‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Jimmy, turning around. ‘I was expecting Barry Pearse.’
‘Shall I go away, then?’ asked Katie. ‘It looks like you two have things to discuss.’
‘No, no, Kathleen, come in, stay,’ said Jimmy. ‘You’ll have to be a party to this sooner or later, so now you’re here it may as well be sooner. Are you all right with that, Bryan?’
Bryan Molloy shrugged and sniffed, as if to say it was okay with him. He stared unblinkingly at Katie, though, with the same pit-bull expression that he had always given her when he was acting chief superintendent. Katie closed the door behind her, walked across the office and sat down facing him.
‘Bryan came here today to see if we could come to some agreement about the Niall Duggan business,’ said Jimmy.
‘You mean his bribery of Donie Quaid to shoot Neill Duggan and supplying Donie with the weapon to do it? You mean that business?’
‘I’m admitting to nothing,’ Bryan retorted. ‘However the feck he was killed, the death of Niall Duggan was the best thing that happened to Limerick since the Shannon Free Zone and you know that as well as I do.’
Jimmy said, ‘Donie Quaid has gone to higher service so we can’t arrest him for the shooting, and I have to agree with Bryan that Niall Duggan’s departure did an awful lot to end the feuding between the crime gangs in Limerick. What I’m saying is, Kathleen, that even if you pursue your investigation to the bitter end, no earthly benefit will come of it and it’s highly unlikely that the DPP will agree to a prosecution.’
‘So where are you going with this, exactly?’ Katie asked him. ‘Are you ordering me to drop this case? Is that it?’
Jimmy pulled a grotesquely strained face, as if he were constipated. ‘If I do that, Kathleen, listen, I could end up in a very compromising situation altogether, do you know what I mean? If one of those investimagational journalists from the Examiner happened to find out that I’d ordered you to pull the plug on it, against your own inclination, it could look like there was something that I didn’t want to come out in public.’
‘Well, don’t you?’ said Katie, although her heart was beating faster now because she knew how risky it was to challenge Jimmy so openly.
Bryan said, ‘You don’t understand, Katie, do you?’ although his expression said Jesus, why are women are so fecking thick? ‘I’m offering to drop the complaint I made against you to the GSOC.’
‘So?’ Katie replied. ‘The GSOC have already confirmed for themselves that you supplied the gun that killed Niall Duggan. Well, they must have told you that by now. On the whole, I’d say that they’re much more on my side than yours.’
Jimmy paced up and down a few times and then he said, ‘Let’s be practical, shall we, Kathleen? Let’s draw a line under all of this unnecessary wrangling. It’s only going to damage the reputation of An Garda Síochána and right now we need to appear honest, and efficient, and above all trustworthy.’
Counting them off on his fingers, he said, ‘We have drug-trafficking to deal with, we have armed robbery to deal with, we have fraud to deal with, we have sex slavery to deal with, we have domestic violence to deal with. We need the public on our side and if you pursue this case against Bryan, that isn’t going to help at all.’
‘So what’s this “agreement” you were talking about?’ asked Katie.
‘It’s totally straightforward. On your part, you announce that you’ve decided to close the case against Bryan because of lack of evidence. And, let’s face it, what evidence do you actually have apart from the word of some old Limerick brasser and a bunch of schoolboys? In return, Bryan will withdraw his complaint against you for harassment and conspiracy to undermine his authority.’
Katie looked across at Bryan, who was still staring at her as if he were gagging to be let off his lead. ‘There must be more to it than that,’ she said. ‘What does Bryan get out of it, apart from a get-out-of-jail-free card?’
‘First, he gets his service record officially recognized – and even you have to admit he has a very distinguished service record. Second, he has it acknowledged by An Garda Síochána that he was forced to resign for reasons of ill health and that he’s entitled to his full pension and any sickness benefits that might be due to him.’
‘And what about soliciting bribes from known criminals to have charges against them dropped? And what about the points that mysteriously vanished off the driving licences of the rich and famous?’
‘That never happened,’ said Bryan.
