‘I reckon you need a holiday,’ said Detective Markey.
They followed Eamon Buckley’s tail lights all the way up Dominick Street, which was oppressively narrow, with terraces of run-down houses on both sides, and a pub with dusty windows that had long closed its doors. At the end of the street, they expected Eamon Buckley to turn left, and drive himself back home towards Farranree. Instead of that, though, he turned right, down towards the river, and turned right again at Pope’s Quay.
‘So where the feck’s he going now?’ asked Detective Markey. ‘I’ll tell you, if I don’t get my mouth round a cheeseburger pretty soon, I’m going to be dying of the malnutration.’
Eamon Buckley drove along Pope’s Quay as far as Griffith Bridge. Then he crossed over the river and turned down Grenville Place and Dyke Parade, heading west. It was when he joined the Western Road and kept going that Detectives Markey and Scanlan realized they might be in for a much longer night than they had expected.
As they reached Victoria Cross and Eamon Buckley took the main N22 towards Carrigrohane, Detective Scanlan put a call in to Katie.
‘How’s it cutting, Padragain?’ said Katie. She had only just returned to her office from Ballynahina. ‘How’s it coming along with Eamon Buckley?’
‘He’s closed the shop but he’s not going home. He’s driving west right now on the Straight Road, so we have no idea at all where he’s headed.’
‘Give me a second to see where you are,’ said Katie. ‘Yes, I have you now. Are you okay to stick with him?’
‘We can, yes. I’ll keep you posted so.’
‘The way he’s driving, do you think he has any notion that you’re following him?’
‘It doesn’t look like it. He’s not speeding or jumping lights or doing any tricksy overtaking.’
‘Okay, then. We’ll be tracking you constantly. Be careful.’
Eamon Buckley passed Carrigrohane and kept on westward towards Ballincollig. Detective Markey said, ‘We should have stuck a tracker on his car, shouldn’t we? Then we could have gone for a McDonald’s and followed him later, like.’
‘I’ve some jam mallows if that’ll help,’ said Detective Scanlan.
Detective Buckley looked across at her. ‘Jam mallows?’ he said, as if she had uttered the ultimate blasphemy.
*
They followed Eamon Buckley through Ovens, Crookstown, Bealnablath and Dunmanway, kilometre after kilometre, mostly in complete darkness. Only the lights of farmhouses and pubs and occasional petrol stations reassured them that they and Eamon Buckley were not the only living souls in County Cork.
A few minutes before seven they arrived in the town of Skibbereen, on the River Ilen, eighty-four kilometres to the west of Cork city.
‘Please God may this be as far as he’s going,’ said Detective Markey.
But Eamon Buckley drove through the centre of the town and crossed the stone bridge over the river, turning west again on the road that led to Schull. He didn’t drive much further, though. When he reached the small overgrown cemetery at Abbeystrowy, with its crosses and headstones for the victims of the Irish famine, he slowed down. He came almost to a stop, and then he took an acute turn up a steep and narrow boreen, with high hedges and trees on both sides.
Detective Buckley switched off his headlights. This boreen was so remote and rural that if Eamon Buckley saw another car behind him – even as far back as a hundred and fifty metres – he would be sure to realize that it was tailing him.
The detectives followed Eamon Buckley’s tail lights for nearly a kilometre. The boreen twisted and turned, and it was so overgrown that sometimes they lost sight of him. Brambles and twigs scratched against the sides of their car like the claws of witches trying to slow them down. Twice Eamon Buckley’s lights were obscured by the hedges, and it was so dark that Detective Markey drove into the embankment with a jolt that jarred them both, and he had to reverse before driving forward again.
Only three or four minutes later, Eamon Buckley’s lights disappeared altogether and they were left in complete blackness.
Detective Markey stopped the car and pulled up the handbrake. ‘This is insane, like. We can’t go any further without putting our lights on, and if we put our lights on he’s going to see us and reckon that we’ve been following after him. And maybe he’s switched his own lights off anyway because he’s seen us.’
