‘Did he try to burn you at all?’
‘Holy fuck,’ she gasped. ‘What do you want? Didn’t he do enough to me, or what?’
‘Sorry, just checking.’ Mulcahy smiled apologetically but he didn’t get one back. ‘I suppose I should be going. Let you get on with things.’
As he got to the door, he stopped and asked: ‘He didn’t take anything from you, did he?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Something personal, a piece of jewellery, you know, a necklace maybe, or—’
‘Y’mean me Versace?’ She was staring at him now, something like laughter in her eyes.
‘Your what?’
‘Ah, go on,’ she said. ‘The other girls used to always take the piss out of me for it. It was like one of those big Versace crosses you used to see a few years back. You know them?’
Mulcahy said nothing, afraid to interrupt the flow.
‘It was a big gold cross all studded with fake jewels and glass and stuff, like the sort them rappers wear, on a chain.’
‘And you were wearing this at the time?’
‘Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t real or anythin’, just a piece of crap I got on Henry Street for a laugh. People were always going on about it, y’know, given me line of business.’
‘And he took it from you? I didn’t see any mention of that in the incident report.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m sure I said somethin’ about it at the time. But maybe I didn’t. It was only a piece of old tat. He’d carved me up, for Jaysus’ sake.’
‘But he took it? You’re sure?’
She shook her head and sighed.
‘Yeah, positive. Soon as he got me on my back, he pulled it tight like he was tryin’ to choke me with it. Course, it was such cheap shite, the chain snapped as soon as he gave a tug on it. That pissed him off – must’ve thought it was worth somethin’. That’s when he started on with the prayers and rantin’ on about Jesus dyin’ for our sins.’ She paused, then a note of pain mingled with the exasperation in her voice. ‘What the fuck would he know about it, eh? Carving me up while spoutin’ on about Jesus on the cross.’
‘Like a priest,’ Mulcahy said, mostly to himself.
‘Not like any priest I’ve ever met,’ she said. ‘Not that I get many. Most of them lot is only interested in fiddlin’ with little boys.’
She waited for the greeting on Mulcahy’s answering service to play out, then the beep.
‘Hiya, Inspector, it’s the chief reporter here. Sorry I couldn’t stay for breakfast this morning but I was expecting some calls and needed to be at my desk first thing. I did try to wake you but you were completely sparko. Anyway, just wanted to say, y’know, thanks for last night and hope your head doesn’t hurt too much this morning. I’m looking forward to us not helping each other with our enquiries again soon.’
Siobhan put her mobile down and smiled to herself for the first time in a few hours. It had taken most of the day to get back to what she’d been wanting to do most. First, that ludicrous email had taken up half the morning. When she’d called Bishop he’d come over all defensive and apologetic about it. Pathetically so, claiming his name was never supposed to be on the itinerary. That the holiday was just for her – ‘if you want it that way’ – the bloody creep. As if she’d even consider it. The thought of his clammy skin coming anywhere near hers was, by now, almost enough to make her retch. But for some reason – the last vestiges of self-interest probably – after he’d promised to cancel the whole thing, she’d calmed down and let him swing the conversation round to some new titbit of gossip he’d uncovered about Marty Lenihan, and they’d eventually hung up on reasonably amiable terms again.
In her gut she knew it couldn’t last. Even if Bishop thought his attentions were innocent, to her they were getting creepier by the day. And no amount of stories was worth that sort of hassle. If she didn’t put some serious distance between herself and Bishop, she knew it could only get worse. How best to go about that, though, she still wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to make an enemy of him either. But she had no time to think about that. As soon as she got back with the coffee, she and Paddy had had to go straight in to Harry Heffernan’s office for the post-mortem he insisted on holding every Tuesday, where he banged on about every misplaced comma, wrong name, cocked-up photo caption and breached deadline from the previous week’s edition – ad-bloody-nauseam.
