Buried

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Oh, yes, the slow people.’ Jimmy O’Reilly pursed his lips and made a thoughtful sucking sound. ‘Sorry, Katie. Looks like we’ll have to make it the day after tomorrow. You’ll have your hands full anyway, won’t you? And I don’t think that Bobby Quilty’s duty-dodging is exactly a priority, do you?’

  ‘No, sir, you’re right,’ said Katie. ‘We’re tight enough as it is for time and money. And that’s another thing I need to discuss with you, apart from Operation Trident – my budget.’

  Jimmy O’Reilly glanced across at James Elvin and Katie saw the younger man frown, as if to say, Come on, Jimmy, beat on, will you, the clock’s ticking and I need my cash.

  Jimmy O’Reilly squinted at his watch. ‘Katie,’ he said, ‘I’d love to go over your budget with you. Unfortunately some unexpected business has just come up and I have to shoot out to deal with it. Besides, it’s going to take us a fair bit of time for you to tell me how much you need, isn’t it, and what you can justify?’

  ‘Again, yes, sir, you’re absolutely right,’ said Katie. All she wanted to do now was to let him go. She wanted to give him no hint at all that she knew the real reason for him needing to leave so urgently – or at least that she had a very strong suspicion.

  She even managed to give James Elvin a smile as she left Assistant Commissioner Jimmy O’Reilly’s office. Not only did he smile back at her, she could have sworn that he winked.

  You just wait, you cheeky young steamer, she thought, still smiling at him. I’ll be giving you something to make you both your eyes blink.

  *

  As soon as she got back to her own office she closed the door behind her and called Detective O’Mara.

  ‘Bryan – listen to me! Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly is about to leave the station. I want you to follow him for me and see where he goes. That’s all. You can take pictures of any address he visits, but be very careful and don’t let him see you.’

  ‘Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly? Am I allowed to know the reason for this, ma’am?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s security.’

  ‘Security?’

  ‘All right – security and health and safety. And time-and-motion study. And anything else you can think of. Just do it, Bryan, and let me know as soon as you’re back.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Next she called Alan. It took him a long time to answer and when he did it sounded as if he was walking along the pavement by a busy road.

  ‘Alan? How’s it going with Bobby Quilty?’

  ‘Fair to middling, I’d say, but I’ve made some progress. I was just about to ring you and tell you. I kicked off by looking for one of Quilty’s fag-sellers and I found one just inside the gate to the Bishop Lucey Park. Skinny wee rat, so he was, only about fourteen years old. He was doing a roaring trade with the lunchtime crowd from that takeaway coffee bar.’

  ‘Can you speak up a bit?’ Katie asked him. ‘You sound like you’re down the bottom of a well.’

  ‘I don’t exactly want to be shouting this out in the middle of the street!’ said Alan. ‘Here – hold on, there’s an office doorway I can go into. That’s better. So, anyway, I found this skinny kid and I bought two hundred fags off him myself so that I could get chatting with him. I wanted to make sure he was one of Quilty’s minions. I don’t think he meant to tell me anything much, Quilty had probably warned him not to. But I made out that Bobby and me were best pals from way back, and the next thing I knew the kid was even boasting to me how much money he’d made that morning, and how he’d have to go back to Bobby to get some more stock.’

  ‘So of course you went with him?’

  ‘Well, no, because the last thing I wanted to do was bump into Bobby. Bobby never forgets a face and he never forgets a grudge. But I followed the kid at a distance, all the way to this parking lot on Keeffe Street.’

  ‘I know it, yes. Demolition site, more like.’

  ‘There was a black Nissan Navara parked there, with some hard-looking fellow keeping guard on it. He filled up the kid’s bag with cartons of Marlboros and the kid went off again.’

  ‘A black Nissan Navara? That’s Bobby Quilty’s car all right. Did you make a note of its index number?’

  ‘I did, yes. But it wasn’t really necessary. I hung around for about half an hour and then Bobby himself came out of the building opposite with two other thugs and some blowsy-looking woman. Quilty had a few words with the fellow who’d been keeping guard and then they all went back in again.’

