Buried

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I’ll go and see Denis MacCostagáin now,’ she said. ‘I’ll meet with you after so that we can discuss exactly how we’re going to set up this operation.’

  ‘We’ll be calling in some armed backup, I imagine?’ said Detective Sergeant Begley.

  ‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘At least three of Quilty’s scummers have served time in the past for carrying guns and I don’t have any reason to think they’re not still doing it today. We’re going to need three Regional Support Units minimum – one at least at each location. Sean – if Padragain brings up the relevant maps and satellite images, can you give me an estimate of how many personnel we’re likely to need? We don’t want any of Quilty’s people sneaking out the back door simply because we didn’t deploy enough officers to surround the entire premises.’

  Inspector O’Rourke looked at Katie very acutely and said, ‘DS Maguire, I pray this all turns out well for you so.’

  Katie touched his arm and mouthed, thank you. Then she picked up her laptop and left her office to go and talk to Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin and Superintendent Pearse.

  She took several deep breaths to steady herself as she walked along the corridor. This wasn’t going to be easy. Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had been planning on taking three days off, starting tomorrow, to play golf at Fota, while Superintendent Pearse had been invited to speak at a Freemasons’ dinner that evening at the Masonic Lodge on Tuckey Street and had been rehearsing his speech for weeks.

  Only God knew how they were going to react when Katie told them that she was proposing to launch a major operation not only to rescue John but to arrest Bobby Quilty and Darragh Murphy at the same time. What was more, she was proposing to do it in the early hours of tomorrow morning, before dawn. The sun would come up at 5.27 a.m., which meant they would have to spend the whole night spent in frenzied preparation.

  She desperately wished that she could contact Kyna. She knew where ‘Sheelagh Danehy’s’ mobile phone was because she had assigned one of the technicians in communications to track it for her, although she hadn’t said whose phone it really was. In spite of that, she had no way of knowing for certain if Kyna still had the phone in her possession, or even if she did, what kind of a situation she might be in. Even sending her a coded message might put her in jeopardy. Bobby Quilty had kept himself out of prison for thirty years by his paranoid mistrust of anybody who came near him, and by quickly and ruthlessly dealing with anybody he suspected of betraying him.

  If Kyna was still with Bobby Quilty when they arrested him, they would have to arrest her, too, just for her own safety, and in any case she would never be able to serve in Cork again. At least that would solve her emotional problems, Katie thought, sadly.

  *

  ‘You’re codding me,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Please tell me you’re codding me.’

  He had already been snapping shut the buckles of his briefcase when Katie knocked at the door of his office and came in to tell him about her plan for Operation Trident, as she had decided to call it on her way along the corridor.

  ‘I only wish I was,’ said Katie. ‘But I hope you can understand why I didn’t tell you that John had been abducted. You would have felt obliged to set up a search for him, especially after that O’Brien business, but in my opinion that would have been far too risky.’

  That ‘O’Brien business’ was a kidnap case three years before, when Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had agreed to the kidnapper’s demands not to try and find out where he was holding his victim, the wife of a prosperous Cork property developer. The ransom had been paid, but the woman had never been returned and her body had never been found. Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin had been severely reprimanded and nearly lost his job.

  ‘I might have set up a search or I might not,’ he said. ‘I do trust your instincts, Katie, you know that. But you still should have reported it to me as soon as it happened. What you did, keeping it all to yourself like that, and using Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán to find him, that was all highly irregular. And if this all goes pear-shaped, it’ll be me carrying the can again.’

  ‘I know that right enough, sir. But my primary concern was rescuing John alive and unharmed, and still is. And there’s not only that – if I can rescue John, Bobby Quilty won’t have any leverage against me any longer. But it’s essential that we bring Quilty in before he can get a message to whoever is actually keeping John locked up. And we need to bring in Darragh Murphy, too, for his own protection as much as anything else.’

