Living Death

by Graham Masterton

  A judge might give Maureen a lighter sentence in return for her assistance for putting the rest of the Callahans behind bars, but that could scarcely go unnoticed by her father and her sisters, and she would be at even greater risk if the DPP decided not to prosecute her at all. It wouldn’t matter if she had a recording of this conversation or not, her family would immediately realise then who had shopped them; and if what Maureen had told her was true, and nobody who crossed the Callahans was given a second chance, she would have to go into witness protection for the rest of her life.

  Katie could have warned her about this, but she didn’t, because so far Maureen hadn’t given her enough information to make an arrest. She hadn’t told her exactly where the shipment of arms had been landed or where it was now, or exactly where in Cork it was going to be stored. That meant that Katie wouldn’t be able to set up surveillance on the storage facility before the arms were delivered. She wouldn’t be able to see who delivered them, and have the chance to arrest them, too.

  It was a typical professional dilemma. She didn’t trust Maureen Callahan at all, and yet if she didn’t act on what she was telling her, she could miss out on making one of the most spectacular arrests of her whole career.

  As they walked back to the car park together, Maureen lit a cigarette, and puffed at it very quickly, almost as if she wasn’t used to smoking. They separated without saying goodbye.

  Back in her car, Katie looked at herself in the sun-visor mirror to tidy her hair.

  If she’s not being straight with me, she thought, why has she gone to such lengths to tell me about Branán O’Flynn being murdered and this huge arms shipment coming in? If only some or none of it is true, what exactly is she after?

  *

  Keeno was sitting in the interview room looking bored when Katie and Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley came in. His hands were clasped together behind his head and he was staring at the ceiling and ostentatiously chewing gum. Garda O’Keefe was sitting in the corner looking equally bored. Katie knew Garda O’Keefe well, and she understood why he had been assigned to guard Keeno. He was a member of the Irish Elite Boxing Club and had been Garda welterweight boxing champion two years running.

  Katie sat down in front of Keeno and Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley sat on either side of her.

  ‘No chance of a smoke, I’m guessing?’ said Keeno.

  Sergeant Begley said nothing but pointed to the No Smoking sign next to the door.

  ‘You’ve been given the leaflet explaining your rights?’ asked Katie.

  Keeno didn’t answer but Detective Dooley said, ‘He has, yes, although he didn’t read it. He ripped it up into twinchy little bits and tossed them on the floor. But he was given it.’

  ‘You haven’t yet told us your name and address,’ said Katie. ‘Gerry Mulvaney calls you Keeno. What’s your full name?’

  ‘Gerry Mulvaney? That arsehole? He can call me whatever he fecking well chooses to.’

  ‘I’m asking you, not Gerry Mulvaney. Now that you’ve been arrested and charged, the law requires you to give us your name and address. If you refuse to do that, you’ll be committing a further offence under the Public Order Act.’

  ‘Away to feck. If I tell you my name then you’ll know who I am. And if I tell you my address, you’ll know where I live.’

  ‘Exactly, that’s the whole idea. Who are you? And where do you live?’

  ‘Do you think I’m stone mad? I want a solicitor. I want something to eat. I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Tell me your name and address first.’

  ‘I want a solicitor. I want something to eat. I’m thirsty. On the leaflet it says that you have to give me something to eat and drink, and you have to call me a solicitor too. It’s my legal right.’

  ‘You tore up that leaflet without even reading it,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘You’re entitled to make phone calls, too. Are you aware of that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and I know what would happen if I made a fecking phone call. You’d only be hacking it to find out who I was calling.’

  ‘What’s your name, Keeno?’ Katie repeated. ‘And what’s your address? I’m not asking you again.’

  ‘“Notso”, that’s my name. “Notso Fecking Thick As You Think I Am.” And I live Up The Fat Woman’s Arse On Shandon Street.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Sergeant Begley. ‘I haven’t heard anybody say that since I was in bunscoil.’

