Beneath the Surface

Home > Other > Beneath the Surface > Page 16
Beneath the Surface Page 16

by Jo Spain


  As he feared, it was like a switch had been flicked. The barman’s lip curled in distaste and the old man on the chair beside Ray turned his back to him. He couldn’t see it, but Tom knew the men behind them were also surveying them with a sudden hostility.

  ‘You might have mentioned that first,’ Padraig Óg said, glaring at Tom. The man was gripping the side of the bar counter so fiercely his knuckles had turned white. ‘Are you proud of being sent up here to baton women and kids off a public road? Is that what you aspired to do when you grew up?’

  ‘Padraig. That’s enough now.’ The barman’s tone was low, warning.

  Tom raised his hands defensively and shook his head.

  ‘We’re not policing any protests, chara. I’m Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and my colleague is Detective Sergeant Ray Lennon. We came up to interview a witness in relation to something that happened in Dublin. That’s all.’

  The man called Padraig continued to stare confrontationally at Tom, as though he didn’t believe him.

  The bar owner spoke again.

  ‘We’ve had bad run-ins with your lot these last few months. There’s history there, so forgive us for not rolling out the welcome mat.’

  The inspector cocked his head to one side.

  ‘I know about the protests and that they’ve been violent at times, but people can be forgiven for reacting strongly in the heat of the moment, surely? Even the guards? I imagine a lot of the officers down there are local lads, am I right?’

  Padraig snorted.

  ‘We’re not talking about a bit of heavy-handed policing here. We’re talking about the Irish police force being used as a private militia for those Udforske vultures. And if you don’t know what your colleagues up here are at, you should get yourself an education.’

  *

  Their dinners arrived. Tom realised he’d been expecting some kind of roast meat after the bar owner had ordered for them without offering a choice, but the chef, Majella, had confounded them. They were presented with two beautifully decorated plates of Dublin Lawyer lobster, the creamy brandy sauce sending up a mouth-watering aroma.

  Tom and Ray had spent the time waiting for their meals convincing the regulars they weren’t henchmen for Udforske. Both were curious to hear the locals’ perspective on the protests and their impressions of Carl Madsen and his company.

  The air of suspicion still lingered but it was fading. Mattie Moorhaven wouldn’t let them pay for the meal, so they’d put money behind the bar to buy everyone a drink. As the Guinness and Jameson whiskey flowed, tongues loosened.

  ‘In the beginning, we thought it was to be embraced.’ Padraig Óg was clearly the designated spokesman. He reminded Tom of a schoolteacher he’d once had, who in turn had always made him think of the poet W.B. Yeats: a small face with a skinny nose and pince-nez glasses.

  Padraig pushed those spectacles up his nose, now. The sweat on the man’s face kept causing them to slip. The bar had been cosy when Tom and Ray arrived and it was getting warmer as the evening wore on. The fire was burning solidly and the front door had yet to open again to allow any heat to escape.

  ‘Madsen bought the cliff house a few years ago. He was an irregular visitor but good to the community any time he was here. Shopped local, hired village women to do the cleaning. If he needed a repair job done, he’d always ask a Moorhaven man to come up, that sort of thing. We’ve been so badly hit by the cuts to the fishing quotas, jobs are few and far between.’

  The old man beside Ray, who’d been introduced as Dinny and had swivelled back in their direction, picked up this part of the tale.

  ‘Aye, that’s right. You wouldn’t think it to look at us now, but Moorhaven was a thriving fishing port once upon a time. Every second family had a boat. Then those traitors sold us out in Europe.’

  ‘What traitors?’ Ray asked.

  ‘The government, son. The Common Fisheries Policy in the ‘70s. A third of the fleet has been lost across the island since then. Those Dublin boys went over there with the farming lobby breathing down their necks and came home with big quotas for beef and dairy but they sold the fishermen down the Swanee. They have our lads restricted in how many days they can go out, how much and what they can catch. Irish trawler owners are flinging good fish back into the sea. Then they’re forced to watch as the Spaniards and Scandis come over in their massive factory ships and harvest our fish to their hearts’ content.’

