Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (48 page)

Determined that her son would be king, Moncha sat on a rock for the whole day and night, preventing him from leaving her womb. He was born the next day, but the top of his head was pressed flat, so he was given the name Fiachu Muillethan, Fiachu the Flathead.

Flat-headed or not, he became King of Munster, one of the High Kings of Erin, although Moncha died giving birth to him and he was left an orphan.

Katie closed her laptop and sat back. This was another link between Bryan Molloy and the High Kings of Erin, but only a very tenuous one and it was far from being proof that he was actively involved with them. What she needed to do now was to find if there was a connection between the old High Kings of Erin, the corrupt Garda officers that her father had told her about, and the new High Kings of Erin, who were organizing the kidnapping of Cork’s small businessmen.

Her phone rang. It was her sister, Moirin, who hadn’t called her for weeks.

‘I just rang Dad,’ she said. ‘He said you criticized me for not buying him tea bags. I don’t know how you have the
neck
! You see him yourself only once in a blue moon and who do you have to take care of? You want to try looking after Siobhán for a day, with a mental age of nine but almost a nymphomaniac, and then you can criticize me all you like.’

‘Moirin, I didn’t criticize you. I never would. I think you’re a saint.’

‘You wish I
was
a saint, you mean, so that you could inherit all of Dad’s house when he passes over.’

Katie leaned back on the couch, closing her eyes and letting the phone drop on to the seat cushion beside her. She could still hear Moirin’s tinny little voice, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. After a while, though, she could hear her snapping out, ‘
Hello
?
Hello
?
Are you there, Katie
?
Katie
?’

There was a moment’s silence, then a sharp click as Moirin put down the phone, and then there was nothing but the dialling tone.

Katie thought of her grandmother, who always used to say, ‘Some people love to hear ill of themselves. There’s nothing they enjoy more than feeling aggrieved.’

***

The next morning she woke up much later than usual and lay staring at the digital clock beside her bed as it changed from 8.12 to 8.13. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again it was 8.36. She threw back the duvet and sat up, furiously scratching her scalp. She had used a new shampoo last night and it had made her itch.

She had just fastened her bra and reached for the dark green roll-neck sweater that she was going to wear today when her mobile phone rang. She picked it up from the bedside table but didn’t recognize the caller’s number. It started with 061, the code for Limerick.

‘Hello?’ she said, cautiously. ‘Who is this?’

‘Is that Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire?’ asked a wheezy male voice.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Gary Cannon. Formerly
Sergeant
Gary Cannon, formerly based at Henry Street, in Limerick.’

‘Oh, yes. And who gave you my number?’

‘The daughter of an old Garda friend of mine who knows that I mean you no harm and that I’m only trying to do you some good. Kyna Ni Nuallán. Her father is Terry ó Nuallán. He was a sergeant, too, at Roxboro Road.’

Katie said, ‘All right, then. You’ve got through to DS Maguire. Why are you ringing me?’

‘I heard that you’ve been suspended from duty. Well – Terry told me.’

‘It hasn’t been announced officially yet,’ said Katie. ‘But, yes. I’m seeing my lawyer about it this afternoon.’

‘It was Bryan Molloy who suspended you, wasn’t it?’

Katie was extremely reluctant to discuss her suspension on the phone with a wheezy-voiced stranger, but he gave her the feeling that he had something to tell her that might help her. He already knew that she had been suspended, so there was no point in trying to hide
that
from him, and she didn’t have to tell him anything more.

‘I was given the sack myself by Bryan Molloy,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘That was less than three weeks before I’d put in twenty-five years of reckonable service, so you can imagine what damage that did to my pension.’

‘What exactly do you want, Mr Cannon?’

‘Oh, you can call me Gary, if you like. I can’t really tell you what I want over the blower, for reasons that you’re probably aware of. But there’s somebody I think you might care to meet. Can you get yourself to Limerick by noon, say, or shortly after?’

‘You want me to come to Limerick?’ asked Katie.

‘I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think it would be worth your while, believe me.’

‘Well … all right. Supposing I do?’

‘Are you fairly well acquainted with Limerick? Do you know Saint Mary’s Cathedral?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘Behind Saint Mary’s Cathedral is Nicholas Street and about a third of the way down Nicholas Street is a small bar with a red front called the Cauldron.’

‘I’ve heard of the Cauldron, yes.’

‘Okay, then. Me and this somebody I think you might care to meet, we’ll be in the Cauldron at twelve o’clock sharp. You’ll recognize me because I’ll be wearing a green jacket and a green cap, and I’ll be sitting at a table on the left-hand side of the bar as you come in.’

