Buried

by Graham Masterton

  Ten

  John was woken up by a man and a woman arguing with each other. Then he heard a dull thump and a complicated clatter, like furniture being knocked over.

  ‘You’re a fecking dirty clart, that’s what you are!’ the man shouted out in a strong Armagh accent. ‘You’re a fecking hoo-ah! I should clean your clock, so I should! I should kick your fecking teeth right down your fecking throat, you hoo-ah!’

  The woman screamed something back at him, although John couldn’t understand what it was. There was another thump and then she started wailing.

  ‘Stop your gurning or I’ll give you something to gurn about!’ the man told her, but she carried on mewling and sobbing.

  John slowly and painfully sat up. He felt bruised all over and his head was throbbing. His left eye was so swollen that he could barely see out of it and his cheekbone ached.

  He looked around the room. It was small and stuffy, with a purple cotton blind pulled down over the window so that he couldn’t see out, although he could hear rain pattering sporadically against the glass. It must have been a child’s room because the walls were papered with space rockets and flying saucers and planets, and there was a white chest of drawers with stickers of smiling cars and aeroplanes on it. The narrow single bed had a pine headboard covered with more stickers and a stained mattress that smelled of dried urine. The purple carpet was spotted and moth-eaten, and one of the door panels was split as if somebody had once tried to kick it open from outside.

  At last the woman stopped crying. John heard the man say something to her which sounded conciliatory, but then she shrilled, ‘Away to feck, you frigger!’

  He could clearly remember leaving his friend Peter Doody’s house in Knocknadeenly, where he had been lodging since he had walked out on Katie before Christmas, and driving down Summerhill into the city. He could remember turning from Western Road into Donovan’s Road on his way to the Hayfield Manor Hotel. A young woman had stepped out into the road in front of him with a baby buggy and when she had tried to jump back out of the way the buggy had tipped over. He had stopped and climbed out of his car to make sure that the child hadn’t been hurt, but after that everything was a blank.

  Very cautiously, he touched the back of his head. His black curly hair was stuck together and he could feel a large lump. He could only assume that he had been hit very hard and knocked unconscious. Not only that, he had a strange, bitter taste in his mouth, as if he been drinking some kind of medicine.

  He tried to stand up. He managed to take two staggering steps forwards and then the floor tilted and he had to sit back down on the bed. His head was banging even harder and he felt as if he could hardly breathe.

  He was about to try again when he heard a key being turned in the lock and the door opened. Two men crowded into the room. One of them had a huge belly that hung over his belt, a piggy-looking face, and his hair shaved up the sides of his head in what the Northern Irish called a scaldy. The other was scrawny, with tufty grey hair and brown crowded teeth and tattoos of a woman’s hands around his neck, as if he were being choked. Both of them were smoking. Behind them, in the next room, John could see the same young woman who had crossed the road in front of him with her baby buggy. She had bleached-blonde hair and enormous breasts that were straining under a tight green T-shirt with a picture of Bono on it, and a dark maroon bruise next to her mouth.

  ‘All right, big lad?’ said the huge-bellied man. ‘How’s it cutting?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ John demanded. ‘What the hell did you do to me? And where am I?’

  ‘Bobby Quilty’s the name, and this is my valet, Chisel. My apologies, like, if you’ve been inconvenienced. But, you know, that’s the price you pay for cosying up to the polls.’

  ‘What? What in the name of Jesus are you talking about?’

  ‘You and that tasty Detective Superintendent Maguire, that’s what I’m talking about.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You and she are a bit of an item, right?’

  ‘What the hell has it got to do with you? Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I told you, big lad. Bobby Quilty. Did your old doll never mention me? Let’s just say that I’m one of Cork’s most successful entre-pren-hoo-hahs.’

  ‘I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Bobby Quilty took a deep drag on his cigarette and then blew a long stream of smoke directly into John’s face, so that he had to close his eyes and his mouth tightly and turn his head away.