  The old man sucked in already hollow cheeks.

  ‘Ruined little villages like this, they did. But sure, we never mattered anyway, away in the West.’

  Padraig nodded in agreement.

  ‘Aye. Dinny is from a fishing family. Lost a son and brother at sea, didn’t you, chara?’

  Dinny nodded sadly. Mattie moved seamlessly into what looked like a familiar response, slipping a whiskey chaser in front of the old man.

  ‘A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.’ The bar owner cited the anonymous quote as Dinny downed the spirit, a glint of tears in his eyes caused by the loss and the strong liquor.

  ‘At least they died doing what they loved and still living in their homesteads,’ the old man said. ‘Unlike those poor souls who’ve had to emigrate to Britain and beyond.’

  Tom nodded in sympathy. Emigration was a spectre once more in Irish homes and the loss was being felt most keenly in the rural West. Most townlands were lucky if they could field a Gaelic football or hurling team, so many young men and women had left for jobs, for college, for a better life.

  ‘All we had left when fishing went was tourism,’ Padraig continued. ‘That’s a short season, as you can imagine. So when Madsen announced he was planning to use the harbour as a base for offshore drilling and would be bringing jobs to the area, well, we could be forgiven for thanking the Lord for the good news. We didn’t know what he had planned. It’s unprecedented, do you know that? To bring untreated gas that far inland. Normally, it’s treated offshore and made safe before it’s piped anywhere.’

  ‘What does it mean, untreated?’ Tom asked.

  ‘In simple terms, it’s high-pressure natural gas that hasn’t been refined – that’s cleaned and depressurised to you and me. It’s far more likely to flare and even cause explosions. Would you want that running under your house, hi?’

  ‘With a great big bloody drilling station plonked in the middle of your sea view and an ugly refinery taking up acres of previously beautiful woodlands,’ Mattie added.

  ‘Hence the protests,’ Tom said.

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not all,’ Padraig continued. ‘He said he was going to use local lads. But straight away he started shipping in contractors from Europe who offered cheaper labour costs. Only a few villagers work down there and they’re the ones saying the right things, with the right connections. Then they tell people on the news that they’re bringing energy security to the region, but that’s not the case. All that gas is being sold to mainland Europe. Nothing has changed for us. We’re not running this village on free Udforske energy.’

  ‘And the real scandal,’ Mattie interjected, ‘is that it’s our bloody resource. Udforske don’t own the territory under the Atlantic. The Irish people do. Do you know how much they pay in royalties for what they extract? Nothing. Sweet FA.’

  ‘But this legislation the government has promised – won’t that make Udforske pay?’ the inspector asked, feigning ignorance.

  Mattie snorted.

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

  Tom and Ray exchanged a meaningful glance.

  ‘I can see why there’s a lot of anger at the protests,’ the inspector said. ‘But, gentlemen, the guards are just doing their jobs. Udforske are operating their business legally; they’re entitled to have access to their workplace. And I can’t imagine it’s in anybody’s interest for the company to bring gas ashore unsafely. After all, Carl Madsen owns a house a few miles up the road. He clearly loves the place.’

  Padraig shook his head.

  ‘Loo
k, our protests were peaceful to begin with, man. That’s what you didn’t see on the news. We sat on the road. Sang, chanted. Held up placards. The violence started on your side. You ask Sergeant Gallagher,’ he spat out the guard’s name. ‘You ask the good sergeant who it was that landed the first blows. Ask who incited the violence. There were women and young babbies at those protests. Not because they were put there but because it’s their homes that are under threat.

  ‘The news claims there are political forces at work. Horse shite. We get people coming in from other counties to stand with us from time to time but we’re there every day. Locals. Ask Sergeant Gallagher about the overtime his little gang is getting paid to police those protests. Ask him about his trips to Madsen’s house, the fancy dinners, the hampers at Christmas and Easter, his brother getting a job as foreman on the site.’

  Padraig Óg paused for breath before resuming his passionate tirade.

