“Oh, she’s anything but that, sir. She has been very successful in apprehending a number of very serious criminals over the past few years, and she’s known for keeping a cool head. Even when she was taken captive by a nasty thug a couple of years ago, she stayed cool, and not only made her escape, but arrested the blighter while she was at it,” Plunkett said, hoping he wasn’t talking Lyons up too much.
“OK. Well, look, I’ll have another word with Nicholson, see if he can tone it down a bit. I have a good bit of influence with that particular gentleman as it happens, so leave it with me.”
“Thanks, sir. That would be very helpful. Oh, and Happy New Year, sir.”
“What? Oh, yes, thanks. And will you have a word with Ms Lyons and suggest that she acts a little less like Annie bloody Oakley next time she has a gun in her hand?”
“Yes, sir, of course sir. All the best,” Plunkett said, hanging up.
When Superintendent Plunkett had finished the call, he sent for Lyons who was back in the station after the grim discovery down at the docks.
“Come in, Maureen. Take a seat. I’ve just been speaking to the chief superintendent about Inspector Nicholson’s report,” he said, plonking himself back into his own chair.
“Oh, right. Am I in trouble?” she said.
“I don’t think so. I explained to the chief that you were not given to rash behaviour, and that you genuinely felt that your life, and the life of Hays was under threat. Nicholson of course wants you to be re-trained, and all sorts, but I think I managed to talk the chief around.”
“So, what happens now, sir?”
“Probably nothing. I doubt we’ll hear any more about it. The chief won’t come back to me unless it’s being taken further, and from what he said, I think that’s very unlikely. How’s Mick’s leg coming along?” Plunkett said.
“He’s fine. You’d hardly notice anything now, although it doesn’t stop him putting on the agony act if he thinks he’s not getting enough attention from me.”
“In other words, he’s a typical man, Maureen,” Plunkett said with a smile.
“I’m glad you said that, sir. I couldn’t possibly comment! Will there be a note on my record sir, about the gun I mean?”
“I’ll check it in a month or so, but I don’t expect there will, no.”
“Thank you, sir. Is that all?” she said.
“Yes, that’s it. I’ll let you get back to it.”
* * *
It was late afternoon by the time Sinéad Loughran called Hays about the death of Rollo.
“Hi, Inspector. We have some results now from the man we brought in earlier – Rollo, is it?”
“Yes, that’s him. What’s the story?” Hays said.
“It looks as if the bottle he was drinking from was heavily laced with methyl alcohol. He probably wouldn’t have noticed it very much – the flavour would have been disguised by the whiskey. He probably thought it was just a very strong bottle. So, what with his general condition, and the adulteration of the booze, his constitution just gave up. He died of heart failure. I’m sorry, sir,” Loughran said.
“I see. Any idea of the time of death, Sinéad?”
“Dr Dodd says probably between 2 and 5 a.m. It’s hard to be more accurate, but body temperature supports that estimate,” Loughran said.
“Are there any fingerprints, DNA or other trace evidence anywhere on his clothes, or in the yard?” Hays asked.
“Nothing, sir. The bottle is clean except for his own dabs, and the yard is wet and dirty, so there’s no discernible footprints of any use. There are no other traces on the man’s clothes either.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any CCTV in the yard?” Hays said.
“No, sir. Nothing anywhere near there I’m afraid.”
“Damn. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance really. What happens to these people when they pass like this, Sinéad?” Hays asked.
“I think the council arranges something for them, sir, but I’ll check it up and let you know.”
“OK, thanks Sinéad. Talk later.”
Lyons came into the office just as Hays was finishing the call.
“What’s the story?” she asked.
Hays relayed the information that Sinéad Loughran had provided.
“I’m sorry, Mick. That’s lousy. Do you think we should open another murder enquiry?” Lyons asked.
