Loughnane’s eyes were fixed to Deirdre’s face, trying very hard to read her, to figure out what she knew.
Deirdre wanted him off balance. She smiled at him warmly.
‘You don’t know who you’ve had to stay?’ she asked. ‘Jesus, I could count on one hand the number of people I would invite into my home, to stay overnight. My sisters, sure. A couple of old friends from college. That’s about it. But you’re different, are you, Mr Loughnane? You like a lot of company?’
Loughnane was flushing a little now. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But I do have guests from time to time.’
‘But not strangers,’ Deirdre said. ‘You wouldn’t let a stranger stay in your house.’
Loughnane hesitated, but Deirdre’s obvious incredulity drove him to an answer. ‘No,’ he said.
Deirdre nodded. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘So, give me a few names so. The dates don’t have to be exact, just approximates will do. I can call everyone to check. Probably some people keep diaries. Or they’ll be able to check back over their text messages, see when you made arrangements. Phones are so handy like that. All that information, at our fingertips.’
‘I’m not sure . . . I can’t recall . . . my sister might have been down. With my mother, at Easter.’
Deirdre nodded again, made a show of noting the information down in her notebook. She took the sister’s name, the mother’s, both phone numbers. ‘Great,’ she said. She allowed her brow to furrow. ‘But I’m really thinking about someone who might have been here a lot. Regularly. Day in, day out type thing. You can’t think of anyone who fits that bill?’
Loughnane shook his head slowly. The confidence with which he’d started the conversation had slowly deserted him.
‘Right,’ Deirdre said. ‘So it’s just you then.’ She turned a page in her notebook. ‘Talk to me about the gym. How was it that you came to be working there?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The gym. Sorry, let me just . . .’ Deirdre flicked back a page, read out loud. ‘Rocket Gymnastics, on the Ballymoneen Road. Am I right in thinking you’ve done a bit of work there?’ She raised her head, wrinkled her forehead as if she was unsure of herself. She was fishing, actually. They knew Jason Kelly had worked at Rocket Gymnastics – Cormac Reilly had found that out at the very beginning. The gym owner had since admitted that Kelly had brought another man on the job with him on at least one occasion. It would be a deeply stupid move on Loughnane’s part to confirm that he had spent time at the gym, but she had him scrambling now, certain that she knew something, but not sure how much. Assuming the second man had been Loughnane, he would be thinking about the times he visited the gym, wondering who could have seen him, realising that it was possible that he had been seen. With the number of cameras around these days – all those private security cameras that people could buy for half nothing – he could even be on film. He would decide it would be too risky to deny it. He would need a plausible explanation.
‘No. I . . . uh, I didn’t work there, in the end, but I did swing by. Do you know, I had forgotten all about it? I’m sure you hear that a lot.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘But in my case, it’s the truth, of course. I bumped into Jason outside one day.’ He gave a nod towards the front window that looked out on the street. ‘He asked me if I was interested in helping him finish a bit of work he was doing at the gym. I dropped by one afternoon and had a look.’
Deirdre nodded, as if that made sense, and slowly, slowly, took notes. ‘Right. And what date was that?’
‘I’m not sure. I’m sorry, but I can’t remember.’
‘That’s all right,’ Deirdre said. ‘Could it have been in August? Late August?’
Loughnane grimaced. ‘That could be right. I’m sorry, I wish I could be sure, but I’d almost forgotten about it entirely.’
‘What went wrong?’ Rory asked. He was staring fixedly at Loughnane. Deirdre wanted to stand up and pat him on the back. He was listening, and he was on her side.
‘Sorry?’ Loughnane said.
‘With the work. Why didn’t you do the work?’
‘Uh . . . the best I can remember is that it was some carpentry work, and I think I felt the quote wasn’t high enough. You know, Jason was a bit of an odd-job man. He did a bit of everything. But I’m a qualified carpenter and I can earn more working for developers. Doing bigger jobs.’
Deirdre nodded. ‘It’s a pity he didn’t tell you that before he dragged you over there.’