Detective Scanlan called in to Anglesea Street again. She was told that Katie was tied up in a meeting with Chief Superintendent O’Kane and Superintendent Pearse, but Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick came out of the meeting and went back to his office to talk to her.
‘We’ve lost him, sir. We’re up this pitch-dark boreen and he’s totally vanished.’
‘I can see where you are on my screen, Padragain,’ said Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick. ‘You’ve no idea where’s he gone to at all?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Tell him what it’s like here,’ Detective Markey put in. ‘Black as the inside of an undertaker’s cacks.’
‘It’s possible that Buckley’s caught on that you’re tailing him,’ said Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick. ‘If he hasn’t, though, we don’t want him to realize that you are. Turn around now and head back to Cork.’
‘Really?’ said Detective Scanlan.
‘Yes, really. Tomorrow morning I’ll call Superintendent O’Shea at Clon and ask him to send a couple of his officers up that boreen so that they can check out where Buckley might have gone. It doesn’t seem likely that he’s coming back to Cork himself tonight, wouldn’t you think? Maybe he has a country cottage up there, or maybe he has some friends living there that he’s going to be staying with. We can check the satellite image and see how many properties there are. But tonight, no – there’s no future in you blundering around in the dark.’
‘Okay, sir. I have you.’
*
They crossed back over the rippling River Ilen. On the south side of the bridge stood the West Cork Hotel, a light grey four-storey building with a decorative first-floor balcony. It was lit up white at the front and green on the side facing the river.
‘My cousin Dara came to a wedding here once,’ said Detective Markey, slowing down. ‘She thought the restaurant was the berries. How about we stop here and have a bite of something to eat before the sides of my stomach stick together? I won’t be able to make it all the way back to the city without some sustenance.’
Detective Scanlan tutted. ‘Next time I go on a stake-out with you I’m going to fetch along a picnic hamper full of sangers. But all right, let’s stop. I’ve a bit of a mouth on me too, to tell you the truth, and I could use the facilities.’
They parked at the back of the hotel, facing the river, and went inside. Detective Markey found them a table in the corner in the Kennedy Restaurant next to a large potted palm while Detective Scanlan went to the ladies. When she came back she rested her elbows on the table, dropped her head forward and ran both hands through her short-cropped hair.
‘I’m beat out,’ she said. ‘I hope this hasn’t been a total wild-goose chase, and Buckley hasn’t just come here to visit his aged granny or something like that.’
‘Well, we’ll find out in the morning with any luck, when the local boys go up that boreen to take a look. How do you fancy the Castletownbere crab and salmon cakes? Or the Gubbeen bangers and mash?’
‘I’ll stick with a pizza, thanks, Nick. Something that’s easy to eat. And a lemonade. If we weren’t on duty and we didn’t have to drive all the way back I’d go for a treble gin, I can tell you.’
Once the waitress had taken their order, Detective Markey said, ‘Do you honestly believe that Buckley minced that little girl’s mother up?’
‘Are you trying to put me off my pizza?’
‘No, of course not. But there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation of how her ring was found in the mince. But if he did mince her up, who killed her, and where did he get her body from, and what did he do with the rest of i
t? There wasn’t a trace of it in his shop, like.’
‘We don’t even know for sure if she’s dead,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘But the main suspect has to be this Lupul, doesn’t it? Especially since that matching necklace was found in Crane Lane, where that ex-boxer was shot.’
‘Maybe the ex-boxer killed the little girl’s mother, and that’s where he got the necklace from,’ Detective Markey suggested. ‘Or maybe he helped Lupul to do it, and Lupul shot him because he was going to rat him out.’
‘That still doesn’t answer how the ring got into the mince. It also doesn’t answer why Lupul wanted to get hold of the little girl so badly – nor those two Eastern European fellows who ended up incinerated down at Cobh. Were they working for Lupul or did they want her for some other reason? And it doesn’t answer why the little girl’s mother disappeared. And there’s that other young woman who’s still missing, too, Máire O’Connor. It’s more than likely that her partner was murdered by the same person or persons who murdered that rough sleeper by the Savoy Centre. Same MO, like, the power drill. Was that Lupul? And if it was Lupul, what’s he done with her?’
