No Turning Back

by Sam Blake

  ‘Pissed off. Angry. Feeling like I’ve wasted a year of my life working for a Master’s that’s going to be completely useless. Apart from that, just great. I’m supposed to be focusing on the next fight but . . .’ She opened her hands to indicate the chips and the wine.

  ‘Everyone needs a night off once in a while.’

  ‘Not if they want to win they don’t.’ Her tone was blunter than she’d intended. ‘Sorry, I’m having a bad day.’

  ‘That’s not like you.’ He reached out and rubbed the back of her hand, his fingers lingering there for a moment before he picked up his can of beer and took another swig.

  She kept her eyes on the table. What was that about?

  He continued as if he hadn’t noticed her reaction. ‘And you know you haven’t wasted a year. It’s vital experience that you’ll have over the next man. It’s experience and training you’ll be able to use every day out on the job.’

  ‘True.’

  It was but it didn’t make her feel any better. She looked up and found him looking directly at her. He looked away quickly, picking up his beer again. For a moment she felt the room go very quiet, could hear the clock ticking. She cleared her throat.

  ‘I was thinking. I need to work out what my next move is, if it’s not going into profiling. I’d prepared myself to move on mentally and now it’s not happening and I’m already feeling a bit . . .’ She paused. ‘Sort of trapped. I need a change.’

  That was the real problem here – that feeling that she’d seen outside the gate but now it had closed on her. She felt a bit like she’d been caught on the ropes in a fight – it could end there or she could forget about tactics, forget about saving energy, and fight her way out, go for the kill.

  She’d had to do that before and one thing was for sure, she wouldn’t be dictated to by circumstances. It wasn’t in her nature.

  He pursed his lips. ‘I think you’re right. Have you any ideas? Maybe see if there are any openings in Crime and Security or the Criminal Assets Bureau?’

  She weighed the thought for a moment. Crime and Security’s remit was far reaching – it was like the secret service wing of An Garda Síochána, covering everything from close protection to undercover units. It was a possibility for sure, but since she’d found herself in a lonely field in the Dublin Mountains with a unit of heavily armed highly trained police officers, she’d been wondering if she could make the cut.

  ‘I was thinking of the Emergency Response Unit actually.’

  She said it tentatively. Whenever it had come up before, he’d been very frosty about the whole idea. The ERU was an elite team based in Harcourt Square in Dublin city centre, but they were on alert to scramble to anywhere in the country in two hours. Heavily armed, they were the premier tactical operations unit. And they were part of the European ATLAS Network task force that could be called on to deal with major terrorist incidents anywhere in Europe. Every job they went on was potentially life threatening.

  O’Rourke’s frowned. ‘The ERU? You sure? I didn’t think you were serious when you mentioned it before. It’s not exactly a walk in the park . . .’ He stopped, thinking about it. ‘But it’s an ideal fit for you. And they are crying out for women.’

  ‘I think the two-week army assault selection course puts a few people off a bit. To say nothing of the balaclavas.’ Confused, he looked at her quizzically. She smiled. ‘Hat hair. Not a good look.’

  O’Rourke rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus, Cat . . . But seriously, though, are you thinking about applying? They are recruiting at the moment. The closing date is pretty soon.’

  Maybe it was the way he said it, sort of believing but not quite. And in that moment she made up her mind. She needed a change, she need to keep on top of her fitness, and she thrived on adrenaline. And let’s face it, she’d already been shot once – and blown up. How many times could that happen in a lifetime? By the law of averages, she should be as safe as houses. And she looked great in black.

  ‘Yes.’

  She surprised herself with how definite she sounded. Her mum was going to kill her but she suddenly realised it was exactly what she wanted to do. If she was absolutely honest with herself she’d been a tiny bit worried about how she’d fare in a desk job, that the paperwork side of the profiler role could actually be the equivalent of a long, slow death for her. She was totally fascinated by the process, by the psychology, by getting deep into criminal motivation, and with everything a detailed knowledge of forensic psychology brought, but she needed action in her life. Maybe chasing armed gunmen across fields in the middle of the night wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was at moments like those that she felt absolutely alive, when she was using all her skills and she knew exactly what she was doing. It was moments like those that made her love her job.