  ‘Quilty doesn’t own or rent any property on Keeffe Street, so far as I know. But with him you can never be sure. He probably owns half of Cork by now, under different names.’

  ‘I managed to take a couple of pictures, so I’ll show you when I see you.’

  ‘Where are you now, Alan?’

  ‘Only a couple of minutes away from you now. Copley Street. I thought I’d drop into that pub opposite and treat myself to a cold one.’

  ‘The Market Tavern. All right. But try not to treat yourself to too many cold ones. I’ve found out something today purely by chance and I may need you do to a bit more following for me later. Let me know when you get there and I’ll come across and tell you all about it.’

  ‘Katie—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It can wait. I’ll see you after, okay!’

  *

  Katie put down the phone, although she stood looking at it for a few seconds afterwards, as if she expected it to ring again and God to tell her what to do next. From out of the blue, He had given her some highly compromising information about Assistant Commissioner Jimmy O’Reilly. Could He not reassure her that what she was intending to do with that information wouldn’t turn out to be madness – or, worse than that, pointless and ineffective? She didn’t think her career could stand another Operation Trident.

  She realized that she might have misunderstood completely what Jimmy O’Reilly and James Elvin had been arguing about, and that she might have misinterpreted the shadowy reflections in the bookcase. Yet what she had seen and heard made sense of what Roisin Magorian had suggested to her. More than that, it had given her a key to unlock one of the most difficult and dangerous investigations that she had ever had to deal with.

  She went into her toilet to brush her hair and fix her make-up. Her eyes were puffy and she hoped she didn’t look as slutty as she felt. At home she always kept two teaspoons in the freezer to pat around her eyes if they were swollen.

  No, come on, Green Eyes, she told herself. You’re going to win this. And you’re not a slut. Everybody needs comfort sometimes, especially when they have the world on their shoulders, like you do, and the lives of two people they really care for depend on them being confident, and brave.

  When she came out, Tyrone was waiting for her. He was staring out of the window at the bright, grey day like a young man in a dream.

  ‘Tyrone!’ said Katie, and he gave a little start and turned round.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I was miles away there. It’s that family this morning, the Dohertys. I can’t get them out of my mind, like, do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes. It’s terrible. It’s worse than terrible. Mother of God, it’s hard enough when one person in a family dies or gets killed. A whole family gets murdered together, I don’t know, it’s like some kind of Greek tragedy.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said Tyrone, although she suspected that he didn’t know exactly what a Greek tragedy was.

  He held up a printout. ‘I have the DNA results from Leitrim Street. The stain on the carpet was blood and it also contains traces of flunitrazepam. The DNA matches the hairs you gave us from John Meagher’s comb. So he was there, all right. I suppose the question you’re asking yourself is where is he now?’

  Katie nodded and said, ‘Thanks, Tyrone. Much appreciated. I don’t think I tell you technical experts often enough how much we rely on you. If it weren’t for you, do you know, we’d be still be crawling around the floor with magnifying glasses, like S
herlock Holmes.’

  Tyrone’s cheeks went pink. ‘It’s our job, ma’am. But Bill Phinner told me that John Meagher was a friend of yours, like, and so this meant a lot to you, this test.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Katie. ‘A very close friend. Well – let’s hope that he still is.’

  After Tyrone had left Katie called Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘Sean, that couple of so-called squatters at Leitrim Street. The fellow that called himself Chisel and that mouthy moth of his. Will you bring them in for questioning, the both of them? Take Scanlan with you. Not tonight – very early tomorrow morning will do it. Tyrone’s just confirmed that the blood on the bedroom carpet was John Meagher’s.’

  ‘I doubt you’ll get them to say anything, to be honest with you.’

  ‘I doubt it, too, Sean. In fact, I’m sure of it. But the DNA test is positive evidence that John Meagher was there and I can’t just ignore it.’