  ‘There’s no doubt, Inspector, the county was already torn about the merits of Udforske in the area, but the policing of the protests has ripped the heart out of this community. Your lot are meant to be on our side. We’re your own. When did it become a crime to show a wee bit of patriotism, to want what’s best for your community and country? Madsen will make his money and be off, fancy house or not. We’ll be left with the destruction – if we’re not blown to kingdom come beforehand.’

  Tom considered what he’d heard. He’d seen images of the protest, with irate locals and embattled officers. His natural inclination was to sympathise with the guards, while having an understanding of where the protestors were coming from. He was long enough in the tooth to know there were always two sides to every story. But there was an emotional honesty to this account that there hadn’t been in Gallagher’s version earlier. There was no doubt the sergeant was satisfied that the Udforske method of bringing gas onshore wasn’t dangerous. He said himself, he and his family lived in the community, so it wasn’t like he was at a remove from any danger if it existed. But Gallagher may have just bought the line and was now spinning it, whereas the anger in these men stemmed from a genuine sense that they were being treated unjustly.

  Given what he’d learned about the forthcoming legislation, Tom was starting to suspect the village and its inhabitants did have the weight of the establishment stacked against them. And he was wondering about the overtime Padraig had mentioned. A moratorium had been placed on additional paid hours for the force since its budget had been slashed last year, so what was happening in Moorhaven? Had overtime been sanctioned by a political system determined to keep companies like Udforske onside? Or was the company providing bribes to some officers?

  Of one thing he was sure: it was the right decision to look closely at this Bill Blake was introducing. The drilling controversy clearly incited extreme reactions in people. Who knew where that could lead?

  Chapter 13

  Sunday Night, Dublin

  Laura had tried to text Ray back, but the message wouldn’t send. Either his phone was off, or the signal in Donegal was poor. The latter was unlikely, though. She’d managed to get hold of Tom via SMS.

  She had been irrationally irritated when Eoin had answered her phone. Fair enough, she’d been in the ladies and had left him sitting at her desk, but nobody else in the office would just pick up her mobile like that. Why did he think he was entitled to?

  Eoin didn’t seem to mind her snapping at him, which annoyed Laura even more.

  Would she have cared if he’d answered the phone to anybody else but Ray? No, she thought. Better not dwell on that.

  Michael came around to her side of the desk and perched on the edge. They were back in headquarters in the Park, filling each other in on the interviews that had been conducted that day and on the results of the background checks, specifically concerning those on their list who’d had gun training or held firearms certificates.

  ‘There are twenty-four people with previous experience of handling guns – all ten guards, ten of the Leinster House staff, two TDs and two guests who were in the bar,’ he summed up. ‘And we’ve no idea about this Carl Madsen, but from what we’ve researched, he likes his safaris.’

  ‘Hmm. We’re flying through all this background work but I’m not sure how much it’s helping,’ Laura remarked. ‘I hope Tom is having some luck with Madsen. The safari thing is kind of interesting, considering Ryan was basically chased down like an animal. Are any of our other persons of interest on that list of yours? Blake? McNally?’

  ‘No. The only one on the list with previous weapons experience of any note is Mr. Morrison. But, you know, I’m not sure if the list means anything. Applying for a gun licence is such a bureaucratic nightmare that we know people dodge the process when they can. Blake doesn’t have one. But I Googled images and found a photo of him in a British magazine from a few years back. He was visiting an MP friend of his and they were pheasant shooting. Pheasant, not peasant. The picture actually shows him holding a shotgun.’

  ‘Not very Reform Party, is it, hunting game? Right, let’s keep that one in the bag.’

  ‘Did you tell Tom about the tunnel entrance Morrison showed you?’

  ‘Yep, I sent him a text earlier.’

  ‘Oh, Brian and Bridget confirmed that Kathryn Finnegan was home on Friday night,’ Michael added. ‘The neighbours on either side said the car was parked outside the house all evening and a friend of Kathryn’s rang her on her home phone just before the 9 p.m. news. They talked for at least a half hour, she said. That seems to rule the wife out.’

