by Amy Cronin
Anna abandoned the remainder of the article. She had read enough. There was no doubt. David Gallagher had somehow got hold of classified security details about the upcoming conference and was planning to sell it. This must have been how he had planned to make ‘real money’. The Meier brothers were the intermediary, and had come to Cork to collect, kickstarting a chain of events which led to David Gallagher being shot dead. What mattered now was that this information should be taken to the right people, immediately.
Anna checked the time – almost seven o’clock. She knew the office staff in the Lee Street station would be long gone home. She wondered if Myles was still in the briefing centre with Janet McCarthy. She stood up and reached for her mobile phone. She texted him quickly before returning to the task of lacing up her boots.
“I’m going in to work. Please come with me. I should have alerted my supervisor you were here a long time ago.” She immediately saw the fear creep back into Kate’s eyes.
“Please, Anna! I can’t. What if Gallagher’s men see me? I can’t risk it. As far as Tom Gallagher is concerned, I robbed them and killed their son. If he finds me I’m dead!”
She was trembling again, and Anna didn’t think she could force her to go with her. What was she supposed to do?
Anna thought quickly. She pulled on her coat and scarf. “OK. Stay here.”
Kate nodded at her gratefully.
“You can shower and rest – there’s a spare room upstairs on the left. Use whatever you need – take some of my clothes. Have a shower or grab some sleep, OK? But I’ll bring a detective back here after I’ve handed this memory key over at work. Elise Taylor will help you, I’m sure of it. If you get this cleared up with the Guards, you’ll be able to get your passport back, and go join Natalie. You could put this all behind you.”
Anna had no idea how long that might take. And she didn’t know if the detective would calmly speak with Kate, or just arrest her on sight. But she was sure she would treat Kate fairly, happy to clear this case from her workload.
Anna pulled the memory key from the laptop and stuffed it into her jeans pocket. Her mobile phone beeped to indicate a return message from Myles – he was still at the briefing centre. So that was where she would go.
“Anna!” Kate said. “Thank you. For everything. You’ve saved my life!”
Anna looked at her and smiled as she grabbed her car keys and bag. “I’ll see you later.”
As she pulled the front door closed, Anna couldn’t help but feel that it sounded like Kate was saying goodbye.
Kate stayed where she was at the kitchen table for a long time, feeling cold in the empty house. She missed Anna now that she was gone – she didn’t think they’d ever see each other again. She looked at the notepad where Anna had pieced together the contents of the memory key. So, this was what David Gallagher had stored on it. This was his get-rich-quick scheme. He had boasted of it so many times, always alluding to his big payday without giving away any details. David was a conman and a monster, and she was glad he was dead. She just had never imagined this situation, and never thought she could kill a man. Not that David had given her any choice.
She stood up. She was freezing. Anna had offered her some clothes, and she badly needed them. A hot shower and fresh clothes would make her feel better, she reasoned.
There had been so many lies. But it was almost over.
Picking up the notepad and turning to a fresh page, she wrote Anna a short message before she headed upstairs.
I’m sorry x
41
Anna was surprised to see snow had fallen thick and heavy while she and Kate were speaking. But the roads were thankfully safe; the daily traffic had created a safe passage and was now abated, and as Anna drove into the city she was able to pick up speed. She was panicking about the contents of the memory key, which seemed to burn inside her pocket.
While stopped at a red traffic light, Anna dialled the mobile phone number Elise Taylor had given her. It rang and rang, eventually going to voicemail. Anna hesitated slightly – had she really left Kate behind in her house? A woman wanted for questioning in the suspicious death of a man was in her home right now. She should have called the detective a long time ago.
After the beep she left her a voicemail:
Detective Taylor, this is Anna Clarke from work. Kate Crowley contacted me and gave me a memory key that she obtained from David Gallagher. I’m on my way into the briefing centre now to give it to Chief Super McCarthy. I’ll discuss further with her, but I thought you’d like to know. Kate assured me she will speak with you. I’ll ring you again shortly.
With a shaky sigh she pushed her phone into her pocket and concentrated on the road. She hoped she wasn’t in serious trouble for the length of time she had taken to contact the detective.
The car park at work was uncharacteristically, but understandably at this time of night, almost empty. Anna parked in the first available space and walked briskly along the street to the nearby briefing centre. Snow was compacted now on the footpath. Christmas lights illuminated her path and she hurried, not feeling the cold.
Chief Superintendent Janet McCarthy and Myles Henderson were sitting together at a large conference table in the centre of the briefing room. They were both reading from a screen and looked up as Anna entered.
Myles smiled in greeting, but his smile quickly faded as he took in her expression.
“Anna. What is it?”
Anna moved further into the room and put the memory key on the table.
“What’s this?” Janet McCarthy asked.
“Kate Crowley came to my house this evening. She’s still there.”
“The girl wanted in the Gallagher shooting? Why would she call to your home?”
