‘Right, let’s get there now,’ said Katie. She crossed her office and took down her pale green linen jacket. ‘What about Aislin? Was she hurt at all?’
‘She wasn’t with him, so far as I know. It seems like Denny Quinn was making a run for it and Gerry was in pursuit of him on foot.’
‘Why was he chasing him on foot? We had a car there, backing him up, didn’t we?’
‘I’m not sure exactly why, like. Brophy said something about them being boxed in, but I don’t know the details.’
‘What about the vehicle that hit him?’
‘A Land Rover. He has a description, although nobody got its number.’
Katie walked briskly along the corridor just as Chief Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin was coming out of his office in his shirtsleeves and braces, looking, as usual, like somebody’s miserable uncle.
‘Ah, Kathleen, you’re on the way to Merchants Quay, then. Michael Pearse has sent out backup already and called Bill Phinner for a technical team. Terrible thing to happen. Terrible. Let’s pray to God that young Barry survives.’
‘I’ll keep you in touch,’ said Katie.
Detective O’Donovan had already pressed the button for the lift and was holding the door open. They went down to the ground floor in silence and out to the car park. The morning’s heavy showers had passed over and although the streets were still shiny and wet the afternoon was cloudless, with a warm breeze blowing from the south-west. Katie could hear two small children laughing as they ran down the street.
As they sped up Eglinton Street, Katie said, ‘A hundred to one it was one of Quilty’s thugs. If not Quilty himself. I’ve said right from the beginning that the only way we’re ever going to stop him is if we nail him in person.’
‘Sure, I agree with you totally,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘The only trouble with that, like, is getting a conviction. None of his dealers is going to give evidence against him, are they? It’s a choice between getting your kneecaps shot off and making six hundred yoyos a week, and I know which of those I’d be going for.’
Clontarf Street, which led to the Brian Boru Bridge, was one-way in the opposite direction, but it had been closed to traffic and Katie and Detective O’Donovan reached Merchants Quay in just three minutes. Five Garda patrol cars were parked at different angles, as well as an ambulance and a Ford Ranger rapid response vehicle from the fire brigade. The pavements were crowded with onlookers and further along the quay, by the bus station, Katie could see an RTÉ television van arriving.
She crossed the road. Detective Barry was lying on a stretcher, with two paramedics kneeling beside him. His face was covered by an oxygen mask and one of the paramedics was holding up an IV drip. Three gardaí and a fire officer were gripping a blue plastic screen between them to shield him from the wind and from public view. The screen made a monotonous flapping sound, but apart from that there was almost complete silence.
‘Detective Superintendent Maguire,’ said Katie, as one of the paramedics stood up. He was a middle-aged man with flat triangular bags under his eyes, as if his skin were tissue paper, and very pale green irises. ‘What are his chances?’
‘Somewhere between zero and nil, I’d say,’ said the paramedic. ‘He’s suffered massive crushing injuries to both his legs and pelvis, and his abdomen was split open by the impact. We’ve done everything we can to replace his intestines and hold him together, but I can’t see him surviving this. I’m amazed he’s still with us, to be honest with you. The father over there gave him the last rites, so that side of it’s been taken care of.’
‘He’s not conscious at all? If I speak to him, will he hear me?’
The paramedic shook his head. ‘We gave him fifteen milligrams of morphine while the firemen were cutting him free from the railings. It’ll wear off, of course, and he’ll be able to speak to you when it does, but he’ll most likely be dead by then.’
Katie looked over towards the blue-and-white balustrade. Three of the uprights had been cut through at stomach height and there was rusty-coloured blood on the surrounding bars. Two firemen were packing away the Holmatro hydraulic cutters which they usually used for extricating dead and injured victims from car crashes.
‘We’ll be taking him to CUH now,’ said the paramedic. ‘We’ve already alerted them that we’re bringing him in, and what kind of state he’s in, so there’ll be surgeons there waiting for him. You never know. We’ve taken people in before who were knocking on heaven’s door and they’ve come out a couple of weeks later as fit as a butcher’s dog.’
