Living Death (17 page)

‘It’s all set up now, ma’am. All we’re waiting on now is Keeno.’

‘Let’s hope he shows up sooner rather than later. And keep your eyes open for anybody who might be with him. Bring
them
in too, whatever they say.’

It was nearly five by the time Katie returned to her desk. Moirin went to fetch her a cup of coffee and then quickly ran over the paperwork that she had sorted out for her. She leaned over Katie’s desk so that Katie could see into her cleavage. She smelled faintly of Rose’s Olde Irish Cough Drops.

‘There’s three invitations for you to meet different community groups. I’d say the most pressing of these is Irish Rural Link. They’re asking for an urgent meeting about Garda station closures. They say in their letter here that the burglary situation in some of the country areas is getting desperate. They reckon that south of the city there’s been almost a twofold increase in aggravated break-ins, although a lot of them don’t get reported because the victims don’t ever think they’ll get their property back, or else they’re afeared of reprisals.

‘It’s probably worth meeting with them because they have very good media connections, do you know what I mean, and if you didn’t agree to meet them they might crib to the
Echo
about it.’

‘I see,’ said Katie. ‘Let’s email them, then, and ask them to suggest a date.’

Moirin jotted that down, and then she said, ‘Oh – and you and a partner of your choice have been invited to the Cork Simon Ball next year. I know it’s not until April but it’s always sold out months before. I’d like to go myself but my Barry’s not at all sociable and when he dances you’d think he’d been struck by lightning the way he hops about.’

Katie gave her a tight smile. She couldn’t take John as ‘a partner of her choice’ because it was questionable if he would even be capable of walking by April, let alone waltzing. But the ball was in a good cause, helping Cork’s homeless, and it would be good public relations for her to show her face there.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Put me down for two tickets. And put an ad in the paper for a man who doesn’t dance like a duck.’

It was a quarter past five already, and she was acutely aware that she would now be able to call Maureen Callahan. Apart from that, she had her strategy meeting with Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin and Superintendent Pearse in only fifteen minutes.

‘Let’s leave the rest of this until later,’ she said. ‘There’s a phone call I have to make and I’m running out of time as usual. But thanks, Moirin. You’ve taken a ton of pressure off me.’

As soon as Moirin had left her office, Katie picked up her iPhone and called the number that Assistant Commissioner Jimmy O’Reilly had given her. It was answered almost at once, as if Maureen Callahan had been jiggling her phone in her hand, waiting impatiently for her to ring.

‘Maureen?’ she said.

‘Hallo, yes, this is Maureen. Is that who I think it is?’

‘It is, yes. Are you able to talk to me, Maureen?’

‘I can. I’m on my own at the moment. My sister’s gone out for the messages. She won’t be too long, though. She’s only gone up to Dunne’s at Ballyvolane.’

‘I’ve been told that you might have some information for me. Something that you don’t want to tell anybody else.’

‘Well, that’s right, that’s right. Sorry to be so skittery. I don’t know if I ought to be talking to you like this or not.’

‘Try and calm yourself down a little,’ said Katie. ‘Let me hear what you have to say, and then we can decide what to do about it, if anything. There’s no need for you to be frightened, let me promise you that. Nobody else is going to know that you spoke to me – and I mean
nobody
, and not only nobody, but
never
.’

‘It’s only because I trust you,’ said Maureen Callahan. ‘I mean I was going to tell that detective feller Dermot and I think I probably could have trusted him, like, but then I wasn’t totally sure, do you know what I mean? I thought I could trust my own sisters, like you would, wouldn’t you, your own sisters? But could I feck. After what
they
did I don’t think I’m ever going to trust nobody, never again. I mean, Jesus.’

Maureen Callahan spoke in a high-pitched northside gabble, and she kept punctuating her speech with little puffing noises, so Katie guessed that she was smoking at the same time, and just as rapidly as she was speaking. Although she had said that she was nervous, Katie could tell from experience that she was working herself up to saying something that she was determined to get off her chest.

‘So why don’t you trust your sisters any more?’

‘Would
you
? Would you trust anybody who did what they did?’

‘I don’t know, Maureen. It depends what they did. One of my sisters borrowed my best angora sweater once without asking and burned a hole in it.’