By the time she got out of there it was lunchtime and of course that was already booked – out in Dun Laoghaire with a Fianna Fail councillor who was helping her with a piece she was researching on the financing of local politics. It was past three by the time she got back from lunch, whereupon she thought of Mulcahy and decided to give him the call. She was glad she only got his message service. Too much else to be getting on with. But just the thought of him was comforting.
She picked up a pencil and pulled a spiral-bound notebook towards her across the desk, then flicked back a couple of pages. She tapped the pencil against her teeth, then used it to circle a name she’d scribbled on the page in front of her. A touch on the mouse brought her computer monitor flickering back to life again. She keyed in her password and double-clicked on a folder entitled Active and, within it, one called JMS. The number of files inside was growing. A single keystroke brought up the Google search engine and she typed in ‘Spanish politicians’. A long list came back, most relating to news stories, but it didn’t take long to refine her search and find a roster of the current members of the Cortes. Seconds later, her breath was stilled as her eyes matched the name in her notepad to an entry on the list in front of her.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said, looking around to see if Paddy Griffin was anywhere in the vicinity.
For once, though, he wasn’t.
Over in Harcourt Square, Mulcahy’s hopes of making rapid progress had not been realised. Brogan and Cassidy had been in the interview room most of the day, trying to wear Scully down. He’d passed a note through to them about what he’d found out at Grainne Mullins’s, and sent an excited-looking Hanlon off to look into the possibility that Scully might have a footprint in the world of Republican subversion – but had heard nothing back on either front. In the meantime he’d done some following up of his own regarding Detective Branigan and, finally, traced him to an armed-robbery task force working out of Dublin West. But his efforts to get in touch were met with the news that Branigan was away on leave until the following day, and to call back then. After going through the rest of the replies to his round robin, and not turning up anything else interesting, he put in a call to Javier Martinez in Madrid to see if they’d come up with anything on their ETA lead. They hadn’t.
When Brogan and Cassidy reappeared for the evening briefing, it proved a pretty dismal affair. While the suspect had been cockily polite and ‘helpful’ all the way through, they reported back, he had obstinately refused to change his story about leaving Jesica at Stillorgan shopping centre and going straight home. And just to help matters he absolutely denied that the drugs found in his bedroom were his, too. In fact, he’d stated for the tape no fewer than twenty-five times that they must have been planted there by members of the Garda search team. Meanwhile, the forensics on the van hadn’t exactly flooded back in, and those that did arrive had yielded nothing. Worst of all, the blood sample taken from the interior definitely did not match Jesica’s, although it had been identified as human. It had yet to be checked against either Scully or his father, both of whom had so far refused to give a sample. Overall, then, the case against Scully was beginning to stall. Brogan decided to keep him in custody overnight again and told him she’d be charging him with possession in the morning and to have a legal representative present.
‘And guess whose phone number he gave the desk sergeant?’ Cassidy scoffed. ‘Dermot bloody Kennedy.’
There was a groan of recognition around the room. Every cop in Dublin knew of Kennedy, one of the city’s longest-serving, most conniving and disagreeable solicitors. He could be relied on
to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Brogan, although there could hardly be any question that she could keep Scully in custody on the possession charge, given his previous form.
‘It proves one thing,’ Whelan remarked. ‘Scully’s no full-time student if he can afford Kennedy’s fees.’
‘Right, but I don’t suppose the bench will see it that way,’ Brogan said. Whereupon she turned towards Mulcahy and said in rather brighter tones, ‘The inspector here seems to be the only one who’s actually made any progress today. Would you care to share what you were telling me about this possible earlier victim, Mike?’
There was a rustle of interest and a scrape of chairs as one or two of those present perked up and changed position to get a better view. But the noise didn’t quite cover the muttered sigh of ‘Jaysus, not the feckin’ Priest again’ that escaped one pair of lips in the room.
