‘What?’
‘Take a look in the glovebox. See what’s in there. But be careful.’
Alan opened the glovebox. He put in his hand and took out two black woollen balaclavas, and then a Garda-issue SIG Sauer automatic.
‘You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘What did you think? That I was going to chase Bobby Quilty all the way up to Belfast and then do nothing but phone the police?’
‘No. Of course not. But you’re taking one hell of a risk here. You’re an awful scary lady, did anyone ever tell you that? I think I’m more afeard of you than I am of Bobby Quilty.’
‘You’ve used one of these SIG Sauers before, have you?’
‘Oh yes. I did all my firearms training with a two-twenty Carry.’
‘We’ll have to make it snappy, Alan. Really, really snappy. No hesitation at all. There won’t be any time for procedure or warrants or calling for backup.’
‘I’m with you all the way. You know that, don’t you? And I’ve done a fair few things myself that were off the menu, so to speak. But this – fewfff...’
‘Where he is now?’ asked Katie. They were approaching Fermoy themselves now, although she was keeping to the speed limit. There was no need to have Bobby Quilty’s pickup in sight when they were tracking him on the mapping plan.
‘Oh—’ said Alan. ‘He’s just passed the turn-off to Mitchelstown. He’ll have crossed the Cork county border into Limerick in a couple of minutes.’
Katie had guessed for herself how far Bobby Quilty had progressed but she had wanted to change the subject. She had enough doubts about what she was doing without Alan asking her if she wasn’t being too reckless.
Ever since they had left Cork City she had seen heavy grey clouds following them in her rear-view mirror, trailing veils of rain, and by the time they crossed over the Blackwater themselves the clouds were on top of them, like a huge grey blanket being dragged over their heads, and large clear droplets were starting to patter on the windscreen. As they reached Limerick it began to lash down, so that Katie had to turn on the windscreen wipers at full speed and the road ahead of them vanished in a fog of spray.
Alan said, ‘Weren’t you even tempted to go to America with John? I mean, for the love of God, think of the weather, if nothing else.’
Katie shrugged. ‘I still wake up in the night thinking that I made a terrible mistake. I could be living in San Francisco right now, happily married, working for Pinkerton’s. I might even have a child. Who knows?’
‘What was it that decided you? Not only your sense of duty, surely. I have a sense of duty – that’s part of what makes you decide to be a police officer in the first place. But I make plenty of selfish decisions, too.’
‘You decided you weren’t going to sleep with me again. Was that a selfish decision?’
‘No. Yes. In a way. Let’s just say that it was self-preservation.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘Meaning that I find you incredibly attractive, and sexy, and strong, and self-willed, and that I would probably find myself falling in love with you even if I haven’t already. And like I said before, having a relationship with you would probably rip us to bits. Well, it would probably rip me to bits, anyhow.’
Katie said nothing for nearly half a minute, while the windscreen wipers furiously flapped from side to side and the tiny car symbol on the mapping plan continued to click every five seconds.
At last she said, ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Of course I trust you. But I’m not sure that I could handle you. What we’re doing now, I don’t know how you had the nerve to think about it, let alone actually carry it out. From what you’ve told me, you fought tooth and nail to get yourself promoted to superintendent, but now you’re putting your entire career at risk, not to mention your life. And all for a man you never really loved.’
‘I didn’t say that I didn’t love him.’
‘You didn’t have to, Katie. If you’d ever really loved him, you’d be in San Francisco right now, sunning yourself, with your new child on your knee, instead of raking through the pissing rain in Limerick chasing after some fat revolting shitehawk like Bobby Quilty.’
Katie was about to answer, but then she didn’t. Maybe Alan was right. She had adored John. She could still close her eyes and think of the way that he used to make love to her, strong and slow and rhythmical, so that sometimes it was like being in a boat on a gently swelling tide, rather than a bed. She could still picture him standing naked by the bedroom window in the morning looking out, but then she could also remember that his eyes seemed to be focused far away instead of on the yard outside, and that she had always felt that she was gradually losing him. Once a man has left Ireland, he never finds it easy to return, not for good. But John was in danger now, appalling danger, and she couldn’t imagine how devastated she would be if she lost him.
