‘Oh, Barns,’ she said, stroking Barney’s ears. ‘What in the name of Jesus am I going to do now?’
She had started to search for more information about Flathead Consultants when her doorbell chimed. Barney ran to the front door and barked, while Katie picked up her gun from the coffee table and tucked it behind one of the cushions. Then she went into the hallway and called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me,’ said a familiar voice. ‘It’s David. I need to talk to you.’
***
Katie opened the door. David was standing in the porch in a navy-blue suit, complete with waistcoat, and a pink silk tie. His hair was neatly combed and she could smell a strong musky aftershave. As smart as he was, though, his right eye was plum-coloured and so swollen that he could hardly see out of it.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you need to talk about?’
‘I’d find it a whole lot easier if I could come inside.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Katie. ‘I can hear you perfectly well where you are.’
‘I went to the Garda station this morning and filed a complaint against you, for assaulting me.’
‘I know that, of course.’
David took two or three deep breaths, and then he said, ‘I want you to understand that I didn’t do it with malice.’
‘Oh, is that right? You tried to attack me, David, and I defended myself as anybody would, man or woman.’
‘Well, that’s your interpretation. I wasn’t attacking you, Katie. Far from it.’
‘What else would you call pushing me over and attempting to rape me?’
David lifted up both of his hands in exasperation. ‘Why do women always say that?’
‘Why do women always say what?’
‘Why do women always call it rape just because they’re not exactly in the mood for it? You know how I feel about you, Katie. That time we first made love, that was amazing. You can hardly blame me for assuming that was the beginning of something special. I know you’ve had your period and everything, and you’re stressed about work, this High Kings of Erin thing. But you did lead me on.’
Katie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t work out if he was deluded or manipulative or simply stupid.
David hesitated for a few moments and then he leaned towards her with his left arm raised and his hand resting against the door frame, as if he wanted to say something affectionate and confidential.
‘The thing of it is, Katie, I’m more than ready to withdraw my complaint.’
‘Oh, I see. You’re prepared to admit that you did try to rape me, after all?’
‘Of course not,’ said David. ‘But I am willing to say that it was nothing more than a lovers’ quarrel.’
‘What? Are you cracked?’
‘Not at all. If you and I are lovers, then that’ll be the truth, won’t it?’
Katie said, ‘Let me get this straight. What you’re actually saying is that you’ll withdraw your complaint against me if I agree to have sex with you?’
‘“Have sex” doesn’t make it sound very romantic, does it? But okay, if you put it like that. I really like you, Katie. You’re a very attractive woman. You and I could be fantastic together.’
‘And what about Sorcha?’
‘What about Sorcha? She’s a mentaller. She doesn’t need me. She needs a psychiatrist.’
Katie looked at him for a while, leaning against her door frame, confident and casual as if he were chatting her up in a bar. He gave her a small ‘how about it?’ kind of a smile and then grinned at her, baring his teeth.
‘Do you know something?’ she said. ‘What you have just suggested to me comes close to being an arrestable offence. I wish to God it was. Now, get off my porch and never come anywhere near me again. I wish I had never set eyes on you.’
David took his hand away from the door frame and stood up straight. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said.
Katie looked back at him with contempt. Then, without saying another word, she closed the door in his face.
‘Well,’ he said loudly. ‘That’s pretty unequivocal, I’d say. At least I know my position now and it’s certainly not on top of you, is it, Detective Superintendent?’
42
Katie leaned back against the coats that were hanging in the hallway. Although she wasn’t physically afraid of David, she still found that she was trembling.
After a moment she went back into the living room and switched off her laptop. She could continue her research into Flathead Consultants later. As soon as Barney saw her do that, his tail started wagging briskly and he jumped up at her.
‘Come on, Barns,’ she said. ‘Let’s go out and get ourselves a breath of fresh air.’
When she opened the front door she saw that David’s Range Rover had already gone from the next-door driveway. She let Barney jump up into the back of her Focus and then climbed into the driver’s seat herself. She held on to the steering wheel tightly for a while, willing herself not to think about David any more and not to be angry. He was worse than scum. He didn’t deserve to be spat on. Yet she still felt that she had been in a fight with him, even if it was only a verbal fight, and lost. He had a way about him of making her feel worthless.
She drove up to the Passage West ferry terminal and joined the queue of cars to board the Glenbrook. It took only four minutes to cross over to Monkstown but she climbed out of her car and stood by the rail, feeling a sense of relief that she was leaving an unpleasant experience well behind her. The sky was cloudy but bright, lending a dull shine to the River Lee, like tarnished silver. A smug, damp breeze was blowing from the south-west, as if it were telling her that this dry weather wasn’t going to last very much longer and that it was soon going to rain, and heavily, and persistently.
Her father had been planning to move from his tall Victorian house in Monkstown but that was when he and Ailish were going to be married. The house would have been far too large, even for the two of them. and it was damp and run-down and badly needed new slates on the roof.
After Ailish had died, however, her father had chosen to stay. The house had already been crowded with memories of Katie’s mother and now the ghost of Ailish was there, too, and he couldn’t bear to sell it. ‘They left me, the both of them,’ he had told Katie. ‘But I’m not going to leave them, not ever.’