“I have an idea. Get Eamon to ask around amongst the other rough sleepers. I doubt that he’ll come up with anything, but you never know. Then I’ll contact the council and see if we can arrange some sort of proper funeral for Rollo. That might bring out a bit more information. Nothing too fancy that would make his mates feel uncomfortable – maybe some kind of buffet with soup and sandwiches in the grounds of the church.”
“Good idea. But do we need a board and an incident room set up?” Lyons asked.
“No, I don’t think so, not yet anyway. I’ll have a word upstairs, but in the way of these things, with no evidence that we can see, I doubt if they’ll want to spend a lot of time on it to be honest,” Hays said.
“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” Lyons said.
“It’s just being realistic, Maureen. It’ll probably be put down to sudden death due to exposure. Unfortunately, the likes of Rollo don’t vote, and don’t pay taxes,” Hays said.
“Terrific,” she said and went to find Eamon.
* * *
Hays waited till his meeting with the superintendent on Thursday to raise the issue of Rollo’s death. There was no hurry – after all Rollo wasn’t going anywhere, and it was not as if there were queues of grieving relatives waiting to bury the poor man.
Eamon Flynn’s investigations among the underprivileged of Galway city had revealed nothing. These men were suspicious of the Gardaí who rarely wanted to do anything useful for them, and more often than not just wanted to move them on, or even prosecute them for vagrancy, or some of the petty theft that they indulged in to stay alive. Flynn’s manner didn’t help either. He didn’t want to be amongst them, and his hostility was quickly picked up by men who relied on their instincts for survival.
On Thursday afternoon Hays kept his appointment with the superintendent. They spent an hour going through a series of spreadsheets covering everything from overtime and allowances for all the members of the force under Plunkett’s control, to stationery and fuel costs for the plethora of vehicles under their management. As they completed the last of them, Plunkett said, “You’ve no idea how happy I am to be handing this lot over to you, Mick. They drive me round the bend.”
“It will take me a while to get the hang of it all, sir,” Hays said.
“Ah, you’ll be fine. To be honest, I doubt if anyone actually looks at them in any case!”
“You heard about my snout, Rollo, I suppose, sir?” Hays said, keen to get off the topic of budgets.
“I did, Mick. Is there something more I should know?” Plunkett said.
Hays went on to explain about the lethal cocktail they had discovered in Rollo’s whiskey bottle, and the Post-it Note stuck to his overcoat.
“Is that all you’ve got, Mick?” Plunkett said.
“Yes. That’s about it. None of his contemporaries are saying anything, and there’s bugger all evidence, although I’m sure the Geraghtys had a hand in it somehow, even though they were locked up at the time.”
“Ah, Mick, if I were you I’d leave it alone. What good will it do spending scarce resources running around after a down and out, even if he was helpful to us from time to time? We’ve more to be doing with our time,” Plunkett said.
While Hays recognised the reality of what Plunkett was saying, he didn’t entirely like it. In a funny way, he had been fond of the old guy, and he’d known him for a good few years. But he also knew that these folks rarely got any of the right kind of attention from the authorities. They were a nuisance to be tolerated rather than looked after, and what had happened to Rollo probably wasn’t all that unusual in any case. He filed it
away, as he had done a number of times in the past.
* * *
As soon as the Geraghtys were fit to walk around, they were taken before the court for a brief hearing. Hays went along to ensure that there was no possible chance of them getting bail and he wasn’t disappointed. Judge Meehan remanded them to appear in Loughrea in two weeks’ time, and while the judge looked curiously at their injuries, he made no comment.
As they were being taken out of the courthouse to the waiting transport that would remove them to the remand centre in Claremorris, Hays encountered the two brothers being walked out, handcuffed, in the company of two armed Gardaí.
“I’ll be seeing you later, Mr Hays,” Anselm Geraghty said with a sneer on his face, “oh, and give my regards to Rollo.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You know what you need, Ms Lyons?” Hays said to his partner back at the station.