  ‘Calm your knickers, big lad, I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. For fecking months now, your Detective Superintendent Maguire has been sticking her neb into my entre-pren-hoo-ring something desperate. In fact, she’s been doing my fecking head in. So in order to persuade her to leave me in peace, I decided to acquire myself something to negotiate with, like a trump card, like – and that trump card is you. The long and the short of it is, she and me have come to an agreement.’

  ‘What kind of agreement?’

  ‘Catch yourself on, will you, what do you think? If she lets me carry on my business undisturbed, you’ll stay sound. But if she keeps on after me, John, and keeps on scooping the people who work for me, well, I can’t guarantee that God will preserve you. Not in one piece, any road.’

  John said, ‘You’re out of your mind. You don’t seriously think that she’s going to leave you alone just because you’re holding me hostage?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind,’ said Bobby Quilty, taking another drag, but this time blowing it out sharply upwards and sideways.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire and me, we’re not even an item any more,’ John told him. ‘We split up just before Christmas.’

  ‘You were going to meet her last night, though?’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘Ach, that’s for me to know and you to find out. But let’s just say there’s nothing that happens in Cork that Bobby Quilty isn’t wise to.’

  ‘So, how long do you intend to keep me here?’ John asked him.

  Bobby Quilty shrugged. ‘I hadn’t really given it a whole lot of consideration, to tell you the truth. But I’d say long enough to make sure that your old doll sticks to what she promised.’

  ‘I think you’re underestimating her badly,’ said John. ‘She’s far more dedicated to the law than she is to me. She broke up with me because I wanted her to leave the Garda. Whatever you do to me, she’ll still come after you. That’s what she’s like.’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’ grinned Bobby Quilty. ‘Well, I’ll be able to see, but if she chooses not to honour our agreement, it’s very possible that you won’t be able to. But don’t worry. I still have my da’s old walking stick and a tin of white Dulux.’

  Chisel grinned, too, exposing his crowd of mahogany-coloured teeth.

  ‘Just settle yourself down, John,’ said Bobby Quilty. ‘Sorcia will fetch you some tea later. You’re okay with a Bigfoot sausage, are you, from the chippie?’

  Eleven

  Kyna Ni Nuallán was waiting for Katie in the small alcove just inside the front door of Henchy’s Bar, up in St Luke’s Cross. She was sitting in the corner with her back to the stained-glass window and even though the alcove was so gloomy she was wearing large black Chanel sunglasses. She had also tied a black silk scarf around her head, pirate-style, and the collar of her black nylon jacket was turned up.

  ‘If I hadn’t known who you were, I wouldn’t have recognized you,’ said Katie, taking off her jacket and sitting down beside her.

  ‘Well, you said to be discreet,’ said Kyna. ‘Do you want a drink of anything?’

  ‘I could murder a double vodka, but a cup of coffee would be grand.’

  Kyna lifted her hand and called out to the bearded young barman, ‘Declan, would you do me a favour there and fetch my friend a cup of coffee?’

  Katie said, ‘You know him? I thought you’d never been in here before.’

  ‘I ha
ven’t. But he was coming on to me as soon as I walked in. He said I was the first beour to set foot in the place since Paddy’s Day.’

  Katie couldn’t help smiling. Kyna was very pretty, in a blonde, elfin way. Even her fellow detectives used to come on to her. What they usually failed to realize was that she had no interest in men whatsoever – not sexually, anyway. Katie couldn’t stay smiling for long, though. She had asked Kyna to meet her here because she needed to ask for her help. She hadn’t been able to think of anybody else who could not only do what she wanted but could be trusted to do it. The trouble was, what she wanted could turn out to be hazardous in the extreme. Kyna had almost sacrificed her life for Katie once already, by stopping the bullet that had been meant for her, and Katie was beginning to wonder if it was too much to ask her to do it again.

  It was because of the dangers involved that Katie had arranged to meet her here, at Henchy’s. It was less than five minutes north of the city centre, up at the top of Summerhill, but it was not a bar frequented by any of Bobby Quilty’s gang, or any other city scobes, or anybody at all who was likely to recognize Katie. Even so, she was wearing a purple beret into which she had tucked most of her dark red hair.