Katie parked in the driveway and went up the steps to the front door. The ivy that clung to the front of the green-painted house was beginning to turn crimson and yellow and it rustled in the breeze. Katie shivered, thinking of David.
Her father opened the door and stood looking at her as if he didn’t know who she was. He had lost weight, so that his face was drawn and sallow and his nose looked even more prominent, and he was unshaven. He was wearing a drooping beige shawl-collar cardigan that needed a wash and baggy brown corduroy trousers and slippers that were frayed as if a cat had been clawing at them.
‘Kathleen!’ he whispered.
‘Well, I’m glad you recognized me,’ said Katie. ‘How are you, Dad? Can me and Barney come in?’
‘Of course you can. How have you been? I’m sorry, but the house is a bit of a tip at the moment. I keep meaning to advertise for a new cleaner, you know, but the days go by. How long is it now since I last saw you?’
Katie followed him into the living room. The house was chilly and smelled damp. There was dust on the window sills and a vase of dead roses hanging their heads on a side table. The kitchen door was open and Katie could see plates stacked in the sink and at least half a dozen dirty teacups. A loaf of Brennans bread was standing on the table but had fallen sideways so that several slices were hanging out of the bright yellow packet.
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I meant to come and see you last week,’ said Katie. ‘The trouble is, I’ve been up the walls with these kidnapping cases.’
Her father eased himself painfully down in his high-backed armchair, as if his joints were seizing up. She noticed that the seat cushions were thick wi
th biscuit crumbs and the carpet all around was spotted with stains. She sat down on the sofa close to him and Barney sat down beside her, with a whine in the back of his throat.
‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’ Katie asked her father.
‘No, I’m grand, thanks. I just had one. At least I think I did. Anyway, I’ve run out of tea bags.’
‘I thought Moirin was doing the messages for you.’
‘Yes, well, she does. But I forgot to put tea bags on my list.’
‘She could have checked.’
‘Oh, well, yes. But fair play to her, she has her hands full looking after Siobhán, and that husband of hers is like a lighthouse in the Bog of Allen.’
‘Listen, I’ll go to the shop and buy you some tea bags before I go back home. Is there anything else you need, apart from a new housekeeper?’
Her father shook his head. She didn’t want to say anything to him but he smelled. For him to lose Ailish was the most disastrous thing that could have happened because, apart from making him happy, she always took good care of him. There was almost no possibility that he would find another woman who would love him as much as Ailish had, especially the state of him now.
‘So, how’s things at Anglesea Street?’ he asked her. ‘Have you heard from Dermot O’Driscoll at all?’
Chief Superintendent Dermot O’Driscoll had been a sergeant when Katie’s father was an inspector. He had championed Katie’s promotion to detective superintendent, against fierce hostility from other officers, simply because he had believed in her professional abilities and female intuition. Earlier this year, however, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was presently on extended sick leave.
‘He called into the station two weeks ago,’ said Katie. ‘They’re still giving him radiotherapy and hormone treatment at Bon Secours, but he was cheerful enough. I have no idea if he’ll ever be able to come back to work.’
‘Dermot’s a good man. He was always a good man. When you see him again, tell him I wish him the best, won’t you?’
Katie’s father sucked at his teeth for a while, his eyes focused on the past. Then he looked across at Katie and said, ‘What’s this kidnapping then? You did say kidnapping?’
‘Haven’t you seen it on the news? It’s been the top story almost every day.’
‘I haven’t watched the telly since Ailish passed. She always had the telly on, morning till night, whether she was watching it or not. It reminds me too much of her, just the sound of it.’
As briefly as she could, Katie told him about the abductions of Micky Crounan and Derek Hagerty and Pat Whelan and Eoghan Carroll. She told him about the bomb at Merchants Quay that had killed Garda Brenda McCracken and the shooting in Carrigaline of Detective Garda Nessa Goold. She also told him how the Pearses had been incinerated on the beach at at Rocky Bay.
‘Mother of God,’ said her father. ‘Do you know who’s behind it?’
‘They call themselves the High Kings of Erin. One of them has rung me to claim responsibility for everything they’ve done. They’re proud of it, would you believe? They say that they’re patriots. They want to restore Ireland’s pride after the collapse of the economy and they’re doing it by punishing all of those small businessmen who borrowed more money than they could ever afford to pay back.’
‘The High Kings of Erin? That’s who they say they are? Really?’
‘Why? Does that mean something?’
Katie’s father reached into the pocket of his cardigan and took out a scrumpled-up tissue to wipe his nose. ‘I should say it means something. It was the High Kings of Erin who forced me to retire early.’
‘What? You never told me. I always thought you retired early because of your heart.’
‘No, there was never anything wrong with my heart. That was just the story that they made me agree to. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, these kidnappers of yours using the same name, like. After all, there’s that folk band, too, isn’t there, the High Kings? But the High Kings of Erin as I knew them – they were all gardaí.’