‘You’re fecking joking, aren’t you? A hole in a fecking sweater, I wish! I’ll tell you what my sisters did. I was secretly doing a line with Branán O’Flynn, like. You know Branán?’

‘Of course. I know all the O’Flynns. I think I’ve arrested all of them, at one time or another.’

‘Well, me and Branán, we’d known each other ever since we was in bunscoil together and he was always flirting around with me even then, when we was kids. But of course we grew up and I was Callahan and he was O’Flynn and we couldn’t go on being friends because our families were always at each other’s throats. It was Kieran O’Flynn who shot my cousin Alan, not that nobody could ever prove it.’

‘Yes, I know about that,’ said Katie. ‘But, tell me – you and Branán O’Flynn started seeing each other, without anybody knowing?’

‘Nobody knew. Not his family, and nor mine neither. We were doing a line, like, for more than six months before anybody found out. I don’t know who it was who sneaked on us. It could have been one of the barmen at Jurys Hotel on the Western Road, because we used to go there to spend the night together, like. But somebody sneaked on us for sure.’

‘So what happened, Maureen?’ asked Katie. Maureen was gabbling and puffing even more furiously, and then she started sobbing, too, although her sobs were more like a seal honking.

‘One day two weeks ago I go to meet Branán at the Oval Bar – you know, on South Main Street. We used to go there for a scoop sometimes because we could sit right in the back and nobody would reck us. Branán’s not there, but I can’t believe my eyes because my Da’s there of all people and so is my older sister Bree. My
Da
! And
Bree
! Would you fecking believe it? They grab hold of me and they take me outside and they push me into the car, like. My Da’s having a rabbie about me doing a line with Branán but my sister Bree – Mother of God, I tell you, she goes off like a fecking Haitch-bomb. She’s allergic to those O’Flynns like I never saw nobody allergic to nobody.’

Maureen puffed and honked and sniffed and honked again.

‘Go on,’ Katie coaxed her.

‘We’re driving back home and I go, “What about Branán? You know, “Did you see him, like, and warn him off, or what?” And Bree goes, “Don’t you bother yourself about Branán, Mo, because you’re never going to see Branán, never again, not so long as you live, and neither is anybody else, neither.” So I go, “What do you mean, like, you haven’t, like, hurt him or nothing?”

‘It’s then my Da turns around and goes, “No, pet, we didn’t hurt him. He didn’t feel a thing.”’

‘Are you trying to tell me they shot him?’

Maureen let out a long, keening wail, which ended in another sob.

‘They only fecking murdered him! They murdered my Branán! The love of my life he was! He and me, we was talking all the time about running away from Cork together and getting married. And they
murdered
him! My own flesh and blood! My own Da, my very own Da, and my own sister Bree! Can you believe it?’

Katie let her sob and puff for a while, and then said, ‘Do you know what they did with his body?’

‘No. They won’t tell me. I’ve asked them again and again but they say it’s better if I never know. More than likely they probably buried him in a bog somewhere, like the O’Flynns was supposed to have done with my cousin Alan.’

‘If Branán’s disappeared, why haven’t the O’Flynns reported him missing?’

‘Oh, come on. The O’Flynns wouldn’t tell the guards if somebody broke into their toilet and stole their shit.’

‘Maureen – are you prepared to make a formal statement about this and testify in court?’

‘No, I am not,’ said Maureen. ‘No way.’ Then, ‘Stall it for a moment,’ and she loudly blew her nose.

When she had finished, she said, ‘If you try to make out that I told you all of this, I’ll say I didn’t. I’ll say you must have been dreaming.’

Katie waited for a moment, and then she said, ‘I don’t understand this, Maureen. If you’re not prepared to help me arrest your father and your sister for murdering Branán, then why did you want me to call you? Without your testimony, there’s nothing I can do. Your father will deny it and your sister will deny it and we have no idea of where Branán’s body might be or where he was killed or how, so we’ll have no forensic evidence, either. Don’t you want to see justice done?’

‘Oh, believe you me, DS Maguire, believe you me – I want justice done. I want
more
than justice done! They’ve ruined my life – I want to see
them
ruined, too, the whole Callahan family, not just my Da and Bree. I want to see them
all
locked up!’

