Inspector Jefe Hernan Ferrer was the Malagan lead investigator working on Begley’s murder. Martinez had supplied not only his office and mobile numbers but delivered on the introduction as well. ‘Por supuesto … ’ Ferrer began, when Mulcahy got through to him. Of course he would be honoured to take a call from an Irish colleague of Comisario Martinez. As so often in Spain, someone who might otherwise have been defensive to external enquiries became entirely, almost obsequiously facilitating once an official introduction came into play.
Mulcahy explained that he was bypassing the formal liaison procedures at this stage solely in order to expedite matters on another investigation he was pursuing. The chief inspector understood entirely, said he would handle the matter personally. Mulcahy got the impression the man was not too hard pressed anyway, perhaps because as soon as they started discussing the progress of the investigation into Begley’s murder, it quickly became clear that it had gone nowhere in the past few days. A series of nationwide anti-austerity strikes by public-sector workers in Spain had left half his support services, his civilian administrators and forensics personnel, backed up for days. Mulcahy’s hopes of getting the information he needed anytime soon began to recede.
‘I was wondering, Chief Inspector, if your team had made any enquiries into Señor Begley’s movements in the weeks prior to the shooting. Specifically air travel.’
Mulcahy assumed this would be standard procedure, but you could never be sure how much effort would be put into investigating the murder of a non-national, especially a scumbag non-national like Declan Begley. The coastal fringes of Spain were awash with foreign criminal vermin of every kind, splurging their ill-gotten gains in the sun. But it seemed Ferrer had not been sparing the horses on Begley, and one reason for that soon became clear.
‘We already had this request, from colleagues in Britain, from the Serious Organised Crime Agency,’ Ferrer said with satisfaction, like he’d been dealing with the FBI or something. ‘So yes, we have this information already. One moment, please, Inspector.’
Mulcahy was staggered. SOCA? What the hell were they doing investigating Declan Begley? Paul Solomons said they hadn’t even come across his name. Had he tried to score some brownie points with SOCA by calling them from Dublin after the meeting in the Clarence?
‘Sí, sí,’ Ferrer said as he came back on the line, pausing and audibly sifting through some papers. ‘Señor Begley made many flights in and out of Spain in the last six months. A total of … eh … fourteen, yes, fourteen.’
‘Where were they to?’
‘To many places. To Gatwick, Eindhoven, Frankfurt-Hahn, Marseilles … these places.’
‘What about Cork? Did he fly to Cork, here in Ireland, at all?’
‘Eh, no. Not according to this list. Not to Ireland anytime, in fact.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Ferrer bridled a little. ‘Or if he did, it was not from Malaga, not direct.’
‘And what about to the UK – you mentioned SOCA?’
‘I told the officers in London that Señor Begley did take … eh … three flights to the UK in this period. Most recently on the first weekend in September. This was the occasion they were interested in. It corresponded with the funeral in Liverpool of Mr Trevor Ronson, another of our local property owners who, as you may know, was murdered recently – though not in the Malaga region, thank God.’
Mulcahy felt a tingle at Ferrer’s use of the word ‘asesinado’, the standard Spanish usage for ‘murdered’, but so much more redolent in the context of a possible hit man on the loose. Was Ferrer being deliberately indiscreet? Was he trying to see whether Mulcahy had already heard of a Ronson connection?
‘Really?’ Mulcahy said, hoping the inflection of surprise didn’t sound too fake. ‘Did SOCA suggest a link between these two murders?’
‘Not as such, no,’ Ferrer said carefully. ‘I had the impression they were more interested in eliminating a connection than establishing one.’
‘Eliminating a connection?’ Ferrer was full of surprises, it seemed. ‘How so?’
The chief inspector cleared his throat before replying. ‘They mentioned a name and asked if this person might have been in the Marbella area at the time. I tell them we have no record of this person.’
‘Who was this?’
‘A Colombian national by the name of Guttierez.’
‘Colombian?’ So SOCA really were pursuing the hit-man theory vigorously.
