The Murk Beneath_A Cork Crime Novel

by L. Danvers

  I was caught off guard. It wasn’t Savage. But I knew the voice. I’d heard it that night in Churchfield. It was Dominic.

  Hognatt nodded. Dominic approached a bit more.

  “Good man,” Dominic said. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “You will in your fuck,” Hognatt said and turned the gun on him.

  Dominic froze. He seemed coiled, ready to run.

  “Down on your fucking knees,” Hognatt shouted. “Now!”

  Dominic didn’t move. Hognatt walked forward slowly. About twenty yards between them. Dominic looked to one side and then the other. The kid had some balls on him – he made a run for a gap in the hedge between him and me.

  At the Bridewell he’d surprised me, taken me from behind. Now I was ready for him. I charged towards him. Dominic tried to climb over the ditch to go through the gap in the hedge, but I grabbed a leg. Then I grabbed the other so that I had a hold of him around his knees. He struggled and I pulled myself along his body until I mounted him.

  “Bosco!” Hognatt said.

  I struggled with Dominic. I took his back, rode him. I wrapped my arms around his right arm and his head. It was like the choke hold O’Keeffe had on Jordan in the cage. I squeezed.

  “Bosco! Let him go. I have him.”

  I squeezed harder. Dominic tried to buck me off. I applied more pressure. He went limp. With Chambers I’d lost control, choked him for too long, denied his brain oxygen to the point of brain damage. But I let go of the rag doll that Dominic had become.

  I got up and looked at a disbelieving Hognatt. “He’s all yours, Matt.”

  Hognatt took a bag from his back pocket, placed it on Dominic’s head. He tightened the drawstring.

  “Jesus, how many of those things do you have?” I said.

  Hognatt shrugged me off. He put plastic ties around Dominic’s ankles and wrists and tightened hard. We carried him to the van and dumped him in. Like a piece of rubbish. Hognatt chained his arms and legs to the wall of the van.

  Where Savage had gone was a mystery. Dominic had some questions to answer when he came to.

  Hognatt spoke. “Mr Jordan’s right. It seems you are easily underestimated.” He searched Dominic’s pockets and threw a set of keys to me. “Follow me in his car. We’ll dump it out of sight.”

  We drove off and I followed Hognatt deeper into Little Island.

  Hognatt drove the van to the end of a road through one of Little Island’s oldest industrial estates. We arrived at what looked like a storage area for tools and machine parts. Several shipping containers, some full-length, others half-length, were stacked at odd angles. Most were open, but some were locked with padlock and chain.

  Hognatt got out of his van and came to my window.

  “You can drive right in there,” he said pointing to one of the half-length twenty-foot containers. “There’s room enough to get out if you park it tight to the left side.”

  I drove Savage’s Mondeo into the container and used the passenger wing mirror as a guide, scraping it on the corrugated interior of the container. I had about a foot and a half on the driver side to open the door and squeeze out, though it was a tight fit with my gut.

  Hognatt came over to the container doors.

  “I assume you’d like a chat with our friend in the back of the van. Do you know him?”

  “His name’s Dominic. I don’t know his second name. Savage has been showing him the ropes. I wasn’t sure if he was dirty or not, but I guess he answered that question himself.”

  Hognatt nodded. “That was some stroke he pulled, trying to escape. That move you put on him … where did you learn that?”

  I didn’t want to get into the story about the display in the cage, so I blew him off.

  “I just hugged him and squeezed the bejaysus out of him. I’m not sure how much I had left in my arms when he passed out.”

  “Well, he woke up a couple of minutes ago. He’s just lying there, not a word out of him.”

  “You going to lock the doors?”

  Hognatt nodded. He went to the back door of the van, opened it and took out a chain and a padlock. He came back to the container and closed the doors. He locked the handles in place and wrapped the chain around the steel poles attached to both doors. As he applied the padlock I thought I heard something – an echoey metallic sound.

  “Did you hear that,” I said.

  “Hear what?”

  I held up a hand to get Hognatt to stay still. “Listen.”

