Red Light

by Graham Masterton

  ‘So what’s your name?’ Ciaran persisted. ‘Where do you come from? How long have you been here in Cork?’

  The girl stared at him over the top of Mr Rooney’s raincoat collar. Her eyelashes were crusted with yellow and her left eye was bloodshot. She didn’t answer, but just continued to stare at him as if she didn’t trust him, or any man, or anyone – and never would again.

  ‘You’re not even going to tell me your name?’ said Ciaran. ‘Well, how old are you? You can tell me that, can’t you? Or don’t you know?’

  The girl held up both hands, with all of her fingers spread. Then she held up only her right hand, with two of her fingers folded back.

  When Ciaran frowned in bewilderment, she did it again. Two hands, ten fingers, then one hand, three fingers.

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Mr Rooney. ‘She’s only thirteen.’

  At that moment, lightning flickered over the hills towards the south-west and the girl clamped her hand over her mouth as if she had just told the most dreadful lie.

  Two

  Katie entered the interview room. It was gloomy but not dark enough for the light to be switched on. A middle-aged woman in a red tweed suit was sitting in one of the Parker Knoll armchairs that were crowded together at the right-hand side of the room. She had dyed ginger hair and fiery crimson cheeks, and the drawn lines around her mouth of a woman whose teeth had all been taken out as a wedding present.

  She half stood up as Katie came in, but Katie made a patting gesture in the air to indicate that she should stay seated.

  ‘Mary ó Floinn, superintendent,’ she said, in a stage whisper. ‘It was me that you talked to on the phone.’

  Katie nodded. She was more interested in the young girl standing by the tall window, looking out. The window was speckled with raindrops and outside the dark slate rooftops were shiny and wet. Down in the area below, a man with a khaki windcheater covering his head was stacking bricks and smoking. Katie couldn’t be sure if the girl was watching him or if she was staring at nothing at all.

  She knew from the records that Nasc had given her that she was eight years old, but she looked no more than five. Her brown hair was unkempt and straggly, and Katie could see crusty brown scabs among the curls. She was very thin, and her emaciated state was exaggerated by the long grey cotton dress she was wearing, which was clean and well pressed, with pink smocking on the front, but two sizes too big for her.

  Katie went over to the window and stood beside her. The girl didn’t look up, but continued to stare outside. She had a high forehead and sharp angular cheekbones, and huge brown eyes. She reminded Katie of one of the fairies in the storybooks that her mother used to read to her, except that she had fading yellow bruises on her left cheek and around her mouth, and purple bruises around her neck, too, like finger marks.

  ‘Corina?’ said Katie, very gently.

  The girl looked up at her, and then immediately looked away.

  ‘Corina, I’m Katie. Have they given you anything to eat?’

  ‘She had fish fingers for her lunch,’ put in Mary ó Floinn. ‘Mind you, she ate only the one. I had the feeling she’d never been given more than one before and she was afraid what might happen if she ate any more.’

  Katie stood looking at Corina for a long time. She couldn’t think of the last time she had felt pain like this. She had to turn away from the window because she had a tocht, a lump in her throat, and tears in her eyes.

  After a while, though, she swallowed and smiled and said, ‘Corina, why don’t you and me sit together over here and we can talk?’

  She went over to the sagging maroon couch on the opposite side of the room and sat down. Corina hesitated for a moment, and then obediently came over and sat next to her, with her head lowered, staring at the carpet.

  ‘Would you like some chocolate?’ Katie asked her.

  Corina shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure? You’ve had your lunch, haven’t you, so you’re allowed.’

  Mary ó Floinn, in the same stage whisper, said, ‘There’s a bit of an issue with chocolate, superintendent.’

  ‘What do you mean “a bit of an issue”?’

  ‘She took a square of chocolate out of the fridge, only a dooshie piece, but Mânios smacked her so hard she hit her head on the concrete step, and then he half choked her. So … as you can probably understand, she’s a little wary when it comes to chocolate.’