Katie bent over Detective Barry. His blonde hair was sticky with blood, but even under the oxygen mask he looked as if he had a smile on his face. She knew that a strong dose of morphine often gives people pleasant dreams, even when they’re dying.
‘God bless you, Gerry,’ she said quietly, and crossed herself.
The paramedics lifted up the stretcher and carried Detective Barry to the ambulance. As they did so, Garda Brophy came over to Katie. He was broad-shouldered and bulky in his yellow hi-viz jacket, with a Neanderthal forehead and an S-shaped nose like a boxer. All the same, he looked grey and strained, and Katie thought he could be very close to tears.
‘Quilty’s wide to what we’re doing, ma’am, no doubt about it,’ he told her. ‘He definitely has his people hovering around to keep an eye on his dealers. Denny Quinn made a run for it, but as soon as me and Mulliken went after him a car turned into the bottom of York Street and boxed us in.’
‘How did Quinn get away? Was somebody keeping sketch for him?’
‘It’s possible, of course, but Detective O’Connell said that one of the customers in the Flea Market recognized Detective Barry just as they were about to put the cuffs on Quinn and blew the whole thing. She tried to stop Quinn but he slashed her face with a blade of some kind and took flight. That’s about all she could manage to tell us. Mulliken’s taken her to the Mercy.’
‘What about the car that boxed you in?’
‘It was a Volvo. We have all its details and Mulliken took the driver’s name and address. He may have been working for Quilty or maybe he was just being bold.’
‘All right, Brophy, thanks,’ said Katie. A white Technical Bureau van was approaching over the bridge, followed by an unmarked green Toyota. Bill Phinner, the chief technical officer, climbed out of the Toyota and came across to join them. He was thin and hollow-cheeked and sharp-nosed, and he always reminded Katie of Dr Van Helsing in Dracula, as if he knew all of the science necessary to catch vampires but found it a constant irritation.
‘How’s Detective Barry?’ he asked, his attention fixed on the gap the firemen had cut in the railings.
‘Bad,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t think he’s going to live.’
Bill Phinner looked down. The Land Rover’s black tyre tracks were clearly visible where it had swerved off the road and mounted the kerb.
‘How old is he?’
‘Just had his twenty-fifth birthday. One of my brightest.’
‘It’s always the brightest, isn’t it?’
Three technicians in white Tyvek suits were waddling across the road now, carrying cameras and metal cases of sampling equipment.
Katie said, ‘There’s some bits of orange plastic over there. They may have come from the vehicle that hit him.’
‘Well, we’ll collect them anyway. If it actually hit the railings, it could well have left some paint on them, too. What type of vehicle was it? Do you know?’
‘A Land Rover. Garda Brophy has a full eyewitness description. They didn’t get its number, though.’
‘Pity. Do you know how many Land Rovers are registered in Ireland? Six thousand three hundred and ninety. And that’s if they haven’t sold any more since April.’
Detective O’Donovan came over to join them. He had been interviewing eyewitnesses and talking to the firefighter who had been in charge of cutting Detective Barry free.
‘No question that it was deliberate, like, do you know what I
mean? Five different witnesses say that the Land Rover was driving dead slow across the bridge like it was following him. Then it sped up and went straight for him. The firefighters reckon there was no attempt to brake. Three witnesses said the Land Rover was a silver-grey colour, two said it was goldy. One said there was only two fellers in it, the others were sure there was a third feller sitting in the back.’
‘Well, that’s a remarkable consensus of opinion, considering,’ said Bill Phinner. ‘Usually they swear it was a red, green, blue and white Nissan Ford Opel saloon estate car driven by three black Chinese fellers with freckles and red brown hair.’
‘They meant to kill him, though,’ said Katie. ‘That’s what worries me. It’s only cigarette smuggling, but this takes it to a totally different level altogether.’
