‘I’ll be talking to them later,’ said Katie. ‘Meanwhile, thanks for all the work you’ve done on this. Let’s pray that we don’t get any more like it.’
*
As Katie was climbing into her car to drive to Anglesea Street her iPhone pinged. It was a text from Alan, saying: BQ’s pickup @ Keeffe St. CU l8er.
She texted him back, telling him that she would arrive at the station in less than fifteen minutes.
Almost immediately, before she could start the engine, Detective Sergeant Begley called her.
‘I’m at Leitrim Street, ma’am, but we’re getting no response at all. We’ve been shouting and hammering fit to wake the dead, but not a squeak. We called around at five-thirty, but they didn’t answer and we thought that maybe they were wrecked, the way they smoke and drink, those two, and we just couldn’t stir them out of their scratcher. But we came back twenty minutes ago to try again and we’re still getting nothing. I didn’t want to go barging in without a warrant, though, especially after all the trouble we had with Operation Trident.’
‘No, good man yourself, Sean. You’re wise to hold off. The courts have been taking a very dim view lately of raids without warrants – and apart from that, I don’t want to be ruffling Bobby Quilty’s feathers again, not so soon, anyway. Post a uniform there to keep an eye on the place, will you, just in case the two of them make an appearance, and find yourself a District Court judge for a warrant. I’m on my way back to the station from Wilton so I’ll see you after.’
As she drove east along the South Link Road, Katie began to feel increasingly apprehensive. She wasn’t particularly worried that Chisel and Sorcia couldn’t be roused. It wouldn’t surprise her if Bobby Quilty had kicked them out of the house on Leitrim Street, or maybe Detective Sergeant Begley was right and they were too hung over to be woken up. But it was time now to put her plan into action and she was losing confidence that it was going to work out. There was so much that could go wrong, right from the very start, or simply not happen at all. What if she had completely misjudged Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly and James Elvin? Even if she hadn’t, what if Bobby Quilty didn’t react the way she expected him to? It was like one of those elaborate games in which a ball rolls down a slide and drops on to a hammer which activates a catapult which knocks over a row of dominoes.
She turned into the Garda station car park. The trouble was, she still couldn’t think of any other way to try to rescue John and Kyna that wouldn’t risk them being moved to another location where they couldn’t be found, or even killed. Bobby Quilty had to be put out of action quickly and effectively, and if possible, legally – although she had decided that she would worry about the legality of what she was planning if and when it had worked.
She was pleased and relieved to see Alan waiting for her in the reception area. He was wearing a light fawn Gentleman’s Quarters jacket which was obviously new and he looked as though he had slept well last night. Before she went over to him, though, she approached the garda sergeant at the front desk and said, ‘Has Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly come back yet?’
‘About ten minutes ago, ma’am.’
‘Thanks,’ said Katie, and walked across to where Alan was sitting.
‘You’re looking worried,’ he said. He stood up and half raised his arms as if he wanted to hold her close, and kiss her, and reassure her that everything was going to be all right – but of course he couldn’t, not in front of the desk sergeant and all the other gardaí and visitors who were coming and going.
‘Let’s go up to my office,’ she said. ‘I have the tracker ready for you, and the briefcase.’
‘Good. I walked past Keeffe Street on my way here and Quilty’s pickup is parked exactly where it was before, with the same shamfeen guarding it.’
‘I’ll give you fifteen minutes and then I’ll go and see Jimmy O’Reilly. That should light the blue touch-paper.’
‘You’re still sure you want to go ahead with it?’
‘I don’t have any choice, Alan. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But I have to try.’
They went up to Katie’s office in the lift. She smelled that black pepper and cinnamon fragrance on him again, but they still didn’t touch or exchange any kind of intimate look. There was CCTV in the lift and more cameras along the corridors.
