"How many people are in there now, do you reckon?"
Livingstone turned for the first time. "Say nothing until we get inside. If anyone asks, you're with Symonds Auditors Limited."
Wilson was really starting to dislike Livingstone. Like two ordinary Joes would walk by the most well-publicised building in Ireland and not be discussing it. Still, he dutifully stayed silent as Livingstone swiped them into a nondescript building across from the Ark, signed him in past a security guard who was doing little more than holding up a uniform, and then into a lift to take them up to the sixth floor.
It was only when they were in the lift that Wilson realised quite how bad Livingstone's breath was. It smelt of barbecue crisps, off milk, and tramps feet. He also had a Jimmy Hill chin and a bit of a squint. He doubted that Livingstone’s absence on a Friday night was being unduly mourned by the Dublin dating scene.
"The bank only let us have the space if we pretended we're from a German auditing company, just here to run some feasibility tests on moving part of their operation. No company wants to be seen as publicly against the Ark. Priority number one is maintaining our cover."
"Right," said Wilson. "Don't mention the War. I did it once, but I think I got away with it."
Livingstone threw a sarcastic smile onto his face which did nothing to improve its aesthetic appeal. The lift doors opened, bringing the small-talk section of the evening to a close.
Livingstone swiped them into an area of open-plan office that looked deserted, save for a sliver of light from under an office doorway at the far end. They walked towards it, Livingstone placing his hand on the handle and stopping to give Wilson a look. "Can I remind you, yet again, that the existence and nature of the operation you're about to see is considered highly confidential."
"Noted," said Wilson.
Livingstone opened the door and they entered a large corner office. It was occupied by a woman in her forties and a chubby man in his twenties, that Livingstone pointed to in turn. "Brady, Tonks… this is Detective Wilson from the NBCI. The DSI says we've to give him every assistance with his investigation, provided it doesn't impinge on ours."
Wilson raised his hand in salute. Brady barely looked up from what she was typing to nod, Tonks waved enthusiastically from behind his bank of monitors.
"Any updates?" said Livingstone.
"Nothing much," said Tonks, in an unexpectedly chirpy voice. "That Polish couple are at it again up on the fourth floor."
"Christ," said Livingstone, "they're like rabbits."
Wilson moved around to stand behind Tonks as he looked at the three large computer screens before him, each showing four different camera feeds. "We've got eight HECs," said Tonks, "that's hidden external cameras to you, and we eventually got feeds of the CCTV footage from the nearby buildings as well. That took a while. Banks get awful funny about giving anybody access to their security systems. Now, we've got the building pretty much covered from outside, bar the areas where they've boarded it up, which is quite a lot of it. Every time they get a box of supplies, the cardboard is used to block another window."
"Why're they doing that?" asked Wilson.
"Well, partly because these offices aren't designed with sleeping in mind. So in practical terms, the people inside need to block out the light to get a bit of shut eye. They also know we're watching though, and they don't like it," Tonks beamed again, "well, apart from that Polish couple, they seem to actively seek out windows. They properly seem to get their ya-yas off that. Last week—"
Livingstone looked up from reading various things Brady was showing him on her terminal and coughed pointedly. Tonks pulled an ‘aw shucks’ kind of face.
"How many people are in there?" asked Wilson.
"We reckon about two hundred, but it's hard to judge from infrared. Not designed to deal with those kind of numbers in close proximity. Sniper reckons—" and then he stopped talking suddenly and looked up at Livingstone.
"Sniper?" asked Wilson.
Livingstone glowered at Tonks. "Codename. We've a man on the inside, have had for three weeks now."
"Right," said Wilson, "would he not be able to do a headcount?"
Livingstone picked up a stress ball from the table and pointed at one of the office chairs for Wilson to take a seat. He tossed the ball from hand to hand as he waited for Wilson to assume his assigned position.