  ‘Leave it with me, ma’am. I’ll have somebody around there fonya-haun and we’ll bring them in for breakfast.’

  Katie was absolutely sure that neither Chisel nor his girlfriend would answer any questions, which is why she was willing to take the risk of bringing them in. Now that the technicians had come up with a positive DNA result she had to show Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin, and the media, too, that she was taking steps to find out who had abducted John and where he was now. It was the first investigation about which she had pretended to know less than she actually did, rather than more.

  Thirty-six

  Alan was waiting for her in the Market Tavern across the street. The tavern’s walls were bare yellow brick decorated with brewery mirrors and GAA scarves, and the furniture was rustic-style pine. The bar was often packed out, mostly with a young crowd of students, but this was the middle of the afternoon and it was almost empty except for a young couple having a whispered but intense argument in one corner and Alan sitting under a picture of Muhammad Ali knocking out Joe Frazier, with a bottle of Satz in front of him, reading the Echo.

  He folded up his paper, stood up and kissed her on each cheek. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You look like you lost a cent and found a hundred euros.’

  ‘You could say that I’m the victim of a happy accident,’ she told him, sitting down. ‘Oh – I’ll just have an orange juice, thanks.’

  She quickly told him what she had seen and overheard outside Jimmy O’Reilly’s office. He listened without interrupting her, but then he said, ‘Were you ever aware before that this Jimmy O’Reilly might be gay?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘He was married before, but his wife left him for some store manager from Dunne’s, I think. I never really thought about it. I always assumed it was because he was such a misery-guts.’

  ‘Well, he might well be dancing at both ends of the ballroom, you never know. It certainly sounds like this young man is cadging money off him for some reason. Blackmail would seem the most likely. Maybe he’s found out that Jimmy O’Reilly is the father he never knew, or that he’s been fiddling the Southern Region’s performance records. But there could be any number of reasons.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Katie, ‘and I’m not counting eggs before they’re laid. I have O’Mara following him right now to see where he goes to get the money. It may be the bank, in which case I’ll have to think again. But Roisin Magorian definitely gave me the impression that he was being funded by somebody shady and that maybe that somebody shady was demanding more from him than compound interest.’

  ‘I never had you for such a theorist.’ Alan smiled.

  ‘I’m not, Alan. Not as a rule. But I’m looking for any way at all to rescue John and Kyna, and so long as there’s still a mole in the station I daren’t do anything official. I don’t want to set up a raid on Quilty’s house only to find they’ve been spirited away, the two of them, or that they’re dead already.’

  Alan nodded. He traced a pattern on the tabletop with his finger for a moment, like a butterfly, around and around. Then he said, ‘I’m going to ask you a favour. I’m thinking of taking a look at that premises on Keeffe Street.’

  ‘What do you mean by “taking a look”? You mean “breaking in and snooping around”?’

  ‘I mean paying a visit after dark without the owner’s knowledge or permission, yes. I’m personally interested in anything that might connect Quilty to drug-trafficking, or to his financing of the Authentic IRA, but of course if I can find anything else incriminating – anything relating to John and Kyna – I’ll let you know at once.’

  ‘And if you’re caught at it?’

  ‘That’s the reason I’m asking you a favour. If I’m caught at it, and arrested, you can make sure that it’s filed and quietly forgotten.’

  ‘What if it’s Bobby Quilty or one of his scumbags who catches you?’

  ‘Katie – I won’t be caught. I’ll go in there, I’ll search the place, I’ll leave. That’s all. It shouldn’t take me longer than a half-hour or so. Nobody will ever know that I’ve been there. But if I can find evidence that will help us to bring down Bobby Quilty for good and all—’

  ‘No, Alan,’ said Katie. ‘I can’t let you do it. It’s way, way too dangerous. Not just for you, but for John and Kyna, too. Don’t think that plenty of people haven’t seen us together, you and me. If Quilty catches you there, or finds afterwards out that you’ve been poking around there, he’s going to blame me for it.’