‘Oh, no? Then why did the last commissioner have to resign?’
‘You’d have to prove it, and you can’t. Nobody can.’
There was another long silence. The tension between them made Katie’s stomach muscles tighten and she desperately needed a wee. All the same, she thought she would rather wet herself in front of these two than agree to what they were suggesting. When he was in charge at Anglesea Street, Bryan Molloy had bullied her relentlessly, and just because she had outsmarted him that didn’t mean that she was going to let him benefit from being a loser.
She could sense what was happening here. Hadn’t Francis O’Rourke warned her how the the old-school, golf-playing Freemasons amongst the Garda’s upper ranks felt about her? Bryan Molloy was one of them, and so was Jimmy O’Reilly, and they wanted a lid put on all of this, as tightly as possible.
She stood up.
‘Well?’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s a reasonable enough request, don’t you think? And there’ll be peace in our time.’
‘I’ll think it over,’ she said. ‘You need to be warned, though, that my immediate inclination is to have nothing at all to do with it.’
Bryan Molloy slapped both his hands on to the arms of his chair. ‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘I always thought you were a fecking obnoxious self-opinionated bitch!’
‘Bryan, for feck’s sake, that won’t do any good,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m sorry, Kathleen, he’s very stressed after everything that’s happened. Please – think it over, like you say. But it won’t do the force any good at all if we don’t get this settled.’
‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Katie. ‘Us bosom-people are not so good at making snap decisions.’
It was only when she had returned to her own office and was sitting on the toilet that she realized that she and Jimmy had not discussed anything about tomorrow’s state funeral.
* * *
Detective Dooley rang her. He sounded out of breath.
‘Karosas has just turned up at the Ballycurreen Industrial Estate. I had a couple of guards posted there to keep an eye out for him. He’s gone inside with a woman and some other fellow and they’ve switched on the lights and they’re playing music, so it looks like they may be there some time.’
‘You have the warrant to search his car, don’t you?’
‘I have, yes,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘I picked it up a couple of hours ago from Judge McNulty. I’m heading up to Ballycurreen right now with Tyrone from the Technical Bureau if you want to come along.’
‘I’ll be right with you,’ said Katie. ‘Are those two guards still there?’
‘Yes, and I’ve asked them to stay there until we arrive.’
Katie hurriedly put on her coat and went down to the car park. Detective Dooley was already sitting in his car with the engine running and the passenger door wide open. She climbed in beside him and said, ‘Okay. Let’s go. Let’s just hope this isn’t a wild goose chase.’
Ballycurreen Industrial Estate was located off the main road that led up to the airport, only a short distance south of the Magic Roundabout. It was a dull collection of warehouses and storage units and offices, and by the time Katie and Detective Dooley arrived there it looked as if most of them had closed for the day.
Savitas Clothing Traders was housed at the very end of the estate, in a small white-painted unit with a concrete forecourt and double garage doors. A sign outside displayed a picture of a dapper pinstriped suit striding along on its own, with nobody in it, but carrying a
cane tucked under its arm and a carnation pinned to its lapel. Katie could see the bronze unmarked police Honda parked across the road, half hidden by a giant blue trailer with Irish Examiner emblazoned on its side. Detective Dooley turned around and pulled in behind it, and almost immediately Tyrone from the Technical Bureau arrived in a dark-green van.
Katie and Detective Dooley climbed out of their car and the two gardaí and Tyrone came to join them. Both of the gardaí were male, and young, but they both looked quite fit.
‘I’m not anticipating any trouble,’ said Katie. ‘All the same, Karosas has a bit of a reputation for cutting up rough. We think he may have picked up Roisin Begley from outside Havana Brown’s on the night she was drowned and we have a warrant to search his car for any evidence of that.’
Katie and Detective Dooley crossed the road, with Tyrone and the two gardaí following close behind them. As they walked past Karosas’s shiny black Lexus they ducked their heads down to have a quick look inside, but its windows were tinted too dark for them to be able to see anything but their own distorted reflections. Detective Dooley rang the doorbell outside Savitas Clothing Traders and then they waited.