  Keeno kept on chewing with his mouth open and staring up at the ceiling but Katie could guess why he was being so obstructive. If he told her his name and address, her detectives would quickly be able to put names to the rest of the gang who had stolen the dogs from the Sceolan Kennel, and if the rest of the gang were all tracked down and arrested, they would know that Keeno had been blabbing. His life wouldn’t be worth living, either inside jail or out of it.

  He might be acting arrogant, but Katie was sure that, behind that arrogance, he was frightened.

  ‘Fair play to you, Notso,’ she said, doing her best to sound unperturbed. ‘Let’s forget about who you are for a moment, and let’s talk about some of the things you’ve done.’

  ‘Like what? I’ve done nothing, never. I’m a decent law-abiding citizen, that’s me. You took my fingerprints, didn’t you? You checked them on your computer, don’t tell me you didn’t. What did you find? Not a tap, that’s what you found. If you’d found anything, you wouldn’t have to be asking me who I was.’

  It was Katie’s turn not to answer. Keeno was right, of course. They had checked his fingerprints on the AFIS database, but they had failed to come up with a match. And while Detective Dooley had pointed out that he seemed to know all of the civil rights, even though he had torn up the mandatory leaflet that he had been given, that didn’t necessarily mean that he had been arrested before. He might have attended a Garda station with a friend who was charged with an offence, and read about his rights there; or maybe he had simply taken the precaution of finding out what his rights were if he ever did happen to be lifted.

  ‘We took a hair sample for DNA as well as fingerprints,’ said Katie.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we didn’t expect to find a match on the FSI database. That hasn’t been up and running all that long, anyway. But we’re more than confident that we’ll find a match from Sceolan Boarding Kennels.’

  ‘I don’t know what the feck you’re talking about,’ said Keeno. He kept his head tilted back but he stopped staring at the ceiling and instead he dropped his eyes to stare at Katie, and stare at her very intently. She had seen the same expression in the eyes of men who had been just about to hit her – or try to hit her, anyway.

  ‘I think you know full well what I’m talking about, Keeno,’ she told him. ‘In fact I’m sure that you do. I’m talking about the wife of the owner of Sceolan Boarding Kennels, Mrs Cleona Cassidy. I’m talking about a home invasion in the early hours of the first of this month. This happened while a gang was carrying out a major robbery there, during the course of which twenty-six pedigree dogs were stolen. Including, would you believe, the very same two dogs which you offered for sale to Gerry Mulvaney.’

  ‘No comment,’ said Keeno, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Although he hadn’t changed his position, with his hands clasped behind his head, Katie could almost feel his mounting tension. She sensed that he could spring out of his chair at any second.

  ‘Two men forcibly entered Mr and Mrs Cassidy’s house,’ she said. ‘One struck Mr Cassidy with his own hurley and knocked him out. The other raped Mrs Cassidy.’

  ‘No comment,’ Keeno repeated.

  ‘While she was being assaulted, Mrs Cassidy heard the other man call her rapist by name. He called him “Keeno”. That’s not a very common name, is it, Keeno? What do you have to say about that?’

  ‘I never told you my name.’

  ‘No, you’re quite correct, you didn’t. But Gerry Mulvaney called you Ke
eno. We have your conversation recorded. And the two dogs that you tried to sell him, the German Shepherd and the Vizsla, both of those have been identified by Eoin Cassidy as having been stolen from Sceolan Kennels. It’s all adding up, isn’t it, Keeno? I mean, a logical person would assume that the Keeno who raped Mrs Cassidy and the Keeno who tried to sell Gerry Mulvaney those dogs, they were one and the same man. And that same logical person would assume that Keeno was you.’

  This time, Keeno said nothing, but slowly lowered his arms and sat up straight. Garda O’Keefe sat up straighter, too. In fact he placed both of his hands on his thighs and leaned slightly forward, as if he were ready to jump up at any moment.

  Katie lifted up the first page of the sheaf of papers that she had in front of her, to give Keeno the impression that she was reading a report from the Technical Bureau.

