Buried

by Graham Masterton

  ‘All right, let me go upstairs and take a look for myself,’ said Katie. ‘And, yes, I’ll have a word with our friends.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ said Sergeant Norden. ‘I was close to lifting the both of them on a charge of pretending to be human.’

  They went inside the front door and Detective Sergeant Begley showed Katie the two ground-floor rooms which had once been the shop premises. Both of them were empty, apart from five or six packing cases and a tipped-over chair.

  ‘No indication that there was ever a bed in either of these rooms,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘In fact, when you look at the dust on the floor I’d say that nobody’s even stepped in here for years.’

  He led her upstairs. The first-floor landing was foggy with cigarette smoke and he pointed to the door on the left-hand side and said, ‘They’re in there, Punch and Judy. I reckon they’ve been through fifty fags each since we got here.’

  ‘Let me take a look at the rest of the rooms first,’ said Katie. ‘I don’t have any doubt at all that John Meagher was being held somewhere here – probably right up until yesterday evening.’

  ‘Your informant was sound, then?’

  ‘The best, believe me.’

  Detective Sergeant Begley opened the doors to the bathroom, and then to the gloomy room where Chisel and Sorcia slept. The sour smell of sweat-stained bedding was so strong that Katie held the back of her hand against her nose, and there were two wrinkled condoms lying on the carpet under the window.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Whoever said that romance was dead?’

  The next bedroom was stacked with more packing cases, as well as a banjaxed wooden ironing board and a dented paraffin heater. The third bedroom was long and narrow, wallpapered with spaceships and planets. There was a small window at the very end and, as Detective Sergeant Begley had told her, the purple carpet bore four deep impressions from the square legs of a single bed.

  Katie went down on one knee and touched the carpet pile. ‘There’s a damp patch here, did any of you notice?’

  ‘I can’t say that we did, ma’am. We had those two squatters hovering around us cribbing and moaning and puffing out smoke like a couple of volcanoes.’

  ‘Well, this would have been where the end of the bed was. My informant said that John’s feet were bolted to the bed. I thought that might have meant that he was chained, or fitted with ankle-cuffs, but his feet were really were bolted.’

  ‘So there might have been blood on the carpet and that’s why it’s damp?’

  Katie stood up. ‘I’ll ask Bill Phinner to send a couple of technicians down here. You can scrub a carpet till doomsday but you’ll never get the DNA out of it.’

  She went to the window and looked out. Then she took her black forensic gloves out of her jacket pocket, snapped them on, and opened the window wide. It was raining even harder now and the rain made a clattering sound as it fell from a broken gutter somewhere below.

  ‘There’s a safety cable on here, but somebody’s unscrewed it,’ she said. ‘Recently, too. Look, they’ve left one of the screws on the windowsill here.’

  She stepped back and peered down at the floor to see if she could find the second screw, and as she did so she saw a red-handled screwdriver lying close to the side of the chest of drawers. She left it where it was, because she wanted to have it photographed and then sealed into an evidence bag, but she beckoned Detective Sergeant Begley to take a look at it.

  ‘Here’s a couple of questions,’ she said. ‘Why would those two squatters bother to take off the safety cable? But if they did, why would they just drop the screwdriver on the floor once they’d done it? I can see how messy they are, but that doesn’t seem natural.’

  ‘You mean it might have been done in a hurry, like?’

  Katie leaned out of the window. She could see that several of the slates were cracked and that four or five of them had been dislodged. The broken guttering was directly underneath them.

  ‘Let’s take a sconce outside,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to those two after.’

  They went back downstairs, through the kitchen, and out of the back door into the cluttered yard. The rabbit started snuffling and scratching at the chicken wire at the front of its cage.

  ‘Jesus, you poor creature, the state of you la,’ said Katie, bending down to peer into its cage. ‘Sean, give Lisa O’Donovan at the ISPCA a call after, would you? If ever there was a case for cruelty to animals, this poor creature is definitely it. This hutch is a wreck. It looks like—’

  She stood up straight and shielded her eyes against the rain, frowning up at the broken gutter. When she looked down again she saw the stack of broken window frames next to the hutch, with some of their panes smashed.