“I know her, well, I used to – we went to school together. She gave me this.” Anna pointed at the slim metal key. “She took it from David Gallagher. We looked at the contents on my laptop – I think David was going to sell the information on to someone, a person he referred to as a Dutchman. She said that on the night David died he was boasting about having found a way to make some ‘real money’. I think this is sensitive information relating to the political conference.”
Janet McCarthy sat back into her chair and exhaled loudly. She looked pointedly at Myles.
Myles picked up the memory key and inserted it into the computer on the table in front of him. Both he and Janet began to peruse the information.
Anna sat down, watching them silently. She had expected more … shock.
“So it has surfaced. And it was David Gallagher, of all people!”
Realisation dawned on Anna – Janet McCarthy knew about the existence of the memory key, and its contents too. She felt a strange sense of relief, a welcome break from the panic she had felt as soon as she had realised what information was contained on it. If the Chief Superintendent wasn’t too shocked by the revelation that the security details for the political conference had been stolen, Anna could only surmise that what was unfolding tonight did not pose a threat.
Anna watched their faces as they studied the information.
“See the question marks here?” Janet said to Myles, pointing at the screen with her pen. “They don’t have the detail of how many armed personnel, just that there are armed bodyguards accompanying the heads of state.”
“See how the maps of the underground pipes and tunnels have been added in. Note the areas circled here in red.” Myles was excited now, leaning forward.
Anna, sitting silently, was growing confused by their calm evaluation of the situation. She thought of Kate back at the house, wondering if she was OK.
Janet rubbed her hands over her face. “There’s almost enough information here to pose a serious problem! Hotel names, who’s staying where, even queries about whether the VIPs will have armed personnel. Christ – access tunnels and a city map. This is very extensive research. I find it hard to see how it ended up in the hands of David Gallagher!”
“He must
have someone on the inside,” Myles said.
Janet frowned at him. “There’s no way any of my detectives would have had anything to do with this!”
“I’m sorry, I really am. But it’s the only explanation. The only way that information got into Gallagher’s hands is by a security breach from inside. It can only have come from someone on the force.”
Watching their exchange, it struck Anna as odd that Myles would be addressing the Chief Super this way – wasn’t he here to sort out technical issues for the conference?
Janet exhaled loudly. “It would appear that there’s no other plausible explanation. The national security arrangements are only accessible to a few. Certainly, within Cork, there are many detectives who are part of the team to keep the conference safe, but this information is kept classified.” She groaned. “This is a disaster!”
Myles and Anna looked at each other. She saw the alarm she felt mirrored in his brown eyes. Janet had grown pale; she looked horrified at the realisation that one of her own team was responsible for stealing the data and providing it to a criminal. It allowed for the possibility that more information had been compromised. Janet picked up a pen and flicked it from side to side on the tabletop as she thought about what to do next.
Anna remembered what Kate had said, that she could swear the Gallaghers had their own information source within the Cork Garda force. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Are you sure Gallagher wasn’t going to use the information himself?” Myles asked, keen to explore all angles.
Anna nodded. “Kate says he spoke about a buyer.”
The Chief Superintendent whistled. “Even for the Gallaghers this is an ambitious reach. Tom must have thought he’d hit the big time!”
“No – Kate told me Tom Gallagher didn’t know anything about it. David wanted to keep him out of it.”
Janet McCarthy looked unconvinced. “Why cut out his father?”
Silence descended. The only person who could answer that lay on a cold slab in the city morgue.
Janet squared her shoulders. She had decided her course of action and was ready to press on.
“Anna, great work on realising the importance of this information. Is Kate Crowley safe? The last thing we need is for the Gallaghers to get hold of her – it seems they are as keen to find her as we are.”
Anna nodded. “She’s safe – they won’t find her at my house.”
“Right, we’ll send a squad car there now,” Janet said, rising to her feet. “OK! I need to get what we’ve uncovered here to some people, and urgently. The underground maps are an add-on, and it gives us a lead about what angle an attack might come from. I’ll email it through to some colleagues and it’d be prudent to make a copy of this.” She turned to Myles. “Do we have any spare USB keys here?”
Anna stood up and offered to get one from the storage room located near the room entrance. As she crossed the conference room Myles and Janet were deep in conversation, Myles pointing at something on the computer screen.
It took Anna a few seconds to locate the storage-room door again. “Stealth storage” was the right term. Anna finally felt the lip of the wooden door with her fingers, almost flush against the wall. She pushed against it gently and it popped open. The tiny room had no light but the conference room was well lit, so taking a deep breath she stepped inside. The door almost shut behind her and she propped it open with one foot as she searched the shelves packed with stationary.
As Anna’s fingers settled on the slim metal case of a spare memory key on the middle shelf, she heard a soft, unusual noise.
Thwump! Thwump!
With one foot still propping open the door, she turned her head to look back into the conference room and saw Janet slumped over the table. Anna’s heart stilled and her blood ran cold. Myles was staring wide-eyed in the direction of the door. With his left hand he fumbled at the computer and, with his eyes never leaving the door, he pulled the memory key out of it quickly.