  ‘Supposing that the DNA from the hair sample which we took from you earlier – supposing that matched any DNA that we might have taken from Mrs Cassidy after her rape? No matter who you are or what you call yourself – Keeno or Notso or Mr No Comment – supposing I charge you not only with handling stolen property, but with robbery, and with rape. Do you have any idea how long you’d be spending in jail?’

  Keeno was too worked up to be listening closely, because he didn’t hear the conditional words that Katie had used deliberately – like ‘might’ and ‘supposing’ and ‘would’.

  Instead, he panicked, and thumped his fists on the table, and let out a roar that was almost a scream. He reared up from his chair, knocking it on to the floor behind him. Katie and Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley started to stand up, too, but he seized the edge of the table and tipped it up, so that all three of them stumbled backward over their chairs.

  He started to head for the door, but Garda O’Keefe seized him before he was halfway there, and pinned his arms behind his back. Keeno had obviously been held like this before, however, because he jerked his head back, so that Garda O’Keefe had to jerk back, too, to avoid being hit in the face, and then he dropped to the floor, as abruptly as if his spine had snapped, so that Garda O’Keefe lost his grip on his arms.

  He rolled over twice across the carpet, and as Garda O’Keefe bent down to grab him, he arched his back and kicked him in the chin. Garda O’Keefe’s jawbone cracked as loudly as a pistol-shot, and he staggered back, one hand held over his mouth.

  ‘You stay down!’ Sergeant Begley shouted at Keeno. ‘Stay down there on the floor, you scummer!’

  But Keeno scrambled to his feet and headed for the door again, and when Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley went for him, he pushed both of them so hard that they collided with each other. Detective Dooley tried to seize his arm, but Keeno punched him in the left ear, and then punched him again on his cheekbone.

  Sergeant Begley forced him up against the wall next to the door. They struggled for a moment, grunting. Sergeant Begley was red in the face, his teeth gritted, while Keeno’s eyes were bulging, his head straining forward, his mouth wide open, like a zombie trying to take a bite out of Sergeant Begley’s neck.

  Katie had lifted the table back on to its feet. She reached over and pressed the alarm button and then she hurried across to Garda O’Keefe, who was sitting on the floor now, holding his jaw.

  ‘I’ve called for back-up,’ she told him. ‘They’ll be here in a flash, don’t worry.’

  He nodded to indicate that he had heard her, but she could see behind his hand that Keeno had kicked his jaw sideways, and dislocated it completely. A long string of blood and dribble was hanging from his fingers.

  She turned back to Sergeant Begley and Keeno, who were still wrestling with each other by the door. Detective Dooley was trying to join in, but he still looked stunned, and couldn’t seem to keep his balance. Keeno was like a bull gone berserk, fuming with rage and fear and almost unstoppable, but at the same time he really knew how to fight. Without any warning at all, he head-butted Sergeant Begley. There was an audible clonk of skulls, and Sergeant Begley took an unsteady step backwards, and then another, half-concussed. Before he could recover, Keeno punched him hard in the belly. Then he turned to Detective Dooley and punched him again, too, a left-handed blow that hit his right cheekbone.

  To Katie, all of this struggling seemed to be happening in slow-motion, and although she could hear the alarm beeping, she wondered why it was taking so long for anybody to come and help them. As Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley stood stunned, Keeno was reaching out for the door-handle, and even though Katie knew that he had no hope of escaping from the station, she called out, ‘Stop there! Don’t you move a muscle! I said, stop!’

  She thought that her words sounded slurred, and long-drawn-out, and when she started to head towards Keeno, she felt as if the air in the room had become so dense that she could only bound her way across the floor like an astronaut on the moon.

  Keeno turned towards her. He had the same blank expression on his face as before. I don’t give a shite if you’re a woman, I’m going to hit you all the same. That’s your place in life, to do what you’re told, and if you don’t do what you’re told, don’t be surprised if you’re hit.

  Katie saw him raising his arm. His hand was open, so it looked as if he intended to slap her, rather than punch her. She saw Detective Dooley reaching out, trying to catch his sleeve. She heard Sergeant Begley shout something, although she was concentrating too intently to hear what it was. It just sounded like ‘Mmmmwerrrrrrrr!’