Ferrer was just as keen to tell him the rest. ‘Yes. I told them we have no record of this person in the Malaga region. Or of entering Spain at all, according to our border authority.’
‘That’s very interesting, Chief Inspector.’
‘I thought you would think so.’ The Spaniard said this with some satisfaction.
‘And when did you have these discussions with SOCA, can I ask?’
‘Only yesterday.’
‘Right,’ Mulcahy said, feeling certain now that Solomons must have been their source. It was fairly understandable from Solomons’s point of view, trying to win some credit for himself, but he doubted whether Ford would be impressed. He was about to say thanks and hang up when a loose end tickled the air in front of him, the niggling sense that there was more to all this than he had fully grasped. ‘One last thing, Chief Inspector, can you tell me again – what date was Begley’s last flight to the UK?’
A finger rustled on paper as Ferrer consulted his file. ‘Mr Begley departed Malaga Airport on Saturday 4 September and returned on Tuesday the seventh. I believe Mr Ronson’s funeral was in Liverpool on Monday the sixth.’
‘To London Gatwick, did you say?’
‘No, not on this occasion,’ Ferrer said chummily. ‘I too thought this strange. There is, after all, a direct service from Malaga to Liverpool and Mr Begley did not use it. But our UK colleagues, they did not think it significant.’
‘Hang on,’ Mulcahy said, beginning to think he’d misunderstood. ‘I thought you said Begley didn’t fly to London?’
‘That is correct,’ Ferrer grunted.
‘So if he didn’t fly to Liverpool, either, where did he fly to?’
What next emerged from Ferrer’s lips could not have surprised Mulcahy more if Begley had risen from the grave and bashed him on the head, in person. Not only did it answer the question of why those dates had been bothering him, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
‘Are you certain about that?’ Mulcahy asked Ferrer. ‘There’s no chance of a mistake?’ But he knew there could be no mistake. Ferrer again insisted he had double-checked it for the Brits.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector. If I give you an email address, could you get someone to send copies of those flight details through to me?’
He gave Ferrer the address, thanked him again and put the phone down. Looking out to see if Ford was anywhere around, he saw him steaming slowly through the open-plan office like an Arctic ice-breaker, his massive head and shoulders above the sea of white room dividers.
Mulcahy gesticulated at him through the glass wall. ‘Liam, in here, quick. I’ve just heard something really, really weird.’
20
‘Bristol?’ Ford scratched his head, took a slug from the grande latte he was holding in his hand. ‘What the fuck was Bingo doing in Bristol?’
Mulcahy shook his head impatiently. ‘No, no. The question is, what the fuck was Bingo doing in Bristol the same weekend as Cormac Horgan killed himself there and Gemma Kearney disappeared?’
‘I suppose it couldn’t be a coincidence?’
‘Come on, Liam. What are the odds of Begley and his squeeze from ten years back coincidentally flying into the same UK city from different parts of the world on exactly the same weekend?’
‘No more than in the millions, I imagine.’ Ford’s frown of concentration made him look like he was actually doing the calculations. ‘But it doesn’t necessarily mean they were up to anything funny, does it?’
‘What
, and the fact that this other ex-boyfriend of hers who happens to be in Bristol at exactly the same time and ends up dead – that’s a coincidence, too, is it?’
‘How should I know?’ Ford shrugged grumpily. ‘I grant it’s a bit strange, but is it any more reasonable to assume that, just because Begley was in the city at the same time as the other two, he must’ve had something to do with the death of one and the disappearance of the other?’
‘Bloody right it is,’ Mulcahy snorted. ‘You know Bingo as well as I do.’
‘That’s just it, though, isn’t it, boss? We don’t know Bingo at all any more. From what your pal McTiernan said, he was a bigger fish out in Spain than he ever was back here. Jesus knows what filth he was up to his neck in. And even assuming these lot did meet up, the coroner’s report said this Horgan guy’s death was suicide, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you said?’