“No!” he cried, before Anna heard the sound again, thwump, and Myles jerked backwards, falling from his seat onto the floor. He lay on his side, completely still.
Anna’s hand shot to her mouth and she managed to stifle a cry. She quickly stepped all the way inside the storage room and pulled the door shut, praying the movement hadn’t been seen.
The darkness inside the space engulfed her, suffocating her, pressing down on her chest. She had enough space inside the storage room to kneel and she did so, trying to steady her breathing and quell her panic. She could taste vomit in her mouth and hear her heart pounding in her ears.
Noises in the room outside the thin door drew Anna back to the present moment. Her thoughts began to clear, reality forcing its way into her consciousness.
It was a stark reality.
Janet McCarthy had been shot twice, and judging by the soft noises she had heard, Anna guessed that the sound of the gun was muffled with a silencer. Myles was also injured, having been shot at least once. Both were unconscious or worse.
Anna fought her rising nausea as she remained on her knees. Her palms pressed onto her thighs were sweaty on her jeans. She felt terror, a much greater terror than last night in her living room. It was a palpable, physical urge to run – but to where? Who had shot Janet and Myles? And why? Had she been followed here, by the Gallaghers perhaps? She knew she could defend herself from a physical attack, but not from a gun. A bullet could not be blocked or outmanoeuvred. Her breath caught in a gasp in her throat, her heart pounding.
Anna thought suddenly of her mother. Of her soft eyes and bright smile. Helen Clarke’s face was never very far from her consciousness. She remembered her mother’s gentle voice and how, whenever she listened to her favourite orchestral music, she would close her eyes, lean her head back and become lost, a tranquil look on her face. She remembered her mother urging her to have what she called “fortitude”. She would say: “Always face your problems, Anna, always be brave.”
Gulping air into her lungs, her thoughts finally began to focus. She was under attack. Two of her colleagues were shot and needed medical attention. And the shooter was in the briefing room with her, outside the thin storage-room door.
Anna pulled her mobile phone from her pocket and with shaking fingers dialled 112.
“Emergency, which service do you require?”
Anna whispered urgently, “Guards and ambulance, two people have been shot. The shooter is still here, in the building. Please hurry!”
“What is your location?”
Anna whispered the address and hung up, switching her mobile phone onto silent mode. She put her phone and the spare memory key into her pocket.
She gave her full attention now to the room outside the tiny space she was trapped in, pressing her ear against the thin door. Someone was moving around, shoving things aside roughly. Anna surmised the shooter was searching for something they couldn’t find.
Suddenly there was silence. Anna held her breath and waited. Her heart almost stopped beating when she heard a soft voice call out.
“Come on out, Nancy Drew!”
There was manic laughter. A woman’s voice.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
The singsong voice stopped just outside the storage room.
Anna had no choice but to push open the thin wooden door and step forward.
She blinked in the bright light.
She was face to face with Elise Taylor, who raised her gun and pointed it firmly at Anna’s chest.
“Where’s the fucking memory key?”
42
Anna’s mouth was dry, her heart racing. She stared at the detective in shock.
Finally finding her voice she whispered, “Detective Taylor? What are you doing?”
“Hello, Nancy Drew. I’m surprised you haven’t figured this one out already! So, the Crowley bitch turned up, did she? Two old friends reunited – how sweet. Now tell me where she is and give me the memory key. Let’s end this sorry mess!�
�
Elise spoke with icy hatred, her hands steady on the gun. Her composure terrified Anna. She looked to be completely in control, and therefore she had just shot Janet and Myles in cold blood.
Anna’s thoughts raced. Why did Elise want the memory key? How did she even know about its existence?
She looked past Elise to where they both lay. Janet was still slumped over the oak conference table. There was so much blood pooled around her head that Anna was sure she was dead. Janet and Elise had been colleagues – how could Elise have shot her? Her body was completely obscuring the computer and the contents of the memory key; the computer screen was on its side and under Janet’s torso. Myles was curled into a ball on the ground at the leg of the table. Anna had seen him pull out the memory key and wondered if he still held it wrapped in his fist. There was a bloodstain on the shoulder of his shirt that was growing and seeping onto his back. He was losing a lot of blood. He would need help soon if he was going to survive.
Anna stifled a sob and looked at the detective in disgust.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why have you done this?”
Elise laughed. “Because I want to get out of this stinking town!”
The laugh faded on Elise’s lips. Colour flooded her face as she stamped one foot on the carpet and spittle flew into the air as she spoke.
“I can’t take it anymore! The filth, the blood, the drugs … we wanted a new life. And she ruined it! She shot David, and she –” The words seemed to catch in Elise’s throat and a sob escaped her. “She shot David and she’ll pay for that. I’ll hand her over to Gallagher and collect the reward. Kate Crowley can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned!”
Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She realised they had all been duped.