Once they had reached her office Katie went straight over to her desk, unlocked her top drawer and took out a black GPS tracker, about the size and shape of a small mobile phone.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘MicroMagnetic Four, one of the newest available. I “borrowed” it yesterday from my drugs team. You can stick it under a wheel arch or anywhere you like. I’ve already set up the mapping panel for it on my laptop and a mapping app on my phone. The second Quilty moves off we’ll be able to see where he’s headed, and it’ll show his position every five seconds after that.’
She handed it to Alan, as well as a cheap brown briefcase packed with thirty or forty sheets of A4 paper. ‘Don’t worry if you lose any of the documents. They’re only last year’s council minutes on flood defences.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give me fifteen minutes or so, that should be easy enough. In any case I’ll text you as soon as it’s done.’
There was no CCTV inside her office and Katie was tempted to give him a kiss. Even if his true motive was revenge, he was being brave and he was helping her. Instead, though, she touched her fingers to her lips and smiled at him and said, ‘Be careful, that’s all.’
‘Careful? Do you know what they called me in the service? “The Underwriter.” Before we went out on a shout I always insisted that we ran through every conceivable risk. I might have been mocked for it, but it saved some lives, I can tell you.’
‘Just make sure you take care of your own life,’ said Katie.
Alan touched his fingers to his lips in the same way that she had, and left.
*
It was a bright, warm afternoon, with a gusty breeze blowing so that the grey surface of the River Lee’s south channel was ruffled. It took Alan less than five minutes to walk along Copley Street, cross the river on to Morrison’s Quay, and walk up towards Keeffe Street. He walked quickly because he was keeping his fingers crossed that Bobby Quilty hadn’t finished his business for the day and driven off home.
When he reached Keeffe Street, though, he saw that the black Nissan Navara pickup was still parked on the demolition site, and that the hard-looking guard was still leaning against it, with his arms folded, looking almost terminally bored.
Alan entered the demolition site, walking slowly between the double line of parked cars. He stopped when he was less than twenty metres away from Bobby Quilty’s pickup and took out his mobile phone, as if he were answering a call. Loudly, he said, ‘Yes, yes! Of course, Bill! No, man, I have it with me! Hold on, I’ll find it for you!’
With deliberate awkwardness, he wedged the mobile phone between his ear and his upraised shoulder, lifted the briefcase and opened it. He took out the sheets of paper and started to shuffle through them.
‘I have it here somewhere, Bill! Yes, just hold on a moment, would you?’
Bobby Quilty’s guard showed no interest in him, but yawned ostentatiously.
Alan shuffled through more papers, and just as another gust of wind rose up, he dropped them all. They flew everywhere, flapping and dancing across the demolition site. Some of them caught against the wheels of Bobby Quilty’s pickup and some of them disappeared underneath it altogether. Some of them wrapped themselves around the guard’s ankles and he irritably kicked them off.
‘Sorry! Sorry! My fault! Sorry!’ said Alan, bending down repeatedly like a penitent monk and making futile attempts to snatch at the papers as they skipped away. The guard started picking them up, too, particularly those that were trapped up against the pickup’s wheels.
Alan circled round to the opposite side of the pickup and went down on his hands and knees so that he could reach for some of the papers that had blown undernea
th it. At the same time, he took the magnetic tracker out of his pocket and clamped it in a small rectangular space next to the exhaust pipe. Even if the underside of the vehicle was inspected with a mirror, it would be very difficult to detect it.
Eventually, he and the guard had gathered up all of the papers except for three of them that were tumbling away towards Fitton Street.
‘Thanks a million,’ said Alan, as the guard handed him two handfuls of crumpled-up papers. ‘I’m like a pig in reverse, me. Always dropping stuff. Dropped a scalding hot cup of coffee right on me foot only yesterday. Thanks.’
‘You’d best be getting after them,’ said the guard, pointing towards the papers that were blowing out of sight.
‘Yes, thanks! Thanks again!’ said Alan, and went off at a jog, stuffing the papers back into the briefcase as he went. Before he turned the corner, he glanced back and saw that the guard was leaning against the pickup again, with his arms folded exactly as before, oblivious to what had really happened.