  ‘I’d never really ruled her in,’ Laura said.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Finish up for the evening. Have you organised that interview tomorrow with Blake for the inspector?’

  ‘Yes. And I rang McNally to see when he’s back. That was a laugh a minute. His mother is being buried tomorrow. He’ll be back on Tuesday, in any case.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’ Laura was glad she’d dodged that bullet. ‘Oh, did a car call out to Grace Brady’s sister’s house?’

  ‘It did. There was no answer, though. We’ll have them check again in the morning. Most of the CCTV footage from the perimeter has been examined and Grace did leave Government Buildings before everything happened but it’s odd we can’t get hold of her.’

  Laura chewed her lip and picked up the file that Eoin had left for her.

  ‘What’s that?’ Michael asked. His backside was getting uncomfortable on the hard desk. He wanted to get home to Anne. He’d two missed calls and a message telling him to hurry the hell up and to bring a chicken tikka masala or his life wouldn’t be worth living.

  ‘It might be something, it might be nothing. I need to do a bit more background checking.’

  ‘In relation to what?’

  ‘One of the visitors in the bar. Apparently he wasn’t entirely upfront in his interview. He might be connected to somebody who was in Leinster House on Friday night and didn’t say. Leave it with me for a day or two.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Damien Reid.’

  Laura tapped the file. She’d forgotten to thank Eoin for his work. She’d pick up some food as an apology and head straight for his apartment.

  ‘By the way,’ Michael said, moving around to his own desk so he could retrieve his jacket, ‘Morrison was on to me about our girl Grace. He sounded relaxed, but I sensed he was a little on edge about us wanting to question her.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just got that feeling. He knew we’d been asking about her. One of Grace’s colleagues must have mentioned it. Morrison said he knows her well and asked us to inform him when we found her safe.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just concerned,’ Laura said. Michael shrugged and nodded.

  Laura didn’t add anything but the absence of the minister’s secretary was starting to worry her. They’d spent two days now trying to get in touch without success. And she still had that feeling that there was something a lit
tle off about the chief of security in Leinster House.

  Just how well did Morrison know Grace Brady?

  Sunday Night, Donegal

  The tales about the Udforske protests continued into the night, with no sign of anyone having a home to go to. In the corner, somebody launched into a bittersweet ballad. Tom started to worry that two members of An Garda Síochána were going to be discovered in a public house post closing time. He was leaning over to say this to Ray when he noticed that his colleague was looking the worse for wear. Unbeknownst to Tom, who’d been bantering with one of the men about the merits of Donegal’s Gaelic footballers versus Dublin’s, his deputy had abandoned beer and progressed to whiskey.

  ‘Jesus, Ray, you realise we’re going back up in the flying tin can in the morning? Have you lost your reason?’

  Ray struggled to open half-closed eyelids, his elbow propped on the bar, hand supporting his head.

  ‘Yep. ’M grand. Can I ask you something? A personal thing?’

  ‘Eh . . .?’

  ‘Women.’

  Tom frowned. ‘Women?’

  ‘Yeah. Women.’

  ‘I’ve heard tell of them. Anything specific you want to know?’

  The inspector had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He’d tried to talk to Ray about Ellie Byrne several times over the last year, but each time the younger man had brushed him off, not ready and unwilling to go there. Tom had known he’d want to talk at some point, but this was neither the place nor the time. They were in company, it was late and drink was taken, though Tom suddenly felt stone cold sober. He needed to get Ray back to the hotel and make him a coffee.

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘Why don’t we get some air?’

  ‘No, tell me first. What happens . . . in your brain? How come, one day, a woman is just a woman and then the next, she’s a woman. Y’know what I mean.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You love Louise.’ Ray said it as a statement, not a question.

  Tom was reminded of the expletive-filled text he’d received from his beloved earlier in the evening. The ‘ducking’ car (thankfully her predictive text saved him from the worst of it) had billowed smoke all the ducking way home. Motorists had pulled up alongside her on the M50 ring road trying to warn her the engine might be on fire, while she’d smiled politely and shrugged her shoulders, all the while planning to ducking kill her husband.

 

‹ Prev