  Perhaps it was all about danger, about living on the edge. Maybe that’s why she boxed, why she was at the top of her sport. And there certainly wouldn’t be any danger flying a desk in headquarters. A profiler was never going to be on the front line unless there was a hostage negotiation, and then they would only be there in an advisory capacity. In a truck about as far from the front line as you could get.

  O’Rourke picked up the last few chip ends and stuck them in his mouth, rolling up the brown paper bags ready to throw in the bin.

  ‘Honestly, I think you’re mad. A lot of people are going to worry themselves stupid about you. But I can see that it’s the right decision. You’re too young to get trapped behind a desk, you can do that at the end of your career.’ He grimaced. ‘Not wanting to tempt fate, but when you’re missing a limb, then it’s time to find a nice quiet number in headquarters.’

  She half-smiled. There were times when she thought that he knew her better than she knew herself. He was making a very good point. One she hadn’t thought of. When she was closer to her thirty years’ service – that was the time to start thinking about taking it easy. Why did he always come up with the sensible stuff? Why hadn’t she thought of that? But perhaps that’s why they got on so well – their differences kept things interesting.

  O’Rourke crumpled his beer can in one hand and wrapped it neatly into the brown paper parcel, pausing for a moment, the package tidy in the middle of the table. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ve got some news too.’

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘What?’

  ‘I applied for Super.’

  She’d known it had to come but it was still a shock. How long had he been the DI in Dun Laoghaire? A couple of years? Superintendent was the next rank up, and he’d always been on the fast track. But for once Cathy was stuck for words.

  ‘It’ll be on the next promotions list.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s why I had to go up to headquarters. The Commissioner has asked me to take over as Detective Superintendent in Limerick, there’s been a vacancy there for a while.’

  ‘Limerick?’ Bandit country. She wasn’t surprised there was a vacancy. There were families there who put the Krays into the shade. And Limerick was at the other end of the country. Cathy felt her stomach go into free fall.

  This was obviously her week for good news. Not.

  Perhaps he was pretending that he hadn’t noticed her face pale, but O’Rourke kept talking.

  ‘The gang situation is hotting up again and the position has been vacant too long. There are going to be questions in the Dáil about it – the press, anyway. The Commissioner wants to be ready . . . I wanted . . .’ He hesitated again. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’

  ‘When?’ It came out more abruptly than she’d intended, the silences in the gaps so loud she felt like they might overwhelm her.

  ‘A couple of weeks, I think. Before there are any more shootings.’

  ‘That’s soon.’ She tried to hide the crack in her voice. Unsuccessfully.

  ‘I’ll write your recommendation for the ERU first. You’ll need to be quick, though, I think the closing date is early next week. With me gone, Frank Gallagher should be made D
I, he’s a good man, dependable. He must have been pretty pissed off when I got the post – he’d applied too.’

  Frank had managed to keep it quiet but Cathy had always suspected that might be the case. A couple of weeks, though. That was fast.

  ‘I’ll miss you.’ It was out before she knew what she’d said.

  His smile was sad. He stood up, wrapping the brown bags into a tighter ball.

  ‘We’ll have the phone. And I’ll be in Dublin for meetings, I’m sure. And Limerick’s not that far. You could come down on your long weekend?’ His voice was quiet, hopeful.

  Cathy smiled at him. ‘I’ll take that as an invitation. You won’t be able to get rid of me that easily.’

  He smiled back at her, his eyes meeting hers. ‘Good. That’s good.’ O’Rourke turned like he had forgotten what he was doing. ‘Right . . . I better be going, we’ve an early start tomorrow.’

  She stood up as he crossed the kitchen to put the chip wrappers into the concealed bin under the sink. The cabinet door closed with a clunk.

  ‘I better be going,’ he said again. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, half-looking at her.

  Sensing his tension, Cathy pretended nothing was wrong, went around the table to pull his jacket off the back of his chair, passing it to him.

  ‘What time are we meeting in the morning?’