‘All right. You want revenge. But if you won’t give me a statement, how do you propose to make that happen?’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll bet you’re recording this, aren’t you?’

‘Of course, yes. All Garda conversations are recorded. But that won’t be much use if you come out later and say that nothing of what you’ve told me is true. Especially if we can’t find Branán O’Flynn’s body.’

‘I’ll meet you somewhere tomorrow morning where nobody can see us and nobody can record what I’m telling you,’ said Maureen. Her voice was lower now, and slower, and she sounded more guarded than distressed. ‘But if you ever come out and say that you met me, and that’s where you got your tip-off from, I’ll say that you’re a liar.’

‘So where are you thinking of meeting me?’ asked Katie. ‘And when?’

‘How are you fixed tomorrow morning about eleven? That’s about the only time I can get away.’

‘I can do that, yes. Where?’

‘If you’re coming from the city and you go past Blackrock Castle there’s a car park for the castle. Do you know it? A short distance past that, though, there’s another car park, for people who want to walk by the river. I’ll be there at eleven so.’

‘Okay,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll be there, too.’

‘But no cheating on me, like. No hidden microphone or nothing like that. This has to be confidential.’

‘I promise you. No hidden microphone.’

Maureen Callahan hung up without saying anything else. Katie was left staring at her phone indecisively. She couldn’t make up her mind if Maureen had been genuinely grieving or whether she had another motive for getting her own back on her sisters. All that sobbing had certainly been dramatic, but maybe it had been a little
too
dramatic. It’s fierce hard to tell these days, she thought, now that people weep and wail and build shrines out of flowers and teddy-bears whenever a rock star or a famous actor passes away, as if they had known them personally.

She dialled Detective Ó Doibhilin’s number.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘Michael, you know Branán O’Flynn, don’t you?’

‘Branán O’Flynn? That chancer? Of course. I lifted him only in April I think it was. Selling Krokodil at the late and unlamented Catwalk Club.’

‘Would you go round to his house and check if he’s there, and if he’s not, go round to his usual haunts and find out if anybody’s seen him in the past two weeks. But do it dead discreet, like, you know. If nobody’s seen him, don’t push it and ask what’s happened to him. Just say okay and that you’ll try to catch up with him later.’

‘What’s the reason?’ asked Detective Ó Doibhilin. ‘He’s still on bail for that, isn’t he? Has he gone on the hop or something?’

‘I can’t tell you at the moment, Michael, sorry. But if you could do that this evening for me, I’d really appreciate it.’

‘Of course, ma’am. No bother at all. There’s only that
Operation Transformation
on the telly tonight. I’d rather be out working than watching a bunch of fat eejits trying to turn themselves into thin eejits.’

‘Thanks,’ said Katie. ‘And there’s something I need you to do for me tomorrow morning, too. I can’t explain why, not at the moment, but I’ll tell you what it’s all about later. Let’s just say that it’s kind of insurance. One of those things that may turn out to be a waste of time, but if it doesn’t, then you’re fierce relieved that you did it.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Detective Ó Doibhilin, and listened carefully while she explained what she wanted.

When she had hung up, Katie went into Moirin’s office and said, ‘I’m going into my strategy meeting now, Moirin. I don’t know what time we’ll be finished so you can go home now if you like. I’ll see you in the morning so. And thanks again for all the work you’ve done today.’

She picked up the folder of rural crime statistics that she was going to take into the meeting. As she did so she remembered that she had arranged to meet Maureen Callahan at the same time as John’s appointment at the hospital with Doctor Kashani to discuss his prosthetic legs.

She could hardly ring Maureen Callahan back and change the time of their rendezvous. Maybe she could manage to alter the time of John’s appointment. Maybe her life was becoming too complicated altogether.

It was nearly 10:30 by the time she arrived home, and it was raining hard. Bridie must have seen her car headlights as she turned into the driveway because she opened the front door for her as she came hurrying up to the porch with her briefcase held over her head.

‘Holy Mother of God, it’s bucketing!’ said Bridie. ‘I left my houseplants out to be watered but they’re going to be washed out to sea if it goes on like this!’