  ‘So what’s this about?’ asked Kyna. ‘I was planning to go back to Dublin tomorrow to see if I can find myself a flat. There’s still nearly six months left on my current lease here, but I met a girl from the university last week and she’s desperate for somewhere to live so I may be able to sublet to her.’

  The barman brought over Katie’s cup of coffee with two ginger biscuits in the saucer, so she waited until he was out of earshot.

  ‘It’s Bobby Quilty,’ she said. ‘He’s kidnapped John and he says he’s going to do him serious harm if I carry on interfering in his tobacco-smuggling business.’

  Kyna looked both shocked and baffled. ‘John? You mean your John? I thought he was totally out of the picture. Didn’t he go back to the States?’

  ‘He might have done. In fact, he probably did. But he’s here in Cork now,’ said Katie. She took the silver Ardagh bracelet out of her pocket and passed it across the table. ‘This was my present to him when he came back last year. Bobby Quilty gave it to me as proof that he really has him.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Kyna. She handed the bracelet back and squeezed Katie’s hand. ‘You must be so worried. Have you told anybody at the station?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘Not yet. They’d want to take immediate action. Or at least, Denis MacCostagáin would. He won’t tolerate anybody trying to intimidate individual guards. But Quilty only has to pick up the slightest sniff that we’re still after him and God alone knows what he might do to John. I’m sure that Quilty killed Gerry Barry, or one of his henchmen did it on his instructions, and that was over what? A few dozen boxes of Russian cigarettes. I don’t think he’d have the slightest compunction about killing John and dumping his body where I’m never going to find him.’

  Kyna stared at Katie for a long time without speaking. Eventually, though, she said, ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘John? Love doesn’t come into it. He’s a human being and Quilty’s threatening to mutilate or murder him.’

  ‘But come on, that happens almost daily, doesn’t it? Abduction, like, do you know what I mean, and blackmail? I’ve never known you to pull the plug on any inquiry, ever, just because somebody was being held hostage. Completely the opposite, in fact. You’ve gone after them tooth and claw.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘But most of the time it’s one scummer kidnapping another scummer because he’s been horning in on whatever racket he’s running. But John isn’t a rival tobacco smuggler, or a drug-pusher, or a pimp who’s been grooming another pimp’s prostitutes. John is totally innocent, Kyna. His only crime was to have a relationship with me.’

  Kyna kept hold of Katie’s hand for a while, but then let it go. ‘You should drink your coffee before it gets cold.’

  Katie said, ‘It’d be different if I had any idea at all where Quilty’s holding him. I could set up a raid, which might be risky but at least we’d have a chance of getting him out of there in one piece.’

  ‘Don’t we know anybody who’s prepared to grass on Quilty?’ asked Kyna. ‘What about that Barty McGee? If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have known half of what Quilty was up to.’

  ‘I don’t think Barty’s going to be talking to us again, Kyna. Quilty gave him the choice of leaving the country and never coming back or eating his own mebs fried in Kerrygold – or that’s what he told Dooley.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had one heaven-sent stroke of luck. Jimmy O’Reilly has decided that after Gerry Barry being killed we should suspend our inquiry into Quilty and instead leave it to Revenue to go after him. He says he doesn’t want the lives of any more officers put in jeopardy for such a low-level crime, but I suspect that he’s run way over budget this year and this is how he’s going to save himself money. Anyway, I said a novena to St Raphael and he must have answered me because at least I didn’t have to stand up in front of half the station and come up with some lame excuse why I thought we should lay off Quilty.’

  ‘St Raphael?’

  ‘The patron saint of lovers.’

  ‘So you do still love him? John, I mean. You do know that St Raphael is also the patron saint of insanity and nightmares? And short-sightedness, too.’

  ‘Mother of God, you must have been paying attention in catechism.’

  Kyna gave her a small, regretful smile. ‘No. But I looked him up not long ago to see if he could help me win my ideal partner.’