  He shouldered it on. ‘I told the lads nine.’

  ‘Grand, that’ll give me time to go to the gym first, work off these chips.’ He still didn’t move. ‘Your coat should be dry by now.’

  Glancing at him, paralysed in the middle of her kitchen, Cathy just wanted to close the gap between them and hug him. He looked so lost, so lonely . . . but mention of his coat seemed to bring him back. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Cathy went out to the hall to get his coat. He followed her. Turning in the narrow hall, she handed it to him and he slipped it on.

  ‘We should have the bus CCTV by the morning too.’ Back to the case with a bump. He hesitated. ‘I better go.’ He said it with zero enthusiasm.

  ‘You need your beauty sleep.’

  O’Rourke looked at her hard and grinned. ‘Yeah, right. And you need yours . . . So I’ll see you in the morning, then?’

  ‘You sure will.’ Pulling the front door open, she looked out into the night. It had stopped raining.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ He was right next to her in the narrow hall, looking out into the night.

  She shrugged; of course she would.

  ‘Good.’

  He turned to her and sort of hovered for a moment, his eyes holding her face. Holy God, was he going to kiss her? Cathy felt a surge of emotion and her knees suddenly went shaky. If they had been in a movie she was sure there would have been a crescendo of violins.

  And with that he was gone, jogging towards his car with the collar of his coat turned up.

  Cathy watched him go, leaning on the door frame for support. She waited while he got into the car, until the interior light began to fade, then he started the engine and put his foot to the floor, roaring off down the road.

  She closed the door gently. Things were changing. For both of them.

  Chapter 18

  Sunday, 7 a.m.

  Cathy got to the gym in thirty minutes, the M50 virtually empty. She’d hardly slept, thoughts of O’Rourke moving to Limerick and the ERU careering around her head.

  McIntyre was in his office behind the plate glass window engraved with a rising phoenix. He waved as she pushed open the door to the gym. It was empty, just the way she liked it. Pop music was blaring but McIntyre had changed the station to an Irish language channel; he must have been sick of the same ten songs playing on Spin all day. Cathy’s Irish wasn’t great – it had been good enough to get her into the job but was starting to fade now. Technically she was supposed to be able to conduct an arrest and prosecute a case in Irish. Fortunately, she’d never had to, although there was always the odd smart-arse who challenged a traffic stop as Gaeilge. Cathy threw her gloves onto the bench that ran around the brick-built gym and grabbed a skipping rope to start her warm-ups. As the rope whistled through the air, her feet rhythmic on the rubber matting, she let her mind drift. This was when she did her best thinking – when her mind wasn’t cluttered with distractions. Fitness training was repetitive work and required none of the quick thinking and total concentration she needed in the ring, which gave her space to evaluate the interviews she’d been conducting and the data they had gathered so far.

  Tom Quinn’s night walks were bothering her a lot. It had been a clear night on Thursday, one of the few days they’d had recently without constant rain, but clear skies meant that it had been absolutely freezing. Admittedly close to the sea the ground temperature was higher than in other parts of the country, but she’d checked the records and there had been a stiff onshore breeze. Which made you think that anyone going for a walk in the dark would need a good reason for venturing out. It definitely wasn’t the type of evening when you popped out for a stroll. Had he been meeting Lauren? It was looking more and more likely. Why else would she have been in Dalkey the same night? Maybe she’d had something to tell him they couldn’t discuss at his house, where the ever watchful Mira might take too much interest, and maybe they hadn’t wanted to go to a pub. The post-mortem hadn’t found any evidence of a pregnancy, so it hadn’t been that, but there had to be a reason they were both out that night.

  They’d both had a couple of drinks at some stage that evening, they had alcohol in their blood. But the footage they had of Lauren leaving the DART station suggested she’d headed straight for Dillon’s Park, which meant she must have had a drink before she arrived in Dalkey. She’d been picked up by the Allied Irish Bank cameras heading down towards Coliemore Road, had passed Paddy Power the bookmakers and the Club pub and then the cameras ran out. The one line that had always stuck in Cathy’s head from her training at the Templemore Training Academy was ‘Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.’ Just because they couldn’t see her didn’t mean Lauren hadn’t been there. Though quite whether she’d met someone on the way or not remained a mystery.

