‘Jesus. They haven’t sent her his head, have they?’
‘No, but she found a jam jar on her doorstep this morning with teeth in it and she believes they might be his. I’ve sent Dooley to get hold of his dental records.’
‘His teeth? That’s a new one.’
‘I didn’t count them myself but I’d say there was at least ten, including one gold crown. Bill Phinner’s looking at them now.’
‘His teeth,’ repeated Bryan Molloy. ‘Gives me the shudders to think about it. I hate the dentist. Usually when some poor soul gets kidnapped they cut off an ear, or a pinkie, and send that along as proof that they’ve got him. Mind you, in Limerick, the Duggan gang once pulled out some fellow’s toenails, all ten of them, with pliers, and send them to his missus in a Jiffy bag. Shows how stupid they were. They could have been anybody’s toenails. How do you recognize your husband by his toenails?’
Katie said, ‘I may be way off but I have a feeling that Derek Hagerty could have been taken by the same people who killed Micky Crounan.’
‘Have they allowed Mrs Hagerty to talk to her husband at all? Does she have any idea who might have snatched him, and why?’
‘No. They haven’t identified themselves in any way, although Shelagh Hagerty said that the man who called her had what sounded like a northside Limerick accent. The manager at the Montenotte Hotel who signed for the wedding cake said that the fellow who brought it also sounded like he came from Moyross.’
‘That’s almost a criminal offence in itself, talking with a Moyross accent.’
Katie came away from the window. ‘I think the most effective way of dealing with this is for Shelagh Hagerty to tell the abductors that she’s managed to raise the full ransom and arrange for a drop somewhere. So long as they don’t suspect that she’s contacted us, we should be in with a fair chance of putting a tail on them. It’s our best hope for keeping Derek Hagerty alive, wouldn’t you think? Always assuming that they haven’t killed him already.’
Bryan Molloy sat down at his desk and pressed his hand over his mouth, as if he were trying to stop himself from saying something that he was going to regret. Katie stayed where she was, saying nothing, watching him. This was a complicated man – irascible, prejudiced, but not a fool.
After a few moments he took his hand away and nodded, and kept on nodding. He reminded her of a toy bulldog on the back shelf of a car. ‘I agree with you,’ he said.
‘You do?’ said Katie. ‘Well, there’s a first.’
‘No, fair play to you, what you’re saying makes absolute sense. We don’t want this Hagerty fellow getting himself topped and, like you say, if we play our cards right we could nail these scummers. We’ll have to plan it real careful, though. They’ll be wanting to count the money before they let Hagerty go. We can’t just jump on them as soon as they show up to collect it, and we can’t palm them off with a bundle of cut-up newspaper.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Katie. ‘But that means we’ll need to indent for two hundred and fifty thousand in real banknotes.’
‘Let me sort that out. Jimmy O’Reilly’s in Dublin at the moment but I’ll give him a call and see how quick he can authorize it. As soon as he gives me the go-ahead I’ll let you know, and you can contact Hagerty’s wife. Meanwhile, if you can do whatever you can to confirm that those teeth really do belong to him.’
‘Of course,’ said Katie. She hesitated for a moment, and was tempted to say that maybe the two of them might be able to work together in harmony after all. But she knew that Bryan Molloy would immediately take that as a sign of female weakness. He would probably tell her that they would never be able to cooperate closely unless she kept her nose out of his private financial affairs, and joined his golf club, and the Masons, and grew a dark red beard – and a penis.
He picked up his phone and said, ‘Get me the assistant commissioner, would you?’ Then he looked up at Katie. ‘Was there something else?’
She gave him the slightest shake of her head, and left. As she walked back to her own office, she smiled at herself for thinking that she and Bryan Molloy could conceivably find a way to rub along together. He had been so effective in his fight against the criminal gangs in Limerick because he understood completely how some people can detest each other for no rational reason at all except that they do, and he detested her.