‘Crossing into County Tipperary,’ said Alan.
*
The rain slowed Bobby Quilty’s pickup down to 90 kph, but on Katie’s laptop it still kept on clicking its way relentlessly northwards. After two hours Katie and Alan reached Kildare, where Katie pulled on to the hard shoulder at the side of the road and they changed places so that Alan could drive for a while. The rain was still hammering down, so they scurried from one side of the car the other as quickly as they could, like two characters in a silent comedy.
‘Jesus,’ said Alan, as he fastened his seat belt. ‘You hardly need a car in this weather. You’d be better off with a fecking speedboat!’
Katie said, ‘I’m going to close my eyes for a while. Wake me up if Quilty does anything strange.’
‘It has occurred to you that it may not be Quilty himself in his pickup, only a couple of his minions?’
‘It’s him all right,’ Katie told him.
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because he’s driving to Belfast to show the whole of the country that he’s not to be messed with, either him or his family. And the only way he can do that is by doing it in person. He thinks somebody’s challenged him and he’s not going to let them get away with it.’
‘But what if it’s not him? What if Jimmy O’Reilly hasn’t even told him and he’s just sent one of his little scummers on some errand or other?’
‘Then I’ll have egg on my lap, won’t I?’
‘Face.’
‘What?’
‘It’s “egg on my face”. Not “lap”.’
‘If that’s not Bobby Quilty in that pickup, then I’ll probably have both.’
She didn’t think she would be able to sleep, but the monotonous flapping of the windscreen wipers and the continual clicking of the laptop soon began to make her feel drowsy. She dreamed that she was in a car, driving through the rain, and then she dreamed that she was sitting in the kitchen at home, talking to her mother.
She was surprised and pleased that her mother was still alive. She looked very much like Katie, with her coppery red hair tied back in a loose, untidy pleat, and intense green eyes. She was wearing a cream-coloured smock with a broderie anglaise collar, which she had been wearing the day before she was taken to hospital to give birth to Moirin, and died.
‘I think you’re making a terrible mistake,’ said her mother, without looking up from her embroidery.
‘Why? I love him.’
‘You think you love him, but you’ve never been in love so you don’t know what love is. Not real love. Not the way your da and I love each other. Not only that, he’s a desperate chancer. You know he is. It won’t do you any favours in the Garda, being married to a man like that.’
‘Ma, I don’t care what you think. Me and Paul are going to get married and that’s an end to it. Paul! Come on, we’re leaving!’
Alan said, ‘Who’s Paul?’
Katie jolted and opened her eyes. Her shoulder was stiff from leaning sideways against the passenger door and her mouth felt dry. It was still raining and the winds
creen wipers were still furiously throwing themselves from side to side.
‘Did I say “Paul”?’ she said. ‘I was dreaming. I was having an argument with my mother about my first husband. Well, my only husband. He’s dead now.’
She peered out of the window and asked, ‘How long have I been asleep? I didn’t think I would actually sleep! Where are we?’
‘You’ve been out for half an hour at least. We’ve just passed Rathcoole. We’ll be going around the Dublin ring road in a few minutes, God help us. Let’s hope the traffic’s not too sticky.’
‘Where’s the—?’ Katie began, but Alan lifted up her laptop from where he had tucked it down the side of his seat.
‘I’ve been keeping track on the Big Feller on my mobile,’ he said. ‘He’s still heading north.’
Katie opened her laptop and saw that Bobby Quilty’s pickup had now bypassed Dublin city centre on the M50 ring road and was passing through Swords. From here, it would take them about another hour to reach the border with the North and then a further fifty minutes to get to Belfast. She reached behind her to the back seat, where she had left her large maroon leather tote bag, and took out two bottles of Celtic Pure water. She opened one and passed it to Alan.