  A few seconds passed. Traffic from the N25 Cork-Waterford road could be heard in the background, some heavy machinery operating nearby also. But then the noise again.

  “It’s inside the container.”

  Hognatt nodded in agreement. He removed the chain, unlocked the handles and pulled back the doors.

  “It must be the car,” he said. “Did you switch it off properly?”

  The noise again, only louder. Then a muffled voice.

  “Eh ee ow!”

  We looked at each other in bewilderment. Hognatt took a pistol from a holster on the back of his pants.

  “Eh ee ow!”

  “It’s from the fucking boot,” I said. “It’s let me out, let me out.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hognatt said. He raised his gun, pointed it at the boot. “Open it.”

  I released the catch on the boot and it sprung up. It was quite dark in the container, but the shape of a man could be seen.

  “Ah Jesus! Help me! Get me out!”

  It was Savage. What was he doing in the boot of Dominic’s car?

  “Get me the fuck out!”

  “Get out yourself,” Hognatt said. He gestured upwards with his pistol.

  “Ah God! Ah Jesus!” Savage grabbed onto the lip of the boot, raised his head up like a demented jack-in-the-box. He looked dazed.

  I put a hand under his armpit and lifted him up. I pulled him and tossed him head first onto the floor of the container. Savage whelped.

  “Get up,” Hognatt said and stuck a Doc Martin into his side. “Get up.”

  Savage struggled to his feet. He was in full Garda uniform, dusty and dishevelled. A couple of shirt buttons were missing. He’d pissed himself.

  Hognatt waved the gun towards the container door. “Get out.”

  Savage walked wearily. Hognatt pushed his back to hurry him up. “Get a move on.”

  “Where is he?” Savage said. There was terror in his voice. Then it became anger. “Where is the cunt? That fucking runt. I’ll kill him!”

  “Hold on, Dave,” I said. “Slow down. What happened?”

  He looked at me, his eyes wide like he was on the very drugs O’Brien was trying to sell.

  “Dominic. The lousy bastard. He tried to kill me.” He was pointing to his neck. “Tried to fucking throttle me. I thought I was done for.”

  “He tried to strangle you?” I said. I looked at his neck. Bruising could be seen.

  Savage nodded briskly, then winced and put a hand to his neck. “Ah fuck! The pain!” He looked around manically. “Where is he? You have him, don’t you? Let me at the bastard.”

  He ran to the van, slid the door back. Dominic was still lying there, the bag over his head. Savage leaped into the van and began to kick Dominic in the ribs.

  “You lousy bastard. You lousy bastard.”

  Hognatt ran after Savage, wrapped his arms around him, dragged him from the van and onto the ground. He took a plastic tie from his pocket and secured Savage’s wrists.

  “Make a move like that again,” Hognatt said, “and I’ll put a bullet in you. Understood?”

  Savage sat on the ground, his back to the rear tyre of the van. He was out of breath and sobbing. He nodded.

  “Good. Now my friend here, Mr Bosco, would like a word and I expect your full co-operation.”

  Hognatt closed the van door. I got onto my haunches next to Savage. His head was bowed, tears dripping from his chin.

  “I know you’re dirty, Dave. I heard you myself in O’Brien’s
. What I want to know is why. Why did you fit me up?”

  Savage coughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bosco. You’re fucking delusional. Who the fuck is O’Brien?”

  I nodded to Hognatt. He gave Savage a kick to his right kidney.

  “Again,” I said. “Why did you try to fit me up?”

  “You’ve finally lost it, Bosco. You’re a fucking joke!”

  I nodded again and this time Hognatt put the gun to Savage’s head.

  “Ah fuck. I swear to you, Bosco, I wasn’t trying to fit you up. I was just helping O’Brien with security. But then he suspected Fitzmaurice of snitching on him.”

  “And was he?”

  “I don’t know. But O’Brien wanted it taken care of. I told Dom to go and rough him up, beat a confession out of him. When I heard he was killed, I thought maybe things had gotten out of hand and Dom had defended himself.”

