Living Death

by Graham Masterton

  Of course he’s gone, she told herself, in her dream. He’s dead.

  30

  To Katie’s relief, Bridie came early and so she was able to leave the house while John was still asleep. She wouldn’t have known what to say to him, or how to act. Should she say sorry, or should she pretend that last night hadn’t happened, and be smiley and bright? And should she mention that he had opened his eyes and stared at her, when he was sleeping?

  She reached her office at ten minutes to eight, but she still hadn’t heard from Maureen Callahan about the arms shipment. Maureen had told her that it would probably be delivered sometime during the night, but it was possible that there had been some delay, and it hadn’t yet arrived.

  Today was Moirin’s day off, but she had left Katie some letters to sign and this month’s financial report. Katie didn’t open the financial report immediately. She knew that she had seriously overspent, mostly on overtime, because of the extra hours that her drugs team had been putting in. In a way, her investment had paid off: they had made over thirty per cent more arrests for drug offences this October than they had in October last year, but she still felt that she was swimming against the tide.

  Detective Ó Doibhilin knocked at her door. His hair was sticking up and his tie was askew and one of his shirt tails was hanging out.

  ‘Good morning to you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Glad you’re in early.’

  ‘State of you, Michael,’ said Katie. ‘You haven’t been in a scrap, have you?’

  Detective Ó Doibhilin hastily tucked in his shirt tail. ‘It’s been a bit of a night, that’s all. There were six students taken into the Mercy, just after two o’clock. They were having a house party in Greenmount and according to their pals they’d been hounding N-Bombs like they were sweets.’

  ‘What kind of a condition are they in?’

  ‘Vomiting and heart arrhythmia mostly. Two of them had to be given CPR. They’re all going to survive, but it was touch and go for one of them.’

  ‘Jesus. Those N-Bombs can give you permanent brain damage if you’re not careful. Did you find out who supplied them?’

  ‘We have, yes, and I’m dead sound about that. He’s downstairs right now. White male, mid-twenties by the look of him. We caught up with him on Oliver Plunkett Street, right in the middle of trying to sell more stuff. He had a satchel bulging with N-Bombs and Smiles and Cimbi-5 and Solaris. I’ll be handing them over to the Technical Bureau as soon as they get in, for analysis.’

  ‘Good work, Michael. The rest of the kids at the party – were they all students?’

  ‘About thirty of them, most of them from UCC. They told us that the campus has been flooded with psychedelic drugs in the past couple of months, and they reckoned that at least eighty per cent of their friends have been taking them.’

  ‘I think I’ll have to have a word with Dr Murphy about this, although I don’t think there’s much that he can do about it. I mean, he’s the president of UCC, but he can’t exactly go searching through his students’ pockets, can he? Do the kids have any notion at all where all these uppers are coming from?’

  ‘No, they don’t. But they were so devastated about these six almost dying on them that I’m pretty sure they would have told us if they’d known. They didn’t hesitate to give us a good description of the fellow who was dishing out the N-Bombs at the party. They didn’t know his real name. They only called him Boxty. He has red hair sticking up like a bog-brush and a yellow leather coat so it wasn’t too hard for us to catch up with him, especially since he was out on Oliver Plunkett Street, flogging his stuff outside the Old Oak.’

  ‘Thanks, Michael. Let me know when you’ve interviewed him, won’t you? It might be a good idea to have Scanlan with you, too. She has a knack of winkling incriminating evidence out of suspects without them even realising what they’re telling her.’

  ‘I will, sure,’ said Detective Ó Doibhilin. ‘Oh – and by the way – no movement from herself.’

  ‘Okay. Keep your eye on her, though, won’t you?’

  Detective Ó Doibhilin gave Katie a military-style salute and left her office. Katie went back to signing her letters, but only a few seconds after he had gone there was another knock at her door. She looked up and to her surprise and delight Kyna Ni Nuallán came in, her arms stretched out wide, suntanned and laughing.

