Living Death (21 page)

She parked her own Focus as far away from the Audi as she could. She was wearing her dark blue duffel-coat and before she got out of the car she tugged up the hood so that even if anybody were watching from a distance they would have difficulty in telling who she was. She walked up to Maureen’s car but she went straight past it without stopping and without looking at Maureen. As she made her way to the footpath that ran beside the river, however, she heard a car door slam and knew that Maureen was following her.

She kept walking. The River Lee was wide here, a glittering grey, with a view on the opposite bank of Tivoli industrial estate with all its Lego-coloured shipping containers and the estuary of the Glashaboy River. Maureen had obviously chosen to meet her here because the footpath was screened from the road by thick bushes, and only somebody in a passing boat could have seen them talking together.

After she had walked about a hundred metres, and smiled at an elderly woman who was walking an equally elderly brown poodle, Katie stopped, and turned around, so that Maureen could catch up with her. Not far behind Maureen stood the limestone towers of Blackrock Castle, which looked like a castle out of a fairy story. These days, it was an observatory and a restaurant, and Katie and John had eaten there quite often, but it had originally been built in the reign of Elizabeth I to defend Cork harbour against marauding pirates. Quite appropriate to meet here, thought Katie, considering how the Callahan family made their money, smuggling arms.

Maureen had pulled on a black woolly slouch hat to cover her distinctive blonde hair, and she was wearing a long black overcoat and black high-heeled boots. She was tall, taller than Katie, and easily the prettiest of the Callahan sisters, with an oval face and chocolate-brown eyes and naturally pouting lips, although she had an angry three-pronged scar on the left side of her forehead, as if she had been struck with red-hot fire tongs. As she came close to her, Katie could smell Joy, which had always been one of her own favourite perfumes.

‘How’s the form, Maureen?’ Katie greeted her.

‘How do you think? I wish to God that I wasn’t meeting you like this, if you want to know the truth, but I’m not going to let them get away with it, do you know what I mean?’

She paused, and then she said, ‘You’ve no microphone?’

Katie unbuttoned her coat and held it wide. ‘You can frisk me if you like.’

She turned her pockets inside-out, too. ‘And see, look, I’ve left my phone behind in the car, so I won’t be able to record you with that, either.’

‘Okay, then, I’ll trust you. You saved my brother after all.’

They started walking together. Maureen was very twitchy, and kept turning around to make sure that nobody was following them. After a while, Katie said, ‘Are you one hundred per cent sure that your sisters had Branán murdered? They haven’t just locked him up in a garage somewhere, or chased him out of Cork and told him never to come back?’

‘Oh no, they’ve done for him all right. Threatening people, that’s not their style. If you cross my sisters, that’s it, you might as well call for a priest right away, because they’ll have you as soon as look at you. No second chances. My Da says if somebody miders you, don’t threaten them, because you’ll only make an enemy out of them, and one day they could catch you unawares, like, and do for you when you least expect it. So it makes sense to do for them first. After that, you don’t have to be looking over your shoulder every five minutes.’

‘But if you’re not prepared to give evidence against them, how are you going to make sure that they get punished for killing Branán?’

‘Because I can get them locked up in jail, that’s how. Why do you think I wanted to talk to you?’

‘Go on, then.
How
can you get them locked up in jail?’

Maureen glanced around again, and then said, ‘They’re having a huge shipment of guns and explosives delivered. Like,
huge
. Biggest this year, I’d say. Sometime on Friday night most likely.’

‘Where’s it coming from, this shipment?’ asked Katie.

‘The Czech Republic, through Boulogne, that’s the usual route. But it’s here in the country already.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m not too sure. Wherever they landed it. It could have been Kinsale or Kilmacsimon Quay up the Bandon River, or further along the coast maybe. It would have depended on the tides, like, and whether they thought that anybody had got wind of it. Maybe even Tralee.’

‘Do you know what’s in it?’

‘Assault rifles, the Czech ones, they’re like AK-47s. And Skorpion machine pistols, you can get four thousand euros each for those. And Semtex.’

‘So this is all arriving here in Cork on Friday night? Where, exactly?’