  And despite scrolling through hours of CCTV, they were still no closer to identifying the time Tom was run down. There was no sign of him on the village CCTV, or at the petrol station, but as Frank had pointed out, he could have cut up the back way to the Queens pub, or continued walking down the back streets to meet Lauren. They were checking the car park footage from the Queens in case it had caught him in the periphery.

  Cathy suddenly realised she was soaked in sweat. Throwing down the skipping rope, she switched to alternating star jumps and press-ups. It took her a few minutes to get a rhythm going.

  ‘Hey there, miss, how are you doing? Sarah Jane on her way?’ McIntyre’s voice beside her made her jump. He had a way of floating around the gym; Muhammad Ali would have been proud of him. Stopping, she turned to grin at him.

  ‘I’m good, Boss.’ She bumped her fist against his. ‘She said she’d be here soon.’

  ‘Still mad about that job?’

  Cathy took a moment to answer. She’d been mad as hell the last time she’d been in here and had virtually kicked the punchbag off its chains, but now she was feeling remarkably zen.

  ‘Actually I had a think about it and I’m not ready for a desk yet. I thought that’s what I wanted but fate has a funny way of intervening, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So have you got another plan?’

  ‘I have actually . . .’ She looked at McIntyre sideways. ‘I’m going to apply to the ERU.’

  She wasn’t sure what sort of reaction she’d expected – him trying to talk her out of it probably – but McIntyre just pursed his lips and scowled while he thought for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.

  ‘You’ll be good at that. I trained special ops for long enough – you’ve definitely got the full skill set. And it’ll be easier to maintain your training programme, you’ll need to stay at peak
fitness.’ He shook his head. ‘I was always a bit worried about you getting stuck in an office. I reckoned you’d last about two minutes and end up banging your wings against the window trying to get out.’

  ‘What does O’Rourke think?’

  Cathy swung around at the voice behind her. Over the music playing in the gym she hadn’t heard Sarah Jane come in. Her best friend had tied her long blonde hair up in a knot, was wearing her black lycra gym gear. Grinning, Cathy turned to give her a hug but Sarah Jane put up her hands playfully.

  ‘Back off there, lady, you’re drenched.’

  Cathy glanced down at her sweat-soaked vest. ‘You’re right. What have you been up to this week? Every time I tried your phone I got voicemail.’

  ‘You got voicemail? I’ve been leaving messages with you all week. I was starting to think you’d left the country after that promotions list nonsense.’

  Cathy punched her playfully on the arm. ‘Sorry. It’s been mad the last few days. We’ve a double case on. I saw the missed calls but you know what it’s like, I’m not dossing around DCU any more.’

  ‘Really?’ Sarah Jane glared at her playfully. ‘Dossing? I’ve been in the library all week.’ She reached for a skipping rope hanging from the wall, checking it was long enough for her, then said, ‘I’m on a deadline for a paid article.’

  Cathy threw her a teasing look of amazement, but Sarah Jane wasn’t letting her win that round.

  ‘Shut up. It’s a good one. About how Facebook Analytics are being used to influence consumer decisions, but I ended up finding loads of stuff on how your personal info is mined and hackers use it to get your bank and credit card info. It’s . . .’

  ‘Here, less chat, ladies, more action. You can talk all you like after you’re done. Make sure you take it easy, SJ.’

  Sarah Jane flicked the rope behind her and grinned at McIntyre. ‘Yes, Boss.’

  It was like being back at school but they loved it.

  *

  An hour later, they were both exhausted. McIntyre gave Cathy the signal that she could finish up, do her stretches and then head for the shower. The two sparring partners he’d found to fight her looked just as relieved as the girls were. They’d come in looking a lot more awake than Cathy had expected for a Sunday morning and were, she’d quickly realised, as dedicated to success as she was, but McIntyre had pushed them all hard. The lads high-fived them as they headed back into the men’s locker room.