‘Sergeant,’ Mulcahy said, staring Cassidy down and waiting for the rest to settle, ‘if you can’t bring any ideas of your own to the table, then my advice is keep your mouth shut.’
Cassidy glowered back at him and muttered something very like, ‘I don’t take advice from you, tosser’ beneath his breath.
‘What was that?’ Mulcahy stiffened.
‘Eh, “If that’s your view, sir”,’ Cassidy said, grinning inanely around the room, eliciting a feeble titter from one or two of the others.
‘Okay, now, everybody,’ Brogan intervened. ‘Inspector Mulcahy is right, we need all the ideas we can get here. So shut up and listen to what he has to say. You might learn something.’
Mulcahy outlined the details of his visit to Grainne Mullins earlier in the day and was gratified to see that everyone in the room, even Cassidy, seemed to take its significance on board.
‘Thanks, Mike,’ Brogan said, when he’d finished. ‘That’s really good. I think we all agree this is a very interesting development.’
She walked away from him and addressed the small group from the front again. ‘Okay, lads, so it’s beginning to look like Scully, or whoever, has done this before. Donagh and Brian, first thing tomorrow I want you to talk to this Branigan character – get his details from Inspector Mulcahy – and find out what happened to the files on his original investigation.’
The two detectives groaned at the idea of having to confront a fellow officer about a botched, or probably deliberately buried case, with Hanlon moaning he might as well be working for Internal Affairs.
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ she snapped back at them. ‘If anything, we’re doing him a favour by not passing it straight on to IA. So don’t go accusing him of anything. If he kicks off, make sure he knows that if any of what this Mullins woman says stacks up he’s going to get a rocket up his arse from somewhere. And emphasise to him that any assistance he gives us now could make the difference between getting a slap on the wrist or a full investigation and all that brings with it. I have a feeling we’ll find that all the original case notes have disappeared, but see what you can get, and then bring Grainne Mullins in to make a formal statement on the original attack, and her allegations about Branigan.’
The two detectives didn’t look any happier but murmured their assent.
‘And make sure they’re separate statements,’ Mulcahy added. ‘Don’t let her mix up what she says about Branigan with the attack itself – for now that’s what we’re most interested in.’
‘It sounds to me like Inspector Mulcahy already did a thorough job,’ Brogan continued, ‘but you never know what else she might be able to give us to tie it in with Scully, so dig deep. Alright, I think that wraps it up for tonight. Let’s hope Technical come up with something useful overnight and we have some hard evidence to pin on Scully in the morning. Anything else?’
There was a low murmur of negatives and chairs started clattering as everybody began to get up and drift out. Brogan dispatched Cassidy on some errand with a whisper, and then turned to Mulcahy as he was leaving the room.
‘Thanks again for that, Mike. This’ll certainly strengthen our case against Scully if anything comes of it.’
Mulcahy wasn’t so certain. ‘You don’t think it would be worth widening the net a bit at this stage, to look into suspects other than Scully?’
‘I wasn’t aware that we had any suspects other than Scully.’
‘Come on, Claire, you know what I mean. Surely it’s worth a go, rather than keeping all our eggs in one basket. I mean, if there is some serial attacker running around out there, wouldn’t it be as well to cover our arses, just in case? You know, get the word out, and pull in some of the usual suspects?’
‘What do you think we’ve been doing for the last few days?’
‘I know, but don’t you think maybe we should look at them all again now, in light of this new information?’
Brogan halted in the corridor and treated Mulcahy to one of her more piercing stares.
‘Look, Mike, I meant what I said. I’m grateful you went out and got us that lead. But don’t forget that’s all it is – a lead. We still have to establish a connection, don’t we? So for now, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, yeah? I have a suspect in custody who I still fancy for this. So I can’t see the point of continuing to rummage around in bushes when I’ve got the bird I want right in the palm of my hand. As you can see, I have very limited resources. I want to use them as best I can to get a proper bead on Scully. If I fail to do that, then obviously I’ll direct them elsewhere. But not until then, okay?’