  Katie pushed her chair back and stood up, and the two of them hugged each other and kissed – on each cheek at first, and then slowly and tenderly, on the lips.

  Kyna had grown her blonde hair long, but had tied it back with a red-and-yellow scarf. She was wearing a dark red pea-coat and tight blue jeans and boots. Because of her suntan, she looked less like one of the fairy-folk and more like a fashion model. Her nose had been broken by one of Bobby Quilty’s thugs, which was why she had been away on sick leave, but it had now healed perfectly straight.

  ‘You don’t know how pleased I am to see you,’ said Katie. She had to wipe tears from her eyes with her fingertips.

  ‘It was so good to get away like that. It helped me to sort my head out, like, do you know what I mean? I think I was suffering from post-traumatic stress, I really do. It was the helplessness, like, being abducted like that. That was the first and only time I ever felt helpless in the whole of my life.’

  ‘And?’ said Katie. ‘You still want to come back here to Anglesea Street?’

  Kyna smiled. ‘Yes, I still do.’

  ‘And what about us? What about you and me? We have to be realistic.’

  ‘I know. But inside the station we can be Detective Superintendent and Detective Sergeant, and when we’re outside of it we can be just good friends.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Kyna nodded. ‘How’s John?’ she asked. ‘Have they fixed him up with his artificial legs yet?’

  Katie closed the financial report and put it away in a drawer. ‘Come and have a coffee and I’ll bring you up to speed.’

  *

  They went into the Market Tavern across the road and sat down by the window.

  ‘So sad they closed the Honeycomb Café,’ said Kyna, as the barman brought them two cups of coffee. The Honeycomb had been a favourite with the gardaí and the firefighters from the fire station next door, but the building had been sold and it was now a Japanese restaurant called Sakura.

  ‘How far do you think your average guard can run after a criminal when he’s had nothing to eat but noodles and sushi? He’d be puffed out after two hundred yards and the feen in the tracksuit would be laughing his head off at him. But you give that same guard a bacon-and-sausage sandwich and a strong cup of tea and he’d be sprinting along like the Terminator. Unstoppable.’

  She poured three sachets of brown sugar into her coffee and noisily stirred it. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘what’s the latest?’

  Katie told her that John was waiting to have his prosthetic legs fitted, but no more than that. She didn’t tell her that her love for him, once so passionate, had completely turned to ashes. After that, she brought her up to date on the dognapping from Sceolan Kennels, and how she had kick-boxed Keeno. Then she described her trip with Conor Ó Máille up to Ballyknock yesterday, and the baiting of the poodle. She explained that she had brought in Conor to help them find out who the dognappers were, but she made no mention of spending the night with him in the Gabriel Guest House, nor how she felt about him.

  Kyna looked at her keenly, holding her coffee cup in both hands. ‘You like him, don’t you, this pet detective? I can tell.’

  Katie could feel herself blushing, but there was nothing she could do about it. ‘He’s good-looking, there’s no question about that.’

  ‘And you like him?’

  ‘Yes. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t.’

  ‘So what does John think about him?’

  ‘John doesn’t know he exists.’

  ‘Aha. And you’re not going to tell him about him, are you?’

  ‘Do you know something, Kyna, you were always a go
od interrogator. Young Pádraigin Scanlan, she’s good, too. I’ve always said that women can get much more out of suspects than men.’

  ‘But you’re not a suspect. Or are you? Something’s happened between you and this Conor Ó Máille, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve told you I like him. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? How was Gran Canaria? I can’t believe how well you’re looking, and you’re not even wearing any make-up.’

  Kyna reached into her bag and took out her mobile phone. ‘Here – let me show you some pictures. Like I told you, the hotel was wall-to-wall with holidaymakers from Cork, so I didn’t have any trouble with the language, except for one fellow from Knocknaheeny who kept trying to chat me up. I couldn’t understand a single word that he was saying so I asked him to speak slower, and do you know what he said? “Let’s... go... halves... on... a... bastard.”’

