He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he drew his finger across his throat and opened his eyes wide, and nodded, and nodded again, to make it clear that he meant it.
Twenty-nine
After Bobby Quilty had been escorted back to the interview room Katie went back upstairs to see Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin.
‘Katie!’ he said. ‘What’s the craic? What time are you having your post-mortem on Operation Trident? And you’re holding a media briefing directly afterwards, is that right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she told him. ‘But I wanted to tell you that I’ve decided to drop the charges against Bobby Quilty. It was probably a misjudgement on my part to arrest him in the first place.’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin looked down at the papers on his desk and then looked up at Katie again, and his expression was even more miserable than usual.
‘This won’t be doing our public image a great deal of good, will it? God knows we’ve been fighting hard enough to prove to the people of Cork that we’re competent and efficient, and that we’re making serious progress against organized crime. This is going to set us back badly.’
‘It might do, yes, temporarily,’ said Katie. ‘But I’m totally confident that I can build up enough evidence against Bobby Quilty to bring him in again, sooner rather than later, and on charges that will get us a conviction.’
Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin stood up and went across to the window. ‘This is strictly between you and me, Katie, but I know you’re a realist. One of the main problems here is that you’re a woman, and as you’re perfectly well aware, there’s still a hard core in the force who resent your promotion, even now. They’ll take advantage of every opportunity they can get to see you demoted or removed altogether, and of course that won’t go down well with Commissioner O’Sullivan. She’s been busting a gut to make sure that women gardaí are given equal advancement, but of all people I don’t have to tell you that in reality that still means that women officers have to perform twice as well as men. This Bobby Quilty business isn’t going to help her cause at all. In fact, to be frank with you, it’s an expletive deleted disaster.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Katie. ‘I’m not making any excuses. But I think it would do our reputation even more damage if we tried to take Bobby Quilty to court on the evidence we have at the moment, or rather the lack of it. He’ll make a great big media show out of it and it’ll make it harder for us to go after him the next time because he’ll accuse us of harassment.’
‘And?’ asked Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, turning away from the window. All his years of experience had given him a very sensitive ear and Katie could tell that he had picked up something in her voice – an unspoken ‘and’ which might have betrayed that she had a much more pressing reason for dropping the charges against Bobby Quilty than the possibility of negative headlines in the Examiner.
‘And – nothing,’ she said. ‘Even if the blood that we found on the bedroom carpet in Leitrim Street turns out to be John’s, we have no way of proving that Bobby Quilty knew he was there, and even if we did, we have no way of proving that he was responsible for kidnapping him. There’s no chance that those two squatters will give evidence against him, even if they really are squatters, not unless they want to risk having their heads blown off like Darragh Murphy.’
‘So what’s your plan?’ asked Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin.
‘I’ve been working closely already with G2, of course, and we’ve a heap of circumstantial evidence against Bobby Quilty and all of his associates – phone-taps, emails, surveillance photographs. On top of that, though, I’m hoping to get some more background information from the PSNI. Nobody can spend twenty years running the cross-border rackets that he’s been running without leaving some incriminating evidence behind them.’
‘All right, Katie,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, in his usual sad voice. ‘Good luck with the media so.’
*
The atmosphere in the conference room was subdued. There was a strong smell of stale cigarettes and damp clothing, and Katie kept the post-mortem on Operation Trident short and direct.
‘I want to thank everybody who took part in Operation Trident. You all carried out your assignments in a highly professional manner, and I particularly wish to compliment the restraint and efficiency of the Regional Support Units. I accept complete responsibility for the outcome, which was obviously not what I had been expecting. I can only plead that I misinterpreted the intelligence that I was given.’
She was quite aware that she was doing herself no favours by accepting the blame for the disaster of Operation Trident. However, if there was anybody in the assembled audience who might be passing information on to Bobby Quilty, she wanted to give them no hint that she was even more determined than ever to see him arrested, charged, and locked up for the rest of his life in Portlaoise maximum security prison.