‘Thanks. A cold Satz would have hit the spot, but this’ll do.’
The late rush-hour traffic around the M50 was slow, a carnival of red brake lights, but it kept moving and as soon as they had bypassed Dublin Alan was able to speed up. The rain was gradually easing off, too, and as they drove over the twisting River Boyne between County Meath and County Louth the clouds began to break up, so that the sun held up a few last silvery swords of light before it sank behind the distant trees.
At last they reached the southern suburbs of Belfast. Alan stayed in the driving seat because he knew the city so well, while Katie kept the mapping plan open on her lap and gave him directions.
‘He’s turning off the main road, left, on to the A55,’ she told him.
‘That’s the Monagh bypass, which goes off to the west,’ said Alan. ‘He won’t find many loyalists in that direction.’
Bobby Quilty’s pickup had slowed down now and they were less than two kilometres behind it.
‘He’s heading along Springfield Road.’
‘I think I know where he’s going,’ said Alan. ‘His cousin Maxy O’Mara lives just up here in Dunboyne Park. Maxy was always Bobby’s fixer. He’d get guns for him if he needed guns, or a car with a number plate that nobody could trace, or rent him a lock-up where he could store his smuggled fags if he’d shipped in too many. Jesus, Maxy O’Mara. We scooped Maxy more times than I can remember, but we were never able to get him up in front of a court.’
‘Not even a Diplock Court?’
Alan shook his head. ‘He wasn’t strictly a terrorist, that was the trouble. And we could never get enough admissible evidence against him. You remember that poem, “The other day, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there”? That’s what we used to call Maxy O’Mara when I was in the COD – “the Man Who Wasn’t There”. No matter where a witness testified that Maxy had been, he could produce two more who would say that he hadn’t been there at all.’
Katie watched Bobby Quilty’s pickup as it turned off the Springfield Road into Highcairn Drive. It travelled a few metres and then it turned left into a short cul-de-sac called Dunboyne Park, just as Alan had predicted. There it stopped.
Alan pulled into the forecourt of the Mount Alverno petrol station, about a kilometre and a half short of Highcairn Drive. ‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘Now what do we do?’
‘We’ll have to wait, that’s all,’ said Katie. ‘He might just have stopped for a comfort break. In fact, I’d say that’s a certainty, knowing him. But it all depends on what he does next.’
‘On balance, I think it’s unlikely that he’ll try to do anything tonight,’ said Alan. ‘He might have found out by now who it was who shot the Dohertys. If they were loyalists, though, like they made out they were, then even he’s going to be cautious about going into a staunchly loyalist area at this time of night. That’s if there isn’t an interface around it and it’s locked for the night.’
‘Quite honestly, I could use a comfort break myself,’ said Katie. ‘Keep an eye on him, would you? I won’t be long.’
When she came back from the petrol station toilet, Alan was standing beside the car with her laptop open on the roof.
‘Any movement?’ she asked him.
‘No. He hasn’t budged an inch. I reckon I’m right and he’s going to stay there till the morning. Listen – we don’t want to be sitting in the car all night, do we? What do you say we go back to my place? It’s only twenty minutes away and we can take it in turns to keep a watch on him. I can knock us up something to eat, too.’
Katie thought for a moment. It was a very high risk. If Bobby Quilty did decide to go after the Dohertys’ murderers tonight, and they lived in one of the nearest loyalist enclaves like Ainsworth Avenue or the Highfield Estate, it would take him only a few minutes to get there and by the time she and Alan arrived it might be too late. On the other hand, the murderers might live further away, and in any case she guessed that Bobby Quilty would want to spend some time relishing his revenge and making sure that his victims knew exactly what a fatal mistake they had made by killing anybody related to the Quilty family.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to think I was out of my mind, doing this.’
‘Well, me too,’ said Alan. ‘But like you said, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and we’ll have to think of some other way of rescuing John and Kyna.’