  She came and sat close to Katie so that she could flick through her holiday pictures with her. As usual, she smelled of Miracle, by Lancôme. Katie briefly wondered what it would be like, to have her as a partner, instead of a man. Spending all of their time together, going on holidays together, sleeping together.

  Kyna showed her selfies taken by the hotel pool, and pictures of the meals that she had eaten, including ceviche and sea-scorpion. There was a selfie of her by the sea, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and a tiny black bikini. The last two pictures showed her at Las Palmas Airport, late last night, waiting to catch her flight home. She was holding up a bright orange cocktail in the bar, as if she were drinking a toast.

  Katie said, ‘Stall it a moment. Let me look at those again.’

  Kyna handed her the mobile phone and Katie flicked back to the bar pictures and enlarged them. Sitting close behind Kyna at the bar, with his own mobile phone pressed to his ear, was a young man in a black leather jacket. His black hair was shaved so short that he looked almost bald, and he had a snub nose and a distinctive pattern of moles on his right cheek, like a star chart of Cassiopeia. Katie recognised him at once.

  ‘Do you know who that is? That fellow you’re sitting next to?’

  Kyna frowned at the picture and then shook her head. ‘Haven’t a notion. Never seen him before in my life. Don’t even remember seeing him then.’

  ‘That’s Branán O’Flynn. One of the O’Flynn crime family.’

  ‘Well? Even criminals have to take a break, now and again. And they can probably afford to, unlike the rest of us.’

  ‘Branán O’Flynn is supposed to have been shot dead by the Callahan family.’

  ‘He doesn’t look very shot dead to me. He’s talking on the phone and he’s laughing.’

  Katie handed the phone back to her. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ she said, and she told her all about the message from the SDU that Jimmy O’Reilly was supposed to have passed on to her, and her conversation on the phone with Maureen Callahan, and how she had met her at Blackrock Castle to be told about the arms shipment, and why Maureen wanted to take revenge on her father and her sisters.

  Kyna sat listening and slowly shaking her head. When Katie told her that she was waiting even now for Maureen Callahan to ring her and tell her where and when the guns were delivered, she put down her coffee cup and said, ‘Dia ár sábháil. God save us. It’s a set-up, isn’t it? I’d give you odds on it. It’s that Jimmy O’Reilly, setting you up. You were right to be so suspicious.’

  ‘I had a quare feeling about it right from the beginning,’ Katie told her. ‘When you think about it, somebody like Maureen Callahan would never come to the guards to get her revenge. Not in a million years. If Branán O’Flynn really was her boyfriend, and if her sisters really had arranged for him to be shot, she would pay some shamfeen to burn their houses down, or shoot their pets, or even shoot them.’

  ‘So you don’t believe there’s any arms shipment at all?’

  ‘I doubt it. If there was – and we seized it because of Maureen Callahan’s tip-off – her life wouldn’t be worth a thrawneen, would it? She’s anything but stupid, so she knows that. That’s what I’ve been thinking in the back of my mind all along.’

  ‘But what if you had believed her? Or what if you simply hadn’t been able to find any evidence that she wasn’t telling you the truth? You would have had to set up a raid, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have had any choice,’ said Katie.

  ‘Spot on. Like – supposing there really was an arms shipment, but you didn’t take any action to confiscate it, even though Maureen Callahan had tipped you off? You’d be right in the shite, excuse my language. But supposing there wasn’t, and you spent thousands of euros mounting a raid that came to nothing at all? You’d still be in the shite. So you couldn’t win, like, could you, either way.’

  Katie said, ‘True that, Kyna. After the hames I made of those three raids in Operation Trident, I would probably find myself reprimanded, or suspended, or even sacked.’

  ‘There you are – that’s the set-up. Any money you wouldn’t find Maureen Callahan supporting your story. Even if she did, she doesn’t exactly have a glowing reputation for public service, does she?’

