Dublin Dead

by Gerard O'Donovan

  Even as he said it, he knew there would be a better chance of her going skiing in the Sahara than taking any notice of a request like that.

  His head was pounding again. He got back to find the ILU office deserted. Ford had been only too happy to take on running the Dublin end of the operation with O’Neill and the B Division team – half of whom he either drank or played football with regularly at the Garda GAA Club out in Westmanstown – and had obviously taken Duffy and Sweeney with him.

  Mulcahy sat down at his desk, feeling suddenly very tired, and noticed two Post-it notes attached to his screen: one in Duffy’s scrawl about a call from Malaga to say an email with flight details had been sent through, the other in Sweeney’s more elegant hand saying DI Brogan had called and could he get back to her when he got a chance. He didn’t feel much like getting into it with Brogan now. Didn’t want to go sending her off on a wild goose chase, either, and despite the mounting evidence, he still wasn’t entirely ready to accept the hit-man scenario was likely, least of all in relation to McTiernan, who he genuinely believed would have had nothing to do with a major drugs-smuggling operation. It simply wasn’t Eddie’s kind of thing. Not for all the money in the world.

  In which case, who the hell had killed him?

  He picked up the phone to call Ford, logging on to the ILU email queue as he did so. Sure enough, atop the swamp of policy directives and bulletins in the inbox was a mail from a name he didn’t recognise with an ‘@policia.es’ ending. He clicked into it and saw the summary he’d requested from Ferrer of Begley’s flights in the previous six months. He looked at the last two of them, the Malaga–Bristol return flights, and noticed there were a couple of files attached. He put the phone down, intrigued, and clicked on one of the attachments. An EasyJet passenger manifest for the return leg of the journey opened up. Chief Inspector Ferrer had been most punctilious, it seemed, in double-checking everything regarding that particular flight. Doubtless because SOCA had taken an interest.

  Mulcahy scrolled down through the list of names: Aherne, G. … Aherne, T. … Almaraz, F. … Almarez, P. … Ballagh, S. … Begley, D. …

  There he was. No doubting that, then. Bingo had definitely been to Bristol and back. He had never even intended going to Ronson’s funeral. Mulcahy was about to close the attachment when something snagged the corner of his eye further down the list, the proximity of a capital letter K to a capital G, perhaps, and he looked down properly, astonished at what he saw: Jimenez, P. … Kearney, G. …

  Well, well. That was a turn-up. Gemma Kearney had gone back to Malaga with Begley, two days after Horgan died and two weeks before Begley himself had been murdered. He remembered now that McTiernan said something had spooked Begley when he was in the UK. Had it spooked Kearney, too? So much that she just dropped her entire life and ran off with Begley? If so, where the hell was Gemma Kearney now? Maybe Siobhan would be able to throw some light on that tomorrow. Providing she’d calmed down by then, of course.

  He closed the file and looked at the list of Begley’s movements again. The fourteen destinations read like an itinerary of western Europe’s most popular drugs-trading cities and he cursed himself for making so many easy assumptions initially about Begley. It was obvious from the list alone that Bingo was a much bigger player than anyone had realised. Alicante, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt-Hahn, Eindhoven, Marseilles … The names went on until he came to one that, again, brought him instantly to a halt: Rotterdam. How the hell had he not noticed that before? He examined the dates beside the out- and inbound flights. Christ, there it was in black and white. Begley had been in Rotterdam back in April.

  He got up and went out to where Ford had shoved the whiteboard against the wall, still showing the timeline they’d put together the day before. The dates of Begley’s flights straddled exactly when Hayford had been killed. So that was it. Begley must have been in Rotterdam the day Hayford was shot by the Colombians. Had he witnessed something? Is that why they were after him?

  Mulcahy looked at the whiteboard again, an even bigger picture forming in his head, straining to remember exactly what McTiernan had said to him down at the ferry port, thoughts tumbling and ricocheting round his brain, making connections, opening possibilities. Vlissingen really wasn’t very far from Rotterdam. He ran back to his desk, swivelled his computer screen round to face him, checked once more through the list of dates and destinations. There it was. Begley had flown to Rotterdam again for five days the week the Atlantean had sailed for Cork. Shit!