  ‘Borrow your flashlight?’ she asked Detective Sergeant Begley.

  She shone the flashlight on to the shattered glass of the topmost window and lit up a spatter of translucent amber stains.

  ‘That could be blood,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the technicians check that, too. Do you have something we can cover it with?’

  ‘Oh, sure. I’ve a roll of plastic sheeting in the car. What are you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. But there’s all the indications here that somebody fell out of that bedroom window and dropped down here. Maybe they fell or maybe they were pushed out.’

  ‘So they might have been unconscious, or dead?’

  ‘It’s possible. But why didn’t they just carry him down the stairs? They must have taken the bed out that way, so why push somebody out of the window, dead or alive?’

  Detective Sergeant Begley shook his head. ‘Don’t ask me. And I doubt you’ll get any sense out of those two squatters. I don’t think either of them’s going to be appearing on Mastermind any time soon.’

  *

  ‘Can we have the window open?’ asked Katie as she entered the room where Chisel and Sorcia were sitting. The smoke was filling the air in lazily curling layers.

  Chisel was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and green-striped boxer shorts, while Sorcia was wrapped up in a yellow towelling dressing gown with threads hanging from the hem. They were both puffy-eyed from smoking and lack of sleep.

  The garda who had been standing in the corner keeping an eye on them opened up the window and the smoke gradually eddied out into the rain.

  ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire,’ said Katie. ‘I’m in charge of investigating the whereabouts of a man named John Meagher. I have very good reason to believe that he was unlawfully held in this house against his will, and that you two aided and abetted that detention.’

  Chisel and Sorcia looked at each other as if they were utterly baffled.

  ‘Come on,’ said Katie. ‘He was being held in that back bedroom there, on a bed. You disposed of the bed yesterday evening and you cleaned the carpet underneath it. What I want to know is, where was John Meagher taken, and who by?’

  ‘John Meagher?’ said Chisel. ‘I don’t know nothing about no feller of that name. There’s been nobody here, like. Only me and Sorsh.’

  ‘So why did you get rid of the bed?’

  ‘Bed? What bed? I don’t know nothing about no bed.’

  ‘Don’t play stupid,’ said Katie. ‘There was a bed in that room and even if you didn’t dispose of it yourselves, you must know who did.’

  ‘Can’t help you,’ said Chisel. ‘If there was a bed, and I’m not saying that there was, maybe it just took off by itself. They have legs, you know, beds.’

  He grinned slyly at his own joke and then began to cough so violently that Sorcia had to slap him on the back.

  Katie was still waiting for him to recover when Detective O’Mara knocked at the half-open door.

  ‘DS Maguire?’ He was holding up an electric drill, with its plug dangling. ‘Just found this in the cupboard under the stairs, in a toolbox.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Chisel, still coughing. ‘I don’t know nothing
about that.’

  ‘The toolbox has the name Charles Rearden stencilled on it,’ said Detective O’Mara. ‘That would be you, wouldn’t it, Mr Rearden?’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s mine all right,’ said Chisel. ‘Some scummer hobbled that toolbox from me months ago and I’ve been wondering where the feck it was. If they’ve put their own stuff into it, that’s nothing to do with me whatsoever. Nothing at all. What’s that you have there? A drill? I never had any drill like that, not me.’

  ‘There’s what looks like dried blood on it and remnants of skin,’ said Detective O’Mara. He passed the drill over so that Katie could examine it more closely. He was right. The chuck had prune-coloured blobs of dried blood on it and there were papery shreds of skin twisted around the thread of the drill bit.

  ‘Never saw that before in my life,’ said Chisel.

  ‘Seriously, Mr Rearden, do I really look like I was just washed in with the last tide?’ Katie asked him. ‘I’m arresting both you and Ms MacKenna here on suspicion of falsely imprisoning John Patrick Meagher. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. Get yourselves dressed and we’ll take you into the station.’

