by Alan Gorevan
The gate to the cemetery was kept locked, but the key was held in the station. Anyone who wanted could come and borrow it, but people rarely did. For that, Joe was grateful. The cemetery had become his thinking space.
He stepped outside, walked around to the gate and unlocked the padlock. He went inside, making his way up the steps to where the path began.
Unlike most cemeteries, there was nothing depressing about this place. The last person to be buried there was laid to rest in 1936, so there were never any mourners. No weeping, no fresh graves.
The place was small and beautifully overgrown. Lots of trees and bushes, and moss on the stone. A few benches were scattered around. A local historian gave tours of the cemetery in the summer, on Sunday afternoons. At the moment, Joe had the place to himself.
He sat down on a bench and let the cold from the damp wood seep into his legs, making him numb. Overhead the sky looked like grey cotton wool. A robin landed on the path in front of Joe. The little bird tipped its head at him quizzically. It brought a smile to Joe’s face, and he needed that. He wasn’t looking forward to telling O’Carroll what had happened in court.
Recent months had been bad.
The confession Joe got out of Aidan Donnelly was worthless. Donnelly didn’t tell them where Valentina was, and he withdrew the confession when he finally consulted a solicitor. The case had fallen apart like an overripe banana.
The only surprising thing was that Donnelly didn’t kick up more of a fuss about what Joe did to him. Anyway, Joe had been suspended without pay and made to take a dozen training courses to correct his behaviour.
He suspected that O’Carroll’s intervention prevented him from being fired. Joe had explained to him how he had met Lisa and Christopher on that June day, the emotional strain he had been under. Joe don’t know if O’Carroll included that information when he presented Joe’s case to the superintendent.
The shock of becoming a father to a fifteen-year-old boy? Like that was going to get a lot of sympathy.
But Joe was still struggling to accept it. He and Lisa had talked a few times that week, after Christopher broke the news about Joe being his father. Those conversations were rough. Joe got angry. Lisa got angry.
For the last couple of months, they hadn’t spoken at all. But she was always on Joe’s mind. And Joe had decided to stay in Donnybrook.
Was he really a father? According to Lisa, yes. What did it mean? What was he going to do about it?
Joe looked at the looming clouds and wondered if it would snow. He decided to get indoors before he got an answer.
The District Detective Unit office was quiet when he arrived. Joe shared the room with four other plainclothes officers. It was tight. Especially with all the paperwork Joe had accumulating on his desk.
Anne-Marie Cunningham looked up when he walked in. Kevin Boyle did too, but he only smirked.
“O’Carroll wants to see you,” Cunningham said.
She didn’t ask any questions, so Joe gathered that she’d heard how things went in court. At least she had the decency not to say anything.
Boyle was different. He said, “How’s Mr. Donnelly?”
Working with Boyle was a pain. Ignoring him, Joe backed out of the room, and climbed the stairs to O’Carroll’s office. He rapped on the door and stepped inside.
“Acquitted,” Joe said.
O’Carroll was sitting behind his desk, tapping away on his computer. He looked up when Joe entered.
“I heard,” O’Carroll replied. “You’re going to have to apologise to Aidan Donnelly.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“But that can wait. What do you know about gelignite?”
Joe was thrown by the change of topic. “It’s an explosive, right?”
“Right.” O’Carroll glanced at his computer monitor. “Philips Construction contacted us.”
Joe knew the company’s name. He’d seen their vans all over the city. They were having a bonanza at the moment with all the offices, apartments and houses that were shooting up in Dublin. If they were calling about explosives, Joe guessed they had a side-line in demolitions.
“What did they say?”
“Forty pounds of gelignite was stolen from their depot last night.”
“That sounds like enough to do some damage.”
“It is. The company insists they had the material locked away securely. But someone got it.”
“An inside job?”
“Unknown.” O’Carroll narrowed his eyes. “That’s why you’re going to look into it, Joe. And fast. Go to their depot and check it out.”
“Okay.”
Joe had just left O’Carroll’s office when an idea came to him. It was too crazy to be true. All the same, he knew he had to check it out, even if that meant ignoring O’Carroll’s order to go to Philips Construction’s depot.
He hurried downstairs. At the bottom, he ducked his head in the door of the DDU office. Cunningham was still there, piling bales of counterfeit cash three feet high on her desk. It had been used as a decoy in an operation, and she was tidying it away for future use.
“I need you,” Joe said.
“What’s going on?”
“Just a hunch. Probably nothing. But bring your gun.”
Chapter 19
Barry Wall swung his car into the driveway of his house – the house he had once shared with Valentina. He killed the engine, jumped out and flung open the back-passenger door. The seat was empty. Aidan Donnelly lay strewn across the floor, hands tied behind his back with his own shoelaces. He was coughing and wheezing and struggling to breathe.
Wall ignored that.
He reached in and grabbed Donnelly by the scruff of the neck, then lifted him straight out of the car. As soon as Donnelly’s runners hit the ground, he tried to make a run for it. Wall tripped him, and at the same time pushed Donnelly’s head forward, enjoying watching him fall to the ground.
