch them, of course, we’re going to have to talk about protection. Those headers don’t like anybody staying alive to give evidence against them, as you very well know.’

‘Pat, can you just describe them to me?’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘Give me some idea what they look like, or how they talk, or anything else that might help me to identify them. Do they have an accent? How do they dress? Do they have an unusual smell about them? Please, Pat.
Anything
.’

But then the phone went dead and all she could hear was an endless beeping. Either Pat had run out of change or else he had deliberately hung up. What disturbed Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán most of all was that neither he nor Eoghan Carroll felt that they could trust the Garda to take care of them. Katie had strongly suspected that somebody at Anglesea Street was passing information to the High Kings of Erin and now Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was sure of it.

She had just replaced the receiver when Inspector Fennessy walked in, closely followed by Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin.

‘Ah! Kyna! Anything I can help you with?’

‘I’ve just taken a phone call for you,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘You won’t ever believe who it was.’

‘Oh. It wasn’t the lotto, was it, telling me that I’m a multimillionaire?’

‘Almost as good. It was Pat Whelan.’

Inspector Fennessy flinched, almost as if a wasp had suddenly flown close to his face. ‘Come here to me? Pat Whelan? You mean Pat Whelan who’s been kidnapped?’

‘The very same,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘He was ringing from a payphone. He says that he and Eoghan Carroll have both escaped from the High Kings of Erin. They’ve gone into hiding and they’ve sent their families off, too, in case the High Kings of Erin come looking for them at home.’

‘Well, there’s a turn-up for the books,’ said Superintendent MacCostagáin, with what almost amounted to a smile. ‘If they’ve managed to escape, that’s going to save us a quarter of a million euros of public money. I should think that Jimmy O’Reilly’s going to be opening a bottle or two tonight!’

‘Ah, no, it can’t be true,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘It’s one of your hoax phone calls, that’s what it is. What did the fellow sound like?’

‘Very scared. I’d say he was shaking.’

‘Well, of course he was. He was scared that you were going to catch on that he was taking the piss. Shaking? Shaking with laughter, more like.’

‘Did he tell you where he was calling from?’ asked Superintendent MacCostagáin.

‘No, he didn’t. There was some traffic noise, like you’d expect, but nothing special. We’ll have it recorded and we can probably trace it back, but if it was a phone booth that’s not going to help us much.’