Alan took out his mobile phone and texted Katie: Stuck!
*
Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly was on the phone when Katie knocked at his door, but he called out ‘Come!’ and when she stepped into his office he indicated that she should sit down opposite his desk.
‘Oh yes, it was pure moving,’ he was saying. ‘A fitting tribute to a very fine officer. Yes. So I’ll see you next week when I come up to Phoenix Park. That’s right, Thursday. All right, Diarmuid. Good luck to you so.’
He hung up the phone and then looked at Katie inquiringly, with his hands steepled and his head cocked slightly to one side.
‘Can I help you at all, Katie?’
‘Not really, sir, but there’s something you need to be aware of – just in case there are any repercussions, you know, like Operation Trident.’
‘Yes, well, I have some news for you on Operation Trident. It seems as if Bobby Quilty is prepared to withdraw his complaints about his home being broken into, and his unjustified arrest, so long as we compensate him financially for the damage caused to his property. He has also asked that we issue a media statement to the effect that we were acting on misleading information and that he is not under suspicion for any offence or misdemeanour.’
‘Holy Mary, what else does he want? A civic reception and a year’s free subscription to Ireland’s Own?’
‘There’s no need for cynicism, Katie. I understand that you feel defensive about Operation Trident, but if Bobby Quilty is prepared to overlook it then so am I – and so, too, is the deputy commissioner in charge of operations.’
‘You’ve discussed it with her?’
‘Of course. I have to say that she’s prepared to be much more lenient than I would have been if I had been in her position, but then it’s all girls together these days, isn’t it, from Frances Fitzgerald downwards. So long as you’ve learned a lesson from this, and we don’t have any more debacles like Operation Trident.’
He pronounced ‘debacles’ with a long ‘a’ like ‘di-bahh-kulls’.
‘I can’t guarantee it,’ said Katie. ‘In this job, you can never tell what misleading information you’re going to be fed, can you?’
‘All I can say is, Katie, don’t let anything like it ever happen again. Now, what was this something that I need to be aware of?’
‘It’s the Doherty family, sir.’
‘Oh, yes. What about them? Very sad case, that.’
‘It said in the message that was found with their bodies that they were shot in revenge for the Langtrys back in 1921. Because of that, we checked up on their genealogy. You know, just to see if they really were related to any known IRA soldiers at the time. Apart from anything else, we were hoping that it might solve the question of who shot them, and why.’
‘So did it?’ asked Jimmy O’Reilly. He started to open and close his desk drawers as if he were looking for something, or wanted to show Katie that he wasn’t really very interested.
‘No, it didn’t, unfortunately. But the big surprise was that the Dohertys were direct descendants of Niall Quilty, who was one of Captain Frank Busteed’s men – you know, the IRA contingent who set up the ambush at Dripsey.’
Jimmy O’Reilly stopped opening and shutting drawers and looked up. ‘Niall Quilty, did you say? You’re not telling me that he was related in any way to Bobby Quilty?’
Katie held up a torn-off sheet from her notebook. ‘I have it all here, sir. According to the Quilty family tree, Niall Quilty was a cousin of Bobby Quilty’s grandfather. One of his daughters married a Doherty and their youngest son was Kevin Doherty’s grandfather, so the family connection to Bobby Quilty is very close. Essentially, the Dohertys were Bobby Quilty’s cousins, only three generations removed.’
‘Oh, I see. That is a surprise. So how’s your investigation into the Doherty murders coming along? Do you have any idea yet who might be responsible?’
‘Apart from that message, and the suggestion that the killers might have been UDA or UFF, nothing at all so far. Dr Kelley has only just completed her autopsy and the technicians are working on the ballistics, but there was scarcely any forensic evidence and no eyewitnesses.’
‘So how do you rate your chances of catching them?’
‘At the moment, zero to nought per cent,’ said Katie. ‘But it’s very early days yet. I’ll be in touch with the PSNI and they may be able to give us a lead.’
‘Fat chance of that, if they really were UDA.’