Wall pulled Donnelly to his feet and shoved him toward the house. It had been easy to grab him outside his block of flats. He’d been walking along like he hadn’t a care in the world.
Now Wall would get the truth from him at last.
And he wouldn’t waste months on it either.
Wall unlocked the door, then used Donnelly’s head to push it open. The impact of skull on wood made a satisfying sound.
“This must be bringing back memories,” Wall said. He stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him. The hall was now white. Wall had painted it himself after Donnelly was taken into custody. He couldn’t stand to look at the peach colour Donnelly had applied months before. On that day…
Wall broke out in a sweat. Sometimes it happened like that. A flash of rage – or shame – overcame him at some memory. Like when he thought of how he’d been laughing and joking with that actress, Holly Martini, at the fitness studio, while his wife was here, being mutilated by this scumbag.
“Where is she?” Wall growled, pushing Donnelly towards the kitchen. “What did you do to her?”
His hands still bound behind his back, Donnelly lost his balance and fell to the floor.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“This time you’re going to talk,” Wall said.
Donnelly rolled onto his side and looked at Wall. “I don’t know anything.”
“You admitted killing her. You signed a confession.”
“It wasn’t true. They made me. That guy, Byrne? He forced me to confess. I signed it just to make him stop. You heard it yourself in court.”
Wall crouched down on the floor. “You’re a lying little shit. But now you’re going to tell me everything. I want to bury my wife. Not just her…” Wall swallowed. “Not just… her fingers.”
Donnelly tried to sit upright. He caught sight of the object on the island in the middle of the kitchen. The thick red sticks bound together and criss-crossed with wires and a digital display.
He swallowed.
“What’s that?”
Wall
admired the bomb. He said, “Mainly nitro-glycerine, with some kieselguhr mixed in. That’s a sedimentary rock, in case you were wondering. A little basic wiring and a remote control for convenient detonation. Not bad, is it?”
He pulled a stool back from the island, lifted Donnelly and set him down on it. Then he went to the other side and took a stool himself.
There were three objects on the counter: the bomb, the detonator and a framed photo of Valentina and Wall, taken in Barcelona three years earlier. People say summer romances don’t last, but Wall had wanted to be an old man with Valentina, decades down the line. He’d imagined children and grandchildren.
Now that was all gone forever.
Wall lifted the detonator. It looked like a crudely made remote control, which was exactly what it was. With his thumb he teased its red button.
“If you don’t tell me what I need to know,” Wall said, “I’m going to blow both of us to kingdom come.”
Donnelly swallowed. “You wouldn’t.”
“You think I have anything left to live for?”
Donnelly’s face grew paler.
“Please. I don’t know anything.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t hurt her. Why would I?”
“I don’t believe you. I bet you—”
The doorbell’s chime interrupted him. Its cheery tone couldn’t have sounded more wrong. Wall looked down the hall. The letterbox set in the front door opened slowly, with a clink as something metal was inserted.
Wall said, “Stay here, asshole. If you make a noise, I’ll kill you.”
He eased himself off his stool, and walked down the hallway, still holding the detonator. Something round and metallic hung out of the letterbox. As he got closer, he saw it was a pair of handcuffs. He eased open the door, but there was no one there.
He turned back towards the kitchen – in time to see the floor-to-ceiling window shatter at the impact of a golf club. Another blow and the glass smashed inwards and fell to the floor.
Joe Byrne dived into the kitchen through what had been a window, his steps punctuated by the crunches of broken glass underfoot.
Behind Wall, the front door crashed open.
A woman appeared.
Another plainclothes officer, with a gun.
She shouted, but Wall ignored her. He ran down the hall towards the kitchen.
Joe Byrne pushed the bomb away, off the side of the kitchen island, and grabbed Donnelly. Byrne dragged him off his stool and yanked him hard toward the garden.
No, no, no. They couldn’t get away.
Wall lifted the detonator as he ran towards them.
The female detective was right behind him. She was screaming, “Stop, right now.”
Byrne and Donnelly were passing through what had been the window, and Byrne was dragging Donnelly around the corner, seeking the protection of the wall of the house.
Donnelly was getting away, slipping through Wall’s fingers once more.
Wall brought up the detonator.
As he dived sideways, through the open doorway of the sitting room, and away from the path of the blast, Wall squeezed the red button on the detonator.
Part Three
Five Months Later
Chapter 20
It was a hot May morning. It felt even hotter after Joe had been sitting in the Honda for two hours with the sun shining in his face. He wriggled out of his leather jacket and threw it on the passenger seat, next to the polymer case containing his pistol.
He was parked halfway down The Pines, one of a dozen tree-named roads in a middle-class housing estate in Deansgrange. Joe hadn’t seen a single pine. Outside each house there was a strip of grass for dogs to crap on and a silver birch for kids to carve their names into.
You wouldn’t have guessed that the four-bed semi-detached Joe was watching belonged to Ger Barrett. Nothing about it screamed gangland.
Barrett had a neat garden with one huge rose bush and a lot of daffodils that ran along the inside of the hedge.
The interior of the house was nice too. Joe had been inside it last week, when they raided the place.