‘I think so,’ Mulcahy said, allowing himself at least that doubt, ‘but I haven’t got the details. I’m not even sure there’s been a formal inquest yet. We’d better get on to them and check. Make sure it all ties up.’
‘No problem. I’ll do that.’ Ford leant over the desk for Mulcahy’s message pad, scrawled a note on it and tore out the page. ‘Look, you know how tricky it would’ve been for Bingo to set foot in Dublin again. Maybe he wanted to see them, for whatever reason, in neutral territory, and here was an opportunity as he was going over to England anyway.’
‘So why not meet in Liverpool, or even London? Why go to somewhere as out of the way as Bristol?’
‘Maybe it was the only place they could get direct flights to – you know, from both Cork and Malaga.’
Mulcahy scratched his head. Could the reason really be as prosaic as that? ‘I doubt it, but I suppose it’s worth checking.’
Ford took another slurp of coffee and something sparked in his eyes. ‘Aren’t you kind of overlooking one obvious thing?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, you’re assuming Bingo was in England that weekend because he was on his way to Ronson’s funeral, but do we even know he went to it? I mean, if I thought some assassin had it in for me, the funeral of the last guy he’d shot is probably not where I’d want to be showing my face. You know?’
Ford had a point. There was only one way of finding out whether Begley was in Bristol to see Kearney or if he was just stopping off on his way somewhere else. It was time to stop pussyfooting around with regard to the Brits.
Siobhan pulled shut the door of the small quantity surveyor’s office behind her and would have punched the air had it not been for a smug-looking man in a loud suit walking towards her on the landing. He was leering at her as it was; she really didn’t want to encourage him to open his mouth. Jesus, what was it with these Cork guys? She hurried past him and ran down the three flights of stairs to street level. Outside, she looked back up at the rickety five-storey office building on Academy Street, delighted she had stuck to her guns and come to check the place out in person.
Her progress earlier had not been so encouraging. A meeting on the other side of the city with Pat Delaney, owner of the Academy Street building where Gemma Kearney rented a two-room second-storey office suite for her accountancy practice, had yielded little or nothing. She had hoped that, as an individual landlord rather than some faceless management firm, he might know some other people Kearney dealt with, but he didn’t. As soon as she felt his eyes rove over her when she brushed the back of her thighs to sit down, she knew he was going to be useless. Things were fine for as long as he was trying to impress her, telling her how much property he owned and how lucky he was not to have been hit too hard by the downturn, but when it came to Gemma he was hopeless, admitting he hadn’t even been aware her practice had been closed up for weeks until Siobhan told him so.
‘I hardly ever go over there,’ Delaney said. ‘She’s been in that suite for years now and the rent’s always paid on time, quarterly in advance. There’s still a couple of weeks to run before it next falls due.’
Not for the first time Siobhan had to remind herself that Gemma had only been gone for a little over three weeks. For some people, that was a holiday. And as far as Delaney was concerned, in terms of Gemma being missing, it was clear his rent was all he cared about. As for the rest, he just didn’t want to play ball. Delaney couldn’t take more than a stab at the name of Gemma’s assistant. And, for reasons of ‘commercial confidentiality’, he refused to say who Gemma’s referees had been when she took out the lease. Siobhan’s attempts to charm him only resulted in him asking whether she was staying in Cork overnight, and if she had already made arrangements for dinner. When she noticed that his gaze had graduated from her legs to the back of her hands, and seemed to have become stuck there, she stood up and left before anything too sick could evolve in his mind.
Going over to the building itself on Academy Street hadn’t yielded much, either. Initially. As Mrs Kearney had found, the other tenants on the first and second floors said they hardly knew who Gemma Kearney was, and none had either friendly or commercial relationships with her. It wasn’t until Siobhan tried the quantity surveyor’s office on the third floor that she hit paydirt – a young, dark-haired receptionist who liked to sneak out for a smoke in the yard behind the building and who’d got friendly with Gemma’s PA, who used to do the same.
‘It was turrible,’ the girl said in a lilting Cork accent. ‘Ali came in four mornings running and the place was all shut up. The bitch owed her three weeks’ money, and she hasn’t seen or heard from her since.’