  Katie sipped at her coffee and snapped one of her ginger biscuits in half, though she didn’t eat it.

  ‘Officially, you’re still on sick leave,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do what I’m going to ask you, not if you don’t want to. It won’t be insubordination. And I won’t think badly of you, either.’

  ‘I can guess what it is,’ said Kyna.

  ‘I’m sure that you can, but believe me, Kyna, if there was any other way, I wouldn’t ask. It’s no use my pretending that it won’t be fierce dangerous, especially if anybody recks you. But you haven’t been in Cork all that long, and you haven’t been involved in any cases of smuggling or evading tobacco or alcohol duty – nor the Authentic IRA, either.’

  ‘Listen, there’s lots of ways I can disguise myself,’ Kyna told her. ‘I can dye my hair. I’ve had it all kinds of colours over the years – shamrock green, once! But black looks good on me. And I can wear clothes that make me look a whole lot younger. Really skinny jeans, loads of bangles and necklaces, and I have a tattoo on my shoulder already, which I can show off.’

  ‘You have a tattoo? What of?’

  ‘A lyre, as a matter of fact. L-y-r-e, not l-i-a-r, although I like the double meaning, too. Sappho the poet used to play the lyre, that’s why I had it done.’

  ‘All right,’ said Katie. This wasn’t the time to go into the implications of that any further. ‘If you can do this for me, I’ll contact you tomorrow, probably, and tell you where you can find one of Quilty’s dealers. They’re growing more and more brazen about selling their cigarettes out in the open so it shouldn’t be hard to locate one. But, like I say, you don’t have to do it. I don’t want you getting hurt again.’

  ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire, I’m a police officer. I know what the risks are. I’m not one hundred per cent sure that this is the right way to go about rescuing John, but if this is what you want to do, I’ll do it.’

  ‘So how would you handle it? We can’t lift Quilty because we don’t have any evidence to bring charges against him, and even if we brought him in for questioning his lawyers would have him out again in five minutes flat. In the meantime he’d make sure that something horrible happened to John. He threatened to blind him.’

  Kyna took hold of her hand again. ‘I’ve said I’ll do it, Katie, and I’ll do it.’

  Katie reached into her pocket a
gain and took out a pink iPhone in a pink sparkly case. ‘Here, take this. It belonged to one of the girls we picked up when we raided that BTB massage parlour on Princes Street. If Quilty asks to check your phone, this one has the numbers of enough pimps and pushers and generally dubious characters to fill Páirc Uí Chaoimh twice over. I’ve also changed the number marked ‘Ma’ to my own mobile number, so if he asks you to call your mother just to make sure that you are who you’re pretending to be, you’ll be able to do it.’

  ‘And who am I pretending to be?’

  ‘Sheelagh Danehy, of Mount Nebo Avenue in Gurra. Late of the support centre for troubled teenage girls at North Pres Secondary School. You went through the copping on course but didn’t really cop on, and when they gave you art therapy you got yourself thrown out for emptying your paint water over another girl’s head. I’m sure you can improvise the rest.’

  ‘I’ll try my best. I was always a goodie two-shoes at school, and of course I never fancied any of the boys. Whenever I walked down the corridor, some of them used to sing out “Kyna, Kyna, with the Untouched Vagina”.’

  Katie smiled again. ‘I’m sure you can act like a slutbag if you try.’

  She spent another twenty minutes briefing Kyna on how she could inveigle herself into Bobby Quilty’s cigarette-smuggling operation. Soon after she had been appointed a detective garda herself, Katie had been planted undercover into a drug-dealing gang in Togher and she knew how difficult and dangerous it was to repel the sexual advances of some of the men involved.

  Expressionless behind her sunglasses, Kyna said, ‘I have done it with men, you know. Sometimes because I was langered. Usually out of pity.’

  ‘Don’t bother about the cigarette-smuggling itself,’ Katie told her. ‘I’m not interested in that, nor in Quilty’s connections to the A-IRA, or that he was probably responsible for Gerry Barry being killed. Not yet, anyway. All I want to know is where John is.’