Or then again, she thought, maybe he didn’t.
8
She had finished all of her paperwork by five-thirty, so she left the station and drove to Tivoli Estate, which overlooked the River Lee to the east of the city, to see how Shelagh Hagerty was coping. It was on her way home to Cobh in any case.
The Hagerty house was hidden from the steeply sloping road behind a high beech hedge, but to avoid attracting attention she parked at the bottom of the hill and walked the rest of the way, letting herself into the garden by the side gate. She could see the white Ford van parked further up the road with O’Keefe Double Glazing emblazoned on the side. There were two armed gardaí sitting in it, allegedly keeping a watchful eye on the property, although from Katie’s experience one of them was probably asleep and the other was likely to be reading the sports pages in the Irish Sun.
All the same, they must have noticed her and alerted Detective Horgan. As she came through the garden, he opened the kitchen door for her and said, ‘Didn’t expect to see you, ma’am.’
‘I just thought I’d see how Mrs Hagerty was bearing up.’
‘Well, she’s trying to put a brave face on it so. But I think the strain is getting a bit much for her.’
Katie followed him through the kitchen into the living room. Shelagh Hagerty was standing by the tall French windows with a bunched-up handkerchief in her fist. Outside the clouds were growing darker, and the room was becoming gloomier and gloomier. A young technician with brushed-up Jedward hair and headphones around his neck was sitting beside the telephone, to which he had attached a Vidicode voice recorder. On the table beside him were two laptops loaded with spy software for tracking and listening in to mobile phone calls.
‘Nobody rung yet, then?’ asked Katie.
‘One wrong number and one feller wanting to sell me double glazing.’
‘Double glazing? That’s ironic. His name wasn’t O’Keefe, was it?’
Katie went over to Shelagh Hagerty. ‘I won’t ask you how you’re feeling because I can guess,’ she said. ‘I just want you to know that the assistant commissioner has approved the release of the ransom money.’
Shelagh Hagerty nodded and tried to smile. ‘Thank you, Superintendent. What would we have done if he hadn’t?’
‘Oh, there was no question of that. Don’t even think about it. Any road, the chances are very high that we’ll get it all back.’
‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’ asked Shelagh Hagerty, but at that moment, the phone rang, and even Katie felt a tingle of shock. Shelagh Hagerty looked at her wide-eyed and said, ‘What shall I tell him? I don’t know what to tell him!’
‘It’s simple. All you have to do is tell him that you’ve managed to raise two hundred and fifty thousand euros.’
‘Oh God, I’m so scared!’
‘Please, Shelagh, try to keep calm. You have the money, so there’s every chance that you can get Derek back safe and well. But try to keep your man on the line for as long as you possibly can.’
The phone kept on ringing and ringing. Eventually Shelagh Hagerty took a deep breath and picked it up.
‘Hello?’ she said, in a high, strangled voice. She listened for a moment, and then she covered the receiver with her hand and mouthed to Katie, ‘It’s him!’
The young technician held up a pair of earphones and Katie plugged one of them into her left ear. She heard a man’s voice with a slurry accent say, ‘Hello there, Shelagh. What’s the craic?’
She was sure that the caller would be using a stealth phone, or what was called a ‘burner,’ a throwaway phone that would make it impossible to trace his number. But the sof
tware would allow the technician to work out roughly where he was by triangulating between the radio towers that were carrying the call, and then use the signal strength to narrow down his location even further.
Detective Horgan was listening on earphones, too. He looked across at Katie and she thought she had never seen him so grim-faced. Usually he was cracking jokes and pulling faces, but she wondered if the job was beginning to get to him. She was always careful to watch her team for the first signs of stress – and herself, too.
Shelagh Hagerty said, ‘I have the money. The two hundred and fifty thousand you asked for.’
‘You have it? That’s grand. It looks like you’ll be seeing your precious Derek again, then, doesn’t it?’
