Begging to Die

by Graham Masterton

  ‘When you say “Fat Man”, you’re talking about Ştefan Făt- Frumor?’

  Mihai shivered, as if the proverbial goose had walked over his grave. ‘I don’t say that name. Vasile never say that name. I know that the Fat Man pay Vasile plenty-plenty money to tell him what he hear in his pub. But Vasile is scare of Fat Man even more than Lupul – and all Fat Man’s men. Vasile say to me one day that you have wrong gatch Fat Man kill you quick as look.’

  ‘One foot wrong and you’re dead meat, then?’ said Detective O’Donovan.

  Detective O’Donovan’s phone pinged. He took it out of his pocket and squinted at it, and then he said to Katie, ‘Talking of dead meat, Eamon Buckley’s lawyer has shown up.’

  ‘All right, Mihai, I think that’s all we need from you for now,’ said Katie. ‘You’ll leave us a contact number, won’t you?’

  ‘Okay. Okay. But you don’t say to nobody that I tell you nothing. Don’t say my name to TV or newspaper. Please.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Katie told him. ‘You can leave out through the car park and nobody will ever know that you’ve been here. You’ll be like a ghost, so you will.’

  *

  The interview with Eamon Buckley and his trainee, Thomas Barry, and their lawyers lasted less than fifteen minutes.

  Eamon Buckley was represented by Frank Lyons, a smooth old-school solicitor with a navy-blue three-piece suit, a nose that was spiderwebbed with broken veins and a greasy comb-over. He was a partner in one of the most long-established legal firms on South Mall.

  Young Thomas Barry was represented by Michelle O’Hara, a thirty-something legal aid solicitor with an irritating habit of coughing and simultaneously tugging down the hem of her skirt.

  Katie was accompanied by Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick and Detective O’Donovan.

  ‘Right,’ said Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick, giving both of the accused one of his long, glacial stares, as if he were disgusted with both of them for wasting his time. ‘Jointly and between you, you removed the deceased from thirteen Alexandra Road and shut him in the cold room of your butcher’s shop in Shandon Street. The deceased has since been identified as a Romanian national by the name of Vasile Deac. Mr Buckley – Mr Barry – did either of you know the deceased before you went to Montenotte to collect his body?’

  ‘No comment,’ said Frank Lyons, without looking up from the file he was reading.

  ‘No comment,’ said Michelle O’Hara. Cough, tug.

  ‘You took him away from thirteen Alexandra Road after he was deceased, but had you taken him there beforehand while he was still alive, knowing full well that he was likely to come to harm?’

  ‘No comment,’ Frank Lyons intoned, turning a page, and without even looking up.

  ‘No comment,’ echoed Michelle O’Hara.

  ‘Mr Buckley, it’s been established by the deputy state pathologist that Vasile Deac was unlawfully killed,’ said Katie. ‘Were you aware of this when you went to pick him up? Were you contacted and asked to remove his body from Alexandra Road? If you were, who contacted you?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘No – the same, no comment.’

  ‘Why did you take his body and store it in your cold room? What did you intend to do with it? Were you paid for removing it from Alexandra Road, or were you promised payment, or some other kind of reward?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘No comment.’

  Katie briefly drummed her fingers on the tabletop, as if she were sending the two accused a coded message. ‘I hope your legal representatives have explained to you that your refusal to answer any of our questions will count heavily against you when you appear in front of the circuit court judge. Don’t have any doubt about it, we’ll have no trouble at all proving that you were both party to murder, and that means twelve years to life. Thomas, how old are you now? Do you really want to spend the rest of your days behind bars?’

  She waited for a few moments, her pen lifted in her hand. Then she said, ‘Don’t tell me. I know. No comment.’

  *

  On her way back to her office, Katie called in to see Chief Superintendent O’Kane. He was on the phone looking irritated, with a half-eaten cheese roll and a half-empty bottle of Ballygowan water on the blotter in front of him.

  Katie sat in front of his desk and waited for him to finish his call. At last he tossed the phone down and said, ‘You know who needs locking up? Forget the criminals. The Ombudsman commissioners, both of them. Jesus. It’s like trying to get sense out of a couple of goats.’

