Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán was sitting with her legs crossed on the opposite side of the room, flicking through a copy of Hello!, but she looked up when Katie said that.
Dr Reidy said, ‘There are five distinct bruises to his temples which were probably caused by thumb and finger pressure, but we weren’t able to lift any prints from them – not entirely surprising since his head was subsequently baked in a cake. However, he’s missing three teeth from his lower left jaw – the second and third molars and second premolar.
Dr Reidy hesitated, but Katie could sense that he had something more to tell her, something critical. He always enjoyed disclosing his findings with dramatic pauses, and he always left his most important revelations until last.
‘All three teeth were extracted at the same time, and I would say that they were taken out almost immediately prior to the victim’s beheading, because the cavities hadn’t even begun to heal. What’s more, they weren’t pulled out by any dentist, I can tell you that for certain. The gums were damaged in such a way that I would guess they were forcibly removed with pliers.’
‘Ordinary DIY pliers, like you’d buy in Hickey’s?’
‘Exactly that. We found squarish contusions around the cavities which exactly match a pair of 125mm flat-nose linesman’s pliers.’
‘You’ll send me your pictures?’ said Katie.
‘Of course. They should be coming through to you in the next few minutes. Full report to follow. Difficult to give you an exact date and time of death because of the effects of the baking process, but I’ve done my best.’
Katie said nothing to Dr Reidy about Derek Hagerty’s teeth being sent in a jam jar to his wife. Those teeth, too, had been forcibly extracted, but so far she had no irrefutable proof that Micky Crounan and Derek Hagerty might have been abducted by the same offenders, even though each new piece of evidence seemed to be telling her that it was increasingly likely.
She told Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán what Dr Reidy had said to her, and then she rang Inspector Fennessy and informed him, too.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It gives me the raging toothache just to think about it.’
‘Have you heard from the bomb squad?’
‘Not more than ten minutes ago. They searched the car park but they didn’t find any more devices. I’ve just had a call from the technical boys, too. The bomb was definitely C-4, probably about twenty to twenty-five pounds of it, judging by the blast damage. It was detonated by a mobile phone.’
‘Any indication who might have built it?’
‘Bill Phinner says what’s left of the wiring suggests that it might have been put together by Fergal ó Floinn. Either ó Floinn himself or somebody that he might have taught to put a bomb together.’
‘Ó Floinn? That piece of work. He swore blind to me after that Cathedral Quarter bombing in Belfast that he would never touch an ounce of explosive again as long as he lived. Of course, that bombing was nothing at all to do with him. None of those bombings ever were.’
‘Well, as I say, we can’t be certain that it was him,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘I’ve asked Patrick to find out where he is, though, and we’ll be having a word.’
‘Okay. Good. But don’t let him fob you off with his usual buinneach.’
‘What’s the news on Brenda McCracken?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.
‘She came out of surgery about an hour ago,’ said Katie. ‘They haven’t told me anything except that she’s critical.’
‘We’re all praying for her. She’s one of the best. Fearless, absolutely fearless, that girl, and always ready with a laugh.’
‘I’ll call you as soon as I get an update so,’ Katie told him. ‘Right now, I think our prayers are probably the best chance she has.’
***
Katie sat in the waiting room for another twenty minutes, while Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán repeatedly went out into the corridor to answer calls on her mobile phone and to send texts to the detectives who were making inquiries all over the city about the bombing in the Merchants Quay car park. They were also still looking for Micky Crounan’s decapitated body. Three floaters had been fished out of the River Lee in the past four days, but one was a heavily pregnant Nigerian woman, and although the other two were both white and male and middle-aged, their heads were still attached.
Katie checked her watch, then she stood up and said, ‘I’ll have to go back to the station, Kyna. It’s coming in from all sides and I need to take control. I don’t want Bryan Molloy accusing me of neglecting my duty because I’m a sentimental woman.’
‘With that feen you can’t win either way,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘I’ll bet if you hadn’t stayed here to see if Garda McCracken was going to pull through, he would have blamed you because you showed no compassion for the rank and file.’
Katie picked up her grey leather shoulder-bag, but as she did so one of the surgeons came into the waiting room. He was a thin Iranian with protuberant eyes and a hooked nose, and a small black pillow of hair on top of his head that might have been a wig.
‘DS Maguire?’ he asked. He spoke so softly that Katie could hardly hear him. ‘My name is Saeed Akbari. I am the leading surgeon of the team that has been trying to save the life of your colleague.’
‘How is she?’ asked Katie.
‘I regret to tell you that there is no more hope for her survival. She suffered catastrophic internal injuries and it was a miracle that her heart went on beating for as long as it did. She is still on life-support at the moment but she can never recover.’
‘So there’s no hope at all?’
Mr Akbari shook his head. ‘None whatsoever, I am afraid. Without life-support she would have passed away already.’
‘I understand,’ said Katie. ‘Can I go in and see her?’
‘Of course. Her sister is there already, as well as Father Burney.’
He led Katie and Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán along the corridor to the ward where Garda McCracken was lying behind curtains. Her curly-haired sister was sitting on the left-hand side of the bed, while Father Burney was standing on her right, his hands clasped together, holding a rosary. A plump bespectacled nurse was sitting next to him, busily filling in a form on a clipboard.