  Alan puffed out his cheeks and made a soft popping noise in resignation. ‘Very well. This is your manor, after all, which is why I needed to ask your permission in the first place.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to do it,’ said Katie, reaching across the table and taking hold of his hand. ‘But at the moment it’s still too risky. Let’s take it one step at a time. Softly softly, catchee whatever.’

  ‘Not a bother,’ said Alan, taking his hand away. ‘I understand exactly where you’re coming from.’ He turned sideways in his chair and crossed his legs and looked towards the bar, making no secret of the fact that he was put out.

  ‘Alan—’ Katie began, but then she thought: Don’t say it, don’t go there. You may be wrong and you need Alan right now. If you tell him what you really think – that he’s far more interested in clearing his own name than he is in saving John and Kyna – you could well be utterly unjust and he may refuse to work with you any more.

  ‘Apart from that,’ she said, trying to sound conciliatory, ‘I want you to follow James Elvin when he leaves the station tonight. See where he heads off to. If I understood their conversation correctly, he’s going to go somewhere and gamble. He might even come in here. They have Texas Hold ’Em nights every Wednesday. My guess, though, is The Bank at Clarke’s Bridge, or the Diamond Club on Father Mathew Street.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll do that,’ said Alan. ‘What time does this James Elvin usually finish?’

  ‘Five-thirty, give or take, unless Jimmy O’Reilly wants him to stay on for anything special. If you wait in reception you’ll be able to see him leave the station and follow him from there.’

  ‘Does he have a car? Supposing he drives off? What then?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely, because it’s a pig to park near either of those gaming clubs and they’re only a five-minute walk away.’

  ‘Okay. Grand. I’ll keep in touch with you and let you know if and when he goes into any gaming clubs. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll stay here in the city tonight.’

  ‘You left your bag at my house. What will you do for a change of clothes? And your razor and toothbrush?’

  ‘Marks and Spencer’s. I’ll manage.’

  ‘Is it something I said? We don’t have to sleep together if you don’t want to. You’re welcome to use the spare bedroom.’

  ‘No, no, Katie. It’s nothing like that. I just think you may be right. Let’s take one step at a time. Softly, softly and all that.’

  ‘I’ve upset you.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. We’re grown-ups, aren’t we? No
t only that, we’re police officers. At least you are.’

  There was a long uncomfortable silence between them.

  ‘Would you be wanting any more drinks there?’ the barman called over.

  ‘No, we’re grand, thanks,’ said Alan. ‘I’m on duty tonight, any road.’

  *

  She had only been back at her desk for five minutes before Detective O’Mara knocked at her door.

  ‘He didn’t see me,’ he said, a little out of breath. ‘I don’t think he saw nobody, to tell you the God’s honest truth, the way he was pushing people off the pavements.’

  ‘So where did he go?’

  ‘I was hard put to keep up with him, I can tell you. And he was wearing this maroony jacket which I never saw him wear before, and a grey hat pulled down over his eyes. If I hadn’t have known it was him I wouldn’t have known it was him.’

  ‘So... where did he go?’

  ‘Over the Trinity Bridge and then up Morrison’s Quay.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. He went up to Keeffe Street.’

  Detective O’Mara looked decidedly peeved, as if to say why the feck did you send me chasing out after Jimmy O’Reilly on a humid afternoon like this when you already knew where was going?

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Keeffe Street. Like there’s a tatty old office building on the left-hand side opposite the car park and he went inside. I didn’t follow him in, but I saw him at one of the upstairs windows for a moment, with his hat still on. He came out again – ooh, no more than ten minutes later – and then he came straight back here.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything? A bag, or a briefcase?’

  ‘A plastic shopping bag in his jacket pocket when he was on his way there, but he was carrying it on the way back like it had something in it, though I couldn’t see what it was.’

  ‘Thanks, Bryan. That was really good work.’

  Detective O’Mara hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what this is all about? Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly walks to Keeffe Street dressed up like some busker and comes back again carrying a bag full of something.’