‘You know who you’re beginning to sound like?’ said Detective Markey. ‘You’re beginning to sound like DS Maguire. She always says that she doesn’t like to speculate, but then she goes off into the longest specumulation that you ever heard in your life.’
‘Yes,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘But that’s how she gets things done. She thinks of all the possibilities, even the maddest possibilities.’
‘Now you’re beginning to sound like fecking Sherlock Holmes.’
‘Anyway… let’s talk about something else, shall we? Here’s your bangers and mash.’
28
Once they had finished their dinner, they ordered two double espressos to keep themselves alert on the ninety-minute drive back to Cork. Then they left the hotel and walked back around to the car park, their breath smoking in the cold night air.
‘I’m fecking stuffed,’ said Detective Markey.
‘Well, I’m amazed you ate all that chocolate cake.’
‘The place was almost empty so who else was going to eat it? It would have been a crime if they’d had to throw it away. I’d have had to arrest them under the Wilful Disposal of Chocolate Cake Act, 1981.’
Halfway across the car park, Detective Scanlan suddenly stopped and caught Detective Markey’s sleeve. ‘For the love of God, Nick,’ she said. ‘Look at our car.’
In the greenish light from the hotel’s riverside illuminations they could see that the back window of their grey Ford Mondeo had been shattered, so that it looked as if it had been thickly encrusted with ice; and as they came closer, they saw that the side windows had been shattered too. All four door panels were deeply dented and all four tyres were flat.
‘Shite,’ said Detective Markey, circling around the car to assess all the damage. ‘I’ll bet this was Buckley. He must have seen us following him. This is going to be a fecking write-off.’
‘I’ll call for the local guards,’ said Detective Scanlan, taking out her phone. ‘Skibbereen’s open twenty-four/seven, aren’t they?’
She hadn’t even started to prod out the number before she heard footsteps pattering towards them. She looked up and saw a man dressed in black running up behind Detective Markey with a club hammer raised above his head. She was just about to shout out a warning to him when she was hit herself on the side of the head, just behind her right ear, a stunning blow that knocked her over sideways on to the ground. Her forehead banged so hard against the asphalt that she could feel her brain being jolted inside her skull. Her phone skidded away and disappeared under one of the parked cars.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t think what had happened to her. She tried to sit up but then she was hit twice more, once on her shoulder and once on the back of her head. She blacked out.
*
She opened her eyes and she could see somebody’s face in front of her, although her vision was so blurred that she couldn’t make out who it was. When she reached out with her left hand she touched sheets and a blanket, and she realized that she was lying in bed. She tried to lift up her head, but she felt as if her brain had swollen to twice its normal size, and it was throbbing painfully with every beat of her heart. Her right shoulder was agony, too.
‘Where am I?’ she croaked.
Whoever it was sitting beside her bed reached out and took hold of her hand.
‘You’re in CUH, Padragain. They assessed you at SouthDoc in Skibbereen and then they fetched you here. How are you feeling?’
The face came gradually into focus and she realized it was Detective Superintendent Maguire.
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘I must have been hit on the head. Same as that fellow was going to do to Nick.’
‘That’s right. You’ll be going for an MRI scan later, just to make sure there’s no brain damage.’
‘How is Nick? Did that fellow hit him too?’
‘I’m afraid so. His skull’s been fractured, although the doctor reckons he’ll be making a full recovery. Again, they have to check there’s no trauma to his brain. He suffered worse in a way, though – all his fingers were broken. That’s going to take a long time to heal.’
‘Mother of God. Poor Nick. We haven’t caught those fellows, have we?’
Katie shook her head. ‘Not a trace of them. How many were there, did you see?’
‘I saw only the one who was running up behind Nick. Then, bang! and that’s all I remember. So there must have been at least two of them. Our car was all smashed up – windows broken, doors dented, and all the tyres let down. We were taking a lamp at it when we were attacked. They must have been waiting for us.’
