Peter rubbed at his forehead with both hands, forced himself to sit up. He looked at the empty grate in the fireplace, at his plastic bag of microwavable shite on the counter. Then he picked up his phone and called Aoife. She answered on the second ring.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘Fine. How’re things?’ he asked. He listened for the sounds of hospital bustle in the background. If she was at work he’d ring off, let her get back to it. But it was quiet, wherever she was. He thought about their cosy little apartment and felt a wave of self-pity. Told himself to cop on.
‘How are you really?’ she asked. ‘I called you yesterday.’
‘Sorry, yeah,’ he said. ‘I meant to call you back.’
‘How’s it going with Des? Have you talked to him? Properly, I mean? Has he told you why he dragged you out there?’
Peter sat forward on the couch. He had his phone pressed to his left ear, his right hand pressed to his forehead. How could he explain the situation with Des? He didn’t understand it himself.
‘He seems to think he’s helping me,’ was the best he could manage. ‘He says he pulled me out of a bad spot. I’m getting a lot of lectures on how to be a good copper.’ He was trying to keep it light. The words didn’t begin to capture his confusion about his father, about the situation generally.
‘That’s a bit rich, coming from him.’
‘I suppose, to give him some credit, he has at least acknowledged that. Sort of.’
Aoife snorted, didn’t comment. She seemed to know that he had something specific he wanted to discuss and was waiting for it.
‘Did you see today’s paper?’ he asked.
She paused. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I saw today’s and the one before that. It’s all just noise, Peter. You can’t pay any attention to it. Normal people know it’s all bullshit. Clickbait.’
‘It’s a national paper, Aoife. It feels like it’s getting worse, not going away.’ Normal people, she’d said. He thought about Niamh. He’d called her, twice. The first time he’d left a message, apologising for missing their dinner. The second time he didn’t bother with the message. She never called back. She would have read all of this, seen the TV coverage. Did she think he was a murderer?
He’d expected Aoife to brush off his concerns with a few reassuring words, but instead she was silent.
‘I’m in trouble, amn’t I?’ he said. ‘It’s not going away.’
‘I don’t know, Peter,’ she said in the end. ‘It could go away. All it would take is for something else newsworthy to blow up, and people will move on.’ She paused. ‘Have you spoken to Reilly?’
He shook his head. ‘No. But we left things badly. I don’t know where I stand there, to be honest.’
They fell silent.
‘Aoife,’ he said quietly. ‘Part of me keeps thinking that maybe they’re right. I had other options. I could have jumped to the side, or tried to. I could have waited for backup at the bottom of the lane. I could have pulled the trigger once, and not three times.’
Aoife sighed. ‘It’s always easy, looking back, to see how things might have been different. But you did what you did for the right reasons. It’s the nature of your job to put you in situations where you have to make life-and-death decisions, sometimes with not enough sleep and no food and fuck-all support. It’s not the same, exactly, but trust me when I say that I know what it’s like. You have to learn to make a call in the moment, and then live with it, moving forward without destroying yourself with regrets. You did your best, Peter.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘How’s Maggie?’ Aoife asked after a beat, her tone a bit lighter, as if she wanted to cheer him up.
Peter let out a shaky laugh. ‘God, Aoife. Things aren’t great there either.’ He filled her in on Maggie’s condition, his conversation with the doctor. ‘Maggie would hate it, living in a nursing home. And I think the next time I talk to the doctor, he’s going to want to talk about that as an option. But I can’t make her decisions for her, you know? And she has this woman living in. Helping her out. She’s young, maybe her early twenties, and she has a young daughter. I get the feeling that moving in with Maggie was a godsend for them. If Maggie goes to a nursing home, then they lose their place too, don’t they? I feel like I’d be putting them out on the street.’