  ‘Jesus, Chisel, what a fecking careless browl you are!’ Sorcia snapped at him. ‘There’s no way they could have known, otherwise.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Ms MacKenna,’ said Katie. ‘There’s plenty of evidence that you and your partner here were helping to keep John Meagher imprisoned. I’d just like you to tell me who ordered you to do it.’

  ‘I’m not saying a single word,’ said Sorcia.

  ‘You could save yourself a rake of trouble if you did tell me who it was, I can assure you of that. You might even escape prosecution altogether.’

  ‘Mmmmm-mmmh,’ said Sorcia, shaking her bleached-blonde hair and keeping her lips tightly closed.

  ‘Was it Bobby Quilty, by any chance?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bobby Quilty. Don’t try to pretend that you don’t know Bobby Quilty. If it was him, you could nod your head. That’s all you’d have to do. Then you wouldn’t have had to say anything.’

  ‘For feck’s sake,’ said Chisel. ‘You can’t ask nobody to tout on Bobby Quilty. You might just as well ask them to jump into the Lee with their pockets full of bricks.’

  Sorcia rolled up her eyes in total exasperation. She dug into the pocket of her dressing gown for her packet of cigarettes, momentarily revealing the depths of her cleavage, with a Celtic cross tattooed into it, complete with a rose and thorns.

  ‘Give me a light, you gom,’ she told him. ‘The condemned woman might as well have one last fag.’

  Twenty-four

  Not only had the rain been dredging down all morning but now the wind had risen into fierce blustery gusts. Because of that, the traditional football game that would have been played in the yard at Sunday’s Well Boys’ School for the last day of Rang a Sé was cancelled. Kevin Doherty picked up his son, Tom, just before noon and took him and his little sister, Sibeal, to McDonald’s on St Patrick’s Street for lunch.

  They sat by the window and watched the shoppers struggling along the pavement as if they were drunk, with their umbrellas flapping inside out.

  ‘So, Tom, do you think you could manage a Big Mac?’ said Kevin. ‘That’s your baby school all behind you now. You’re almost a man now. You’ll be starting at the Mon after the holliers.’

  ‘Miss Cashman was crying,’ said Tom seriously. ‘She said we were the best Rang a Sé she’d ever taught and she’s going to miss us.’

  Kevin reached across the table and patted Tom’s hand. Tom was a thin, thoughtful boy, with short brown hair that stuck up at the back and very large brown eyes and protruding ears. His grandmother always said that he was going to grow up to be a poet like W. B. Yeats, but in reality he was more interested in wildlife conservation. He had built a hedgehog house in the garden with a sign saying Gráinneog over the entrance, although no hedgehogs had yet decided to nest there. His friend Charlie said that was only because hedgehogs had come from England originally and couldn’t read Irish.

  Kevin could tell that even if Tom wasn’t quite tearful himself, like his teacher, the reality had struck him now that he was never going to go back to Sunday’s Well BNS, and that he was no longer a senior in Rang a Sé, the sixth form. Next term he would be a new boy in An Chéad Bliain, the first year at North Monastery School. His infant days were over.

  Sibeal said, ‘I want chicken, but I don’t want pissy-bed leaves.’

  She was four years old, with blue eyes and long tangly blonde hair. She looked like a miniature version of her mother, Órla, and was just as strong-willed. She was clutching a red-haired rag doll with only one eye and a crazed expression on its face. ‘Pissy-bed leaves’ – dandelions – was what she called lettuce.

  ‘What’s the magic word?’ asked Kevin.

  Sibeal frowned and then she blurted out, ‘Abracadabra!’ and giggled.

  Kevin was a little sad, too, that Tom was growing up, but he was feeling mellow and relaxed. He loved taking the children out, especially when he was under less pressure at work. After two months of wrangling he had closed the sale yesterday on that three-storey commercial building on North Main Street that had once housed a branch of Allied Irish Bank, and the lease of a substantial corner property on Tuckey Street was very close to completion.