  “But then Brick.”

  “Brick wasn’t even on my radar. That was all Dom. I think he got a taste for it after Fitzmaurice.”

  “For what? Strangling people?”

  Savage nodded.

  “Jesus Christ. And he picked Brick from one of my old arrest reports?”

  Savage shrugged his shoulders. “Makes sense. Brick had nothing to do with O’Brien, so I didn’t put two and two together and connect Dom to it.”

  “And Doolin?”

  “I was interviewing O’Keeffe about the Fitzmaurice murder when –”

  “You were trying to put O’Keeffe in the frame for Moolah.”

  He nodded. “Then Dom came rushing in, said he’d seen you leaving. I lost it. I couldn’t believe you were in the Bridewell behind my back.”

  “Dominic tore my hair. You punched my face, drew blood.”

  “And Dom must have strangled Doolin and planted the evidence.”

  I sighed. “How did Dominic find out about Doolin?”

  “I met with Jimmy Dorgan around the corner from the Steamship the day before the poker game. I asked if he’d any new information to justify his retainer. He boasted about you being in the game. He said you were like Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, for fuck sake! I used to love Bruce Lee movies.”

  “Dom was in the car with you?”

  Savage nodded.

  I supposed that it wasn’t such a leap from there to Dominic nabbing Doolin, choking him, dumping his body and planting my DNA. He was probably watching Doolin’s car that night, saw the kidnapping, happened across him when he followed after us.

  “So what did you do to piss off Dominic?”

  Savage shook his head. “I don’t know why he turned on me like he did. I had a slight suspicion after Doolin, but I said nothing. Maybe he sensed my suspicion. I turned my back on him for a second and the next thing I remember is waking up in that boot.”

  I had my own suspicions about why Dominic decided to strangle Savage and keep him in the boot.

  “He was with you when Jimmy called about the assault rifle?”

  He nodded.

  I looked at Hognatt. “Get Dominic out here.”

  He opened the van and got in the back. He unchained Dominic from the van wall. He dragged him by the ankles and sent him flying to the ground, landing on his back. He loosened the hood and pulled it off.

  “What was the plan, Dominic?” I said.

  Dominic gave me a cold stare. There wasn’t a flicker of emotion. He said nothing. I looked in his eyes. It was like looking into Chambers’s eyes.

  “You enjoyed it, didn’t you? Was Moolah your first?”

  Nothing from Dominic but that icy stare. I decided to change tack.

  “It was an amateur job. I’d know. I’m the Bruce Lee of Cork. I’m a legend – did you know that?”

  I thought I might have detected a flinch in his eyes.

  “What I did to Chambers … that was something special. I mean, a child killer. For fuck sake, boy, I choked a child rapist, a paedophile. And what did you go after? Twopenny corner boys. Not worth the time of day. It’s all so … forgettable. That’s the word – forgettable.”

  “Stop,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “I said stop.” Genuine anger.

  “And then I got to strangle you. I thought Chambers was a special feeling, but then I got my arms around your neck. It was like … it was like making love. Do you know what I mean? Isn’t that how you felt?”

  “I said stop!” I’d rarely seen such rage. Dominic thrashed, kicked his legs and flailed his arms. Blood was streaming from where his wrists were tied. He stopped and looked in my eyes – his were wide open, maniacal. “You’re the one going to prison, Mickey. I set it up good and tight. There’s a fucking new Bruce Lee now, man. You’re going down.” He started laughing.

  “You had a great plan. Jesus, I mean, setting me up as a cop killer? I’d never have seen the light of day again.”

  Dominic kept laughing. “You don’t know the half of it. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to kill me? Dave too? It’s your word against a Guard.”

  Savage spoke. “No, it’s your word against mine, Dom.”

  Dominic stopped laughing suddenly. He looked at Savage and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t have an answer.

  “You’re done,” Savage said. “I’m done. The game’s up.”

  “W-wait, Dave. We can work our way through this if we just –”

  “Save it, Dom. I’ve had enough. You’re one sick freak. You need to be cleaned off the streets before you murder some other poor fucker.”