‘Right, well, I suppose I might have been passing. I don’t remember it as a big deal.’
‘Sure,’ Deirdre said, finally allowing her scepticism to show.
Loughnane gathered himself, clearly deciding that umbrage might be a better tack to take. ‘Look, this is all very odd. Jason Kelly was my neighbour, that’s it. I don’t understand all these questions. Should I . . . I mean, I don’t know, this all sounds ridiculous. But I feel like I should be calling my lawyer.’
‘Do you have a lawyer, Mr Loughnane?’ Deirdre asked.
‘I’m sure I can find one.’
Deirdre looked at Rory Mulcair, then back at Loughnane. ‘That’s a decision at your absolute discretion, Mr Loughnane. But while you’re having a think about that, and just to ensure that everything is covered, Garda Mulcair here will caution you.’
Loughnane reacted like Deirdre had slapped him. His expression was of mortal offence. ‘I . . . But this is all totally unnecessary. I don’t understand what it is you’re trying to say.’
Rory spoke in a monotone. ‘You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘Look, there’s no need to get formal. I’m happy to answer your questions. I just don’t know what it is you’re hoping to achieve. Jason is dead, isn’t he? The girl he took is at home safe with her family. And I had nothing to do with any of it. If I could help you, I would. Of course I would.’
‘Do you have a second phone, Mr Loughnane?’ Deirdre asked.
Loughnane shifted in his seat. ‘What?’
‘It’s a simple question. I’ve asked if you have a second mobile phone. I know you have a mobile phone registered to your name.’ She read out the number. ‘Do you also own a second phone, a pay-as-you-go phone, that you used to communicate with Jason Kelly?’
‘I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You didn’t send a text message to Jason Kelly on any of the following dates?’ Deirdre called out a list of dates taken from the data filter.
Loughnane shook his head. ‘No. No. That wasn’t me.’
‘On all of the dates I’ve mentioned, messages were sent to Kelly from a mobile phone that was in this house.’
‘You’re lying,’ Loughnane said. ‘You can’t tell that. You can’t tell exactly where a mobile phone is located. I mean, the general area, maybe, but not the house. Those messages could have been sent by anyone around here.’
‘Ah, that’s not going to work, Mr Loughnane,’ Deirdre said, all regret, as if she had been rooting for him all along and hated to give him the bad news. ‘The trouble is, you made a bit of a mistake. Did you carry both phones around with you all the time? Your normal phone and your secret phone?’ She waited. ‘I can see from your face that you did. Both phones left an electronic trail, you see. We can track the historic movement of your registered phone as it moves about the city, as you go to work, to the pub, to the cinema. As you go home. The thing is, the mystery phone leaves the exact same electronic trail. Exactly. Down to the metre. Down to the second. Isn’t that interesting?’
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Loughnane said. He looked like he was going to be sick.
‘I’ve tried to think of another explanation,’ Deirdre said. She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t come up with anything. Do you have any ideas?’
‘Maybe . . . maybe someone followed me.’
Deirdre frowned, looked down at her notebook, flicked through the pages
. ‘Followed you. To work every day. And home. For months?’
Loughnane said nothing.
Deirdre lowered her voice, spoke gently. ‘We’ve sent in a request for the text messages. That’ll take a week or two. The phone companies are bloody slow, you know. It’s not like on TV, where coppers get everything the minute they ask for them. It’ll take a while. But we’ll get them in the end. And when we do, what do you think we’ll find? I’m sure you were careful, but it’s hard to be careful for weeks, months, when you’re discussing something you both feel . . . strongly about.’
Rory was staring at Loughnane, couldn’t keep the disgust off his face, and Loughnane caught it. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I didn’t take her. That was all Jason.’
‘But you called him that day, didn’t you, Mr Loughnane? You called him to let him know the police were looking for him?’
‘I . . . No, I didn’t.’
‘Are you sure about that? It’s better to tell the truth, you know. Better if you cooperate now, when it counts, rather than later, when all the evidence is in and there’s nowhere left to go.’
