Living Death (16 page)

‘Sounds like cat’s malogian to me,’ said Detective Dooley.

‘Me too, ma’am,’ said Detective Scanlan.

Katie turned back to Gerry Mulvaney and said, ‘Who gave you these dogs, Gerry? You have one last chance to tell me.’

‘I’m not telling you nothing, girl,’ Gerry Mulvaney retorted. He was looking angry now, but his bluster gave Katie the feeling that he was frightened, as well as angry.

‘You’re sure? In that case, I’m going to take you in for questioning. Not only that, I’m going to call the ISPCA, and I’m going to suggest that they conduct a full and thorough inspection of your kennels here, with a view to closing them down on the grounds that they’re insanitary, and a threat to the health and wellbeing of the animals you have here.’

‘Call them. See if I give a shite.’

‘Oh, I will. And on top of that, I’m going to suggest to the tax commissioners that they aggressively audit your accounts for the past five years. You must have made a fair profit out of all these dogs that these anonymous people have been giving you to find a home for. I wonder what’s happened to all that money? Did you declare it?’

Gerry Mulvaney said, ‘Listen to me, Detective Superintendent Missus-Whatever-The-Feck-You-Call-Yourself. You don’t scare me one iota. I’ve been running these kennels for fifteen years and the ISPCA have never given me a single ounce of bother once, and nor neither have the Revenue. So get up the yard, will you, and take your two wains with you.’

Katie looked at him with a very serious expression on her face. ‘You do realise that I’m giving you one last opportunity to tell me who gave you these dogs?’

‘And you do realise that I’m giving you one last opportunity to get the feck away from here?’ Gerry Mulvaney retorted.

Katie went up to the Vizsla’s stall and slid back the bolt on the wire-mesh door.

‘Hey now, stall the ball,’ said Gerry Mulvaney, stepping forward to stop her. ‘This is private property and you don’t have a warrant so you can’t fecking touch nothing at all. And don’t be thinking you can take those dogs away with you, because they both belong to me now and like I said I can prove it.’

Katie ignored him and swung the door open. The Vizsla stood up and came up to her, sniffing at the hem of her russet tweed skirt.

Gerry Mulvaney reached out to pull Katie back, but Detective Dooley grabbed his sleeve.

‘Come on, Gerry, boy, you don’t want to be done for assaulting a garda, do you?’

Katie had guessed that a stand-off like this might arise, which was one of the reasons why she had decided to come along with Detectives Dooley and Scanlan, and why she had armed herself. Her greatest concern had been that they might be threatened with a shotgun. It had happened to her before when she was a Garda Sergeant in Crosshaven, and she had been sent to investigate three stolen cows, and shot at by an irate farmer, who had narrowly missed her. But now she had seen how fearful Gerry Mulvaney was, and how she could exploit that fear.

She lifted her sweater and took her revolver out of its holster.

‘What in the name of
feck
?’ said Gerry Mulvaney.

Katie took hold of the Vizsla’s collar and pointed the revolver directly between its agate-coloured eyes. The dog’s expression was so appealing and sad that she was glad that it couldn’t understand what she was doing.

She turned to Gerry Mulvaney and said, very calmly, ‘Mr Mulvaney – I shall have to report to my chief superintendent that we came here to ask you some questions about two dogs that you’ve advertised for sale on the internet – dogs which we had good reason to believe might have been stolen.’

‘What are you playing at, girl?’ Gerry Mulvaney demanded. ‘What the feck’s that gun for?’

‘You grudgingly took us to see the dogs, but you were pure aggressive about it,’ Katie told him. ‘The dogs picked up on your aggression. They became highly agitated and attacked us. I had no alternative but to put them both down.’

‘
What?
You’re not going to
shoot
them?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t have any alternative. It was self-defence. Detectives Dooley and Scanlan here will back me up.’

‘That’s right,’ said Detective Dooley, picking up on Katie’s cue. ‘I mean, Jesus, they could have torn our throats out.’

‘What in the name of God are you talking about? They’re just fecking standing there, good as gold! You can’t fecking shoot them!’

‘That’s not the way I see it,’ said Katie. ‘The way I see it, these two dogs had to be destroyed. It was a fierce pity, that, because it meant that you weren’t able to sell them, and because of that, you had to tell your
flaithiúlach
friend that you wouldn’t be able to stand him a pint of Murphy’s after all. But what did he care? A generous fellow like that?’