Maureen pressed her hand over her mouth and looked out across the river. For a long time she said nothing at all, but then she turned back to Katie and said, ‘Even with what they did to Branán, this isn’t easy. I mean, it’s betrayal, like, isn’t it, and that goes against the grain.’

‘Maureen, those guns are going to be used to commit crimes, and probably to kill people. The explosives, too. I know that your motive for telling me about them is revenge, rather than saving lives, but think about it. You’ll not only be making sure that your sisters get the justice they deserve, you’ll be doing something in the public interest, for a change.’

‘Well, I suppose you’re right,’ said Maureen. She thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘No, you
are
right, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. As soon as the shipment’s delivered, I’ll ring you to let you know where it is.’

‘Can’t you tell me now?’

‘I can’t, no. I wish I could, but there’s a score of different places where they store stuff and I don’t know where they’re going to put this shipment yet. My sisters have been fierce cagey with me lately, do you know what I mean? Like I say, though, the moment I know that it’s all been unloaded, and where, I’ll ring you. If you can just give me your number?’

Katie told Maureen her number and Maureen put it into her iPhone.

‘Right then,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll be waiting to hear from you.’

There was much more that Katie could have said to her. She could have said that even though she was acting as a Garda informant, she might still face historical charges for her own involvement in the arms-trafficking racket. After all, she had been working for the family business ever since she had left school, and over the years the Callahans had handled millions of euros’ worth of Semtex, as well as assault rifles, handguns, and even rocket launchers. Indirectly, the Callahans could be blamed for countless deaths and robberies, both south and north of the border. If a politician or a gangster had been shot in Dublin, you could almost be sure that they had been killed by a gun supplied by the Callahans.

A judge might give Maureen a lighter sentence in return for her assistance for putting the rest of the Callahans behind bars, but that could scarcely go unnoticed by her father and her sisters, and she would be at even greater risk if the DPP decided not to prosecute her at all. It wouldn’t matter if she had a recording of this conversation or not, her family would immediately realise then who had shopped them; and if what Maureen had told her was true, and nobody who crossed the Callahans was given a second chance, she would have to go into witness protection for the rest of her life.

Katie could have warned her about this, but she didn’t, because so far Maureen hadn’t given her enough information to make an arrest. She hadn’t told her exactly where the shipment of arms had been landed or where it was now, or exactly where in Cork it was going to be stored. That meant that Katie wouldn’t be able to set up surveillance on the storage facility before the arms were delivered. She wouldn’t be able to see who delivered them, and have the chance to arrest them, too.

It was a typical professional dilemma. She didn’t trust Maureen Callahan at all, and yet if she didn’t act on what she was telling her, she could miss out on making one of the most spectacular arrests of her whole career.

As they walked back to the car park together, Maureen lit a cigarette, and puffed at it very quickly, almost as if she wasn’t used to smoking. They separated without saying goodbye.

Back in her car, Katie looked at herself in the sun-visor mirror to tidy her hair.

If she’s not being straight with me,
she thought,
why has she gone to such lengths to tell me about Branán O’Flynn being murdered and this huge arms shipment coming in? If only some or none of it is true, what exactly is she after?

*

Keeno was sitting in the interview room looking bored when Katie and Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley came in. His hands were clasped together behind his head and he was staring at the ceiling and ostentatiously chewing gum. Garda O’Keefe was sitting in the corner looking equally bored. Katie knew Garda O’Keefe well, and she understood why he had been assigned to guard Keeno. He was a member of the Irish Elite Boxing Club and had been Garda welterweight boxing champion two years running.

Katie sat down in front of Keeno and Sergeant Begley and Detective Dooley sat on either side of her.

‘No chance of a smoke, I’m guessing?’ said Keeno.

Sergeant Begley said nothing but pointed to the
No Smoking
sign next to the door.

‘You’ve been given the leaflet explaining your rights?’ asked Katie.

Keeno didn’t answer but Detective Dooley said, ‘He has, yes, although he didn’t read it. He ripped it up into twinchy little bits and tossed them on the floor. But he was given it.’

‘You haven’t yet told us your name and address,’ said Katie. ‘Gerry Mulvaney calls you Keeno. What’s your full name?’