Loughnane just sat there, looking back and forth between Deirdre and Rory, as if searching for a way out. Deirdre offered him one.
‘Kelly was very charismatic,’ she said. ‘The kind of man who could lead you down a path you’d never go down yourself. It might have been easy to think that he didn’t mean what he said. You might not have realised that he meant it all until he actually took her. Was that how it was?’
Loughnane’s eyes locked on Deirdre’s. He opened his mouth to speak, was teetering on the edge of a confession. ‘I didn’t think he was serious,’ he said. ‘I swear. I thought it was all just fantasy. Until he took her.’
Deirdre kept her expression as neutral as she could, suppressing the blazing surge of triumph that she felt. She clenched one fist down by her side where he couldn’t see it, until her knuckles whitened.
‘Why don’t you tell me all about it, Mr Loughnane? And we’ll see what we can do for you.’
‘I’m telling you, it was all just fantasy, as far as I was concerned. I never for a second thought he was serious. And I thought she was older, too. Sixteen, at least. I’d never be interested in a child in that way. I’m not a pervert.’
After that, the floodgates opened. Loughnane confessed to a prolonged conversation with Jason Kelly leading right up to the abduction. It was Loughnane who had seen Peggah first. He’d described her in detail to Kelly, who had gone along to the gym with Loughnane the following day and had become obsessed with her. He’d talked about taking her and Loughnane had encouraged it. Loughnane confessed, too, to calling Kelly immediately after speaking with Peter on the day of the abduction, tipping him off. Reilly had been right all along. It was that call that prompted Kelly to dump Peggah on the side of the road, to drive on to the lake. He’d been planning on sinking his car into the water, to get rid of it and destroy any forensic evidence at the same time.
Deirdre stood up.
‘Mr Loughnane, I’d like you to come in to the station now,’ she said. ‘We’ll take an official statement, in a little more detail, and we’ll compare it to the evidence from the phone records. And we’ll see where we go from there.’
Loughnane nodded reluctantly. Where they would go from there was directly to a charge of conspiracy to kidnap. Some part of him must surely know that. Deirdre felt giddy with success, and terrified that something could still go wrong. But Rory was there, taking his notes, his face flushed with anger and revulsion. Once they brought Loughnane in, Moira Hanley would have to follow the case through to its natural conclusion, and maybe Peter, at least, would be saved. Maybe that would make up in some way for what she had done when she had all but sent Reilly into a trap.
She walked Loughnane to the squad car, one hand on his shoulder, Rory following in her wake. Even if he never came back, she would track Cormac Reilly down and tell him about this. He deserved to know.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The house was on Erne Street in the south inner city of Dublin. Another Georgian terrace, but this one far from derelict. Cormac parked on the street outside the house and took a breath. He half expected someone to come knocking on the window. Did Matheson have protection? During the Troubles every garda commissioner had had a security detail. Since the permanent ceasefire, the question of a protective detail had become a more flexible one, dependent on ongoing risk assessment and, to some degree, a commissioner’s personal preference.
Kevin Matheson had been Commissioner of An Garda Síochána for a little over a year. He had taken over when the previous incumbent had been discreetly bumped into early retirement due to some political scandal. Matheson was a career cop. He was an uncontroversial choice for the acting role, considered a safe pair of hands during the lengthy recruitment process that was required for a permanent appointment. There had been some surprise when Matheson won the permanent role, though Cormac had seen it coming. He knew Matheson, if only slightly, and the man was a sharp operator.
Cormac clenched his fists for a moment, then gathered himself, picked up his laptop and got out of the car. It was near midnight and the street was empty. The house was in darkness. Cormac thought again about checking into a hotel, coming back in the early morning, but he had a real sense of urgency, as if delaying even an hour longer would cause disaster to unfold. He climbed the well-worn stone steps to the front door and pressed the bell. He waited with his back to the door, keeping his eyes on the street, checking both directions. He pressed the bell again. A minute later, he heard footsteps and a hall light went on. The door opened and Kevin Matheson was standing there. He was barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and looked seriously pissed off.