Although Gerry Mulvaney’s cheeks remained as two scarlet spots, the rest of his face turned white, and his pale blue eyes darted from side to side like a cornered rabbit.

‘You can’t do that! Of course he’ll fecking care!
Care?
He’ll be raging!’

‘So what you were saying... that wasn’t exactly true?’

‘Not exactly, no, I admit it. But that was because I thought it was none of your business. I’m supposed to sell the dogs and give him the proceeds and I’ll take my cut. That’s the way it works. But if you shoot the dogs and I can’t pay him, he’ll fecking
murder
me. I mean that. He’ll genuinely fecking murder me, in real life.’

‘Well... there is a way that you can stop me from shooting them,’ said Katie. The Vizsla was trying to sniff at the muzzle of her revolver now. ‘Tell me who gave them to you. Give me a name.’

Gerry Mulvaney’s chest rose and fell under his Tattersall waistcoat. At last he said, ‘You have to swear to God that you won’t let him find out that it was me that told you. Otherwise he’ll murder me just the same, either him or his gang.’

‘Just tell me the name, Gerry.’

‘He calls himself Keeno. That’s the only name he goes by. I’ve done business with him a fair few times before. He rings me and says that he has dogs for sale and he fetches them here and I sell them for him.’

‘Keeno?’ Katie repeated. She gave him no indication that she had heard that name before. ‘Can you describe him?’

Gerry Mulvaney shrugged. ‘I don’t know, like. Mid-forties I’d say, maybe a little older, black hair. Kind of sleepy-eyed, like, and with a busted nose, too. Tell you who he puts me in mind of – that Sylvester Stallone fellow in the Rocky fillums.’

‘What kind of an accent does he have?’ asked Detective Scanlan.

Gerry Mulvaney looked hesitant, but Katie kept her revolver pointed between the Vizsla’s eyes and nodded suggestively down at it as if she were quite prepared to pull the trigger at any moment.

‘West Cork, Kerry maybe. He speaks real quick, like, and kind of slurs what he says. But he never says much. Only “Here’s the dogs, like, and we’ll be waiting on the grade.”’

‘Do you have any idea who his gang are? Have you seen any more of them?’

‘No. He’s the only I’ve ever seen. Look – you’re not really going to shoot them dogs, are you?’

‘What kind of a vehicle does he drive?’

‘The last time, when he dropped these two off, just some van. Ford Transit, I’d say. Silver, no lettering on it. There must be hundreds of them.’

‘How do you pay him?’ asked Katie.

‘Cash. I ring him up to tell him I have it ready and then he comes to collect it.’

‘All right,’ said Katie. Usually, she would have been deeply suspicious about everything that he had told her, but he had given her the name ‘Keeno’. Even if he had been lying about everything else – even if his dog supplier looked more like John Goodman in reality than Sylvester Stallone, and even if he drove a red Fiat Ducato instead of a silver Ford Transit, Gerry Mulvaney had still made the connection that she was looking for.

She tucked away her revolver, pulled down her sweater and patted the Vizsla on the head. The Vizsla wagged his tail and licked his lips as if he were expecting a treat.

‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Gerry,’ she said. ‘We’re going to take these two dogs as evidence. We’re going to give you the money for them, cash, and you’re going to tell

Keeno that you’ve sold them, and that you’ve been paid.’

‘Then – then what?’ said Gerry Mulvaney, and his left eye was twitching.

‘When Keeno comes to collect his money, we’ll be waiting to have a word with him. It’s as simple as that.’

‘But you can’t do that! Jesus Christ Almighty, the rest of the gang they’ll know it was me who ratted him out and they’ll fecking kill me!’

‘Your choice, Gerry. If you co-operate with us and help us to detain Keeno, the court should go easy on you. If necessary we can also give you protective custody and relocate you to a safe house. However, if you
don’t
co-operate, I’ll arrest you now and we’ll announce through the media that we’re looking for Keeno, so his gang will still know that it was you who gave us his name. If that’s what you decide, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, I can tell you that.’

She looked around the building and said, ‘Either way, it’s the end for Gerry Mulvaney’s High Class Kennels.’

Gerry Mulvaney took a dented cigarette case out of his inside pocket, opened it, and took out a half-smoked cigarette. He lit it with a pink plastic lighter and blew a long stream of smoke out of his nostrils.