‘It sounds to me like you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself,’ Aoife said. ‘I think I’d bring Maggie into hospital, get her admitted for a few days. Have her monitored and get a medication review done. You might see a big difference. And maybe with the woman’s help, and a bit of extra nursing, Maggie could stay at home longer.’ Aoife sounded sad. She’d always had a soft spot for Maggie.
‘Yeah,’ Peter said. ‘I could do that.’
‘So where are you staying? If Maggie’s place is full?’
He told her about the shit-hole flat. Made it seem funny rather than tragic.
‘At least you’ll be back in Galway for the weekend,’ Aoife said. ‘You need a bit of normalcy. A bit of craic.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. He didn’t tell her that he was suddenly very unsure about going home. If the press coverage got worse, there would be names named and pictures published. Ireland was a small country. Peter Fisher, killer cop. That’s who he’d be for the rest of his life. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
Friday 6 November 2015
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By ten o’clock on Friday morning Cormac was in the car and on his way back to Dublin, his freshly repacked bag on the back seat. The meeting with Matt and Internal Affairs was set up for two o’clock and he wanted to get to Dublin in plenty of time to check in to his hotel beforehand. He called Emma on the hands free as soon as he reached the motorway.
‘Corm? Can you give me a second?’ He could hear a murmur of voices in the background, then Emma came back on the line. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘You’re at work,’ he said. ‘Sorry . . . I meant to call you earlier. Forgot to set an alarm.’
‘It’s fine. Not a problem. How was your flight?’ She was distracted, her attention elsewhere.
‘Emma, look, I’m sorry I chased off yesterday. I should have stayed.’
‘You had things to do,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
‘Yes, but I should have stayed.’
More voices in the background. Someone speaking whose voice he couldn’t distinguish, Emma responding, ‘Well, put it back ’til twelve, then.’ A pause. ‘So, call him and ask.’ Another pause. ‘Just try, okay?’
She came back on the line. ‘I’m really sorry. Can I call you later?’
‘No problem.’
Cormac hung up, and the phone rang again two minutes later. He accepted the call without taking his eyes off the road.
‘Emma?’
A hesitation on the other end of the line. Then, ‘Sorry, no. This is Deirdre. Deirdre Russell. I’ve got the name you asked for.’
‘Deirdre. Right.’
‘You asked me to track down the people Peter spoke to on the day Peggah Abbassi disappeared. According to the file, he spoke to a guy called Francis Loughnane, a neighbour of Jason Kelly’s, at around two o’clock.’
‘Okay,’ Cormac said. ‘That’s great. Does Loughnane have a record?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing at all that I can see. But this has to be it, don’t you think? He must have tipped Kelly off.’
‘Mmm,’ Cormac said.
‘What do we do next?’ she asked. She was excited, eager to press on.
Cormac shifted in his seat, kept his eyes on the road. What they needed now was a warrant, and he could do nothing at all about that.
‘You’ll need to go to Moira with the theory and the information, press for her to get a warrant for Loughnane’s phone records.’
Deirdre was quiet for a moment. ‘She’ll never approve that,’ she said. ‘I told you, she’s out to get Peter. She wants to prove that Kelly wasn’t involved. She’ll hardly get a warra
nt that might prove the opposite.’
‘If you make a strong argument as to why the warrant is necessary, she’ll have no choice,’ Cormac said firmly. ‘Look. Moira doesn’t like Peter much, that’s true. And I think it’s likely that she was given a push to see this case in a particular light. But she’s not dishonest, and she’s not stupid. She’s going to have to cover her bases. Just make sure you document your theory about Loughnane on the permanent file before you take it to her.’
Cormac was fairly sure that Moira would approve the warrant application, if only because she wouldn’t expect to find anything. Loughnane would hardly have been stupid enough to call Kelly from his personal phone.
‘Okay, will do,’ Deirdre said, and Cormac felt another pang of guilt. Should he be doing this? Was he leading another young officer down a path that led to suspension or worse?