‘It was very hard to raise it,’ said Shelagh. ‘I had to sell almost everything we own. I had to borrow some, too, and that wasn’t easy, because I couldn’t tell anybody what I wanted the money for.’
‘Listen, Shelagh, I don’t give a shite how hard it was to raise it. The only thing that matters is that you have it. All we have to do now is arrange for you to hand it over.’
‘I need to see my Derek first. Or at least to talk to him on the phone. I have to know that he’s still alive before I give you all this money.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to trust me, because he isn’t here with me now. But I can tell you for sure that he’s still living and breathing, and that as soon as I get the money he’ll be free to go.’
Shelagh Hagerty didn’t know what to say next, but Katie gave her a thumbs up and mouthed ‘okay’.
‘All right, then,’ said Shelagh. ‘Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.’
‘You haven’t been in touch with the shades, have you?’
‘What do you think? My Derek’s life is at stake.’
‘Very sensible of you. Well, then, here’s what to do. The money should all be in two-hundred and one-hundred-euro notes, just about half and half, all used, with non-sequential numbers.’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Let me write that down.’
‘Come on, Shelagh, lively now, I don’t have all day. Wrap up the money in five bundles of fifty thousand euros each in cling film. You understand me, the ordinary cling film like you use in the kitchen. Put the bundles into the back of your car and park it on the second level of the Merchants Quay car park at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Leave the car unlocked with the keys and the parking ticket in the glove box and take a taxi back home. We’ll call you when we’ve checked that you’ve given us everything we asked you for.’
‘But what about Derek?’
‘When we call you, we’ll let you know where you can find your car, and we’ll also let you know where you can find your husband.’
‘He is alive, isn’t he? You took out some of his teeth, didn’t you, but you haven’t hurt him any more than that, have you?’
Shelagh Hagerty was breathing hard, and Katie could tell that she was boiling to tell this man how angry she was, and how much she hated him, and what a monster he had been to pull out so many of Derek’s teeth, but she managed to keep her anger under control.
‘Have you traced his location yet?’ Katie asked the technician.
The technician nodded. ‘I’m getting there. He’s calling from somewhere between the phone towers on the North Ring Road and Mayfield Industrial Estate, but he’s much closer to Mayfield. I’m just checking the signal strength to narrow it down a bit.’
‘I shall never forgive you if you’ve hurt him,’ said Shelgah Hagerty.
‘He’s living and breathing, Shelagh, as God is my witness,’ the man replied. ‘If you do exactly as I’ve told you, and no funny business, you’ll be seeing him again before you know it. Two o’clock on the dot tomorrow, second level, Merchants Quay car park. G’luck to you so.’
With that, he switched off his phone. Immediately, though, the technician said, ‘He’s less than a hundred and fifty metres away from Mayfield Shopping Centre. In fact, it’s most likely that he’s calling from the car park or somewhere right outside.’ He swivelled one of his laptops around so that Katie could see the map on his screen, with a small red icon flashing. Mayfield Shopping Centre was less than five kilometres to the north-east of Cork City centre, and only six minutes north of Tivoli Estate, where they were now.
Detective Horgan said, ‘I’ll have Dooley go up there. I don’t think we have much hope of catching this fellow without knowing what he looks like, or what kind of car he’s driving, and he’s more than likely driven off by now. But if we check out the shopping centre’s CCTV we may be able to pick out somebody in the car park making a phone call at a time that tallies.’
‘Well, you can try,’ said Katie. ‘These days it seems like everybody’s walking around with a phone glued to their ear.’
‘So what should I do?’ asked Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Do you really think they’re going to let Derek go?’
‘Do exactly what your man told you to do. We’ll have the money ready for you by tomorrow morning and we’ll bring it round here. Then just drive down to Merchants Quay and follow his instructions.’
‘What will you do? Follow them? Supposing they see you?’
‘I can’t tell you what we’re going to do, Shelagh, but I promise you that we won’t take any action that might jeopardize your husband’s life.’