  Although he had wild wavy hair and rather a large nose, he was an attractive man, slim and smart, with the permanent smile of somebody whose career depends on making people feel welcome. He had turned forty in April and while he had been depressed about it at first, he was now feeling mature and confident and in control of his life. He had woken up one morning and suddenly thought: I’m happy. Jesus, I’m actually happy. This is what it’s like, being happy.

  ‘One week and three days to go and then we’ll be off to Gran Canaria,’ he said. ‘Sunshine, swimming in the sea. We’ll be having the time of our lives.’

  ‘I want to take Blossom,’ said Sibeal. Blossom was her rocking horse.

  ‘No, sweetheart, you can’t take Blossom. She’s way too big to fit on the aeroplane. Daddy will buy you a blow-up horsey when we get there.’

  Kevin helped Sibeal to cut up her chicken. She sang as she ate, with her mouth full, while Tom swung his skinny legs as he ate his burger and stared out of the window.

  After lunch, it wasn’t far for them to drive home. The Dohertys lived in a three-storey red-brick terraced house on Military Road, up the hill from St Luke’s Cross, where Katie had met with Kyna. When they arrived, Kevin was irritated to see that a battered green van had parked directly outside his front gate, where he usually parked, and it took him several minutes of wrestling with his steering wheel before he managed to manoeuvre his Audi estate in behind it, so close that it was almost touching.

  ‘Some people, you know? They don’t think at all that you might need to park outside your own house. I’ll bet it’s Mrs Doody has the decorators in again. That woman can’t let her house be for more than a month without changing the wallpaper.’

  ‘I like Mrs Doody,’ said Sibeal. ‘She gives me Smiley Face Jellies.’

  ‘Well, she shouldn’t,’ Kevin told her, as he helped her climb out of her child seat. ‘Your mother says that too much sugar makes you hyperactive.’

  ‘What’s “practiff”?’

  As they walked up the brown-and-white tiled path, Kevin was surprised that Órla wasn’t waiting for them with the front door open as she usually did when he brought Tom home from school, especially since today was his very last day at Sunday’s Well. Sibeal rang the doorbell repeatedly, but Kevin took out his key anyway.

  ‘Órla!’ he called out as they went into the hallway. There was no answer, so he called out, ‘Órla, are you at home, love?’

  The house was silent. Usually Órla had the television on because she liked a constant background noise, even
though she barely paid any attention to the programmes. Most likely she had walked down to the Cross to buy sausages from Sheehan’s.

  ‘You can change out of your uniform now, Tom,’ said Kevin. ‘Fetch it downstairs after because Mummy will have it cleaned and we’ll take it to the school for another boy who needs it.’

  Sibeal said, ‘I want a drink.’

  ‘You’ve only just had a drink at McDonald’s.’

  ‘I want another drink.’

  ‘Well, all right, but you can have only water. You’ve had enough Tanora for one day. You’ll be jumping all over the place like a kangaroo and then what will Mummy say? And what’s the magic word?’

  Kevin was about to usher Sibeal along the hallway to the kitchen when he became aware of an unusual smell. Órla had been making barmbrack when he left, which was one of the reasons she hadn’t come with him to collect Tom from school, but this wasn’t the warm, fruity aroma of Órla’s baking. This was more like musty second-hand clothes in a charity shop, with an undertone of strong, cheapish aftershave.

  ‘Órla?’ he said, but quietly this time. The oak-panelled living-room door was only slightly ajar, whereas normally they kept it wide open.

  Sibeal looked up at him. ‘Do you think Mummy’s hiding?’ she asked him in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Kevin didn’t answer. He was concentrating too hard on listening. Besides, Órla never played tricks like this: it wasn’t in her nature. She would organize proper party games, and face-painting, and singing children’s songs like ‘The Bog Down in the Valley-O’, but she had never been one for practical jokes and pranks. Their marriage had been through some abrasive times because of the constant clash between Órla’s seriousness and Kevin’s flippancy, and that was one of the reasons why there had been an eight-year gap between their two children. Sibeal, in fact, had been conceived by accident – but a happy accident, as it turned out, because having their little girl had brought Kevin and Órla much closer again.