‘The sergeant from Skibbereen told us that you’d stopped at the West Cork Hotel for something to eat, and that you left the restaurant about ten past nine. You weren’t found till half-past ten, when one of the kitchen staff went out of the back of the hotel to dump some rubbish.’
‘Oh Jesus, I hope Nick’s going to be all right. We only stopped there because he was hungry.’
‘You’re only human, Padragain. You’d been sitting in that car since lunchtime.’
‘Did DI Fitzpatrick tell you? We followed Eamon Buckley up some fierce narrow boreen but we lost him and it was too dark to go on. When I say dark – honest, there could have been an elephant sitting in the road right in front of us and we wouldn’t have seen it.’
‘Yes, DI Fitzpatrick brought me up to date,’ said Katie. ‘And we were thinking that it might well have been Buckley who arranged to have you two beaten. But listen, I’m not going to bother you any further. It’s nearly two o’clock and I need to be getting some sleep myself. We can go through it all tomorrow when you’re feeling up to it. We’ve been given an address where Lupul might be staying – a house in Sidney Park – so we’ll be paying the place a visit at the crack of dawn.’
‘Serious? That’ll be some result if you can haul him in. Nick and me were talking about it, and we both reckon that it’s him behind the murders of all those rough sleepers, and those two women disappearing – that little Romanian girl’s mum and Máire O’Connor, too. Well, that’s what I think and Nick says he agrees with me, bless him.’
‘I tend to agree with you, too, Padragain. But even if we manage to lift him, we can’t charge him on a hypothesis. We’re going to need evidence. Sleep well, though. I’ll try to visit you again tomorrow afternoon, pressure of work willing. If not, I’ll ring you.’
Before she left the hospital, Katie walked along the corridor to Conor’s room. When she gently pushed open the door, she found that it was in darkness, except for a faint light shining from underneath the bathroom door. Conor was asleep, with the upper part of his face thickly bandaged. He had undergone surgery on his cheekbone and his eye socket today, and in three or four more days he would be having his nose restructured.
She stood beside his bed watching him breathe. His beard had been shave
d off, which made him look younger, but in a way it made him look more vulnerable, too. Behind the beard of a virile hero like Brian Boru there was somebody altogether more sensitive – somebody who had risked his life to save mistreated puppies, and who could be easily hurt by the way the world was.
Katie leaned over his bed and kissed him, and then she left. She loved him, but she was too tired to think any more about their relationship. She would have to stay at Anglesea Street tonight, because there wouldn’t be time to drive back home to Cobh, and she would be lucky to get more than three hours’ sleep.
As she was waiting for the lift to come up to the second floor, she saw a door open halfway along the corridor – the door to the room in which Saoirse Duffy was being treated. She made a mental note to ask Dr O’Keefe tomorrow how she was, and when she might be ready to be interviewed.
The lift arrived with a ping! and its doors opened. But just as Katie was about to step into it, she saw a nurse coming out of Saoirse Duffy’s room. The nurse started to walk quickly towards the lifts, but suddenly she stopped and turned around and walked just as quickly back in the opposite direction.
The lift doors closed, and Katie had to press the button to make them open again. She hesitated, because it had appeared as if the nurse had turned around as soon as she had come close enough to recognize her. But then she thought: No, you’re overtired, and you always get hyper-suspicious about everything when you’re overtired. The poor nurse was working the graveyard shift and she had probably forgotten for a moment which patient she was supposed to be tending to next.
*
Whenever she had to stay overnight at the station, Katie was restless. She was used to the mournful hooting of ships in the harbour outside her home but not to the constant stopping and starting of traffic on Anglesea Street. Tonight, though, she fell deeply asleep as soon as she climbed into bed. Her sleep was usually dreamless, too, but she began to imagine that she had arrived at the Foggy Fields puppy farm together with Conor, and that they were trying to find the McQuaide sisters. Conor still had his chestnut-coloured beard, although he was wearing a hospital gown and slippers, and a strange white hat like a turban.
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