‘Gerry Mulvaney? That arsehole? He can call me whatever he fecking well chooses to.’

‘I’m asking
you
, not Gerry Mulvaney. Now that you’ve been arrested and charged, the law requires you to give us your name and address. If you refuse to do that, you’ll be committing a further offence under the Public Order Act.’

‘Away to feck. If I tell you my name then you’ll know who I am. And if I tell you my address, you’ll know where I live.’

‘Exactly, that’s the whole idea. Who are you? And where
do
you live?’

‘Do you think I’m stone mad? I want a solicitor. I want something to eat. I’m thirsty.’

‘Tell me your name and address first.’

‘I want a solicitor. I want something to eat. I’m thirsty. On the leaflet it says that you have to give me something to eat and drink, and you have to call me a solicitor too. It’s my legal right.’

‘You tore up that leaflet without even reading it,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘How do you know all that?’

‘No comment.’

‘You’re entitled to make phone calls, too. Are you aware of that?’

‘Oh, yes, and I know what would happen if I made a fecking phone call. You’d only be hacking it to find out who I was calling.’

‘What’s your name, Keeno?’ Katie repeated. ‘And what’s your address? I’m not asking you again.’

‘“Notso”, that’s my name. “Notso Fecking Thick As You Think I Am.” And I live Up The Fat Woman’s Arse On Shandon Street.’

‘Jesus,’ said Sergeant Begley. ‘I haven’t heard anybody say that since I was in bunscoil.’

Keeno kept on chewing with his mouth open and staring up at the ceiling but Katie could guess why he was being so obstructive. If he told her his name and address, her detectives would quickly be able to put names to the rest of the gang who had stolen the dogs from the Sceolan Kennel, and if the rest of the gang were all tracked down and arrested, they would know that Keeno had been blabbing. His life wouldn’t be worth living, either inside jail or out of it.

He might be acting arrogant, but Katie was sure that, behind that arrogance, he was frightened.

‘Fair play to you, Notso,’ she said, doing her best to sound unperturbed. ‘Let’s forget about who you are for a moment, and let’s talk about some of the things you’ve done.’

‘Like what? I’ve done nothing, never. I’m a decent law-abiding citizen, that’s me. You took my fingerprints, didn’t you? You checked them on your computer, don’t tell me you didn’t. What did you find? Not a tap, that’s what you found. If you’d found anything, you wouldn’t have to be asking me who I was.’

It was Katie’s turn not to answer. Keeno was right, of course. They
had
checked his fingerprints on the AFIS database, but they had failed to come up with a match. And while Detective Dooley had pointed out that he seemed to know all of the civil rights, even though he had torn up the mandatory leaflet that he had been given, that didn’t necessarily mean that he had been arrested before. He might have attended a Garda station with a friend who was charged with an offence, and read about his rights there; or maybe he had simply taken the precaution of finding out what his rights were if he ever did happen to be lifted.

‘We took a hair sample for DNA as well as fingerprints,’ said Katie.

‘So?’

‘So we didn’t expect to find a match on the FSI database. That hasn’t been up and running all that long, anyway. But we’re more than confident that we’ll find a match from Sceolan Boarding Kennels.’

‘I don’t know what the feck you’re talking about,’ said Keeno. He kept his head tilted back but he stopped staring at the ceiling and instead he dropped his eyes to stare at Katie, and stare at her very intently. She had seen the same expression in the eyes of men who had been just about to hit her – or try to hit her, anyway.

‘I think you know full well what I’m talking about, Keeno,’ she told him. ‘In fact I’m sure that you do. I’m talking about the wife of the owner of Sceolan Boarding Kennels, Mrs Cleona Cassidy. I’m talking about a home invasion in the early hours of the first of this month. This happened while a gang was carrying out a major robbery there, during the course of which twenty-six pedigree dogs were stolen.
Including
, would you believe, the very same two dogs which you offered for sale to Gerry Mulvaney.’

‘No comment,’ said Keeno, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Although he hadn’t changed his position, with his hands clasped behind his head, Katie could almost feel his mounting tension. She sensed that he could spring out of his chair at any second.