He laid his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Listen, if it would make you feel happier to stay close by and keep a watch on Quilty all night, I don’t mind doing it. I’ve done plenty of stake-outs before, albeit when I was a few years younger. The garage sells sandwiches and drinks, and there’s a toilet. What more do we need?’
Katie couldn’t help smiling even though she felt so tense and confused. ‘No...’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to your place. So long as we’re ready to scramble the second that Quilty makes a move. I have the feeling that you’re right and that he won’t try anything until tomorrow.’
‘You’re sure about that? I mean, you’re in charge.’
She looked at him and for the first time she could see in his expression that he accepted that she outranked him, even if he was no longer in the service, and that he was prepared to do whatever she told him. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering what he would be like if they went to bed now, if he would make love to her any differently than he had the first time.
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘But before we do, let’s just cruise past Dunboyne Park and take a look.’
Alan started the engine and they drove further along Springfield Road until they reached Highcairn Drive. On the left-hand side of the road there was a low brick wall and a hedge. On the right-hand side, there was a patch of rough grass, with a spiked steel fence behind it, and beyond the fence two terraces of houses. On the end wall of each terrace were paintings of masked men with guns, and loyalist badges, and the letters UFF, for the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
Katie had visited Belfast many times before, but mostly to the city centre, for meetings with the Crime Operations Department, and she had forgotten how blatant the hostility still was between republicans and loyalists. UFF could almost have stood for Us? Forgive and Forget?
Dunboyne Park was two neat rows of red-brick houses with neatly tended front gardens. About two thirds of the way down Katie could see Bobby Quilty’s Nissan Navara, with one of his men leaning against it, smoking. Even as Katie and Alan drove slowly past the entrance to the cul-de-sac she saw the man leave the side of the pickup and disappear into one of the houses.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope they’re all inside, sitting down to a pasty supper and tapping their feet to the Wolfe Tones’ greatest hits.’
‘I wish I’d met you years a
go,’ said Alan.
They turned around and then Alan drove them into the city centre. They crossed over the River Lagan, with the street lights sparkling in the water, and out to King’s Road, in the Cherryvalley area, which was lined with large detached 1930s houses – the prosperous Protestant part of the city. They turned into a small mews with modern blocks of flats at the end of it.
‘Home,’ said Alan.
Katie’s attention had been fixed on her laptop, making sure that Bobby Quilty’s pickup was still parked outside Maxy O’Mara’s house. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We’re here. That was quick.’
Alan led her in through the communal entrance and upstairs to his third-floor flat. He opened the door and switched on the lights and said, ‘Sorry about the mess. I keep meaning to tidy up, but somehow I never get around to it.’
The flat was very small, but very modern, with polished wooden floors and a kitchen with pine cupboards and black faux-marble work surfaces. The living room was bare except for a purple couch, a glass-topped coffee table and a bookcase. The only mess that Katie could see was a heap of crumpled shirts at one end of the couch and a stack of scribble-filled notebooks on the coffee table, along with a half-empty coffee mug and an oat bar wrapper.
‘I expect when I said I lived in Cherryvalley you imagined somewhere very grand,’ said Alan, picking up the shirts and carrying them through to the bedroom. Katie could see that there was a double bed, unmade, with a pale yellow bedspread, and a fitted wardrobe, but hardly enough space between the bed and the walls to walk around sideways.
He came out of the bedroom and said, ‘When I was married, of course, we had a three-bedroomed house and a garden and all. But can you imagine what this place cost me? €129,000! For a flat no bigger than a bus shelter!’
Katie sat down. She was beginning to feel very tired now.
‘What can I get you?’ he asked her. ‘Tea? Coffee? Wine? Beer?’
‘Tea would be good. I don’t drink on duty.’
When she said that, they both looked at the mapping plan on the laptop. Bobby Quilty’s pickup was still in Dunboyne Park. What he was saying, or doing, or planning to do, Katie couldn’t even guess.
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