  She spun around on the ball of her right foot and kicked Keeno in the chest with her left toecap. Even when she was sparring at her kick-boxing class she had never kicked anybody as hard as she did then.

  Keeno crashed back against the door, and then slid down until he was sitting on the floor. His head was tilted to one side and his eyes had rolled up into his head so that only the whites were showing. The palms of both of his hands were upturned and open as if he were making an appeal to heaven.

  ‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ said Sergeant Begley.

  Katie recovered her balance, and as she did so, the world seemed to speed up again. She could hear the alarm frantically beeping, and now a garda’s face appeared in the window in the door. He was rattling the door handle from the other side and trying to push the door open.

  ‘Okay, hold on!’ Katie called out. Between them, Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley dragged Keeno away from the door and laid him on the floor. Immediately, the door burst open and three uniformed garda pushed their way in.

  ‘What’s the story here?’ one of them asked. ‘Anybody hurt?’

  ‘We had a bit of a scrap with our suspect here,’ said Sergeant Begley. ‘One of you needs to take O’Keefe to the Mercy. His jaw’s been busticated.’

  ‘You look like you’ve had a fair bashing yourself, sergeant,’ said the garda, pointing to his forehead.

  ‘Oh, I’ll survive so. I’ve one devil of a headache, but it’s nothing that a couple of Nurofen won’t see to.’

  Katie was standing over Keeno. His eyes were closed now and he was still unconscious.

  ‘What about your man?’ asked the garda.

  ‘DS Maguire gave him a kicking, that’s all. He’ll probably come round in a minute.’

  Another gingery-haired garda knelt down on the floor beside Keeno and bent over to hear if he was still breathing. Then he pressed his fingertips against his carotid artery to check his pulse.

  ‘Yes, he’s still with us. But Jesus, you must have given some kick there, ma’am.’ He looked up at Katie, impressed.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Sergeant Begley, ruefully rubbing his stomach where Keeno had punched him. ‘Three hefty men in the room, like, and one of them only a boxing champion, and it takes a woman to bring your man down.’

  One of the gardaí led Garda O’Keefe away, so that he could drive him to the Mercy Urgent Care Centre in Gurranbraher; and Katie told Detective Dooley to go to the first-aid room downstairs to have ice packs applied to his bruise. The two remaining gar
daí fetched a stretcher, and heaved Keeno up on to it. Keeno’s eyes remained closed, although the lids were fluttering as if he were having a fit.

  When they had lifted him up, Katie shook his shoulder and said, ‘Keeno? Keeno? Can you hear me, Keeno? Keeno!’

  He didn’t respond. Katie shook him again, harder, but still he didn’t open his eyes. Maybe he really was concussed, but Katie guessed that he might be feigning unconsciousness because he was humiliated at having been knocked out by a woman, or else he didn’t want to answer the charges against him, or both.

  ‘Take him to a holding cell, would you,’ said Katie. ‘You’d better call Doctor Fitzpatrick, too, to give him a once-over. If he hasn’t woken up, make sure you lie him on his side. I don’t want him swallowing his tongue or choking on his own vomit. He’s probably faking, but I don’t want to take the risk, like.’

  The two gardaí stretchered Keeno out of the interview room. After they had gone, Katie turned to Sergeant Begley and said, ‘As for you, Sean, I’m sending you home. Put a cold compress on your forehead, put your feet up, and have yourself a good hot cup of tea. I’ll see you tomorrow so.’

  ‘What about Mulvaney?’

  ‘I’ll be having a word with him now, although I doubt that he’ll tell us much more than he’s told us already. Even if he does know who these dognappers are, I think he’s far too frightened to give us their names.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘I’ll probably let him go for now. I don’t want to bring him up in front of the court until we have much more evidence against the whole gang. If we prosecute him, they’ll only go to ground, and then we’ll never find out the whole extent of what they’re up to.’