Four
Detective Barry had already been taken into the operating theatre when Katie arrived at Cork University Hospital. She had sent Detective Pádraigin Scanlan to the Mercy to talk to Detective O’Connell about exactly what had happened, in case she had noticed some critical details but had forgotten them in her shock at having her face slashed. At the same time, she had sent Detective Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley to Mother Jones Flea Market to interview any witnesses they could find there, and to confiscate whatever remained of Denny Quinn’s bags of contraband cigarettes.
Detective O’Donovan had returned to Anglesea Street to see if the hit-and-run had been caught on CCTV and to help in organizing the search for the Land Rover and for Denny Quinn. Katie had also told him to check on Bobby Quilty’s whereabouts at the time, but to be careful not to alert him that he might be under suspicion. Although Detective Barry had been deliberately knocked down while pursuing one of Quilty’s dealers, she had no evidence yet that Quilty was responsible, either directly or indirectly, and she didn’t want to make him any more wary than he already was.
Katie was prepared to wait at the hospital for as long as it took the surgeons to save Detective Barry’s life. He was special to her – one of a crop of five young detectives that she had been working hard to recruit. Some of the older officers called them ‘Katie’s Kids’ and mocked them for their lack of street experience. But they were not only energetic and open-minded, they were highly computer-literate and they had already solved several serious cases of hacking and online fraud, including a complex attempt to divert over two million euros from Permanent TSB.
Katie sat down on a beige-coloured couch in the waiting room, opposite a woman with dyed gingery hair who was continually letting out mewling noises like a cat that wanted to be let in from the garden, and blowing her nose on an increasingly diminishing ball of tissue.
‘How are you doing?’ Katie asked her. ‘Here, look, I have some fresh Kleenex.’
The woman gratefully took the small packet of tissues that Katie offered her. ‘It’s my daughter, Sháuna,’ she said with a sniff. ‘She took an overdose this morning and they’re doing everything they can to save her. I’m just waiting on news.’
‘That’s tragic,’ said Katie. ‘Was she very depressed?’
‘She was bullied, that’s what it was, and I never even knew the half of it. She was being bullied at school because she’s taller than all the rest of the girls, and she was being trollied on the interweb, too, or whatever you call it. She’d been cutting herself and everything, like, and how she managed to hide it from me I just don’t understand. I mean, what kind of a mother doesn’t know when her own daughter’s cutting her arms and thinking of killing herself?’
‘Come on, it wasn’t your fault,’ Katie told her. ‘I’m a Garda officer and I’ve seen this happen again and again. Girls of that age often feel they’re worthless and ugly, especially when their so-called friends start to pick on them.’
The woman shook her head and said, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, if she dies, what will I do then? Her father passed on only two years ago and Sháuna was his bar-of-gold. If she arrives in heaven and she’s only fifteen, what’s he going to think of me?’
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ Katie asked her.
‘Brenda. Brenda Molony.’
‘Well, give me your address, Brenda, and when Sháuna’s recovered I’ll send a detective around to call on you and check her computer. We’ll be able to identify those bullies and stop them.’
‘That’s if Sháuna recovers. They said she swallowed a whole bottle of the paracetamol.’
Katie said, ‘She’ll recover, Brenda. I’ll say a prayer to St Benedict for her.’
Brenda’s eyes overflowed with tears. ‘Ah, you’re a good woman, thank you. Here – take your tissues back.’
Katie smiled and shook her head. ‘Keep them. I think you need them more than I do.’
Just then, a nurse came into the waiting room and said, softly, ‘Mrs Molony? Your daughter’s conscious now. Would you like to come up and see her?’
‘Good luck,’ said Katie, as Brenda followed the nurse out of the room. She couldn’t speak, but gave her a complicated wave which expressed her thanks and her despair and her trepidation more than any words could have done. Katie knew exactly how she felt.
She opened her laptop and started to go through the figures she had been intending to present to the County Council Policing Committee. She was concentrating so intently that she didn’t notice the young woman with cropped blonde hair who came into the waiting room and sat down very close to her. It was only when she smelled her perfume that she looked up from her computer screen. There was only one person she knew who wore Miracle by Lancôme.