Brenda McCracken herself was lying with her eyes closed and an oxygen mask covering her face. Underneath the thin green cotton blanket that covered her, her chest was protected by a metal cage. The heart monitor beside the bed was tirelessly beeping, but it was only counting out the seconds that the respirator had allowed her to borrow. In reality, she was dead already.
Katie went up to the bed and laid her hand on Brenda’s sister’s shoulder. Her sister looked up and her eyes were red-rimmed and her mascara blotched.
‘She was one of our very best,’ said Katie. ‘She was brave and she was confident and everybody was fond of her.’
The nurse finished filling in her form and stood up, taking off her glasses. Katie was unsettled to see that she looked the bulb off her own mother – same dark red hair, same sympathetic expression in her eyes, as if she completely understood how much everybody in this room was already grieving, even if she didn’t share in their grief.
‘I’m afraid it’s time,’ she said.
Brenda’s sister started to sob and her shoulders shook. Father Burney stepped forward and made the sign of the cross.
Very quietly, he said, ‘May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. There in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.’
The nurse gently lifted the oxygen mask from Brenda’s face. She looked so peaceful, like a young woman in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. It was difficult for Katie to believe that she wasn’t simply sleeping a dreamless sleep, but dying.
After a few minutes the nurse checked her heart rate, and said, ‘Brenda’s passed away. I’m sorry.’
***
Katie walked so briskly out of the hospital that Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán almost stumbled in her wedge-heeled shoes to keep up with her. She had felt angry many times before. The scummers she had to deal with every day were so cruel and stupid and thoughtless that it was very hard not to feel angry with them, although most of the time she was able to keep her temper under control. But she had never before fumed with such vengefulness as she did now. The inside of her head felt like a slow-motion car crash.
A precious young life had been taken away, for nothing more than a few thousand euros. She was determined to track down whoever was responsible, and against every principle that she had sworn to uphold when she joined An Garda Síochána, she even found herself hoping that the offenders would try to resist her when she came to arrest them, so that she would have an excuse to use deadly force.
As they reached Katie’s car, Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s iPhone rang and before she climbed into the passenger seat she stopped with her door still open to answer it.
Katie heard her say, ‘No’ and ‘No!’ and ‘Come back to me?’ and ‘No, you’re codding!’
‘Who was that?’ Katie asked her, starting up her engine and backing out of the parking space.
‘Patrick O’Donovan, and you’re not going to believe this. We’ve just picked up Derek Hagerty, alive and reasonably well.’
‘So, well, they actually let him go,’ said Katie. ‘I suppose that’s something to be thankful for. Where did we find him?’
‘Grand Parade. A member of the public tipped us off that he would be there. Some quite well-spoken fellow, that’s what Patrick said.’
‘Did he give us his name, this well-spoken fellow?’ asked Katie. She was keeping her attention on the traffic as she pulled out into the Bishopstown Road.
‘No. He wanted to remain anonymous. He said that his wife found Derek Hagerty lying in a very poor state by the side of the road up by Ballynoe. She brought him home because he told her he was afraid of what his kidnappers might do to him and his family if he contacted the Garda.’
‘That was very Christian of her. Pure stupid, but very Christian. Jesus – you eejit! Pull out in front of me without making a signal, why don’t you?’
Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán waited while Katie put down her window and remonstrated with the van driver who had just cut her up. Then, as they drove on, she said, ‘The caller said that he and his wife allowed Hagerty to take a shower and they also gave him a change of clothes.’
‘More than most people would have done. Then what?’
‘When Hagerty was in the bathroom, your man overheard him talking on a mobile phone and so he started to grow suspicious. Like – what kind of kidnappers would allow their hostage to keep his mobile phone? Not only that, Hagerty had shown this fellow and his wife that his body was covered in a mass of bruises. But when he sneaked a look at him in the bathroom, it looked like all of the bruises had washed off.’
‘They’d washed off? Serious?’
‘That’s what your man told Patrick. He’d agreed to drive Hagerty into the city centre, but before he left his house he called us up and told us where Hagerty wanted to be dropped.’
‘I don’t understand this, Kyna. Why wasn’t I told about this anonymous caller as soon as he rang?’
‘I have no idea. According to Patrick, Molloy took charge of it personally, so if anybody should have told you, it was him.’
‘What? Molloy took charge of it? He had absolutely no right to do that. This was my operation, and it still is, even if I have made a real hames of it.’
‘You couldn’t have known about the bomb. Nobody could have seen that coming.’
‘It’s my job, Kyna. I’m supposed to look after my team. That means I need to take precautions against every eventuality that I can think of, and a few more that I can’t.’
‘I know. But you can’t blame yourself for what happened to Brenda McCracken.’
‘I can, Kyna, and I do.’
‘There’s one more thing, though,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán as they stopped at the traffic lights at Victoria Cross. ‘The caller said his wife found Derek Hagerty at approximately one-fifteen. He told her that he had escaped from his kidnappers by climbing out of a toilet window.’