  ‘Did you manage to talk to Frank Magorian?’

  ‘Frank? Yes, I did. I was after coming up to tell you, once I’d had a word with Michael Pearse about the logistics.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’ll be happy to know that hauling in all of the homeless is a go, as far as he’s concerned. Provided we can make the arrangements to have them securely accommodated while we question them, he’s prepared to underwrite the cost of the whole operation, up to five thousand euros.’

  ‘That’s grand altogether. I’ll give Jim Phelan a call at the council. I think I remember reading that St Dunstan’s church hall up at Mayfield is disused at the moment, so we may be able to accommodate them there. What about Bishop O’Neill and the Simons and the Penny Dinner people? Did Frank suggest any way that we can sell this operation to them? The bishop’s going to be giving us the seven shows of Cork when he finds out about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if we were excommunicated.’

  Brendan shrugged and raised his eyebrows. ‘I think you know as well as I do what Frank Magorian feels about human rights. He said to pick up all the rough sleepers first and worry about the self-appointed saints later, except the language he used was a little more colourful than that. He agrees with you, Katie, and I have to admit that you’ve persuaded me, too. If we can break these begging rings we’ll be giving the homeless a hell of a lot more than a boxty now and then and a bed for the night.’

  ‘That’s grand then. If you can talk to Michael Pearse and tell him we have the green light, I’ll start getting everything else organized. We won’t have time to set it up for tonight, which is a pity, because we need to do it as soon as possible. But I want us to be ready by tomorrow so.’

  Katie had almost reached his office door when Brendan said, ‘You’ll let me know, won’t you, when you need the money for Walter?’

  Katie stopped. ‘You’re still okay with that? It’s likely to be more than two thousand and Mr O’Neill said that he’d understand if you’d changed your mind.’

  Brendan came up to her and from the way he looked at her she could tell that he wasn’t really thinking about the bill for Walter’s surgery.

  ‘Yes,’ he said gently, closing his eyes in that sleepy way that had always attracted her so much. ‘I haven’t changed my mind. To be honest with you, I never have.’

  *

  It was almost five o’clock and Katie was thinking about packing up and going home when Donal Brogan rang her from CUH.

  ‘We’ve been through the pharmacy records for the past seven days, ma’am. There were a few minor discrepancies, like, but most of those were down to patients failing to pick up their medicines after they were discharged.’

  ‘No fentanyl gone missing?’

  ‘None. In fact, no fentanyl prescriptions went through the system at all. There were several other prescriptions for opioids, but all those have been accounted for.’

  ‘Fair play, Donal, thanks. I’ll get back to you if I think of anything else.’

  Katie stood up and went over to the window, where her phantom reflection was floating outside in the darkness.

  Her first suspicion had been that the nurse in the video might have been the paramedic Brianna. She had looked so guilty when she and Dr O’Keefe had surprised her in Saoirse Duffy’s room, holding up that pillow. Yet it made no sense that the same medic who had saved Saoirse’s life should then try to kill her. Unless perhaps they knew each other, and there
was some kind of blood feud between them, what on earth could her motive have been?

  It was not that her motive necessarily needed to be logical, or explicable. Katie knew from weary experience that murders could often be totally irrational, and that even the murderers themselves could be at a loss to explain why they had taken it into their heads to kill their victims. Only last month a woman had deliberately run over and killed a completely innocent man in Dunnes’ car park in Ballyvolane because he was the image of the father who had sexually abused her when she was seven – even though her real father had died years ago.

  All the same – even if Brianna had no obvious or rational motive for murdering Saoirse – Katie still had to check if there was any possibility that she might have done it, if only to eliminate her from their inquiries.

  She called Detective Inspector Mulliken into her office. He was carrying a fat green jobs book under his arm and Katie knew that he was going to try and bring her up to date on another serious case that he was supervising. A cache of AK-47s and shotguns had been discovered hidden underneath the floor of a barn up near Ballyhooly, and it was suspected that the farmer might have a hidden store of explosives and detonators too.

  ‘Is that the Moloney case you have there?’ she asked him.