‘I’m trying very hard to believe that,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Right now, though, I’m wishing that I’d never told you. I could have raised that money somehow, and at least I’d be sure that Derek wouldn’t be hurt any more.’
‘Shelagh, there are never any guarantees with people like these. But if we let them get away with it once, they’ll do it again and again, and you don’t want another wife to suffer the way that you’ve been suffering, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Right now, I don’t care very much about anybody else.’
9
That night, she was woken at two-thirty by the sound of shouting and screaming from the Kanes’ house next door. She turned over and covered her ears with her pillow, but the noise continued, as well as door-slamming and clattering and a sudden burst of loud pop music, as if a radio had been turned on full and then immediately turned off again.
At last, after more than twenty minutes, there was silence, but by now Katie was so wide awake that she climbed out of bed and went to the window. She pulled the curtains aside, but the Kanes’ house was in darkness. She went back to bed, switched on her bedside lamp and picked up the crossword she had been trying to finish before she had grown too sleepy.
One of down clues was ‘Together, the top and bottom of the world are manic’. The answer was ‘bipolar’.
***
Next morning, as she came back with Barney from his early-morning walk, she found David Kane standing in her porch with the collar of his grey raincoat turned up. It was raining hard now and Barney had been stopping every few yards to shake himself.
‘Good morning, Katie,’ said David. ‘That’s the trouble with dogs, isn’it? You have to take them out to do the necessary, whatever the weather.’
Katie lowered her umbrella and shook it. ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ she asked him.
‘No, I couldn’t. If my patients smelled another dog in the house, whether they were dogs themselves or cats or whatever, they’d find it very disturbing.’
He stood close beside her as she unlocked her front door. ‘Talking of disturbing, the reason I’ve come over is to apologize for all the racket we were making last night, Sorcha and me. Sorcha was having one of her episodes.’
Katie stepped into the hallway and Barney followed her. David stayed in the porch as she hung up her raincoat.
‘Has she been back to her doctor?’ she said.
‘Several doctors. None of them seem able to make her any better.’
‘Come in. I have to go to work in half an hour, but I was going to make myself a cup of coffee, if you’d like one
.’
David came into the house and closed the front door behind him.
‘Here, take off your coat,’ said Katie.
‘Are you sure? I feel like I’m imposing on you.’
‘That’s what I do for a living, David. It’s my job to be imposed upon.’
‘Yes, but by criminals. Not by your next-door neighbour.’
‘My father used to be a Garda inspector. He always told me that some people are destined to take care of everybody else, whether they like it or not. “We’re born to wipe the tears of the world,” he used to say.’
‘Oh, well, if you put it like that.’
They went through to the kitchen. Katie put on the kettle and spooned some ground espresso into her cafetière. While they waited for the kettle to boil, David sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and dry-washed his face with his hands.
‘Have you thought of taking her to a psychotherapist?’ asked Katie. ‘We have a very good one who helps us when we interview suspects who have some kind of mental disturbance, Dr Gillian Murphy. She has a practice in Wilton.’
‘She saw one psychiatrist in Dublin, but he was worse than useless. He put her on lithium and told her to watch comedy films if ever she felt badly depressed. Can you believe it? Comedy films!’
‘You’re going to have do something, David. You can’t let things go on the way they are.’
‘Well, no, you’re absolutely right,’ he said, watching as Katie poured him a mug of coffee. ‘I’ll try this psychotherapist of yours in Wilton if you can give me her number.’
He paused, and then he said, ‘You have no idea what I would give, though, Katie, for a normal evening out with a normal woman. Just to go to a restaurant and not be constantly on a knife-edge in case she bursts into tears or starts screaming at the waiter or throwing her food all over the place. Just to have a few hours of inconsequential conversation about this and that and the other, if you know what I mean, and a bit of a laugh. I’m not trying to do Sorcha down, but she’s wearing me out.’
Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Page 6