“And what would that be, Mr Hays?” she replied with an impish grin on her face.
“A holiday! Why don’t we see if we can get away for a week to somewhere nice? Then, when we get back, we can start working on the superintendent’s master plan,” Hays said.
“Sounds good to me. Are you thinking bikinis or winter warmers?” she said.
“Bikini – definitely, and speedos for me, of course.”
“Bloody hell, Mick. That’s a scary mental image for a girl at this hour of the morning. Canaries?”
“Perfect. I’ll square it with upstairs, and you get onto the travel agent and see what you can conjure up. My treat, so go easy on the credit card, there’s plenty of budget accommodation to be had, even at this time of year,” he said.
“No chance. I’m a five-star sort of girl, or hadn’t you noticed?” she said, smiling warmly at him, and thinking how thoughtful he was.
* * *
When Hays returned from a brief chat with Superintendent Plunkett, he popped into Lyons’ office.
“How does Los Cristianos in Tenerife grab you? Leaving Sunday morning from Shannon,” she said.
“Terrific. Well done you, and the boss thought it was an excellent idea too, by the way.”
“Just as long as he’s not coming with us!” Lyons said.
“Well, I did invite him, but he says he’s too busy!”
* * *
The two detectives enjoyed a glorious week in the Canary Islands. While Hays’ leg hadn’t enjoyed four hours sitting in the middle seat of three on the somewhat cramped Ryanair Boeing 737, once they disembarked, and he got a chance to stretch it on the long walk to collect their baggage, it eased out and felt a lot better.
Lyons had chosen the hotel well. It was the height of luxury, and positioned conveniently close to the beach and the centre of the little resort, which seemed to have a good array of excellent restaurants, bars and shops.
The weather was kind to them too. At between twenty-three and twenty-seven degrees and sunny each day, it was just the type of climate they both enjoyed.
They spent most days lounging by the pool or swimming in the sea, and while Hays was still careful not to walk too far, they managed a few gentle strolls along the coast on top of the dramatic cliffs that give Los Cristianos its unique scenery.
In the evenings, they enjoyed some excellent meals at any one of the seafood restaurants in the town, and after a nice bottle of good red Spanish wine, they ambled back to their hotel, retired, and made love gently and passionately in the enormous king-sized bed.
By the end of the week, they were both feeling thoroughly refreshed and were almost looking forward to getting back to work. Hays’ leg had healed up well by this time, and the journey back didn’t bother him nearly as much.
Arriving back into Shannon at almost midnight, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and flurries of light snow were drifting across the apron at the airport, but not sticking for long, as the temperature was just above four degrees.
When they saw it, they both decided to check in to a local hotel for the night rather than drive back to Galway.
“Let’s finish off the week in style, Maureen,” Hays said as they checked into the Park Inn just near the airport.
“Amen to that!” Lyons echoed with a wide grin on her pretty face.
* * *
Several months later, when the Geraghtys’ case finally got to court, the case was concluded pretty quickly. They pleaded guilty to a number of the charges against them, but not guilty to the murder of Paddy McKeever. But the evidence told a different story, and with the fingerprints on the spent cartridge, and positive evidence that Anselm’s gun had been used to fire the fatal shot, with his fingerprints all over it, there was little doubt. The jury took just two hours with their deliberations, and convicted them both of murder, aggravated assault, robbery, and wounding a police officer in the execution of his duty.
Mitigation was entered by the defence for Emmet Geraghty. It was put forward that he was being led and coerced by his older brother, and that he was scared what would happen if he didn’t go along with him. This was largely shot down by the prosecution, citing the incident at Deasy’s yard, where Emmet, acting alone, had threatened the lives of both Tadgh and Shay Deasy.
Both were handed down life sentences, with the judge specifying that Anselm should not be eligible for parole for eighteen years.