Katie nearly said, There’s no need for cynicism, but she kept her mouth shut. Jimmy O’Reilly stood up, walked over to the window, and then came back and sat down again. Katie could tell that he was deeply agitated by what she had just told him. He drummed his fingers on his desk as if he were trying to make up his mind about what to do next, and Katie could easily guess why. Should I tell Bobby Quilty that the Dohertys were related to him, or should I say nothing at all? What if I don’t tell him but it comes out later? At least, that’s what she imagined he was thinking. She could be wrong.
After a long silence, Jimmy O’Reilly said, ‘What do you have there? The family tree, is it?’
‘That’s right. Of course, most of the family records before 1922 were lost in the Four Courts fire, but we found the connection between the Quiltys and the Dohertys in the parish register in Inniscarra.’
‘Can you make me a copy of that?’
‘Have this one,’ said Katie and handed him the sheet of notepaper. ‘I thought you ought to know about it, that’s all, in case Bobby Quilty was accused of something else that he hadn’t done.’
‘It’s not a joke, Katie,’ said Jimmy O’Reilly. ‘We know perfectly well what Bobby Quilty gets up to, but it all comes down to manpower and budget. Let Revenue deal with him. He’s much more their problem than ours.’
Katie stood up and said, ‘I’ll let you get on, then, sir. Thank you for the update on Operation Trident. I appreciate it.’
Jimmy O’Reilly was frowning at the family tree that she had given him. ‘Hmm,’ was all he said, and raised his hand to acknowledge that she was going.
Forty-one
Half an hour later, when she was sorting through all the paperwork that had piled up on her desk, she heard a click from her laptop and saw that Bobby Quilty’s pickup was leaving the car park on Keeffe Street. She kept her eye on the little blue vehicle symbol as it flashed up every five seconds on the MicroMagnetic mapping plan. She watched it crossing over the Michael Collins Bridge and then turning north up Ship Street and she wondered if it would continue heading north. It stopped at the end of Ship Street, but then it turned eastwards on the Lower Glanmire Road, towards Tivoli, in the direction of Bobby Quilty’s house.
Alan had only had coffee for breakfast so he had gone across to the Market Tavern for a drink and a beefburger. He, too, was following Bobby Quilty’s progress with his mobile phone app, and he texted Katie: The Big Fellers on the move. Going home by the looks of it.
Katie thought: Maybe Jimmy O’Reil
ly hasn’t been in touch with Bobby Quilty yet. Or maybe he has been in touch with him, but Bobby Quilty isn’t interested in historical vendettas. Or maybe he is interested, and he’s raging about it, but he’s going to arrange for somebody else to do the dirty deed for him. On the other hand, maybe I’m dead wrong about Jimmy O’Reilly and he would never pass confidential information to anybody, especially a scummer like Bobby Quilty, no matter what personal pressure he was under.
She almost felt guilty for suspecting him. So what if he was homosexual and James Elvin was blackmailing him for money? That didn’t necessarily mean that he would breach Garda security, just to protect his own reputation. He had a very impressive record of service, even if he was old-school and intolerant of women being promoted any higher than tea-makers and crossing-patrol officers.
Bobby Quilty’s pickup turned into Tivoli Park and stopped. There was nothing that Katie could do now except wait and see if he suddenly drove off somewhere else. Alan texted her: Dont panic. He may not have heard yet. Or hes making some calls to find out who did it.
Glad UR so confident! Katie texted back.
There was a pause, then Alan replied: It wont be over till the fat man gets scooped.
Katie went back to her paperwork. She was having to deal with complaints from victims of crime in rural areas that detectives were either late in responding to robberies and assaults or not turning up at all. In some villages the closure of Garda barracks was leading to crime waves, with hundreds of thousands of euros of farm machinery being stolen and elderly people assaulted and robbed in their own homes.
‘I never answer the front door now after dark,’ one complainant had written. ‘I never know who it might be – a neighbour come for a chat, a priest come to pray, or a knacker come to rob me.’
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