  He laid the jobs book down on her desk. ‘It is, yes. We have at least half-a-dozen witness statements now, and some CCTV that could be incriminating, and I’d say we’re very close to making an arrest. Well, five arrests, as a matter of fact. The whole Moloney family are New IRA – even the grandad was, believe it or not, Ruari, but he died a couple of weeks ago so we can’t be hauling him in.’

  ‘Good work, Tony. But if you can put the Moloneys aside for an hour or two, there’s something urgent I need you to do. I want you to go down to the Southside ambulance station and ask Ardan Fallon if he can give us a complete inventory of all the drugs used by all his paramedic crews over the past seven days.’

  ‘All his paramedic crews?’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t tell him, but what we’re looking for is any fentanyl that’s unaccounted for. There’s one paramedic in particular I have my eye on, a woman, but it’s possible that she could have lifted it from another ambulance, not her own. We’re not talking about a huge amount, like – only about five milligrams, but even five milligrams can stop a carthorse in its tracks. I’m trying to find out where the fentanyl that killed young Saoirse Duffy came from.’

  ‘Okay…’ said Detective Inspector Mulliken. He sounded dubious.

  ‘Tony – the reason I want you to go yourself is that Ardan can be pure tetchy at times. He’s only just taken over as Chief Ambulance Officer but he still has a rake of old fleet and staffing issues down there at the Southside to sort out. He doesn’t like to talk about them so he usually expects us to direct any questions to the HSE and not direct to him. But I think he’ll respect you because of your rank. It’s critical, though, that he doesn’t realize what we’re really looking for, so that the ambulance crews don’t find out, either.’

  ‘So what should I be after telling him that we’re looking for?’

  ‘Make up some story so. Tell him we’re searching for counterfeit painkillers that were sold to the HSE by some dodgy Eastern European drug gang. I leave it to you.’

  ‘You really think that Saoirse Duffy might have been done in by a paramedic?’

  ‘It’s a suspicion, Tony, no more than that. It could be that somebody sneaked into one of the ambulances when it was unattended and hobbled the fentanyl. It could be that the fentanyl overdose that killed her didn’t come from an ambulance at all. I mean, you can buy it at almost any nightclub in Cork if you know who to ask for. But like I say, I have a suspicion, and it’s a fierce strong suspicion, and we need to follow it up.’

  ‘Right you are, ma’am, I’m on to it. Meanwhile, if you could find the time to look through the Moloney file—’

  ‘I will of course. I like to think that I’m something of an expert when it comes to the New IRA.’

  38

  Loredana had never felt so cold in her life, even when she had been sitting on a bench beside a statue of Vlad Tepes in Târgoviște in December, with the thermometer down to minus 15°C. Now she was crouching in the same doorway in Cook Street that Matty and Máire had once called home, bundled up in a smelly bronze sleeping bag, with a yellow scarf wrapped around her head and a pink baby blanket that she had stolen from Penneys folded across her knees.

  She was shaking as badly as if she were having an epileptic fit, and every now and then she would let out a little whimper, like a lost puppy. She hadn’t had a fix since seven o’clock this morning, and Marku was over two hours late in bringing her the crystal meth that he had promised. He had never been this late before, because Dragos insisted that his beggars should always be balmed out and smiling. If they looked sick or aggressive or mentally disturbed, passers-by tended to give them a wide berth and they collected far less money.

  Two uniformed gardaí came walking slowly along the street, a man and a woman. The woman stopped and hunkered down beside her. All Loredana could see was a plump blurry white face and a smile that seemed to float in the air by itself like the Cheshire Cat’s smile in Alice.

  ‘Are you all right, girl?’ she heard her say. ‘You’re looking fierce shook there, like. Do you want me to see if we can get you a bed at Riverview?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Loredana whispered, scratching her arm. ‘I wait for my friend.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘It’s okay. He take care for me. What is time?’

  ‘The time? It’s twenty past nine. What time are you expecting him?’

  ‘He say seven. But maybe he have problem.’

  ‘Have you tried to get yourself into a hostel? Do you know where to find them? Like I say, there’s Riverview for young girls like you but Edel House might take you too if they have the room. They’re not far away in Grattan Street. We could take you there if you want.’