‘Commissioner, I’m sorry to wake you,’ Cormac said. ‘You may not recall but we worked together on a case a few years back. I’m—’
‘I know who you are, Reilly,’ Matheson said. ‘The better part of my day was spent trying to resolve a mess you seem to have been knee-deep in. What are you doing on my front porch?’
Cormac held up the laptop. ‘There’s something I need to show you, sir.’
Matheson didn’t look at the computer. He kept his eyes on Cormac’s face. ‘I’ve been told, by people I should trust, that you’ve been running off-the-book operations fuelled by paranoia and self-importance, that you’ve pulled others into your mess. You seem to be particularly good at getting officers to ignore their chain of command, getting them to do what you want them to. A cult of personality. That’s not what policing is about.’
‘Sir, I don’t think—’
‘It’s been recommended to me that you should be prosecuted for obstruction of a garda investigation, among other things. What are your thoughts on that?’
‘Well, obviously, I don’t agree,’ Cormac said, abandoning all attempts at careful civility. ‘And if you’re half the cop I think you are, then you already know that those people you should trust, as you call them, are the last people who should have your ear.’
There was a beat, a moment, where Cormac felt it could go either way, then Matheson stepped back and let him into the house. Matheson closed the door behind them and led the way into a small living room off the hall. It was sparsely but beautifully furnished, with polished hardwood floors, a wood-burning stove, a small couch and a single armchair. Matheson sat and gestured to the other chair.
‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Use them wisely.’
Cormac said nothing. The laptop was ready to go. He opened it, turned it so it faced Matheson and pressed play.
‘Yesterday there was a raid on the incinerator in Tullamore. You’ll have been told it was the culmination of an undercover operation into corrupt garda activities by Sergeant Trevor Murphy. That is not true. This is a video of Trevor Murphy shooting and killing a man by the name of Cahir Dempsey. Dempsey was a low-level drug dealer for the McGrath crime family. He wanted to get out of that world. Murphy killed him to send a m
essage to everyone involved that getting out wasn’t an option. That talking would be punished.’
Matheson was leaning forward, looking closely at the video, focused and taking it all in.
‘Sir, I believe that there has been corruption of the Garda Síochána on a large scale, and that Trevor Murphy and Superintendent Brian Murphy have been at the centre of that corruption for some years. I believe that they, and others, have been working hand in hand with the McGrath family to seize and resell drugs brought into the country by rival drug dealers. The story that Trevor Murphy was undercover is a convenient lie.’
The video came to an end, and Matheson looked up at Cormac. ‘I know,’ he said.
There was a pause. ‘Sorry,’ Cormac said. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know,’ Matheson said again. ‘Or . . . let me be clear. I’ve suspected for some time. But suspicion is easy. Proof, less so. This conspiracy, this corruption. It is more deeply rooted and more widely spread than I think you realise, Reilly.’ He put his head to one side. ‘Speaking of which, how did you know you could trust me? Or did you take steps to put this video into other hands, in case I should make it magically disappear?’
Cormac smiled grimly. ‘I thought about the kind of person who could be induced or blackmailed into joining a drug gang,’ he said slowly. ‘And then I thought about you. And I decided you’re just not that fucking stupid. Sir.’
Matheson laughed briefly, a little huffed out breath, quickly swallowed and Cormac felt a knot of tension unravel.
‘Well, the question remains, Reilly, what do we do about this? The challenges haven’t gone away. If they’ve corrupted even Internal Affairs, and I believe that they have, how are we to police this?’
Cormac tapped the laptop. ‘Trevor Murphy is as venal and self-centred as they come. And we have him, lock stock and barrel, for murder. We need to find where the bodies are buried, literally. Bring him in, offer him something. Once the McGraths know we have him for murder, they’re going to see him as a risk and they’re going to want rid of him. General population in any prison in the country would be a death sentence for him. Offer him protection and he’ll give us what we want. Christ, he’ll be motivated to give us what we want. He’ll be as keen as we are to expose every corrupt officer in the force because everyone who remains will be a threat to him.’
The Good Turn Page 33