‘I’m not expecting you to believe anything,’ Mulcahy said, ‘but it’s got to be worth considering. DI Brogan’s witness said the killer was blond and driving a small green car. Commander Corbett said this guy’s nickname is “the Blond”. Yesterday those were just two possibly related facts. This morning they seem to be adding up to considerably more, don’t you think?’
Mulcahy paused, tried to think of a way to set out his thoughts more coherently. ‘Look, Donal, the fact is, everyone who’s been rumoured to have any connection with this consignment of Colombian cocaine is either dead or missing now. I still don’t understand how McTiernan got involved, but I’ll say this: if the Cali Cartel is sending a message, it’s a bloody effective one – don’t fuck with us or we’ll come and hunt you down. Even in the wilds of West Cork.’
Murtagh shook his head slowly and opened the car door. ‘Come on, we’d better find O’Grady and fill him in on all this. Then I’ll have to have a talk to this Inspector Brogan of yours and get her take on it.’
They walked along by the low harbour wall, over to the pier, ducking under the strips of blue and white Garda scene tape and making their way out along the pier towards a group of men and women in coveralls clustered on and around a small pleasure cruiser. Hayes’s boat, Mulcahy surmised, noting the plastic sheet the team from Technical Bureau had fixed over the bow of the craft to secure the forensics evidence beneath. Squatting down and pointing out something to one of the technicians on the boat, Mulcahy recognised the broad shoulders and square jaw of Detective Superintendent Sean O’Grady and prayed he wouldn’t make a meal of it when Murtagh gave him the bad news.
‘Seems to me there’s only one person who’s had something to do with all of these people, now,’ Murtagh said when they were halfway along the pier.
‘And she’s been missing for at least as long as Bingo’s been dead,’ Mulcahy said. ‘I wouldn’t hold out too much hope there.’
‘I wasn’t talking about Gemma Kearney. I was talking about your friend Siobhan Fallon.’
‘No.’ Mulcahy shook his head. ‘She’s just following the story like we are. The only witness she’s had any actual contact with is Conor Hayes, and it was just her bad luck that she got to him before we did.’
‘Right, and ye’ve both still got questions to answer about that as far as I’m concerned,’ Murtagh said gruffly. ‘In the meantime I’ll put out an alert on all flights and sailings out of Cork and Dublin tonight. Anyone with even a hint of a dodgy passport gets hauled in and questioned. I’m not having some Latin American cowboy thinking he can shoot all around him on my patch and get away with it.’
26
‘Mulcahy, are you done there yet?’ Siobhan’s voice was a low, anxious whisper on the line.
He had dropped Murtagh off at the courthouse ten minutes previously and also checked in with Liam Ford on the way back, reassured to hear he had arrived in Cork and was about to execute the warrant to enter and search Kearney’s office on Academy Street. Now Mulcahy was pulling up at a B&B place he’d spotted on the way in from Glandore, thinking he was probably going to be stuck in Skibbereen for one night at least.
‘Yes, just finished. I can be with you in, say … ’ He looked at his watch, figuring how long it would take, but she didn’t give him a chance to finish the thought.
‘No, there’s been a change of plan,’ she said urgently. ‘Look, you’ve got to get over here to Drimoleague, right now. You’ve got to come. It’s on the—’
‘Drimoleague?’ he cut in, the name sounding only vaguely familiar to him. ‘What are you doing over there?’
‘Just listen, would you,’ Siobhan hissed, an edge of danger in her voice now. ‘I’m at a house called Culgreeny. It’s a bungalow just outside Drimoleague, on the main road in from Skibbereen. You can’t miss it. There’s a long wooden fence and an ornamental windmill in the front garden. You’ve got to get over here quick. I’m serious, like, now.’ She paused and her breath rasped in the earpiece. There was a sound like a door banging, then a muffled ‘Shit, she’s—’ and the connection went dead in his hand.
Already the hairs were tingling like a burst of static on the back of his neck. Ever since Murtagh told him Siobhan might have seen the killer there had been a pinch of anxiety fretting away at the back of his mind. The killer had seen her arguing with Hayes, had possibly even been seen by her. Could she be in danger herself now?