"What you've got to understand is, in there," he said, pointing out the window to the Ark, "is something we've not seen before. You've got a very disparate group of people. Firstly, you've got your ordinary, everyday rough sleepers. Let’s call them group number one. People who'd most nights end up on the street if they can't get into a hostel. Mostly male but some women, variety of ages, quite a lot of them young people. Within that group, all sorts of mental health issues, rap sheets for petty crime, drug addictions of various forms – basically your unhappy buffet of human existence. We've sat down and gone through them with the local forces; there's a few with violent tendencies, but most are just poor bastards who fell through the cracks. A lot of them are the types that don't go to the shelters because they don't want to be around drugs. The most shocking thing is how far some fell. There's an honest-to-God architect in there. They don't all fit the profile you'd expect. Not by a long shot."
Brady looked up from her screen and tapped Livingstone on the arm.
"Kids," she said.
"Oh yeah," continued Livingstone, "there's also a few families with kids. Four, we reckon. It seems that when some people become homeless, they're terrified to go to the Social for fear of the kids being taken into care, so they ended up in there too. Along with them, there's group two - the foreign nationals. Mostly people who came here looking for a decent life and found it hard to come by. Eastern European, Africans. Some have been here a while. Came in the boom years and when the arse fell out of the economy, they'd no safety net. Others came here pretty recently we reckon. That lot makes us nervous, because we don't know who most of them are."
He pointed to a corkboard behind him that featured long-range photographs of various people. Some had names, but many just had question marks beneath them.
"Then," continued Livingstone, "you've got your professional protester types; the kind that do actually have homes but the need to piss mummy and daddy off supersedes all others. Most of them we know. They've protested bypasses, water charges, pipelines, evictions. You name it, they've held a placard for it. They spend a whole lot of their time arguing with each other about stuff, but they're mostly harmless. Then there's group four…"
Livingstone turned to Brady and she handed him a folder.
"These are the ones that keep us up at night." Livingstone pulled out a picture and handed it to Wilson. It was of a man of about six foot two, with an extensively tattooed gym-body build, maybe mid-thirties. "Andy Watts, career militant. Born in Barnsley but lived all over since his dishonourable discharge from the British Navy where he was a Signals Engineer. Calls himself an environmental socialist these days, but he's basically spent his life looking for a fight. He’s tried to join any organisation with the word ‘militant’ attached to it. Interpol have a long file on him. He's currently wanted for an assault in Germany. Nasty piece of work, but from what we've been told, not that bright."
Livingstone handed Wilson another photo, this one of a brunette woman in her late twenties, with a lot of piercings and tats. "Belinda Landers, Belgian national. The wild-arsed progeny of a famous Belgian family, would you believe. I didn't even know such a thing could exist. Grandad was a highly regarded left-wing politician, mother came second in Eurovision…"
"With the ‘La La La’ song," interrupted Tonks.
"Yeah," said Livingstone, seemingly irritated by the fact he'd failed to knock the enjoyment of life out of Tonks yet. "Point is, she went looking for trouble too, and found it with Watts. Been boyfriend and girlfriend for a couple of years, although it's one of those open relationships. Watts has a temper, Belinda seems to enjoy watching
it blow. Between them, they've enough issues to keep a whole building’s worth of shrinks in business."
Livingstone handed another picture across. This was of a thin man with long white hair who looked to be perhaps in his sixties but in good shape for it. "This one is Gearoid Lanagan; Irish and proud, but a real superstar of international naughtiness. Born in Offaly, he joined the INLA at an early age but, following a bit of a falling out, he took the show on the road. Went to Germany in the eighties and was linked to the Red Army Faction, the German terrorist group that came out of that Baader-Meinhof lot. The group was active for over twenty years; kidnapping, assassinating and the like. While Lanagan was pictured talking to people around the edges, they could never link him to anything. He then disappeared completely, showing up again in Colombia in the Nineties. They reckon he was helping FARC turn cocaine into guns but again, no proof. Then he was gone again, off the radar for five years. Interpol located him in 2006 in France, but they don't reckon he was there long. He was also pictured a couple of years ago hanging out with some of those ‘good old boy’ militias the Yanks have. He's smart and clearly morally flexible. He's also," said Livingstone, as he pointed out the window, "got a lot of influence in there."