  ‘I bet she would swear that she never spoke to me on the phone, or met me, either,’ said Katie. She was growing quite angry now that she had seen that picture of Branán O’Flynn. ‘I also bet that Superintendent O’Malley would deny that she ever spoke to any undercover SDU officer, and so he couldn’t have passed on a message about her to Jimmy O’Reilly. And I further bet that Jimmy O’Reilly would say that he never passed on any such message to me. He would probably say that I’m just out to undermine his authority, like I did with Acting Chief Superintendent Bryan Molloy. Except that Jimmy O’Reilly deserves to be undermined, just like Molloy deserved it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Kyna asked her.

  ‘Wait and see. Maureen Callahan doesn’t know that we have a picture that proves that she was lying. Neither does Jimmy O’Reilly. And I’ve taken some precautions to protect myself.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘When I went to meet Maureen Callahan at Blackrock Castle, I asked Michael Ó Doibhilin to follow me and attach a GPS tracker to her car, one of those mini ones. We’ve been keeping an eye on her movements ever since – not that she’s done anything very exciting, except to visit her sisters and go to Douglas Village for the messages.’

  They finished their coffee and then they went back across the road to the station. As she walked back along the corridor to her office, Katie received a text message from Detective Dooley that Keeno was still comatose. Almost immediately afterwards she had another text from Dr Kelley, saying that she had printed several 3-D versions of the knife that had been used to stab Martin Ó Brádaigh and that she would be bringing them over before she took the train back to Dublin.

  Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin was away for the weekend, but Katie promised Kyna that she would talk to him on Monday about her rejoining her team.

  ‘I can’t see that there’s going to be any problem,’ she smiled. ‘Denis MacCostagáin loves you nearly as much as I do.’

  ‘I’ll head on then,’ said Kyna. ‘I have a fridge full of empty food so I need to go to Tesco. Are you around tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends what happens today. Can you just email me that picture of you and Branán O’Flynn before you go?’

  When Kyna had left, she went to the window of her office and stood there for a while, thinking. It was a windy day, as windy as it had been in her dream about Paul, and the clouds were clearing away, so that the Elysian, the tallest building in Ireland, was shining pale green.

  It was 9:00 am now, so Conor would probably be up and showered and have had his freshly laid eggs for breakfast. She needed to ring him and ask him to come down to the station so that he could make a call to Lorcan Fitzgerald. He could see if Fitzgerald was interested in some pedigree Shar-peis or Akitas for fighting, and arrange to meet. If Conor actually brought the dogs with him, and Fitzgerald agreed to buy them, he
could be arrested and brought in for questioning.

  She was about to call Sergeant Nolan of the Dog Support Unit to see what dogs he could rustle up for her when her iPhone rang. It was Maureen Callahan and as before she sounded breathless, as if she were smoking, or in a panic, or both.

  ‘DS Maguire? It’s Maureen. They arrived about an hour ago, the guns. They had some kind of a hold-up, I don’t know what it was. But any road it’s all been delivered and stored away. My father and my sisters are going up there at half-past three to look it all over, and also to meet some fellows from Armagh who’ve told us they’re interested in making them an offer for the Skorpions.’

  ‘Half-past three,’ said Katie, trying to sound calm. ‘I see. And what’s the location?’

  ‘Sarsfield Court Industrial Estate. It’s the second warehouse on the left when you drive in. It’s painted green and it has a sign on it saying Boyle Power Tools but they’ve gone out of business now and my family rents it.’

  ‘I have you,’ said Katie. At the same time she had clicked on to Google Maps and was checking the street view of Sarsfield Court Industrial Estate to see if Maureen was giving her an accurate description. There it was – a small green warehouse signposted Boyle Power Tools. It had a wide forecourt and it also looked as if there was clear access all around it, so if she had wanted to launch a raid, she could have organised it so that gardaí burst into the building from all sides simultaneously, and nobody inside would be able to escape.

  ‘Where will you be?’ she asked Maureen.

  ‘I’ll be far, far away, don’t you worry. I don’t want Bree or my father to get the idea that I had anything to do with this.’

  ‘Fair play, Maureen. You can ring me later if you like, to see how it went. Mind you, you’ll probably see it on the news.’