‘Deirdre, look. You need to be careful. I don’t want you crossing any lines here. It was fine that you came to me last night, and fine that you called me today, but after this you need to work within the confines of the team, all right? Look around. You’ll see that you have some allies there too. Talk to Dave McCarthy. He likes to act like he doesn’t care but he’ll have your back.’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘And stay away from the drug squad, right? From Healy and Trevor Murphy in particular.’
‘That won’t be too difficult,’ Deirdre said. ‘They left this morning for Dublin. Not due back ’til next week, as far as I know.’
That got his attention. ‘Dublin? Anything drawing them there in particular?’
‘I don’t know. But I could find out if you like?’
‘No. No, that’s fine, Deirdre. Better to stay away from all that, okay?’
They hung up and Cormac was left wondering if he should have shut her down from the off. He had every intention of doing whatever was necessary to pull Peter Fisher out of the hole he was in, but that could be done most effectively when he was back inside the fold, doing the work he was made to do. Playing games like this, drawing junior officers out and sending them on errands in direct defiance of their superior officer, this was . . . not him. Deirdre Russell needed to have faith in the system. He should be encouraging her to do good work within the rules, not to ignore them when it didn’t suit her.
Cormac pushed the thought away and focused his mind on other things for the rest of the drive. He had just pulled into the underground car park of his hotel when his phone buzzed again, this time a text from Deirdre.
H and M in Dublin for scheduled destruction of seized drugs, Tullamore incinerator, Sunday 2 pm. Let me know if you need anything else.
The address Matt had provided for the meeting with Internal Affairs led Cormac to a derelict Georgian terrace on Moss Street. The ground and first-floor windows of the house were boarded up, the front door had been replaced by something secure and functional and the walls displayed aging graffiti. Cormac stopped on the doorstep, looked around, and took out his phone to double-check the address. Yes: 31 Moss Street. He examined the door more closely, tried the handle and found that it was open.
Christ. The place smelled foul. Damp and rotting with an overlay of what might have been rat urine. It was dark too. There was light coming from a doorway at the end of the corridor, and Cormac, stepping carefully on crumbling floorboards, made his way towards it. He pushed open the door and found Matt and two strangers waiting inside.
‘Cormac.’ Matt offered a hand and they shook briefly. ‘This is Rebecca Murray,’ Matt said, indicating with a nod the only woman in the room. She was in her forties, blonde hair, tough looking. ‘And Aidan Kennedy. Aidan and Rebecca are both Garda Internal Affairs. We’ve been in communication about this issue for some time.’ Kennedy was tall and thin, where Rebecca Murray was all muscle. She wore jeans, boots and a bomber jacket, and he was in a suit and highly polished leather shoes. It would be a mistake to think they were anything other than a team, though.
There was tension in the room, as if Cormac had walked into the middle of an argument, but he got a thorough up-and-down examination from both of them before they exchanged a look that clearly communicated a multitude.
‘This is . . . picturesque,’ Cormac said, gesturing to their surrounds. ‘Is it strictly necessary?’
‘Where did you think we’d meet?’ Murray asked. ‘Phoenix Park?’
‘Bec . . .’ said Kennedy, in a placating manner.
‘Rebecca and Aidan thought it would be a good idea to meet away from headquarters,’ Matt put in. ‘There’s a fair chance you would be recognised, Cormac, and they don’t have any reason for meeting with you. It would draw questions.’
‘Look, I still don’t know what we’re doing here,’ Murray said. ‘No offence to you, Reilly, but you’re sticking your nose into places you have no business being. This is our operation.’
Matt opened his mouth to speak, to intervene, but Cormac cut across him.
‘What is?’ Cormac asked.
Rebecca Murray looked back at him, silent, but clearly pissed off.
Cormac spread his hands wide. ‘I’m asking, what is your operation? Because as far as I can see you’ve known for nearly two years that Anthony Healy and Trevor Murphy are on the take and you’ve done nothing. Murphy was promoted last year. Right now, they have more resources and more power than they’ve ever had. So what exactly is this operation of yours doing?’