‘I will, of course, be making a full report to the assistant commissioner,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile, I want you to know that I intend to drop the charges against Bobby Quilty at this time. If you happen to come into contact with him during the course of your duties, I expect you to treat him with the same respect that you give to any other citizen of Cork.’
There was a loud derisory raspberry from someone at the back of the room and a few of the gardaí shook their heads in exasperation, but nobody else had anything else to contribute.
As everybody shuffled out of the conference room, Inspector O’Rourke came up to Katie and said, ‘You didn’t have to take all the blame, you know, ma’am. You could have come up with some almost nearly true story about Quilty getting wind of it somehow.’
‘I would have, if things had been different,’ said Katie, snapping shut the clasps on her briefcase.
‘Different – like, how?’
‘I’m sorry, Francis, you don’t have the whole picture yet and I’m not in a position to give it to you. When I can, though, you’ll understand at once. Let’s just say that if I get myself demoted because of this, it won’t kill me. On the other hand, if I’d given out even the slightest suggestion that I suspected anybody here in the station of being a tout for Bobby Quilty—’
Inspector O’Rourke looked at her narrowly for a few moments, expecting her to finish her sentence. When she didn’t, but simply raised her eyebrows, he understood what she was telling him, even if he could guess only roughly what it was.
She hated this secrecy, especially since she really felt the need for somebody to confide in, and to support her. Just as she was walking out of the door of the conference room, however, her iPhone pinged with a message. A visitor had arrived for her and was waiting for her downstairs. He didn’t have an appointment, but he had said that she would know who he was and why he was here. His name was Alan Harte.
When she arrived at the front desk, a short ginger-haired man was just pushing his way out through the front doors and she thought for a moment that it was him, grown tired of waiting for her. Then she looked across to the opposite side of the reception area and there he was, his face in shadow, wearing a long grey raincoat with shoulders that were still sparkling with raindrops.
‘Alan?’ she said, and he stepped out of the shadow.
‘Katie,’ he said, in the same soft Belfast brogue that she had heard on the phone, and held out his hand.
He was tallish, just under six foot she would have guessed, and he looked as if he had once been very slim but had filled out with middle age. His hair was steel-grey, cut short and sharp. His eyes were grey, too – Irish-sky grey. He had a broad face, with strong cheekbones and a square chin. Katie would have guessed some Scottish ancestry. He was carrying a black overnight case.
‘You could have let me know you were coming,’ said Katie.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know myself until this morning.’
‘Come up to my office,’ she said – then, as soon as she had pressed the button for the lift, ‘What about Kyna and John? Have
you seen them?’
Alan nodded. ‘I have, yes. That’s the main reason I’m here. I could have called you or texted you, but you never know who might be hacking your phone and I didn’t want to risk it. I drove down to Forkhill at first light this morning, even though it wasn’t very light. I parked my car about a half a mile away from the house and walked through the fields so that I could sneak my way into the paddock at the back. It was lashing down so there was nobody outside in the yard, and I doubt they expected anybody else to be out there, either.’
The lift arrived and Katie and Alan stepped in. Close up to him, Katie caught a smell like a combination of black pepper and cinnamon. Maybe it was some aftershave that he was wearing, or maybe just his shower gel.
‘How did they look?’ said Katie. ‘The last time you saw John they were carrying him on a stretcher, weren’t they?’
‘They were in a large downstairs room at the back. Your friend John was lying propped up with a cushion on a couch and your detective sergeant – what was her name, Kyna? – she was sitting beside him in armchair. So far as I could make out, she was feeding him out of a bowl with a spoon. I don’t know what that says about his physical condition. The room was gloomy enough so it wasn’t easy to see them too distinctly. They were alive, anyway. I was going to take some pictures but then some wee man came into the room and pulled the curtains across.’
‘And you’re sure they didn’t see you?’