  Was it even possible? Could Begley really have found himself in the position of being the only man on the planet who knew where Hayford had stashed €100 million worth of cocaine?

  His mobile rang and he snatched it from his pocket: Ford. Thank Christ for that.

  ‘Liam, are you done yet? How would you fancy that pint I owe you?’

  24

  ‘What in the name of Christ happened to you?’

  Mulcahy spotted Ford approaching from the other direction just as he was about to enter the Long Hall. He waited under the striped canopy outside, puzzlement growing with every second. Even from twenty metres away, the bruise purpling up on Ford’s left cheek, just below eye level, was very, very nasty.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ Ford growled at him.

  ‘What am I starting?’ Mulcahy said. ‘Am I supposed to ignore that you look like a train ran into your face?’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Ford said, touching the skin, stretching it carefully, examining his reflection in the window. ‘I’ll just have to disappoint the ladies for a day or two.’

  ‘No change there, then. So what happened?’

  Ford shrugged. ‘Marker, the little shit. I asked Kev to, you know, let me have the pleasure of going in first. So, when they dinged the door, in I went and … Fuck, I don’t know. Marker was on his own, but completely off his face. Must’ve been on the fairy dust or something. It took four of us to pin him down in the end.’

  Mulcahy reckoned he was probably better off not trying to visualise that, so he said nothing, just let Ford continue.

  ‘As soon as I went in the room the cunt just picked up this plate-glass coffee table and flung it at me, like it weighed no more than an ashtray. I’m not kidding, it must’ve weighed a couple of stone.’

  ‘You were hit by a glass coffee table and that’s all the damage it did?’

  ‘It didn’t hit me,’ Ford said, irritated. ‘I slammed into the edge of the door trying to dodge the fucking thing. That’s when I got really annoyed.’

  ‘And it still took four of you?’ Mulcahy had seen Ford truly angry on maybe five or six occasions in all, none of them pleasant.

  ‘Strong as a fucking water buffalo, he was.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll buy you an extra one for that,’ Mulcahy said, pushing in through the door.

  Inside the pub the chandeliers and mirrors glittered a jagged low light on the half-deserted interior – a small gang of besuited office workers up the front end, the usual lonely throats at the bar and a scattering of loving couples in the back room. The barman snapped a grudging greeting at them as they passed, then told them to sit down in the back, that he’d bring the drinks over – a sure sign he was bored rigid. They grabbed a couple of chairs in the corner, and Mulcahy listened to Ford’s account of the afternoon’s events while they waited for the pints to come.

  As soon as they did, they each took a long, cool draught and Ford sat back while Mulcahy outlined the information that he’d uncovered in the email from the Spanish, particularly with regard to Begley’s flights to and from Rotterdam.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Ford asked, still trying to get his head around it. ‘That Bingo might’ve done all this off his own bat? That even Ronson didn’t know about it?’

  ‘Would you put it past him?’ Mulcahy asked.

  Ford scratched the back of his head. ‘I guess not,’ he said, exhaling heavily. ‘We both know the man was an opportunist of the highest order. And no better fella to stab a p
al in the back. But this is Bingo Begley we’re talking about. I mean, would he have had the nuts for it?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Mulcahy said, taking another pull on his pint. ‘The only thing we can say for absolute certain about Bingo is that we’ve totally underestimated him in every other aspect of this. So why not again?’

  Ford sniffed loudly and took an enormous gulping swig of his pint. ‘It would make sense of one thing, anyway. Right from the minute I mentioned the Atlantean to Marker, he started screeching on about Bingo, how we were all a bunch of stupid cunts and Bingo would have the better of us. Ha, ha, ha.’

  ‘Hadn’t he heard the bad news, then?’ Mulcahy asked.

  ‘’Course he had,’ Ford grunted. ‘Those two go back further than most. I just assumed he was blaming us for what happened to Bingo out in Spain. Like I said, he was off his face, raving. To listen to him, you’d think he’d been knocking back whiskies with Bingo just the other day. But this way, it kind of makes sense – gives us another link between Bingo and the Atlantean, right?’