  “But they’re scum, Dave. They’re all scum. How many have walked free from court? How many get out of prison early because they can’t fund enough prison spaces? I thought you’d be impressed.”

  “Enough, Dom.”

  Dominic looked up at me. “You understand, don’t you?”

  In a way I did. But I hadn’t calculated Chambers’s end – I had become lost in the frenzy much like Chambers had with Robbie O’Meara. Dominic, on the other hand, had planned his killings meticulously. I knew there would never be an end to his killing spree until he was locked up for life.

  I looked at Savage. “You’ll testify against him?”

  Savage nodded.

  “And you’ll confess your own deeds?”

  Savage paused, but then nodded.

  I believed him. I saw it in his eyes. And I’m good with eyes, me.

  I looked at Savage. “My friend here is a demon with a machete. You should see him bone a chicken. Don’t even try and double-cross us.”

  I turned to Hognatt. “Change of plan. After the next op I’m going to take these guys in. I’ve got to clear my name.”

  He nodded. “We can tie them up in the container, padlock it closed, return later.”

  I helped Savage to his feet. Hognatt took him into the container and secured him. He returned to help me with Dominic. He put the hood back on Dominic’s head and we dragged him into the container.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let’s give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  I opened the boot of the car. Dominic kicked and screamed, but Hognatt was a beast and slung him into the boot head first, slamming the boot door down on top of him. Hognatt closed the container doors and chained them.

  We decided to change location, just in case. We got into the van and headed towards the Jack Lynch Tunnel.

  We took the exit to Mahon and drove up past Mahon Point shopping centre, then turned right and continued on until we reached Loughmahon. Hognatt parked between two groups of houses in a cul de sac.

  We had about an hour to kill. Hognatt turned on the radio, hit a preset for 4FM Classic Hits.

  “This must be just another day at the office for you,” I said.

  Hognatt responded with a grunt. “Every op is different.”

  “Business must be booming,” I said. “There’s always some little war going on somewhere that needs hired guns.”

  Hognatt curled his lips. “As long as there’s oil, there’ll be no shortage
of work. But it’s good to be home for a bit.”

  “Have you considered another line of work? One that takes you out of harm’s way?”

  Hognatt shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll always be a soldier. I don’t know any different.”

  I understood him completely.

  Something had been rattling around in my brain. I was wondering how he had grabbed me.

  “How did you know I was going to be in Aghada?”

  “We have a code word. If you’re under duress on the phone, you use the word sharp. Crowley said five o’clock sharp.”

  I nodded. “A bit like a safe word during kinky sex. You know … when the dominatrix has your balls in a vice.”

  Hognatt laughed.

  To pass the time, we listened to a number of songs that included Eddy Grant’s ‘I don’t wanna dance’, Abba’s ‘The winner takes it all’ and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast car’.

  At seven we left to pick up Crowley. When we pulled up outside the apartment in Blackrock Avenue, Crowley came out immediately. He opened the passenger door with a look of shock on his face.

  “It’s all good,” Hognatt said. “Get in the back.”

  “You can’t be serious, he’s –”

  “In the back, Crowley.”

  Crowley relented. He gave me one final look of disdain and got in the back via the side door. He sat glumly on the floor.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Hognatt said to me quietly. “He’s motivated by money. He won’t do anything stupid to jeopardize it.”

  I nodded.

  We drove off and picked up two more men, one in Douglas, the other in Rochestown. We took the N27 back to the city centre and then the N20 Blackpool bypass to get onto the Limerick road.

  I got glimpses of Blackpool village from the bypass. People smoking outside pubs. Cars filling up at O’Callaghan’s garage. Then the shopping centre where people were emptying bags from trolleys into the boots of their cars. Good people, I thought. Good people.

  The three in the back said little as we drove. I supposed I’d seen their quiet nervousness only in war movies. Like paratroopers waiting for the call over Normandy. They were probably mentally rehearsing their planned actions, much like a professional slalom skier would sway his hips while queueing before the start gate.