He reached over and grabbed the road map, scanned a quick circle round Skibbereen and spotted Drimoleague about eight miles to the north. Seeing the name in print again, he remembered Siobhan telling him it was where Gemma Kearney had grown up. Could it be where her mother lived? His heart thumped as the crime-scene photos of Conor Hayes’s corpse in the water came crowding back on him, along with the thought that the killer, shotgun in hand, might even now be stalking the Kearney house for Gemma. If he saw Siobhan there, wouldn’t he take his chance, make sure?
Every instinct urged him to race off immediately, but instead he stepped out of the car and went round to the back, opened the boot and unlocked the small gun safe bolted to the chassis inside. He removed his official-issue handgun, a Sig Sauer P226, and inserted one of the two 9mm magazines, leaving the bulky regulation holster in the boot and slipping the weapon into a neat, hard plastic clip-on job he’d bought on the internet. Only then did he get back in the car and set off, a shower of loose gravel pelting the dry-stone wall by the roadside. Every junction he came to, he slowed just enough to check there was no danger of a collision, then shot through. In two minutes he was out on the main road, heading north at eighty, the fastest the Saab could cope with on the twisting, single-carriage road. The traffic was light, and overtaking wasn’t a problem except once when, faced with a tractor holding up a queue of six or seven cars, he overtook the lot in one go, flashing his headlights, his fist on the horn, and raced away to a chorus of angry hoots from behind.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before he saw the six-foot black and white windmill in the garden of a low-slung property on the right-hand side ahead. The bungalow was set back twenty metres from the road on a rise, the sloping, well-manicured garden fenced all along the long road frontage by a wooden horse rail. On the driveway were two cars, a small new-looking Toyota and Siobhan’s red Alfa, which he remembered all too well from the year before. He hit the brakes and drew to a stop on the roadside, not wanting to alert anyone to his presence by coming up the driveway in his car. He jumped out, clipped his weapon onto his belt under his jacket and approached the house cautiously.
He was halfway up the steeply sloping drive, feeling a little exposed, when the front door opened and he stopped. He was wondering whether to hold his ground or look for cover when he saw Siobhan coming backwards out of the door looking none too anxious about anything, as she was gabbing away animatedly to whoever was inside. She pulled the door to but not closed, then turned to face him, her eyes wide and a finger to her lips, the other hand making a cupping, come-hither motion.
‘Come on, quickly,’ she whispered at him. ‘I’m not sure how long I can keep her talking.’
‘Keep who talking?’ Mulcahy said, annoyed. ‘What the hell is going on here? I thought you were in trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ she said, searching him with her pale blue eyes like he was mad or something. ‘No, look, I thought you’d want to hear this for yourself. You’re not going to believe it.’
He breathed out heavily, trying to contain the pulse of frustration surging through him, thanking Christ he hadn’t been spooked enough to actually draw his weapon. What the hell had he been thinking? But before he could put any of it into words, Siobhan grabbed his arm and, with a ‘C’mon, hurry’, pulled him in the door.
Inside was a small hallway, with a couple of rooms off it at the front and a corridor towards the back, leading to the kitchen and bedrooms, he assumed. The place reminded him of his parents’ old house, having been furnished sometime in the 1980s and not updated since, although
it was scrupulously clean and tidy. Siobhan led the way down the corridor and into the kitchen, a small room that also hadn’t been redecorated in years, just regularly scrubbed into submission. Sitting at an abbreviated breakfast bar – the room wasn’t wide enough to allow for more than one stool either side – was a thin, tired-looking woman with short, greying hair and green eyes, who looked up at him as he entered without either greeting or warmth. She looked to be no more than in her late fifties, but already worn out by life.
‘This is Mrs Kearney,’ Siobhan said, giving him a little dig with her elbow. Then she addressed the woman, her voice slower, louder, like she was talking to a child or someone hard of hearing.
‘Mrs K, this is the detective I was telling you about, from the Guards. His name is Inspector Mulcahy and he’s completely trustworthy. I’m sure he’ll be able to help us. All you have to do is tell him what you told me.’