"Really?" said Wilson, "I mean Franks is hardly the militant sort."
"Ah, but that's it. Lanagan is a smart cookie. They'd a couple of incidents, you see. Think about it. You get people with drug problems, mental health issues all crammed in one place with a bunch of ordinary citizens, stuff is going to happen. Couple of fights, bit of thievery, one guy getting way too friendly with the hands. Lanagan dealt with it all and made himself invaluable in the process. Became a sort of de facto head of security. Father Franks is all big picture and nice speeches, odds are he has no idea who Lanagan and his fellow travellers really are. We tried to open up lines of communication but Lanagan has fed the paranoia, so Franks doesn't trust us or the government boys at all. At the end of the day, Lanagan hasn't got any meaningful convictions and no outstanding warrants. All we've got is what Interpol reckons."
"Jesus," said Wilson, "he sounds like a scary fucker."
"That he is," said Livingstone, "and we can't really figure out what his angle is. Which brings us to our really fun joker in the pack."
Livingstone handed him a fourth picture and then put the empty folder down on the desk. This one was of a stockily built man of about five foot ten, with a shaven head, glowering directly down the lens of the camera. "He's calling himself Adam but we're pretty sure that isn't his real name. We have tried everything and neither us, nor Interpol, nor even the CIA have the first clue who this bloke is. He hardly speaks, and there are conflicting reports that he might be Irish, Scottish, American or even Canadian. All we know is he reeks of ex-military, but whose, we've no idea. Sure as shit, nobody is claiming him."
"Right," said Wilson, "so these four are around Franks and the good father doesn't realise quite who they are. Are they in communication with the outside world?"
"Oh yeah, all the time. They've got mobiles, and we can't get a trace because we can't narrow down to their numbers. There are dozens of phones in there and no judge is going to give us a licence to tap all of them."
"Can't you block them?"
"If only," said Livingstone.
Brady spoke up properly for the first time, in the kind of husky voice that sounded like forty-a-day. "Take a look around you, Detective. You're in the middle of a financial services centre. Have you any idea how much hassle we'd get if the mobile phone network went down?"
Wilson ran his hands through his hair. "I assume you've seen the news?"
"The Púca," said Tonks in a deep, ominous voice. "Yeah. Fun name."
"Christ," said Brady, "shut up and make some tea, would you Mark?"
Tonks stuck his tongue out and exited the room, clearly in a huff. Wilson imagined there'd be discussions about professional behaviour as soon as he left.
"Do you think Lanagan could be behind it?" asked Wilson.
Brady and Livingstone exchanged a look.
"We're not saying he is, and we're not saying he isn't," said Livingstone, in a deliberate way that gave the impression that he and Brady had agreed this beforehand. "What we can tell you is: one, I certainly wouldn't put it past him; and two, four nights ago Adam snuck out through a fire exit and managed to break through the ring of steel. Now, not only do we not know who he is, we don't know where he is."
Wilson looked at the pictures in his hands again. It looked like Detective Superintendent Burns wasn't going to be getting that quiet life any time soon.
Chapter Nineteen
"I am so sorry," said Brigit, for what she was aware was at least the twentieth time. Apologising for something was supposed to make you feel better about it, but it hadn't helped so far.
Dr Sinha did not raise his head up from dangling forward over a teatowel to avoid getting blood on the sofa. "Honestly, it is fine. Don't mention it. I should not have startled you."
Brigit sensed that her apologies were now reaching the point of being potentially very irritating. She resisted the urge to apologise for that too.
"I'm really not a violent person."