‘Fierce cold,’ said Detective Dooley, clapping his hands together. ‘They said on the TV that we might get some snow.’
‘D’you think?’ said one of the gardaí sceptically.
He was about to ring the bell again when the door opened and Davydos Karosas appeared, wearing a tan overcoat with a brown velvet collar and smoking a cigarette. From the top of the concrete stairs behind him, Katie could hear accordion music and laughter.
‘What you want?’ asked Karosas. He looked Detective Dooley up and down and then he saw Katie and said, ‘You! What you want?’
Detective Dooley held out the search warrant from the district court. ‘We have a warrant to search your car, Mr Karosas.’
‘My car? What for you want to search my car?’
‘Your car was seen on Hanover Street on the night that Roisin Begley was drowned,’ said Katie. ‘We have reason to believe that you may have picked her up there.’
‘Who? When was this? I don’t know nobody that name. I never been near Hanover Street, never.’
‘It’s no good denying it, Mr Karosas. Your car was picked up on CCTV and you were driving it.’
‘It’s a mistake. I never pick nobody up. I don’t know nobody that name.’
‘If that’s the case, you don’t have anything to worry about, do you? Do you think we could have the keys, please?’
Karosas sucked hard at his cigarette and then blew smoke in Katie’s direction. ‘What I say no?’
‘If you refuse to give us the keys to your vehicle, Mr Karosas, then we will have to gain access to it by force.’
‘You make one scratch my car, you regret it for ever, I tell you that for free.’
‘Then give me the keys.’
For nearly ten seconds Karosas said nothing. He didn’t move, but smoke was still leaking out of his nostrils as he breathed. Katie said nothing, either, but held out her hand, making a beckoning gesture with her fingers.
‘You know what you are, you pigs?’ said Karosas at last. ‘You are pigs.’
With that, he took his keys out of his coat pocket and dropped them into Katie’s palm. Katie handed them to Detective Dooley, who passed them over to Tyrone. Tyrone pressed the remote button and the Lexus’s amber lights flashed as the doors unlocked.
‘You make one mark,’ Karosas warned them.
‘Please don’t threaten us, Mr Karosas,’ said Katie. ‘We have a job to do, that’s all.’
Tyrone set down his metal box of forensic equipment and opened up the car’s passenger door. He leaned inside with his halogen flashlight, shining it this way and that. Although she could sense his extreme tension, Karosas remained in the open doorway, furiously smoking. Upstairs, the accordion music and laughter continued, although a woman’s voice called out, ‘Davydos! Davyd! Ka˛ tu darai?’
Karosas didn’t answer but flicked his cigarette butt across the concrete forecourt and immediately took out another and lit it. He watched with barely contained rage as Tyrone slowly and methodically went over every inch of the interior of his Lexus with a large hand-held ultraviolet lamp – first the dashboard and the front seats and the footwells, then the back seats, and then the boot.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, I don’t believe this,’ he kept on muttering. ‘This is racist. You only do this to me because I am Lithuanian.’
‘Of course it’s racist,’ said Katie. ‘It has nothing at all to do with the fact that you have a record of violence and sex-trafficking and that you were caught on CCTV at a time when a vulnerable young girl went missing.’
‘Dah, fuck you, you are pig!’
After about twenty minutes, Tyrone climbed out of the car and called Katie and Detective Dooley to come over and join him. He shone his ultraviolet lamp on to the headrest of the passenger seat and said, ‘There... you see those fine bluey-white strands? Human hair, and it’s blonde when you see it under natural light.’
‘Karosas might have a blonde girlfriend,’ said Detective Dooley.
‘Of course, but I’ve taken samples and we’ll be able to make a comparison with Roisin Begley’s hair.’
Next he directed the lamp at the dashboard. ‘Fingerprints, a whole fine mess of them, and this wasn’t just from passengers opening and closing the glovebox. The newest prints are consistent with a passenger pushing hard against the dashboard with the heel of their left hand but also trying to grip it with both hands.’