Mulcahy had to concede the point. The evidence was there at every briefing.
‘I was only suggesting it might be better to get a head start, so you’re not left staring at nothing should Scully go tits up.’
‘And I just told you. I haven’t got the resources for running two lines of enquiry. It’s as much as I can do to keep up with this one.’
‘So why not get me to do it? I’d handle it on my own.’
Brogan seemed surprised by the suggestion, as if using him productively was still the last thing she’d consider. In the end there was more exasperation than enthusiasm in her response.
‘Alright, Mike, why don’t you do that? Look around all you like and, if you find anything, come back and let me know. But until then just let me get on with my own enquiry in my own way, okay?’
‘Great, I’ll be happy to.’
She pushed her hair back behind her ears and swept it round in a loose plait over her right shoulder. In any other circumstance it might have seemed self-conscious or even flirtatious but not, as it was, accompanied by that steely glint in her eyes.
‘Just one more thing, yeah?’
‘What?’
‘I’m pretty amazed that the press haven’t got wind of this thing yet – even after all Healy’s warnings. I don’t suppose you’ve heard any stirrings?’
Mulcahy looked at her, his thoughts immediately flying to Siobhan. He’d thought it through and decided there was no merit in telling either Brogan or Healy about Siobhan’s approach. It would only complicate matters for him, and while he had no doubts that she’d dig deeper and break into the story soon enough, he was confident she wouldn’t bring his name up in connection with it.
‘No, nothing,’ Mulcahy shrugged.
‘It’s amazing,’ Brogan went on. ‘The more I thought about it, the more I was inclined to agree with what you said the other day, about how mad Healy was thinking he could keep something like this under his hat. Especially with the political edge to it. It’s incredible nobody’s got a sniff. You’d have thought that the Spanish press at least would be making a fuss about it.’
‘The silence on the Spanish side is easy to explain,’ Mulcahy said. ‘The Ambassador went on at length about it to me this morning. He said Salazar is willing to take out as many injunctions as it takes to keep this out of the media over there. For the girl’s sake. The privacy laws in Spain are a good bit tougher than they are here, especially when it comes to minors.’
‘So it’ll be down to us if i
t leaks, then?’
‘Or the hospital, I guess. Like I said, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. Are you heading home now? You look like you could do with a break.’
Brogan shook her head. ‘I’m here for ages yet. I just got a call to say Scully’s solicitor is coming to see his client, tonight. Says he wants to meet the arresting officer.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’m not aware there is one,’ Brogan said. ‘But you know what a slippery creep Kennedy is. He’s bound to have something up his sleeve. We’ll just have to wait and see what bollocks he’ll try to push past us.’
‘Do you want me to hang around?’
Brogan smiled. ‘Thanks, Mike, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to handle him.’
But the evening only went further downhill for Brogan. She’d just about been able to square Hanlon’s cock-up over the van ownership with Superintendent Healy – at least there was someone else to blame for that. But when Dermot Kennedy came marching in downstairs in his Louis Copeland suit, all arrogant gloating and bluster, waving a copy – God knows where he’d got it from – of the search warrant, claiming it was invalid because Cassidy, the authorised officer named on it, hadn’t been on the premises when the drugs were seized, she nearly had a stroke.
It was a small point, one for which most judges would not throw out a warrant. Not on its own. But when added to the cock-up over the van, it meant the whole search – and the drugs seizure made on the back of it – might now be fatally undermined. And even though Kennedy didn’t seem to have spotted the issue over the van yet, she couldn’t afford to take the risk of provoking him into looking any closer at that warrant. So, humiliating as it was, she’d had to agree to Kennedy’s request that his client be allowed home for the night on the understanding that he would attend for interview again at ten the following morning to be formally charged for possession under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Healy’s reaction to being caught on the hop like this had not been good, not good at all.
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