Murray shook her head. ‘It’s very fucking easy to come in here with eagle-eyed hindsight, knowing absolutely nothing about what’s been going on, and point the finger at us. You have no idea how many times we’ve tried to go after those guys and failed. And before you jump to another conclusion and assume that me and Aidan are useless fuckers, we’re not. They’re just very well informed, and very well protected.’
Matt lifted a hand in a pacifying gesture. ‘Can we just all take a breath here? We’re on the same side.’
‘You don’t know that, Matt,’ Murray said. She raised a finger and pointed, all pent-up aggression. ‘You and Reilly here might be good mates from back in the day, but that means precisely nothing to me.’
‘You think I’m on the take?’ Cormac said mildly.
She looked at him, her expression flat. ‘You could be. This whole thing about your suspension – it’s all very visible, isn’t it? Could be that was all arranged just to put you in this room, with us. And even if it wasn’t, let’s say that the suspension is genuine, what good are you to us if you’re about to get the boot?’
Cormac laughed, shook his head. ‘Looks like I can’t win, right, Murray?’
‘We met you out of courtesy to Matt,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sharing a word of what we know with you, Reilly. Not a word. I don’t know you.’
‘Rebecca . . .’ said Kennedy.
‘No, Aidan. No way,’ she said.
Cormac looked her in the eye, tried to convey the seriousness and sincerity of his intent.
‘I’m not here to ask for information, or to wheedle my way inside your operation. I’m here to bring information to you, and to help you do something with it.’
She held his gaze.
‘Did you know that Trevor Murphy and Anthony Healy are personally supervising the destruction of drugs at Tullamore incinerator the day after tomorrow? The incineration is scheduled for two o’clock on Sunday, and Healy and Murphy have made changes to their schedules so that they can be there.’
Murray exchanged another long glance with Aidan Kennedy.
‘How do you know that?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Did you know it?’ Cormac asked.
Two blank faces looked back at him. They were trying hard to hide their thoughts, but if he was forced to bet on it he would have said they hadn’t known. Rebecca Murray had been all Jack-Russell-terrier in-your-face energy from the moment he’d arrived, and now her body language told him she was suddenly much less certain.
‘There’s only one reason Murphy and Healy have made those arrangements. They’re
not burning drugs. They’ve already switched them out and they’re going to supervise the burning of whatever they’ve switched them out with to make sure that nothing goes wrong.’
‘How do you know about the incineration, Cormac?’ Matt asked.
Cormac thought about how much to tell them. This lack of trust went both ways, but he supposed they had to start somewhere.
‘Someone I work with tipped me off, and I made a phone call to confirm it.’
‘Jesus, Reilly,’ Murray said. ‘You might as well have taken out an ad. Who did you talk to?’
‘I spoke to someone I’ve known for twenty years. Someone I trust,’ he said. ‘This is why you’ve been stuck for the past year. If you trust absolutely no one, you’re never going to make any progress.’
They stood there without speaking for a long moment. It was Kennedy who broke the silence.
‘Rebecca?’ he said.
Rebecca Murray took a breath, let it out. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. Let’s talk. But if we’re bringing you in on this, then you have to do something for us.’
‘Okay,’ Cormac said. ‘What is it?’
It was Kennedy’s turn to talk. ‘We want you to try to find someone.’
Cormac looked at Matt, who shrugged, eyes wide. Whatever this was, he hadn’t known about it.
‘There’s been a crackdown on CHIS. I don’t know if you’re aware . . .?’ said Kennedy.
‘I am,’ said Cormac dryly. It wasn’t exactly a secret. The old garda system of informants had been investigated and found wanting over the past number of years. The Covert Human Intelligence Sources system was the new garda system for managing and formalising the use of informants and it required gardaí to register their informants on the system, as well as the flow of information and money.
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