‘So they could have been struggling, is that what you’re saying?’ Katie asked him. ‘Trying to stop somebody from pulling them out of the car?’
‘That’s a possibility, yes. Especially when you look at the seat.’
He pointed the lamp downwards and Katie could see that the leather had circular smears in the middle of it, as if it had been wiped with a cloth. Under natural light the smears were invisible, but in ultraviolet they showed up with an unearthly blue glow.
Tyrone said, ‘Somebody was clearly making a hurried attempt to clean the seat, but they weren’t nearly thorough enough. That’s urine. At some point, whoever was sitting in this seat wet themselves.’
‘And of course you’ve taken samples of that, too?’ said Katie.
‘Oh, yes. That could give us the most damning evidence of all. Well – that’s always assuming that it matches Roisin Begley’s DNA. If not, we’ll just have to presume that Mr Karosas had a friend with him who couldn’t wait until they got home.’
Katie wished that he would change the subject. The breeze that was blowing across the industrial estate was even chillier now and she was feeling that pressure on her bladder again. She was sure, too, that when they were driving here she had felt her baby stir.
‘That’s not all, though,’ Tyrone added. ‘This is the pièce de what’s-its-name.’
‘Résistance,’ said Katie.
‘Yes, that. In fact, there’s several. I found these under the passenger seat. It looks like they dropped on to the floor, rolled backwards under the seat when the car accelerated, but then rolled forwards again when it slowed down and got caught underneath the floor mat. If somebody was trying to clean the car out in a hurry, which they probably were if these urine stains are anything to go by, they could easily have missed them.’
He opened up the breast pocket of his Tyvek suit and took out a small transparent evidence bag, laying down his ultraviolet lamp on the car seat and picking up his halogen flashlight instead so that Katie could clearly see what it contained.
Inside the bag were five or six sparkling opalescent beads, like flower petals, with crystals for stamens. They were identical to the beads that had made up Roisin Begley’s bracelet – the bracelet that Abisola’s selfie had shown her wearing at Havana Brown’s only minutes before she went out to meet Davydos Karosas.
Katie walked back to the doorway. Karosas greeted her with a billowing cloud of cigarett
e smoke and said, ‘Well? You satisfy?’
‘Just answer me one question,’ said Katie. ‘Do you allow anybody else to drive your car?’
‘What? You know what that cost, Lexus G3? I don’t let nobody touch it. It make me sick in my stomach to see you pigs touch it. I have to have it valet now, get rid of your stink. I should send you bill.’
‘So nobody has ever driven it, except you?’
‘That’s right,’ said Karosas. ‘You deaf or what?’
‘In that case, I have to ask you to come with me to Anglesea Street Garda station for questioning.’
Karosas twitched his head as if he had Tourette’s syndrome. ‘What? You crazy? What for? I don’t come to your fucking Garda station. What for? Go and fuck yourself. Pig.’
‘All right, if you won’t come voluntarily, I am hereby arresting you for the abduction and murder of Roisin Begley,’ Katie told him. ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
Karosas twitched his head again and then he suddenly stepped back into the doorway and tried to slam the door shut. Before he could do so, Katie seized the sleeve of his coat and swung him against the wall, forcing the door open again with her shoulder. Then she hit him hard in the chest with her left elbow and punched him even harder on the cheekbone with her fist.
Karosas lost his balance and stumbled backwards towards the stairs. Katie stalked in after him, her fists raised, ready to kick him if he tried to resist her. Detective Dooley had now come in through the door after her and the two young gardaí were right behind him.
‘It’s okay, ma’am, we’ve got him!’ said Detective Dooley.
Katie lowered her fists and was about to step back when Karosas pressed one hand against the wall to steady himself, swung his leg back, and kicked Katie in the stomach.
Katie toppled backwards and sideways into Detective Dooley’s arms, stunned, unable to breathe, unable to speak. Detective Dooley laid her down gently on the floor, while one of the gardaí pushed his way past them and grabbed hold of Karosas’s arms. His companion followed him and together they handcuffed Karosas and pushed him face-first up against the wall.
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