  ‘No. I wait for my friend.’

  ‘It’s up to you, girl. But you’re not looking well at all. What drug are you taking?’

  ‘No drug, no,’ said Loredana. ‘Only cold.’

  ‘Can’t force her,’ said the male garda, who was growing impatient.

  The female garda stood up. ‘All right, love. But I’ll be coming back this way in about an hour to check up on you. If your friend hasn’t shown up by then, I think we ought to try and find you a bed for the night. It’s going to be Baltic tonight, I warn you.’

  Loredana didn’t answer, but nodded. The two gardaí stood over her for a moment longer and then walked off at a measured pace towards St Patrick’s Street.

  When they had turned the corner, Loredana picked up the plastic McDonald’s coffee cup in which she collected change. She tipped it into her shaking hand and tried to count it, wondering if it would be enough to pay for a fix. The trouble was, she couldn’t focus on the coins clearly enough to see what denomination they were, and she wasn’t familiar with euros, only Romanian leu. Besides, she didn’t know where she could find anyone to sell her any ice, and she was trembling so much she wasn’t sure that she would be able to walk.

  She had never felt so desperate and alone in her life. Where was Marku? Dragos had promised that he would always look after her, ever since he had first sat down next to her on that bench at the end of Alexandru Ioan Cuza Street. She had been sleeping rough for over a month by then, after her mother’s drunken boyfriend had tried to rape her one night and she had fled from her home with nothing, not even a change of clothes. Her father had died of drink when she was only seven years old, and the only relative she knew was an aunt with early-onset dementia who lived in Bucharest.

  Dragos had bought her a pizza at the Casa Veche and then taken her back to his flat. He had promised to find her somewhere safe to sleep every night and buy her new clothes and make sure that she always had enough to eat. All she had to do was come and work for him. Before she had gone to b
ed he had given her a pill to make her feel ‘happy again’.

  That night she had tossed and turned and sweated and shivered, but she had felt euphoric, as if all her problems were over and a wonderful new life was opening up in front of her. Next morning, as she began to come down, she had begged Lupul for another pill, and that was how she had become addicted to methamphetamine. These days she smoked it mostly, or sniffed it. The septum of her nose had almost completely eroded away and her molars were all black and rotten with ‘meth mouth’. Sometimes at night, when she had enough meth powder to spare, she would ‘shelve’ it, pushing it into her vagina to give herself a slower, longer-lasting high, although her vagina was blistered and sore and never stopped weeping.

  More time went by and she started to shake so violently that she had to clench her teeth and hug herself tight, but she still knocked her head several times against the door behind her. She was sure that if Marku didn’t come soon she was going to die of a heart attack. The whole street appeared gradually to be tilting itself up at a forty-five-degree angle, and she was sure she could see dark ghosts sliding up and down it, and hear them talking in high, screeching voices, like chalk scraping on a blackboard.

  A face floated in front of her like a balloon. A man’s face, round and pale. He had a small black moustache and bulbous eyes, and a large mole at the side of his nose.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her.

  ‘What? I wait for my friend.’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  Loredana bit her bottom lip to try and stop herself from shaking so much. ‘Marku. His name is Marku. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, I know Marku. But I can tell you this, you’re going to have a long wait if it’s Marku you’re waiting for.’

  ‘Why? Where is he? He comes, yes? Please tell me he comes.’

  ‘You’re one of Dragos’ gang, are you?’

  Loredana stared at him. She suddenly realized that he had actually said, ‘Ești una dintre gașca lui Dragos, nu-i așa?’ in Romanian, and she began to feel afraid. She didn’t understand what was happening at all. She needed ice, she needed ice more than life itself, and she needed to be warm, and she needed to sleep. She didn’t want to be here with this man’s balloon face bobbing in front of her. She wanted to be back home in Târgoviște, in her own bed, cuddling the pink bear that she had called Bomboane, and which she had never seen again after she had left. Did Bomboane ever wonder where she had gone? Did Bomboane lie there, looking up at the moon, glassy-eyed, in the same way that she was looking up at this man’s round face?