  She didn’t add that she wasn’t at all confident about the security at Anglesea Street and that she still suspected that a very small minority of officers were taking payment from criminals in exchange for useful tip-offs. Even if they could put Operation Trident into action within the next few hours, she was worried that Quilty would get to hear that she had sufficient evidence to arrest him and that she had discovered where John was being held.

  ‘I’m prepared to stand by my decision, sir, one hundred per cent,’ she told Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘Under the circumstances I think it was totally the right call to make. Think on it. If tonight’s operations go off as planned, we’ll have killed three birds with one stone. We’ll have saved John, arrested Bobby Quilty and Darragh Murphy for murder, and put a stop to Quilty’s tobacco-smuggling.’

  Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin sat down at his desk. ‘Very well,’ he said, in a tone of voice that meant ‘there goes my golfing weekend’. ‘Show me the pictures. We’d best call Michael in to look at them, too. He’s going to throw a sevener, I can assure you of that.’

  *

  As it turned out, Superintendent Pearse wasn’t at all upset that he would have to cancel his speech to the Freemasons. He could have delegated Operation Trident to Inspector O’Halloran, especially since Inspector O’Halloran had more than eight years of experience in mounting simultaneous raids on drug-dealing gangs and cross-border car thieves, but he insisted on heading up the arrest of Bobby Quilty himself.

  ‘I won’t make any secret of it, Katie,’ he told her. ‘It’s personal. The last time I lifted Bobby Quilty – well, you remember. He walked out of that courthouse sticking two fingers up at me because I couldn’t prove a thing. My chief witness against him was found floating in Tivoli Docks with no way of proving that it wasn’t suicide and the other two witnesses had vanished off the face of the Earth altogether. That was five years ago and I still don’t know what happened to them to this day.’

  ‘Pity to miss your speech, though, Michael,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin dryly.

  ‘Well, that’s another reason why I’d like to take over this operation myself. I was dreading it, to be honest with you. It was bad enough when I had to stand up and give a speech at my daughter’s wedding. But this was The Future of Law Enforcement in Cork City and Environs with Special Regard to Immigration and Community Relations.’

  ‘I’m sure the lodge members will be devastated,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘But you know, Michael, a speech like that doesn’t have to go to waste. Next time I can’t sleep I’ll ring you up and you can read it to me over the phone.’

  After that, though, there was no more banter. In spite of their disapproval of the way in which Katie had tracked down John, Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin and Superintendent Pearse both had to acknowledge that this was going to be a rare opportunity to put Bobby Quilty behind bars.

  Katie and Superintendent Pearse sat and waited patiently while Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin put in a long phone call to Assistant Commissioner Jimmy O’Reilly, who was in Dublin that day. He explained at length what had happened and what they intended to do, and what the probable costs would be when balanced against the outcome.

  Eventually he put down the phone and said, ‘We have the go-ahead. He agrees that if we can convict Bobby Quilty for Detective Barry’s murder and put a stop to his cigarette-smuggling, too, that will really be a feather in our cap
– not just with Phoenix Park but with the government, too. After all, it’s no good them putting up the price of fags if it can’t be enforced.’

  Now they had approval from Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly they had to act quickly. Superintendent Pearse called in the five senior uniformed officers who would be involved in Operation Trident. In less than twenty minutes they had all arrived for a general strategy meeting around the conference table, with Katie chairing it. This was followed by a full briefing of the sixty-three gardaí who would be needed to surround all three target premises – Orange Team, Green Team and White Team. These included eight of Katie’s detectives and five armed Regional Support Units, two of which had driven down to give their support from Henry Street Garda station in Limerick. An ambulance would be standing by on Leitrim Street, too, in cased John needed medical treatment.

  As she wound up the briefing, Katie said, ‘I can’t emphasize enough how important the timing of this operation is going to be. We have to enter all three locations at 04.30, on the dot. Speed and surprise are essential. If you have any trouble gaining access, don’t stand outside ringing the doorbell, use your door-openers and ferret guns immediately. I would like to think that all three raids will all be over in less than three minutes and that by 05.00 we’ll have all of the detainees here, ready for formal charging and questioning.’