  Mulcahy shrugged. He wasn’t so sure it made that much sense. ‘Interesting that other thing about Kearney heading off to Malaga with Bingo, though. I wonder where she is now.’

  ‘In the grave with him, with any luck,’ Ford said dismissively. ‘She was up to her tits in this. She must’ve been in touch with Bingo all along.’

  ‘I think she probably was,’ Mulcahy said, thinking of his earlier conversation with Siobhan.

  ‘Sounds like some kind of black widow,’ Ford continued. ‘I’m glad she’s not my fuckin’ accountant.’

  ‘No chance of that, Liam. I hear she had “a small and very select clientele”. It did make me wonder, though. If Bingo really was this big player without anybody knowing it, he must’ve needed somewhere to salt away large amounts of cash. And it turns out this ex-girlfriend he’s still in touch with is an accountant who runs a mysteriously small yet high-yielding accountancy practice in a backstreet in Cork. And she in turn has an ex-boyfriend who’s making an absolute fortune in the property business. Is it really so easy to make millions from an estate agent’s in Skibbereen?’

  ‘You were there yourself, weren’t you, when you went to Baltimore?’

  ‘I passed through it,’ Mulcahy shrugged.

  ‘Skib’s a nice enough place and all,’ Ford said, ‘but it’s no Beverly Hills. I did wonder the same thing myself when you mentioned Horgan the first time: how come this jumped-up little turd from the city can come in and turn around a failing family business in a matter of months?’

  ‘But it was the boom,’ Mulcahy said. ‘Everyone was stuffing their pockets, weren’t they? Especially in property. That’s where all the money was.’

  ‘Maybe. But to be making fortunes for everyone else around as well? Even taking the boom into account, he’d’ve had to be some quare kind of whizz kid to do that in the wilds of West Cork. Sounded more like Robin Hood than a feckin’ estate agent.’

  Mulcahy sat back and thought about it. ‘But you checked out Horgan yourself. Whiter than white, you said.’

  ‘And I also said too good to be true,’ Ford said with some satisfaction. ‘Anyway, who better to run a laundry? Don’t forget the name of that record company Bingo set up – Klene. Jesus, it wouldn’t surprise me if laundering was his specialist subject all those years and we didn’t have a fucking clue. We should have guessed he’d stick to what he knew and just try to get better at it.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to beat ourselves up on that score,’ Mulcahy said. ‘We didn’t even know he set up Klene Records until – when was it, yesterday? I don’t think anyone could accuse us of dragging our heels.’

  Mulcahy sat back and drained his pint.

  ‘You are having another one, aren’t you?’ Ford said.

  ‘Yeah, go on, then.’

  Ford tutted. ‘Jesus, you’re worse than a bird you are: full of promises, but when it comes to the big pay-out … ’

  ‘Shit, sorry,’ Mulcahy laughed, and signalled the barman for another couple of pints. Ford grunted, knocking back the remains of his own pint, and the two lapsed into a thoughtful, companionable silence as they waited for the drinks to come.

  ‘You know, I’m still not sure I buy Horgan’s involvement in all of this,’ Mulcahy said, finally. ‘Begley and Gemma Kearney? Okay, I can see that, no problem. There’s the past relationship, and it sounds like the money she got to set up her practice came from nowhere, so why not from Begley? Maybe he even kept her going single-handedly, who knows? That’s a nice little criminal enterprise. It might even explain why there wasn’t much fuss from other clients when she disappeared. But Horgan? I’m not so sure you can get involved in all that shit and not leave a few skidmarks. Especially in a small town. People keep a careful eye on you when you’re new. If you start making money like you’re printing the stuff, someone’ll notice. Someone’s going to get jealous and put the bad word around.’

  Ford held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Maybe Horgan just dipped in and out. Or maybe Kearney put a few things his way every now and again for old time’s sake, and he didn’t even realise he was being used as a sink.’

  ‘That seems more likely,’ Mulcahy agreed. ‘Maybe he just dipped in the once and got so badly burnt he felt he had to go for the big dip, in the river.’

  ‘Or maybe he got the big shove,’ Ford said.