Seven AM, and the street had been swarming. There were detectives like Joe, half a dozen uniforms, a few officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau, and a team from the Armed Support Unit, who made a breached entry. That’s what it’s called when they smash down the door with a battering ram.
They tried to work quietly, what with the time of day and the neighbourhood, but a raid is a raid. You get in and take the suspect by surprise.
Or not.
Ger Barrett’s house was cleaner than a dentist’s teeth. Nothing out of place. Absolutely nothing to tie him to the criminal empire they knew he ran. And Barrett’s outrage at the raid sounded rehearsed.
Something was wrong.
He’d known they were coming.
Hence Joe sitting there, sweating it out on his day off. He took a gulp of water, trying to ignore the plastic taste of the bottle. His window was open an inch, letting in the sound of a nearby lawnmower and the faint smell of cut grass.
Net curtains hung from Barrett’s windows, so Joe couldn’t see what was going on inside the house. Barrett hadn’t been out all day. The only thing Joe had seen was a few of Ger’s buddies arrive in a black BMW. A 3 Series Sports Saloon. A year old, according to the plate. Polished like a mirror. They parked it behind another black BMW, same model as the first, but this year’s model, and they went inside.
Since then, nothing.
Joe hoped he wasn’t wasting his time.
His phone buzzed with a text message from Lisa.
Just to remind you, we’re having cake at 6 pm.
Typical of her to think Joe had forgotten Christopher’s birthday. His sixteenth. The first one Joe had been around for.
See you later, Joe texted back.
He rubbed his eyes and started to think about lunch. He was dreaming of grabbing a burger when the front door of Barrett’s house opened.
A bodyguard emerged first. He looked around, then got behind the wheel of one of the BMWs. Ger Barrett followed. His thin frame and long, grey curls made him look like a hippy, but Barrett was as cold as they came. He got into the back seat.
Finally, some action.
Barrett’s car pulled out of the driveway and set off down the road, nice and slow. Joe started the Honda’s engine. When Barrett’s car reached the end of the road, Joe began to follow. He turned on the AC, feeling a blast of cold air that brought a little relief from the heat.
Joe didn’t try to predict where Barrett was going – just followed him on his leisurely drive, which seemed to be heading east. Donnybrook was some distance away, but Joe was helping colleagues in Cabinteely with this investigation. Every officer in South Dublin was happy to help, if it meant finally nailing Barrett.
It didn’t take long before Barrett’s car began to slow. Joe followed him down a one-way street.
Barrett pulled into a stubby cul-de-sac, just long enough for a couple of cars to park end-to-end.
A wasteland, surrounded by a chain metal fence, lay to one side. Weeds grew up through the cracked tarmac. It looked like a car park that had been deserted. Behind it, an ugly block of offices reared into the sky.
The other side of the cul-de-sac was bordered by a stone wall.
Joe drove on.
The road curved around to the left and there was nothing for a while but walls on each side. Farther down, he found a turn that let him do a loop. He circled back and found his way to the turn Barrett had made a couple of minutes earlier.
Instead of taking the turn again, Joe drove up onto the kerb and put on the hand break.
Now the turn Barrett had taken was ahead of him and to the right. Barrett, at his little cul-de-sac, lay just out of sight.
He was waiting for someone.
Joe waited too. He hated being unable to see what was happening, but he forced himself to be patient. He was glad he did.
After a couple of minutes, a sad-looking, grey Ford appeared from behind. Joe sank down in his seat while it passed, then sat up again. The car looked familiar, but it slipped around the corner, down towards Barrett, before Joe could catch the license plate.
He stepped out of the Honda and looked around. The area was quiet. Nearby houses had low walls, but they were topped up by hedges, which provided some privacy.
He took his 9mm Sig Sauer out of its case. The gun contained fifteen rounds, and he had another fifteen in his belt. He’d never needed to use it, but the familiar weight of the P226 was reassuring.
He jogged across the road, to the corner, pressed against the wall and peered around. He saw Ger Barrett get out of his BMW.
The man he was meeting got out of the Ford. Mid-thirties, with a smooth, round face, and short, dark hair gelled within an inch of its life. Downward sloping eyebrows, resembling an upside-down V. It was a face Joe knew well.
Detective Sergeant Kevin Boyle.
Boyle paused to light a cigarette. So much for looking after his health.
The failed raid on Ger Barrett’s house made sense now. It wouldn’t be the first time a detective had sold confidential information. Every police force in the world had a few rogue officers and Dublin wasn’t any different.
Joe moved a little closer. He saw Barrett lean into the open door of his BMW and pull out a backpack. Barrett handed it to Boyle, who unzipped it and pulled out a wad of cash.
Then a second BMW came tearing up the road from behind Joe.
Barrett’s friends.
The driver glared at Joe. He was a mean-looking bastard with floppy blond hair and a scar under his left eye.
The car’s horn blasted, shockingly loud on the quiet road.
BEEP.
Ger Barrett looked up.
BEEP.
Kevin Boyle looked up.
BEEP.
Barrett and Boyle were suddenly tugging the bag of money back and forth.