‘What, like a secret society? Like the Knights of Saint Columbanus or the Fenians or the Freemasons?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But why did they force you to retire early? What were they up to?’
‘They always claimed that they were being charitable, and I suppose they were, in a way. But they were running a scam that wasn’t so different in its way from the penalty points racket that Martin Callinan and Alan Shatter had to resign for.’
‘So they were wiping points off driving licences for people who could do them favours?’
‘They were, yes, but a whole lot more than that,’ said Katie’s father. ‘They weren’t just erasing penalty points. They were dropping all kinds of charges – fraud, rape, drug-dealing, you name it – so long as the offenders paid them enough. Sometimes they were paid thousands. You remember Kieran Beasley?’
‘Kieran Beasley? Yes, that rings a bell. He was charged with running some kind of Ponzi scheme in computer software, wasn’t he? Whatever happened to him?’
‘Absolutely nothing happened to him, Katie. He was charged with fraud but before he was due to appear in court he paid the High Kings of Erin nearly quarter of a million punts and all the evidence against him mysteriously vanished. I think your friend Michael Gerrety paid to have some sex charges dropped, too. The same thing happened again and again, quite regular, like, for years.’
‘So what was charitable about that?’ asked Katie.
‘The High Kings of Erin donated at least two thirds of the money to various needy causes, like the ISPCC and the L’Arche Community. The rest they kept for themselves, as “expenses”.’
‘That’s unbelievable.’
‘Well – they justified what they were doing by saying that it was better for the money to go to the poor and the needy rather than the state, in fines, and if any of the offenders had been jailed it would only have cost the country more money to keep them in prison – nearly eighty thousand euros a year, at the last estimate. Well, you know that.’
Katie shook her head. ‘I suppose there’s some kind of twisted logic to it. But what happened? Why did they make you retire?’
‘Because me and another inspector, Tom Keaveney, we found out what was going on. We were investigating a drug-running gang that was based in Limerick but were smuggling cocaine through Ringaskiddy. We arrested three mules from Eastern Europe and confiscated nearly one and a half million pounds’ worth of drugs that they had hidden in their shoes. But two days later we were approached by this fellow from Limerick who said that he’d happily pay us if we forgot all about the charges and let the mules go.
‘Of course, we told him there was no chance at all, and that we could arrest him for attempting to bribe two police officers. But he just laughed at us and said that he’d paid to get members of his gang off charges a rake of times. If we didn’t accept his offer, he’d go public and tell the newspapers and TV the names of the gardaí who had taken his money before.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Katie.
‘Me and Tom told him that we didn’t believe him. We were worried, of course, that this was some kind of a set-up by the Garda Ombudsman and that we were being secretly filmed or recorded, and that if we took money off him we’d be charged ourselves with corruption. But he said that he’d paid money at least five times to a group of gardaí who called themselves the High Kings of Erin, and that these High Kings of Erin had assured him that it would all go to charity. He had taken it for granted that every Garda officer was involved in this same racket, which was why he had offered to pay us.
‘Again, we told him that we didn’t believe him, but he said that we should go and ask the officers he had done business with.’
‘So he told you who they were?’
Her father wiped his nose again, and nodded.
‘Well – who were they? Aren’t you going to tell me?’
‘I swore that I would never menti
on this to anybody, ever again. The High Kings of Erin said that they would burn down my house if I did, with me in it, and that they would hurt my family, too – especially you, Katie, because you were a garda yourself. Has it never occurred to you why you faced such fierce opposition when Dermot wanted to have you promoted? It wasn’t just prejudice because you were a woman. They were afraid that I might have told you who the High Kings of Erin were. And that was one of the reasons I never told you why I retired before my time. I was protecting you, pet, as well as myself.’
For a few moments Katie said nothing. Her father’s words gradually sank into her consciousness like a leaky rowing boat. As chilly and damp as it already was, his house now felt even chillier, and gloomier, and more oppressive. It was so hard for her to accept that he had been living in fear ever since he had retired from the force. She had worshipped him ever since she was small, and boasted about him at school, and the stories he used to tell her about arresting notorious Cork criminals had been one of the reasons why she had decided to make a career herself in An Garda Síochána.
Now he was telling her that he had discovered that some of his fellow officers were corrupt – but because they had threatened his life if he exposed them, he had never had the nerve to face up to them. She had always believed that he was afraid of nobody and nothing.
‘Dad,’ she said, reaching across and taking hold of his hand. His fingers were icy-cold and gnarled and he had semicircles of black dirt under his nails. He was still wearing the wedding ring that he had first put on when he married Katie’s mother and had never taken off. Ailish had told him that he could keep it on after he was married to her. ‘You don’t stop loving people just because they’re dead.’
‘Dad, you have to tell me who they were, the High Kings of Erin.’
‘No, Katie, I can’t. I don’t care about myself any more, but I’m not having you or any of your sisters put at risk.’
‘Dad, I’ve been suspended. I’ve been making hardly any progress at all with these kidnapping cases and now somebody’s made a complaint against me and Jimmy O’Reilly has used it an excuse to pack me off on gardening leave.’
Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Page 36