  ‘You’re not going to let any media in on this?’ asked Mathew McElvey. ‘It would make for some fantastic TV news footage.’

  ‘Absolutely not, Mathew, sorry. The fewer people know about this in advance, the better. We’ll announce it only when Quilty and Murphy are sitting in their cells. You’ve already been cautioned not to tell your families or your friends why you’re on duty tonight. That goes double for anybody you know in the press.’

  They returned to Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin’s office. His personal assistant had brought in sandwiches and coffee and two bottles of Tanora. Katie stood by the window looking out at the lights of Cork City, sipping coffee. She didn’t feel at all hungry.

  ‘Have you decided which team you’ll be going with?’ asked Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, sitting behind his desk and taking a bite of a sandwich.

  ‘Orange,’ she said. ‘I want to arrest Quilty myself. Besides, I’ve just had an update on the location of Kyna’s phone. She’s back at Quilty’s house on the Middle Glanmire Road, Tivoli Park or whatever it’s called. I need to make sure that she’s safe and unharmed.’

  ‘So you’re not going with the White Team to rescue your John?’

  ‘I can’t be in two places at once, sir. I’m not Boyle Roche’s bird.’

  Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin said nothing for a long moment. Then, ‘I know the feeling, Katie. Even though I’m stuck here in the present, I wish I was still in the past.’

  Mathew McElvey knocked at the office door and came in. ‘For once the Taoiseach has done us a favour!’ he announced.

  ‘What kind of a favour?’ asked Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘I heard that he’d had a mild heart attack.’

  ‘That’s right, at a meeting of European finance ministers, as well he might. But it means that the Langtry story was pretty much crowded out of both of tonight’s news bulletins.’

  ‘They did mention it, though?’ asked Katie. ‘I was too tied up at that strategy meeting. I forgot to watch.’

  ‘I have it here,’ said Mathew McElvey, holding up his tablet. He switched it on and Katie saw Fionnuala Sweeney standing on Anglesea Street.

  ‘Cork Garda confirmed today that the four bodies found buried under the floorboards in Blarney were in fact those of the Langtry family, who mysteriously disappeared in 1921. Father, mother and two children were all shot in the back of the head. The family dogs were also shot. Gardaí have opened a historical inquiry into who might have been responsible for their murders, but Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire emphasized that the case was over ninety years old and was not a high priority.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. ‘No mention of illicit affairs with British officers or other cracked ideas. Tomorrow’s going to give us ructions enough without yesterday sneaking up to bite us in the backside.’

  Twenty-one

  By 4.20 in the morning the three teams taking part in Operation Trident had all been deployed – Orange Team in Tivoli, Green Team in Parklands and White Team on Leitrim Street.

  Katie was sitting in a dark blue unmarked Opel with Detective O’Donovan and Detective Scanlan. About two hundred metres further up the Middle Glanmire Road, on the opposite side of the entrance to Tivoli Park, she could see the white Volvo XC70 of the Regional Support Unit with four fully armed gardaí waiting for the signal to move in. Five other uniformed gardaí were already positioned in the woods behind Bobby Quilty’s garden to make sure that there was no escape for him that way.

  ‘Hard to work out how many people are in there exactly,’ said Detective O’Donovan, leaning over from the back seat. ‘Nobody’s been seen to leave since we put the house under surveillance, so Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán’s probably still in there, and Quilty’s girlfriend, Margot Beeney, but we’re not sure if any of his minders are staying overnight.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out soon enough when we get inside,’ said Katie. ‘Let’s hope that whoever’s in there, they don’t give us any bother.’