  ‘I see,’ said Katie. She smiled at Corina, but behind her smile her pain had turned to anger, an anger that was stronger than almost any anger she had felt before, and in her mind she could see herself stalking out of the room and finding Mânios Dumitrescu at whatever bar in Cork he was drinking in this afternoon, The Idle Hour probably, taking out her .38 revolver and without hesitation shooting him between the eyes.

  She unfastened the flap on her bag and took out the Milky-bar she had bought at the newsagent’s on her way here. ‘Let’s share this, shall we? Half for you and half for me.’

  Corina stared at her with those soulful brown eyes. Then, at last, she nodded.

  While they sat side by side, eating chocolate, Katie said, ‘Do you know where you were born?’

  Corina shook her head again.

  ‘Do you know where you are now?’

  Corina nodded.

  ‘And where is that, Corina?’

  Corina closed her eyes and recited, in a soft, hoarse voice, ‘Number thirty-seven St Martha’s Avenue, Gurranabraher, Cork. Telephone number 021 4979951.’

  ‘Well, at least the Dumitrescus made sure they weren’t going to lose her,’ said Katie. She waited for a moment while Corina finished her chocolate and lifted up the hem of her dress so that she could wipe her mouth. Then she said, ‘What’s your mother’s name, sweetheart?’

  ‘Marcela.’

  ‘Marcela is the woman you’ve been living with. I mean your real mother.’

  Corina frowned as if she didn’t understand. Katie looked across at Mary ó Floinn, who shrugged and said, very quietly, ‘She believes that Marcela is her real mother, superintendent. Remember that she was only three when the Dumitrescus adopted her. We’ve contacted the social services in Bucharest but we were hoping that you could get in touch with the Romanian police to see if they can trace her real family.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll do that, for sure,’ said Katie. ‘They have a special directorate to combat human-trafficking, just like we do. Meanwhile I’d like to set up some interviews with Corina, when you think she’s ready. We can’t delay it for too long, though. As you say in your report here, the Dumitrescus have adoption papers and they’ve already lodged a complaint to get her back.’

  ‘The courts won’t make us hand her over, though, will they? Look at her.’

  Katie shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mary. Unless we can find some really sound evidence against them there’s not a lot we can do. Well … you’re the legal experts when it comes to immigrants. If they can get their hands on her again, the Dumitrescus could up sticks and head off to England or back to Romania or wherever in the world they wanted and then we’d never see her again.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Mary ó Floinn. ‘The ISPCC have lodged her for the moment with some really grand foster parents in Douglas, Mr and Mrs Brennan. I’ll be taking her there after this. She should be able to talk to you in two or three days, maybe sooner. She just needs to get over the fear that she’s going to get a beating if she tells you what the Dumitrescus have been doing to her. Meanwhile I’ve given you the name of the neighbour who first called us. I don’t know whether she’d be prepared to give evidence in open court, but maybe she could give you some leads to other witnesses.’

  Katie took hold of Corina’s hand and squeezed it, and smiled. ‘I’ll see you again, Corina, yes? Some nice people are going to take care of you. You’ll have your own bed to sleep in and you won’t have to do any more cooking or cleaning or changing babies’ nappies, and we’re not going to let Marcela or Mânios hit you any more. You’re safe now.�
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  She didn’t know if Corina understood everything that she was saying, but the little girl looked up at her and gave her a wide grin. It broke Katie’s heart to see that all her teeth were rotten right down into her gums.

  While she was putting on her dark red waterproof jacket, Katie had a few quiet words with Mary ó Floinn in the corridor.

  ‘Fair play to you, Mary, you’ve shown some real neck, doing this,’ she told her. ‘Most people don’t dare cross the Dumitrescus. We’ve had Mânios Dumitrescu up in front of the court three times in the past four years on charges of assault and extortion and every time our witnesses have been threatened with being cut or beaten up and they’ve all conveniently decided to lose their memories.’

  Mary ó Floinn said, ‘You don’t think we’re scared at Nasc? We’ve already had some very nasty phone calls from the Dumitrescus. Not openly threatening, as such. They’re vicious, but they’re not stupid. And of course this isn’t the usual kind of case for us. Mostly we’re trying to keep Roma families together, not split them apart. In the end, though, yes – I suppose it’s all going to depend on what you can coax little Corina to say to you and what witness statements you can get.’