Just over a year into his sentence, Anselm Geraghty was discovered at six o’clock in the morning lying in a pool of his own blood on the cold, wet floor of the toilet block in Limerick prison. The prison authorities reported he had been stabbed with a finely sharpened tooth brush handle that had been found lodged in his carotid artery.
When Hays heard about the incident, he said to Lyons, “Some of those old lags have very long memories. The Geraghtys weren’t much liked, even amongst the criminal fraternity. I’m not surprised, to be honest.”
“It’s a good job you can only die once,” she said.
“How do you mean?” Hays said.
“Well, we know there were at least two deaths down to him – McKeever and Rollo, and maybe more that we don’t know about. What about Emmet Geraghty?”
“That’s a funny thing. When he heard about his brother’s death, he went completely mad. Literally mad. He was screaming and banging his head off the walls, and throwing himself about. They had to sedate him, but when it wore off, he was back at it again. Apparently he’s being moved to that place in Dundrum where they keep the criminally insane. I doubt if he’ll ever get out of there,” Hays said.
“Good enough for them both, if you ask me. We don’t need those types in our community.”
* * *
Some months after the terrible events that led to the death of her husband, Breeda McKeever received a generous settlement from An Post, and a good pension to boot. But her heart never mended. Paddy had been her first, and only love, and his loss was almost too much to bear for the poor woman.
The benefits people worked hard with the management of An Post to encourage their customers to have their weekly allowances paid directly into bank accounts, so that large quantities of cash did not have to be transported on quiet country roads. This was quite successful, so that mounting any further armed robberies on An Post vans became a waste of time and too risky for the criminal community, given the poor returns.
A small cross was erected at the side of the road at Dog’s Bay where Paddy had given his life in the cause of his work, and there were almost always fresh flowers propped up against it, no matter what the time of year, or the weather, although no one really knew where they came from.
When Hays and Lyons were back in harness in Mill Street, during a quiet moment in the office, Hays said, “It’s going to be quite different with me taking up the new role as Superintendent you know.”
“I know it is, and I’m still not sure that I’ll be able to step into your shoes completely successfully,” Lyons said.
“I know you’ll probably do things quite differently to me, Maureen, but that doesn’t mean you won�
��t be just as effective. I’ve tried to observe your work objectively over the past while, and to be brutally honest, I think you’ll do an even better job than me. Your instincts are sharper than mine, and you don’t mind taking the odd risk to get the job done. That’s a pretty heady mix. I’d say the criminal element in Galway is in some bother,” Hays said.
“It’s good of you to say so, Mick. Let’s just hope it all works out. Oh, and does this mean you’ll be chasing me around for all sorts of ridiculous reports every month, and giving out shite when I overspend on some vital thief taking operation?”
“Of course! And don’t expect any sympathy, just because we’re partners either,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mick, I have a few ways of sorting that out, wait till you see.”
“And that would be?”
“All in good time – patience, dear man, patience!”
List of Characters
Senior Inspector Michael Hays – a tough, experienced Garda who has ambitions to progress his career either at home, or in a UK police force.
Inspector Maureen Lyons – a sassy policewoman who has a long track record of success due to her cunning ways and no-nonsense approach to policing.
Superintendent Finbarr Plunkett – a wily old Garda who keeps the Detective Unit under close observation and helps them deal with the ever-increasing bureaucracy.
Detective Sergeant Eamon Flynn – a determined and thorough member of the Detective Unit who is known for his persistence in pursuing wrong-doers.
Detective Sally Fahy – joined the Gardaí after a spell as a civilian worker with the force, this pretty blonde officer is going places.
Garda John O’Connor – loves nothing more than hacking into a criminal’s laptop or mobile phone to reveal all those hidden secrets.
Sinéad Loughran – leads the forensic team attached to the Detective Unit to gather evidence and assist in successful prosecutions.
Dr Julian Dodd – the diminutive and sarcastic pathologist with a great nose for something out of place.
The Galway Homicides Box Set 2 Page 28