But this Ali was clearly resourceful, because she had left a mobile number so her pal could let her know just as soon as ‘the bitch’ showed her face in the building again. Siobhan glanced at the Post-it note in her hand and dug her phone out of her bag. It was one of the basic tenets of tabloid reporting: you rarely, if ever, get better than an aggrieved ex-employee when it comes to dishing dirt. Ali McCarthy, she just knew, was going to be the big break she’d been hoping for.
Routed through the UK liaison office, Mulcahy’s request to speak to Commander Gavin Corbett of the Serious Organised Crime Agency was fulfilled within the hour. Corbett turned out to be a lot less stuffy than any of Mulcahy’s previous SOCA contacts, although that wasn’t necessarily saying much. After the introductions and explanations, Corbett was happy to get straight down to business, asserting that his interest in Declan Begley had been purely in the context of ‘known associates’, people who fraternised with Ronson and might have borne a grudge against him – for whatever reason.
‘We had been aware that Mr Begley and Ronson were friends out in Spain,’ Corbett said, deftly sidestepping the question of how he’d heard about Begley, ‘but once we ruled out his presence in the UK at the time of Ronson’s murder, we lost interest in him, more or less. Until we heard about him being gunned down the other day, when we thought we should take another look. But in terms of what the Spanish investigators were able to give us, and what we’ve been able to ascertain ourselves, we uncovered no evidence of any criminal relationship between them here UK-side. Unless you’re going to tell me something different, of course.’
There was a mild challenge in Corbett’s voice. Mulcahy wondered was the man trying to play him, but as he’d seemed perfectly straightforward so far, he decided it was probably just his imagination.
‘A source of mine here in Dublin suggested the two murders might be connected, but not how,’ Mulcahy said, choosing his words carefully. ‘So from what you said, can I take it that you’re not linking them?’
‘We have no reason to,’ Corbett said. ‘Not at this stage.’
That was a strange way of putting it, Mulcahy thought. ‘We were wondering if you might be able to tell us whether Begley attended Ronson’s funeral. Did you run a surveillance operation at it?’
‘Well, we couldn’t miss a chance like that, could we?’ Corbett chuckled and for the first time Mulcahy got a flash of fellow feeling, of joint purpose, with the man. ‘It’s not
often we get such a gathering of the clans, and it can be very illuminating to see who’s talking to who. As I recall, there was an individual we initially thought might be your Mr Begley, although he was indistinct on our video capture. That was one of the main reasons we went back and took another look at Begley when we heard what had happened out in Fuengirola. But then, at more or less the same time as we were making our renewed enquiries, it emerged that the individual in our video was actually a mourner down from Newcastle for the day, very well known to some of my colleagues from that part of the world. So no, no sign of Mr Begley, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re sure about that?’ Mulcahy asked.
‘Absolutely. There was quite a crowd there, so it took us a while to sift through them all, but we’re now confident we have identified everyone who attended both the church and burial. As far as we’re concerned, Mr Begley was not present. Having said that, if you’re talking to the Spanish, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go telling them about our friend from Newcastle. We put something of a squeeze on them to procure the information on Begley in a hurry.’
‘I spoke to Chief Inspector Ferrer in Malaga this morning. I got the impression he was more than happy to help you.’
Corbett fell silent as he considered the import of that. ‘Ah, you’ve spoken. Well, that’s good to know.’
‘Just one last thing, Commander,’ Mulcahy said, deciding to go all in. ‘This source of mine also hinted at another link, which I initially thought was just fantasy but I’m now being forced to reconsider. Something about a missing shipment of cocaine in Rotterdam, and a Colombian hit man out for vengeance.’
‘That’s an impressive source you have, Inspector.’
‘Yes, Commander, very impressive. And now also very dead, unfortunately.’
This time the silence at the other end of the line was more in the way of a plunge than a gentle fall. ‘Ex – excuse me?’ Corbett spluttered. ‘Did you say dead?’
Dublin Dead Page 20