  Mulcahy looked over at him and they both nodded in agreement. ‘That would make the most sense, wouldn’t it? Begley needs someone to cooper a big load of coke from a yacht off the Cork coast. He asks his best girl if she knows of anyone local, and she says she knows this fella who not only has access to boats but has been so hammered by the crash that he’s absolutely desperate for cash, and, what’s more, she can wrap him round her little finger. But it all goes wrong. The coke’s seized and Begley’s left high and dry. He’s going to be mighty pissed off. Even Cuypers said it was the guys in the rib who panicked and fucked it up.’

  ‘So you reckon Bingo put the squeeze on Horgan?’

  ‘Par for the course, I’d say,’ Mulcahy said. ‘Meanwhile some muchacho from the Cali Cartel spots their missing product on the news, puts two and two together and sends someone round to sort things out.’

  ‘And the whole thing blows up when Ronson gets whacked and Bingo feels the need to go on the run. Only they caught up with him.’

  ‘And maybe caught up with Gemma Kearney, too, do you think?’ Mulcahy said. He sat forward in his chair, rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head ruefully. ‘Murtagh wants me down in Cork tomorrow, to follow up on all this Horgan stuff in Skibbereen. I think it would be an idea if you came as well. While I’m out in Skibbereen, you can get the Cork lads to sort you out a warrant for Kearney’s office, get in there and have a good root around. I have a feeling we’re going to find a lot of answers in there.’

  Friday

  25

  More than anything else it was the colour of the sky that swamped him with dread: blood-red gashes ripped across bunched black clouds massing in the west, the freezing air screaming in from across Seaspray’s stern and him alone at the tiller while his dad crawled forward, battling against the weather and the bucking boat to take in the sail. ‘Keep her steady. Keep her steady,’ his father was shouting, he knew, but he couldn’t hear as the wind whipped the words from his lips and cast them out into the boiling sea. He battled to do as he was told, used every inch of his thin arms and bony chest to lever himself against the wooden shaft kicking against confinement like a wild creature, his father mouthing encouragement, struggling to tie in the sheet until a squalling gust ripped it from his hands and the sail went flying up and he saw his dad’s face filled with fear for the first time ever and his own hands froze and he felt the boat shudder beneath him as the tiller jumped from his grasp with a rending, shrieking crack …

  He woke with a start, sweat streaming down his face and chest, disorientated, a lost and vulnerable child for the second or so it took h
im to realise it was the sound of his mobile that had woken him. He pulled an arm loose from the tangled duvet, fumbled towards the pulse of light and pulled it to his eyes, jolted into wakefulness by the name he saw lit up there, and the time: SIOBHAN FALLON, 4.30AM.

  ‘Siobhan, Jesus, what’s the matter?’ he said, clamping the phone to a clammy ear and realising too late that his jaw was still half locked from sleep and his words were emerging in a moronic slo-mo mumble.

  She didn’t seem to notice. ‘Sorry, Mulcahy. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,’ she said, sounding completely hyper. ‘I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to get you into trouble, honestly, but it was my only way out. Those wankers held me for seven hours. Can you believe it? Seven hours. Even though they knew damn well I couldn’t have had anything to do with it. But you know how it is – have a go at the hack every chance they get—’

  ‘Hang on, Siobhan. Slow down, would you?’ He was unable to pluck more than ten comprehensible words from the torrent gushing from her mouth. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘What do you mean, where am I? Skibbereen, of course. Where else would I be? You’re supposed to be meeting me here in a few hours, remember?’

  That at least slotted, or clunked rather, into place for him. ‘Yeah, yeah, of course. Skibbereen. Sorry. So what’s the panic?’

  ‘The panic?’ Her voice cracked in disbelief. ‘The panic? Are you seriously telling me they didn’t call you? The fucking tossers. I just don’t believe that!’

  None of that left him any the wiser, either, so he let her rant on until she had to pause for breath, then asked her to repeat everything she’d said to him already but more slowly. It took a minute or two for his sluggishness to disperse and her anger and agitation to diminish, but eventually they reached an equilibrium of sorts.

  ‘So what actually happened, Siobhan?’