  She paused, and then she said, ‘By the way, superintendent, I wasn’t expecting you to come here in person. I very much appreciate it.’

  Katie gave her a quick, tight smile. ‘I was going to send Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán – you’ve met her, haven’t you? But I wanted to come and see Corina for myself. I’m allergic to those Dumitrescus but I wanted to remind myself exactly why, and just how much. Mânios, he’s the devil incarnate, that fellow, that’s the only word for him, and that mother of his, what a witch!’

  She looked back towards the interview room and saw Corina sitting alone on the couch, her head down, playing some game by wiggling her fingers. Detective O’Donovan had reported to her that when Corina was taken from the Dumitrescu house in Gurranabraher last Friday, the officers had found that she had no spare clothes, only the filthy T-shirt and shorts she was wearing at the time, no shoes apart from a pair of worn-out rubber dollies that were two sizes too small for her, and no toys. She wouldn’t have needed books, because she had never been sent to school and couldn’t read or write. She couldn’t even count up to ten in Romanian.

  Katie made her way down the steep concrete steps of Ferry Lane to Pope’s Quay, overlooking the River Lee, where she had parked her metallic-blue Fiesta. The sun was shining, so that the pavements and the road surface were almost blinding. After she had climbed into the driver’s seat she pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the mirror. The weather had been unseasonably cold in the past few weeks and her lips were chapped. She thought she looked tired, and her short copper-coloured hair was a mess. Sometimes she wondered what John had ever seen in her, though he had always told her that she looked as if she were related to the elves, petite and green-eyed and ‘impossibly pretty’. ‘Don’t you mean “pretty impossible”?’ she had always retorted.

  She applied some Lypsyl to her lips and tugged at her hair. She made up her mind not to go to Advantage again to have it cut, although it probably wasn’t her stylist’s fault that she had chopped it about so much. While the poor girl was trying to layer it and trim it straight Katie had been constantly talking on the phone, and when she talked on the phone she always got agitated or angry, and she never sat still.

  No wonder her late mother had always called her ‘Fairy Fidget’.

  Three

  Her phone rang now, playing the chorus of ‘The Wild Rover’ by The Dubliners. And it’s no, nay, never – no, nay never no more—

  She lifted it out of her jacket pocket and said, ‘Yes, Liam? What’s the story? Did you get to talk to Gerrety?’

  It was Inspector Liam Fennessy. He was supposed to have been meeting Michael Gerrety and his lawyer this morning to discuss the thirty-nine charges that were being brought against Gerrety for operating the city’s most profitable online sex service, Cork Fantasy Girls. It was a convoluted case that had been dragging on for months.

  ‘Gerrety didn’t show,’ said Inspector Fennessy. ‘No big surprise, I’d say. His lawyer made some lame excuse about his mother being poorly. But that’s not the reason I’m ringing you. A feller’s been found dead in a flat over a shop in Lower Shandon Street. Horgan’s there already and ó Nuallán’s on her way. Horgan said your man’s been lying there for at least three days, but it could be anything up to a week. Both of his hands have been amputated and it looks like he’s been shot point-blank in the face with a twelve-bore.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said. He was a black feller, apparently. We have a name for him because there was a young girl in there with him, although it’s not a name I’d recognize. The girl claims she was an eye-witness to him being shot but she was too scared to come out of the room. Apparently the perp threatened her that if she did, she would blow her head off, too.’

  ‘Come here to me? ‘Did you say she?’

  ‘That’s right. The girl told the two fellers who found her that it was a woman who did it, for definite.’

  ‘Did she know the woman?’

  ‘They didn’t think so. They weren’t sure.’

  ‘Did she give them any idea what she looked like? Would she recognize her if she saw her again?’

  ‘No. They said she clammed up after telling them that. Didn’t say another word.’