‘Go on, then,’ he said, without looking at Katie. ‘Take the fecking dogs. I’m tired of running this fecking business any road. Just make sure that none of Keeno’s pals ever finds me, that’s all.’

Katie turned to Detectives Dooley and Scanlan and said, ‘Can you contact the dog support unit and ask them to shoot down here asap, to pick up these two? And can you arrange with Bandon for Eoin Cassidy to be fetched up here to take a look at them, to see if they’re his? I’ll talk to Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin and arrange for the cash to be raised to pay this Keeno, and I’ll also ask Superintendent Pearse to set up surveillance.’

‘Do you know who I feel like?’ said Gerry Mulvaney, blowing out more smoke. ‘I feel like Michael Collins when he signed that fecking treaty with the Brits, that’s who I fecking feel like.’

‘What? That you’ve signed your own death warrant?’ said Katie. ‘Don’t worry, Gerry. We’ve a whole rake of witnesses under protection – you wouldn’t even believe how many – and no harm’s come to any of them yet.’

Gerry Mulvaney shook his head and couldn’t stop shaking it. ‘You know what you are, Detective Superintendent What’s-Your-Face? You’re a fecking
dearg-due
, that’s what you are. A fecking blood-sucking witch. You never were going to shoot those dogs, were you, not in a million years? But you got inside my head. And now look at me. Totally fecking botched.’

Katie had been waiting at the Circuit Court for over half an hour when she heard an ambulance siren outside, and doors slamming, and the sound of running feet. A man’s voice shouted, ‘Here, this way, and make a bust will you!’ and a woman called out, ‘Where is she?’

Katie was sitting in the office that the state solicitor used on court days. It was a small stuffy side room with a desk and a green leather couch and shelves crammed with books on case law and family law, as well as
The Irish Constitution of 1937
and the
Acts of the Oireachtas
.

She stood up and went over to the high window that overlooked Cross Street but although she could see the ambulance’s flashing lights reflected in the windows of the Washington Inn opposite, she couldn’t see the ambulance itself.

She was about to go out and find out what was going on when Finola McFerren the state solicitor came in, looking flustered. She was holding her wig in her hand as if it were a dead rat that she had found in the corridor outside.

‘I’m
so
sorry, detective superintendent,’ she said. She was a tall woman, almost unnaturally thin, with black-framed glasses that were always perched halfway down her long curved nose. ‘Abidemi Nduka has failed to show up. I wasn’t so concerned about that. As you know yourself, her testimony wasn’t exactly going to be critical. But would you believe that Rosaleen Dunnihy has gone into labour?’

‘Stop! So that’s what the white van’s for?’

‘I’m afraid so. Her waters broke, right there in the witnesses’ waiting room. It was a blessing it didn’t happen while she was on the stand giving evidence.’

‘So what now?’

‘Judge O’Connell has postponed the hearing
sine die
, and he’s said that if it’s a boy he wants it named after him.’

Katie wasn’t amused. She picked up her briefcase from the couch and said, ‘If she was that close to giving birth, like, why did you call her? I’ve just wasted nearly an hour and I’ve fierce more important matters to be taking care of.’

‘Well, as I’ve said, I’m sorry. I’ll get back to you about it as soon as it’s rescheduled, of course, but I shouldn’t imagine that will be for several months now.’

‘All right. Fair play to you. At least Michael Gerrety will be staying on Rathmore Road where he belongs.’

Michael Gerrety was Cork’s wealthiest and most notorious pimp, and he had lodged an appeal against his sentence for conspiracy to drown a teenage prostitute. Katie had been obliged to attend the hearing because his appeal was based on the grounds that she had harboured a long-term personal grudge against him – mostly because of her repeated failure to convict him for living off immoral earnings. He also claimed that she had persuaded the principal witness against him to give false evidence. His appeal was a farce, as far as Katie was concerned, and she knew that he had lodged it for the sole purpose of irritating her and wasting her time.

On her way back to Anglesea Street, Detective Scanlan called her from Riverstick and told her that the Dog Support Unit had arrived and collected the German Shepherd and the Vizsla. Eoin Cassidy would be driven up from Bandon tomorrow morning at 10:00 to see if he could identify them.

Detective Scanlan also told her that Superintendent Pearse had sent down two gardaí with the cash for ‘Keeno’ to collect, accompanied by four more armed officers from the Regional Support Unit.