"Of course not, Nurse Conroy," said Dr Sinha, without any trace of irony as he briefly held the wad of blood-soaked tissue away from his nose to examine it.
Brigit thought that she'd never been more embarrassed in her life, and then was horrified when the memory of answering the door to Paul two nights ago popped into her head. "I've just… it's been a very stressful few days."
"I can imagine. I heard you had taken a sabbatical after the incident involving Dr Lynch."
"Yes, well, that's one way of putting it. I didn't think you'd know about that."
"Nurse Conroy, you handcuffed a doctor naked to a bed for eight hours. That is the kind of thing that gets around."
"Oh God."
"Don't be embarrassed. I'd imagine you are a folk hero to every nurse in Ireland by now, and a few of the doctors as well. Dr Lynch does an impression of my accent. He finds it most amusing."
Brigit had known Dr Sinha for eight months, but it wasn't like they were friends. They had first met when he'd patched Paul up after he'd got stabbed in the shoulder by a homicidal octogenarian, although judging by what Paul had done since, that may have been pre-emptive karma. Since then, she'd met Dr Sinha occasionally through work. He'd always been cheerful, polite and really quite formal. All she knew about him was that he was from India, he'd moved over here a couple of years ago and the nurses considered him good, nurses being the only people who can really tell. They had never met socially. She had no idea what he was doing at her apartment. That would've been her first question if she'd not assaulted him.
Dr Sinha lifted his head up and gingerly felt his nose.
"The bleeding has stopped and no bones are broken," he diagnosed with a tentative smile.
"I'm really—"
Dr Sinha held his hand up to stop her. "There is absolutely no need, Nurse Conroy."
"OK, I'll make you a deal. I'll stop apologising if you stop calling me Nurse Conroy. I've known you for a while now, you're in my apartment and I've properly clocked you one. I reckon that puts us on a first name basis. It's Brigit."
"Alright, Brigit," he said, taking a foreigner's care to try and get the pronunciation right. "In that case, please call me Simon."
"Honestly, I'm really good with languages, I can use your real name."
He smiled and nodded again. "I appreciate that, but it really is Simon. My parents are not terribly religious and my father is an enormous Paul Simon fan."
"Oh," said Brigit.
"Don't be embarrassed, it is a common assumption. You can only imagine how difficult life is for my sister Garfunkel."
Brigit laughed nervously at first, and then properly as her confidence grew that this was definitely a joke.
"OK, Simon, well, can I get you a cup of tea then?"
"Oh, no, thank you. I actually have to get
moving. I have a… I am meeting a young lady for a drink tonight."
"Right," said Brigit. "In light of this new information, can I break the previous agreement and apologise yet again."
"Nonsense. My nose will be an excellent conversation piece and besides, what are the chances of getting punched in the face twice in one evening?"
"Fair enough," said Brigit.
"The reason I am here is… I believe you are looking for a friend of yours, a Mr Bunny McGarry?" Dr Sinha said the name in such a way that indicated that, while he was fairly certain he had the right words in the right order, he couldn't believe they were a name.
"Yes," said Brigit, "that's right. How did you know?"
"You have left a couple of phone messages for a friend of his. That friend would like to meet you."
"I see," said Brigit, who didn't see at all. "So, why are you here?"
"Ah," he said. "the problem is, who that friend is."
Chapter Twenty
"What do you mean, you've got a flat tyre?" asked Phil.
Paul looked down at the flat tyre and then at the traffic hurtling by on the M50. He had to shout into the phone to be heard over it. "What words in that sentence are you having trouble understanding, Phil?"
"But… you can't have a flat tyre."
"And yet I do," said Paul.
"I'll tell you what this is – karma."
The ‘karma’ Phil was referring to related to Paul's destination. He had finally decided on a solution to the Maggie problem. The problem currently had its head out the back window of Bunny's car, and Paul could swear it was enjoying his discomfort immensely.
The Day That Never comes (The Dublin Trilogy Book 2) Page 14