At the words ‘Guards’ and ‘inspector’ Mrs Kearney’s expression had become more animated. Her eyes pingponged anxiously from Siobhan to Mulcahy and back again, and when she spoke, her voice was shrill and breathy. ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’
She broke off as a bang from outside the house grabbed all their attention. Mulcahy put a hand up and in two strides was at the window over the sink, looking out across a wide back garden bordered by low shrubs and mostly laid to lawn. He saw nothing out of place other than a white plastic garden chair tipped over on the patio by a gust of wind, still rocking.
‘It’s nothing.’ He turned back to the two women. ‘What’s going on here, Mrs Kearney?’ He tried to catch her eye, to gain her trust, but her gaze eluded him, focused as it was on some fear locked away inside her. ‘Whatever it is, I’m sure I can help, but not if you don’t tell me what the problem is.’
‘No, I promised her,’ Mrs Kearney said cryptically, twisting her arms up in front of her chest, hugging her shoulders.
Finally Siobhan couldn’t take any more and said it for her. ‘It’s about Gemma, Mrs K, isn’t it? It’s okay. Inspector Mulcahy knows all about her. I’ve told him everything you’ve told me, except … ’ She looked at the woman, encouraging her to complete the sentence for her, but all she got was another look of rising panic. Siobhan cursed under her breath and turned back to Mulcahy. ‘I wanted her to tell you herself. Gemma called her last night.’
A kind of cold, post-nuclear hush fell over the room as the impact of her words was absorbed: Mrs Kearney’s mouth opening in wordless fear and protest, Mulcahy struggling to suppress the genuine surge of surprise ripping through him that Gemma was alive at all.
‘She phoned you, didn’t she, Mrs K?’ Siobhan said, eventually breaking the silence.
She didn’t wait for confirmation but kept addressing herself to Mrs Kearney in slow, encouraging tones, although Mulcahy could see the message was entirely for him. ‘And Gemma said she’s okay. She’s scared, but she’s not hurt or anything. She just can’t come home yet. Isn’t that right, Mrs K?’
Mrs Kearney nodded, then slowly turned her face towards Mulcahy, a lifetime of maternal worry burning in her redrimmed eyes. ‘That’s right,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘She said some fella was after her. That’s all she said, but I could tell she was terrified. She sounded like she was in fear for her life. It was like the last time, with that other fella. She sounded so scared, my poor girl.’
The effort of holding in her worst nightmare finally got the better of Mrs Kearney and she seemed to collapse inwardly, bending at the waist as she raised her hands to her face and began to sob.
‘Where is she, Mrs Kearney?’ Mulcahy asked urgently, but he might as well have been talking to the wall.
He looked at Siobhan, whose upturned palms and blank expression told him she didn’t have a clue, either. ‘Gemma wouldn’t tell her.’
It took a few minutes, but between them they managed to get Mrs Kearney calm again, their reassurances as strong and sugar-laden as the tea they made and gave her to drink. At the same time Mulcahy tried to extract some more details from Siobhan, but all she’d been able to glean was that Gemma had called her mother sometime the previous evening and made her promise she wouldn’t tell anyone about the call. Gemma had explained her disappearance, apparently, by saying some people had been after her for money and she’d had to disappear for a while. That was all she had said, other than that she needed to stay out of circulation for a while longer and her mother shouldn’t try to contact her or call her back.
On recalling that particular detail, Siobhan’s face lit up and she turned to Mrs Kearney. ‘Did anyone phone you since then, Mrs K? Obviously you called me this morning, but did you receive any other calls? About Gemma or anything else?’
Mrs Kearney had to think about it but said no, no one else had been in touch. Siobhan got up and went through the door into the living room, and emerged a moment later with a landline phone in her hand, clicking on the keypad. She held up the receiver towards Mulcahy, pointing at the number on its narrow screen.
‘Last call received,’ she said, and hit the redial button.
She kept the phone glued to her ear for well over a minute, but eventually she shook her head and hung up. She hit the dial key again, waited, with the same result.
‘No answer, no voicemail service. It just keeps ringing.’
‘What’s the number – land or mobile?’ Mulcahy asked, putting his hand out.