  ‘What number Lower Shandon Street?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll have any trouble in finding it, ma’am. We have three cars and a white van there and more on the way. The technical team should be there, too, at any minute. Horgan says that there’s a fierce crowd already.’

  ‘Okay, Liam. I’ll go there directly. How about you?’

  ‘I still have all of the statements on that Ringaskiddy drugs case to go through. It’s up in court in the morning. Michael Gerrety’s lawyer said that he might be available tomorrow afternoon, but I doubt I’ll be able to meet him then. I’ll have to make it Friday, if I can.’

  ‘In that case, don’t worry. I’ll go. It’s high time I had a less than friendly chat with Mr Gerrety.’

  ‘Cancery bastard. I know exactly why he vexes Dermot so much.’

  ‘Watch your temper, Liam. Just leave the file on my desk, and I’ll have Shelagh fix the appointment for me.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll catch you later so.’

  Katie started up her car, backed out of her parking space in front of the old Cork Button Co., and drove along the quay to Lower Shandon Street. Earlier this morning she had been wishing she had eaten something before she had left home. She usually found that if she missed breakfast she was beginning to flag by eleven o’clock and become irritable, particularly in the week before her period. After what Inspector Fennessy had told her, though, she was relieved that she hadn’t. There were few things she found more unpleasant than lukewarm coffee and half-digested Alpen spurting out of her nose.

  Fennessy had been right – Lower Shandon Street was already crowded with three patrol cars, a yellow ambulance, a white Mercedes Vario van from the Technical Bureau, an outside broadcast van from RTÉ, two Garda motorcycles and at least seventy or eighty bystanders, many of them black and Asian, all standing on the pavement opposite the Hungarian Deli as if they were expecting a minor celebrity to show up.

  A motorcycle garda waved Katie through and pointed to a space where she could park outside O’Donnelly’s Turf Accountancy, with two wheels tilted on to the kerb. Detective Horgan was standing outside the Hungarian Deli, talking to Dan Keane from the Examiner and a woman reporter in a silvery fur-collared anorak whom Katie didn’t recognize. He immediately came up and opened her door for her. Katie saw that he had a blue surgical mask tied around his neck.

  ‘Well, wow, you really hurled it here, ma’am. Didn’t break the speed limit, I hope?’

  Katie ignored that remark. She was used to Detective Horgan’s terrible sense of humour. He
was blue-eyed and fresh-faced, and his high quiff of wiry blond hair made him look like a member of a second-rate boy band. In spite of his puerile quips, though, he was developing into a very acute and persistent young detective, who was almost impossible to fob off with blustering excuses or hastily cobbled alibis.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ asked Katie, as they walked towards the shop.

  Detective Horgan pointed to Ciaran O’Malley and his client, Mr Rooney, who were standing under the awning of the next-door premises looking fed-up and anxious to go. ‘The young feller works for Lisney’s and he was showing the old feller the shop to rent it out as a chipper. The way they tell it, they opened up the front door and the stink almost knocked their socks off.’

  ‘The body’s where?’

  ‘Upstairs, first floor.’ Horgan pointed to the window over the Hungarian Deli sign. When she looked up, Katie could see blue laser lights criss-crossing the ceiling, and then, momentarily, the back of one of the Garda technicians in his white Tyvek suit.

  ‘I’ll tell you for nothing, ma’am, it hums in there like St Mary’s church choir. You’d be advised to put a dab of the old Mentholatum under your nose.’

  ‘Inspector Fennessy mentioned a girl,’ said Katie.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, they found her sitting on the floor next to the body, practically naked. She’s in the back of the ambulance now. I talked to one of the paramedics and she doesn’t appear to be suffering from any injuries, like, but she’s badly undernourished. She’s been living off tap water and Bolands Raspberry Creams for the past three days. They’ll be taking her off to the Wilton Hilton in a minute for a check-up.’

  Katie said, ‘Okay, I’ll see her first. Have you interviewed those two fellers?’

  ‘I have, yeah, both of them. Not that they could tell me much. When they first found the body the girl said a couple of things in some language they didn’t understand. The old fellow said it sounded like African.’