Katie turned to frown at her. ‘One-fifteen? That means that he managed to get free more than three quarters of an hour before the ransom was due to be paid. So there was no need for us to pay the ransom at all, and Brenda McCracken needn’t have died. What time did this anonymous caller get in touch with us?’
‘About twenty minutes ago, give or take. He didn’t say where he was calling from.’
‘Get in touch with Tony Brennan. Tell him I need to see today’s CCTV footage from Grand Parade as soon as I get back to the station.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Make sure that Bryan Molloy is still in his office and hasn’t sloped off to play golf. I’m going to have that man’s mebs for earrings one day.’
Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán looked at her and shook her head. ‘Don’t,’ she said, very seriously. ‘They wouldn’t suit you.’
14
‘I’m not saying that you’re incompetent, Katie, not for a moment,’ said Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy. ‘I’m simply pointing out that you might have considered a different approach to handling the money drop … one that gave Derek Hagerty’s abductors some credit for intelligence. They were bound to suspect that you were going to bug Mrs Hagerty’s car.’
‘I took that into account, of course,’ said Katie. ‘That’s why Garda McCracken was following him, and that’s why I had five other cars in position all around the city, just in case he swapped vehicles. I even had officers watching the Passover and all of the other pedestrian bridges in case he abandoned her car altogether and tried to get away on foot.’
‘But it never occurred to you that they might blow the car up?’
‘To be honest with you, no. But then I don’t suppose it occurred to you, either.’
‘Maybe not, Katie, and I can’t deny that I gave this operation the go-ahead. But I wasn’t in charge of the tactical details, was I? Perhaps if I had been, things might have turned out different. As it is, we’ve lost a young garda’s life and a quarter of a million of taxpayers’ euros, and all for nothing. No arrests, no leads, and to cap it all the hostage had already managed to escape before we handed over the ransom money. The very least damage it’s done is to make us look like a bunch of clowns.’
‘Bryan – I disagree with you entirely,’ Katie told him. She was trying very hard to keep her temper, but her voice was strained. ‘I think it shows how much dedication we put into this job. There was no possible way we could have foreseen that they were going to blow up Mrs Hagerty’s car, or that Derek Hagerty would have got himself free. We’re not psychic.’
Bryan Molloy looked at his Rolex. ‘Oh well, I’m holding a media conference at five-fifteen. That’s what I’ll tell them, shall I? A garda was killed and two hundred and fifty thousand euros of public money has gone missing because we’re not psychic?’
‘Before you do that, I want to talk to Derek Hagerty myself.’
‘If you think it’ll do any good, go ahead. He’s in the first-aid room on account of the leathering they gave him. So far he’s refused to say anything at all. He won’t even admit to being Derek Hagerty, even though we’ve had his wife in and she’s identified him.’
Katie stood up. ‘You say you’re not blaming me, Bryan, but it sounds very much as if you are.’
‘It was your operation, Katie. Your idea. You have to admit that.’
Bryan Molloy stared at her with those bulging eyes, one eyebrow suggestively raised. Katie was sorely tempted to tell him that the responsibility for what had happened at the Merchants Quay car park was ultimately his, and that Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll would have accepted that he was personally accountable even if he hadn’t been involved in the finer points of planning the operatio
n.
However, she kept her lips tightly closed. She was quite aware that Bryan Molloy was doing everything he could to undermine her – partly because she had made no secret of the fact that her detectives were looking into his political and financial connections, but mostly because she was a woman.
But it wasn’t Bryan Molloy who concerned her the most. It was what appeared in the media that mattered most – that, and how Assistant Commissioner Jimmy O’Reilly would react. After all, it was Jimmy O’Reilly who had authorized the release of all that untraceable cash, and it was Jimmy O’Reilly who would have to explain to Phoenix Park how Katie had let Derek Hagerty’s kidnappers get away with it.
She said, tautly, ‘I’ll see you before the media conference, after I’ve talked to Derek Hagerty.’
Bryan Molloy pulled a face, as if to say, Do whatever you want, girl, I don’t give a fiddler’s …
She left his office. While she waited for the lift at the end of the corridor, she took several deep breaths, as if she were about to dive deep underwater.
***
Detective O’Donovan was waiting for Katie outside the first-aid room. He was halfway through eating a Mars bar and when he saw her coming he quickly wrapped up the rest of it and dropped it into the pocket of his dark blue windcheater.
‘I don’t mind if you want to finish that, if you’re hungry,’ said Katie.
Detective O’Donovan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘No, you’re all right. I’m trying to lose weight anyway.’
‘Well, don’t blame me if it goes all melted. What’s the story here?’
Through the circular window in the first-aid room door, Katie could see Derek Hagerty lying on one of the two recovery beds, still wearing the yellow zig-zag sweater and olive corduroy trousers that Norman had given him. His grey hair was neatly parted and his hands were pressed together over his chest like a figure on top of a tomb. His eyes were closed, but Katie had the feeling that he was not really asleep.
‘Doctor Murphy came in about a half-hour ago and gave him a bit of a check-up,’ said Detective O’Donovan.
Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Page 10