‘Not a chance. I was hiding myself beside this tool shed, and like I say it was lashing. I stayed there about ten minutes longer, trying to see if I could pick up a phone signal, although I had no luck with that. Nobody came out, though, so they obviously didn’t know I was there.’
‘And you’re sure it was them? Kyna and John?’
‘No question at all. It was fair gloomy in that room, like I say, but I recognized them straightaway from the pictures on your bulletin. They looked tired and kind of nervous, but if they were being fed I’d say that was something to be optimistic about. If you were intending to kill a pig you’d feed it up, but a human being? You wouldn’t bother, would you? Why waste good food?’
Katie gave him a quick sideways look. ‘That’s not very encouraging.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Too many years being a copper, that’s my trouble. I think it’s made me impervious to other people’s feelings. I’m not even sure I have too many of my own any more.’
‘I’ve dropped the charges against Bobby Quilty,’ said Katie, as they entered her office and she switched on the lights. ‘I should never have arrested him in the first place. I suppose I was hoping that St Francis would conjure up some miraculous piece of evidence before I had to let him go.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Alan.
Katie sat down at her desk, but Alan remained standing. She told him as briefly as possible how Operation Trident had gone so disastrously wrong, and how Bobby Quilty had been one step ahead of her and made a mockery of each of the three simultaneous raids. Alan nodded when she told him about Darragh Murphy being shot, and nodded again when she described what they had found at the house on Leitrim Street – or rather, what they had failed to find.
‘Tip-off,’ he said. ‘You have a tout there, no question about it.’
‘Oh, no doubt at all,’ said Katie. ‘The problem is, I have no idea at all who it could be. To begin with, only a handful of people knew that I’d asked Kyna to work undercover for Bobby Quilty, but on the night we had to warn the Regional Support Unit that she might be inside his house, in case it came to a firefight and they shot her by mistake.’
‘Believe me, Bobby Quilty was doing the same in Armagh,’ said Alan. ‘What makes him so hard to scoop is that he has contacts in all walks of life – politicians, business executives, prostitutes, criminals. He knows everybody from Bamba’s Crown to Cranfield Point, I can tell you. He knows bank managers, so that he can easily find out if any police officers are having a struggle financially. He knows hotel keepers, who tell him if they’re having affairs with any woman that they shouldn’t be. He knows club owners and drug-dealers, so he’s always aware if they’ve ended up addicted to the crack that they’re supposed to be confiscating. At the very least he always has three or four poor peelers who are going to be passing him inside information, either in exchange for cash, or for keeping his mouth shut, or for not posting pornographic photographs of them on Twitter for their wives to see. He’ll have at least one tout here in Anglesea Street, possibly more than one. As you say, though, Katie, the problem is finding out who. It could be anybody at all, from the highest to the lowest.’
‘Well, I have some ideas how I can winkle them out,’ said Katie. ‘In the meantime, though, what do you suggest we do about Kyna and John?’
‘I’d recommend absolutely nothing at the moment. Bobby Quilty’s going to be confident now that so long as he holds them hostage, you’ll be leaving him well enough alone. He’s not so stupid that he’ll kill the geese that guarantee him the golden eggs. We had a similar situation in Belfast in 1988. The Provos kidnapped the owner of Sheen’s department store and said that they would only return him in exchange for two of their own men who had been caught by the RUC the previous week. The poor store owner suffered a heart attack and died, so the Provos no longer had anything to bargain with. That lesson won’t have been lost on Bobby Quilty.’
‘So, what else are you doing here?’ Katie asked him. ‘You didn’t come all this way just to tell me about Kyna and John, did you?’
‘To be honest with you, Katie, I thought I could maybe help you to do for Bobby Quilty once and for all. I’ll admit it’s personal, but the man’s a general menace. If you could let me look through all of the intelligence that you have on him and I can see first-hand for myself what kind of a set-up he’s running here in Cork, there’s a fair chance I might spot something that you’ve overlooked without realizing it, do you know what I mean? If I can help you to build up a strong case against him that will stand up in court, and see the bastard sent down, it’ll be like five Christmases rolled into one, I’m telling you.’