‘Mobile, I think,’ Siobhan said, handing the phone to him. ‘It’s not the one I had for her before.’
‘It looks like an Irish number, anyway.’
He turned again to Mrs Kearney. ‘I know you said Gemma didn’t tell you where she is, but was there anything that might give us a clue? You must have asked her?’ He knew how difficult it is for people not to let something slip unconsciously about their whereabouts, especially when they’re questioned directly. ‘Did you even get any sense of where she was – here in Cork or somewhere else? Was there any kind of noise in the background, maybe?’
All Mrs Kearney could do was shake her head. If Gemma had left any clues, her mother hadn’t picked up on them.
He turned back to Siobhan. ‘If it is an Irish number and there’s no answering service set up, there’s a chance the phone’s a pay-as-you-go and won’t have roaming, either, in which case she’d only be able to use it for calls here in Ireland.’
‘You think she might be back here?’
‘Why not?’ Mulcahy said, shrugging.
‘You guys can track mobile phones, can’t you?’ she said excitedly. ‘Pinpoint their locations?’
‘Not without a court order,’ Mulcahy said. ‘And no way do we have grounds to get one.’
He cursed as his phone rang in his pocket, breaking his concentration. Liam Ford’s caller ID. He excused himself, walked to the back door and out into the garden.
‘Liam, what’s up?’
Ford was calling from Kearney’s office, his voice heightened with excitement, his Cork accent noticeably more pronounced. ‘This place is unbelievable, boss. She can’t have been expecting to disappear. There’s stuff out all over the place, to do with her businesses – “investment” companies and all sorts. They’re nearly all hers, or else businesses she’s actually running for other people. There’s so much of it. There must be millions involved. It’ll take us a while to go through it.’
‘Us?’ Mulcahy said.
‘Yeah. Aidan called last night and asked if he could come along. He’s going to be a big help here. He knows more about this kind of stuff than me. He’s even got into her computer already. You should see the number of bank accounts she has access to.’
‘That’s great, Liam. Good work.’ Mulcahy quickly explained to Ford what he’d heard from Siobhan and Mrs Kearney regarding Gemma’s phone call the night before.
‘Well, at least we know she’s alive,’ Ford said, ‘if not exactly safe, given what happened to Hayes. Do you think that’s why she called the ma?’
‘I don’t see how she co
uld have heard about Hayes before she called. I didn’t even find out about it till the early hours of this morning. But the mother did say she sounded terrified. In fear of her life, she said.’
Ford breathed heavily into his phone. ‘It still could’ve been one of those “goodbye” calls.’
‘Either that or she’s somewhere that she thinks is secure enough to risk a call from. Impossible to say, really, without knowing where she actually is.’
Mulcahy paused a moment, thinking it through. ‘Do me a favour – and tell Aidan, too – when you’re going through her stuff, keep a particular eye out for anything that might give us a clue about her whereabouts, and call me right away if you come across anything.’ He stopped again a second, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. ‘Right, you get on with that. Did you at least leave Aisling in Dublin?’
Ford confirmed that he had. Mulcahy hung up and dialled her number, scraping impatiently at the grass with his shoe while he waited for her to pick up, at the same time trying to see in through the kitchen window but unable to because of the glare. A rustling noise from the shrubs behind startled him and he swivelled round to see a cat run out from cover at a small bird, which squawked shrilly and fluttered off just in time. He was breathing out a tense sigh of relief when Sweeney answered.
‘Aisling, I need you to do something for me.’
It had been nagging him ever since Siobhan had told him of her suspicions that Horgan had been on a drugs run to Bristol. The ferry from France. The van. It had come to him as a stray thought that just clicked in his mind at the pier in Glandore. Ferries. There were at least three ferry ports with services to Ireland within a hundred miles of Bristol: Fishguard, Pembroke and, closest, Swansea, from where, significantly, the only ferry service to Cork had recently reopened. He asked Sweeney to contact the security chiefs at all Irish ferry ports, but in Cork and Rosslare particularly, and get them to run Kearney’s name through their passenger lists for the past month as a matter of red-flag urgency. She sounded pleased not to be left out of the action altogether.
Dublin Dead Page 26