  Seconds before they entered the house technically trained gardaí would cut the landline and jam all of the occupants’ mobile phones. It would have been normal procedure to knock or ring the doorbell first, to give the suspect the opportunity to open the door, but Katie was concerned that Bobby Quilty might have some other means of communication so she had ordered that they break down the door silently to give him no prior warning that they were coming in. They would jam the intruder alarms, too, but if Bobby Quilty had fitted a high-quality alarm system it would almost certainly sense the jam and start ringing. With most alarms, however, there was a polling interval of two minutes and that would give Orange Team more than enough time to force their way inside.

  Detective O’Donovan looked up and said, ‘Lord, are You listening, Lord? I hope you’re not on your cloud asleep at the moment. I think we’re going to need a bit of a helping hand here.’

  Katie turned round in her seat. ‘Just remember, Patrick, your number one concern is finding DS Ni Nuallán and protecting her once you’ve found her.’

  ‘You can count on me, ma’am,’ Detective O’Donovan told her. ‘I was just putting in a request for a little divine backup there, that’s all.’

  Although there was little more than an hour to go before sunrise the sky was still inky black because it was densely clouded over, and the forecast was for low cloud and persistent rain all day. Yesterday had been warm and bright, but Katie found it easy to believe as she waited to arrest Bobby Quilty that summer was over.

  She had received no further texts from Kyna, although the latest signal from her iPhone indicated that it was still inside the house. Katie tried to put her to the back of her mind – and John, too. She had prayed to St Leonard to take care of them both, and at the moment that was all she could do.

  In her earphone the voice of Inspector O’Rourke blurted, ‘Green Team all in position and ready to go in.’

  Inspector O’Rourke was on the Parklands housing estate on the far side of Blackpool, outside Darragh Murphy’s semi-detached bungalow. As soon as she had received the go-ahead for Operation Trident, Katie had dispatched two plain-clothes gardaí to keep the bungalow under surveillance. They had reported that Darragh Murphy had driven home at 11.17 in the evening, obviously drunk, because his car had struck the low concrete wall around his front garden and then bumped into the garage doors. Once he had managed to climb out and stagger to the front door, it had taken him over three minutes of erratic jabbing to fit the key into the lock.

  ‘White Team ready,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley, from Leitrim Street. That house, too, had been watched for mos
t of the previous evening by plain-clothes gardaí. Nobody had been seen entering or leaving, but the officers had heard a man and a woman shouting and arguing until well past midnight.

  ‘There’s an alleyway that runs along the back of the houses, past the yard behind Brannagan’s Bar,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘We have that covered. Unless they land a helicopter on the roof, there’s no way anybody’s getting out of this place without us catching them.’

  ‘Two minutes and thirty seconds to go, ma’am,’ said Detective O’ Donovan.

  ‘Right,’ said Katie. ‘Let’s do it.’

  As she climbed out of the car five gardaí jogged past her towards Bobby Quilty’s house, their all-black combat uniforms rustling, guns clinking and rubber-soled boots pattering on the pavement. All of them were wearing black helmets with protective goggles and black face masks. Two of them were pulling behind them the heavy black case that contained the Holmatro hydraulic door-opener.

  One garda ducked his way between the three shiny parked cars in front of the house and headed straight for the side gate, where the telephone junction box was located. Another crouched on the driveway between the cars and took out a mobile phone jammer and a radio signal jammer, both of them not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes, and switched them on.

  Detective O’Donovan checked his watch and said, ‘Grand stuff. Unless he keeps a carrier-pigeon in his bedroom, that’s Quilty totally cut off from the outside world.’

  Katie looked up at the bedroom windows of Bobby Quilty’s house. The curtains and blinds were drawn in all of them and they were all in darkness, although a single ceiling light was shining on the first-floor landing.

  ‘Do you reckon they’re all asleep?’ she asked Detective O’Donovan.

  ‘Oh, I’d say so, for sure. They probably only leave that light on in case one of them needs the jakes in the middle of the night. That Bobby Quilty can drink the cape off St Paul.’