‘You understand that I couldn’t allow you to do that officially? I mean, the Garda and the PSNI swap officers all the time, but you’re not an officer any more, and all of the intelligence on Bobby Quilty is highly confidential. If I let you look at it, you’ll see how we acquired it, and the names of our informants, and that’s all confidential, too, of course.’
‘I get that, Katie. And I’m not even a former officer. I’m an ex-officer. But this is a fierce unusual problem we’re up against here and it’s going to take some fierce unorthodox measures to solve it.’
‘I don’t know, Alan,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll have to give this some very serious thought. I can’t see Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin agreeing to it. He’s a stickler for protocol, and it’s not like you retired from the service in a blaze of glory, if you’ll forgive me saying so.’
‘I understand that, of course. But I was hoping you might take me on as a kind of unofficial adviser. Let’s face it, Katie, what are the options? The second you tell anyone here that Kyna and John are being held hostage, and that you want to raid Bobby Quilty’s house to rescue them, Quilty will get to hear of it and the best you can hope for is that you find their bodies. It would be exactly the same if I tried to persuade Chief Superintendent Shields in Armagh to do the same.’
‘I know,’ said Katie. She was about to answer him, but she knew he was right.
Alan stood there watching her for a while, saying nothing. She opened the file on her desk in front of her, which was a lengthy report on the tightening of border controls between the Republic and the United Kingdom because of the number of illegal migrants who were using Ireland as a back door into England. She read the first two paragraphs and then closed it.
‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.
‘Jury’s probably, on the Western Road. I brought my toothbrush with me and a change of gunks.’
/> ‘Look – I have a media briefing in ten minutes,’ Katie told him. ‘It shouldn’t take long. I’ll take you to the canteen if you like and you can have a coffee while you’re waiting. We can talk some more afterwards.’
‘Aye, grand, that’s fine by me. I’ve all the time in world, so I have.’
*
The usual crowd of reporters and freelance journalists had arrived for the media briefing – although Dan Keane from the Examiner was in hospital for X-rays on his lungs and Roisin Magorian was standing in for him, a quiet, thin, sharp-looking woman in a dark green linen suit. Her lips were almost always tightly pursed, which had led Detective Sergeant Begley to christen her ‘the Pencil Sharpener’.
Fionnuala Sweeney was there, too, as well as Branna MacSuibhne from the Echo and Muireann Bourke from Newstalk.
Superintendent Pearse joined Katie to give her moral support and explain the logistics of Operation Trident.
‘Everything went exactly as planned,’ he said, by way of conclusion. ‘No firearms were discharged, no gardaí were injured, and there was no risk to the public at any time. It was a textbook operation from beginning to end.’
‘Well, one firearm was discharged, wasn’t?’ asked Roisin Magorian, holding up her pencil. ‘The firearm that killed Darragh Murphy.’
‘I’m sorry, but that was done several hours before Operation Trident was actioned,’ said Superintendent Pearse. ‘And not by us.’
‘You say it was a textbook operation, but the man you wanted for killing Detective Barry was murdered before you could arrest him. Not only that, there was no hostage in the house on Leitrim Street where you suspected there was one, and even though you arrested Bobby Quilty you later dropped both of the charges against him and released him. What kind of a textbook operation was that?’
Katie said, ‘Our failure to get a satisfactory result from Operation Trident was entirely down to me. I was given intelligence which I interpreted to the best of my ability, but the intelligence turned out to be misleading, to say the least. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have acted on it, or that there was any mishandling of the operation whatsoever. If the information had in fact been correct and we had failed to act on it, we would have been guilty of gross dereliction of our duty and it could have resulted in injury or even death.’
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