‘Kyna.’ She smiled and put aside her laptop. ‘What are you doing here?’
Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán had lost nearly twelve kilos after she had been shot five months ago, and her face was still gaunt. She had sooty smudges under her eyes and her cheekbones were sharper, but that made her look even more elfin than before. Katie thought she could have been one of the Aes Sidhe, the Fairy Folk.
‘I’ve just been for a scan and a check-up with Doctor Kashani,’ she said. ‘The nurse told me you were here. She said that a detective was seriously hurt, but she didn’t know who.’
‘Gerry Barry. He was hit by a Land Rover on the Brian Boru Bridge. Crushed against the railings.’
‘Mother of God. Was it deliberate?’
‘We’re almost sure of it. I’m praying that he’s going to make it, but the doctors are not holding out a lot of hope. His family’s on their way here from Tip.’
‘Any notion who did it?’
‘I can’t say for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Bobby Quilty had something to do with it.’
‘Quilty. That scummer. He’d run over his own mother if he thought she had a couple of euros in her purse.’
Katie took hold of Kyna’s hands. Her wrists were as thin as kindling sticks, so that her large watch and her hospital identity tag were hanging loose. ‘So are you okay?’ Katie asked her. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet you last week. I was up the walls with all those Irish Water lorries getting burned and that Cronin case. It seemed like everybody was setting fire to anything that annoyed them.’
‘Oh, I’m grand altogether. Doctor Kashani was worried because my blood sugar was low and I was having difficulty breathing, but he says my stomach’s almost completely healed up now and I don’t have to worry.’
‘You haven’t changed your mind, though?’ Katie asked her.
‘About coming back? No. I’ve thought about it, like you asked me to, but it wasn’t just my body that got shot, Katie.’ She tapped her forehead and said, ‘It’s gone. All my confidence. I’m even scared when I go out for the messages. I was waiting at the checkout in Dunne’s the other day and I saw this feen staring at me real narrow-eyed, do you know what I mean, like? I couldn’t help thinking, oh Jesus, what if he’s a member of a crime gang and recognizes me and shoots me?’
‘I could arrange for counselling for you, Kyna. I’m sure you can get over it, in time.’
Kyna shrugged and smiled
. ‘There’s too many other complications, Katie. Losing my confidence is only part of it. There’s my feelings for you, too. I’m better off looking for something else to do with my life. I can sing, too, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t. Serious?’
‘Oh, yes. I used to sing at The Foggy Dew in Temple Bar. They were always telling me I ought to go professional. I’ll sing for you one day. “One Morning in Autumn”, just for you.’
‘I think you know how much I’ll miss you if you do decide to quit for good,’ said Katie. ‘Apart from anything else, I’ve never known anybody get confessions out of offenders the way you do. They’re always so busy fancying you that they’ll tell you they robbed a bank just to impress you, even if they didn’t.’
She paused, and then she said, ‘Will you go back to Dublin?’
Kyna nodded. Katie could understand how she was feeling. She looked haunted. If she was ever going to recover fully, both physically and psychologically, she needed the comfort of her family around her and to forget the grey pavements of Cork City for a while, and the grey waters of the River Lee, and guns, and men who were only too ready to use them.
Kyna lowered her head. Katie, still holding her hands, leaned forward and kissed her parting.
It was then that a surgeon came into the waiting room, still wearing his theatre cap and gown and surgical clogs. He pulled off his cap and approached them with a grave look on his face. His eyes were bulging and sad, like a Boston terrier, and Katie wondered if he had been born with eyes like that or if they had become like that because of all the tragedy he had witnessed. He was dark-skinned and unshaven.
‘Detective Superintendent Maguire?’ he said, and then he had to stop to clear his throat. Katie started to stand up, but then sat down again. She knew it was bad news and she hadn’t eaten all day and didn’t want to feel faint.
The surgeon sat down next to her. ‘I am Dr Walid. My team and I did everything we possibly could to try and save the life of Detective Barry. Regrettably he died five minutes ago. The trauma he had suffered was too great for him to survive.’
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