Katie was about to ask Gary Cannon if he could give her at least a notion of what this ‘somebody’ wanted to tell her, but he hung up. She sat on the side of the bed wondering what she ought to do. If Gary Cannon really was a friend of Kyna’s father, then she was fairly sure that she could trust him, but she only had his word for it. And what could this ‘somebody’ have to say that would make it worth her while driving all the way up to Limerick in the rain?

She stood up and finished dressing, pulling on her bottle-green tights and black wool skirt. As she was putting on her make-up in the bathroom, she looked at her reflection and knew by the look in her eyes that she had decided to go. It was strictly against regulations, but she decided to take her revolver with her, too. She could hand it in to the armoury when she came back to Cork. But as her father had always said, ‘The only person you can trust is the person you see in the mirror, and even they can let you down when you’re least expecting it.’

Katie drove up to Limerick through Mitchelstown so that she could stop and take a look at the Kilshane Tarmac depot on the Dublin Road. Behind grey steel palisade railings she could see a grey concrete office building and a high corrugated-iron shelter, like a barn with no sides, under which two large pavers were parked, as well as a trench roller and two compactors. There was a pungent smell of asphalt in the air.

She could make out several people in shirtsleeves inside the offices, and a group of four or five workmen in orange high-visibility jackets were standing in the yard outside, smoking. She was tempted to go inside and ask questions about the road they had laid near Ballincollig, but she wanted to find out much more about the High Kings of Erin before she showed her hand. Apart from Fergal O’Donnell, and the team of labourers who had done it, she assumed that she was the only person who knew that Kilshane Tarmac was responsible for spreading asphalt over that body, and she wanted them to continue to believe that they had got away with it. Not only that, she didn’t have the legal authority at the moment and she didn’t want to have her fight for reinstatement compromised by any further complaints.

She continued her drive northwards to Limerick. An hour later, a few minutes before twelve, she turned into Nicholas Street – a long, narrow street of small, flat-fronted houses, which on a wet day like this looked particularly dismal. It had two pubs in it, the Cauldron and the Mucky Duck, and a derelict demolition site overgrown with weeds and supported by rusty scaffolding. Further down, even St Mary’s Cathedral had turned its back on Nicholas Street, presenting it with nothing but a rough grey stone wall.

She parked outside the Cauldron’s red-painted facade and went inside. The small bar was crowded with noisy drinkers and the large flat-screen TV was showing a hurling match between Limerick and Kilkenny, where the clouds were so dark that the stadium lights had been switched on. She had no trouble finding Gary Cannon. As he had told her, he was sitting at a table on the left-hand side, next to a mirror advertisement for Smithwick’s ale, wearing a green cap and a green jacket with leather patches on the elbows.

Beside him sat a woman of about forty-five years old, with wiry dyed-black hair, false eyelashes that looked as if she had used them to sweep a chimney, and sticky, crimson lipstick. She was wearing a tight black wool dress which clung to her enormous breasts and wide, double-barrelled hips, and her wrists jangled with gold and silver bracelets. In spite of her blowsy appearance, however, Katie could see that she was actually quite handsome, with strong cheekbones and cat-like amethyst eyes.

Gary Cannon stood up and offered Katie his hand. ‘I’m Gary, Katie, and this is Jilleen. What would you care to drink?’

‘Nothing, thank you, for the moment, Gary,’ said Katie, but at the same time Limerick scored a goal and the noise in the bar was so overwhelming that she had to shout.

‘I’ll have another Power’s and ginger if you’re getting one,’ said Jilleen.

While Gary went to the bar, Katie sat down and took out her mobile phone. Jilleen gave her a ghost of a smile but said nothing.

‘Is this your regular bar?’ Katie asked her.

Jilleen shook her head. ‘I usually drink at Ma Reilly’s. Gary wanted us to meet here because nobody will reck us.’

‘I see. Does he not want anybody to know that we’ve met?’

‘Let’s just say that it would be better if nobody did.’

‘All right. His actual words were that you might have something interesting to tell me.’

‘Oh, not just
tell
you,’ said Jilleen. ‘I have something interesting to give you, too.’

‘Really?’

Gary came back from the bar with a pint of Guinness for himself and a whiskey and ginger for Jilleen. ‘You’re sure I can’t tempt you?’ he asked Katie.

‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m driving.’ All the same, she was surprised that she didn’t even feel like one.

Gary swallowed some Guinness and wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand. ‘Has Jilleen told you anything yet?’

‘No, nothing, except that you wanted us to meet in a place where we wouldn’t be recognized.’

‘Well, that’s right. I mean, it’s not so bad if I’m recognized, which one or two of them might, because I’ve felt a few of their collars over the years, especially that fat fellow at the end of the bar with the wild white Ronnie, but he’s so langered already I don’t suppose he’d know his own mother if she walked in – not that she would, because she’s dead, but you know what I mean. If her ghost walked in, like.’

‘I don’t think anybody in Limerick would recognize
me
,’ said Katie.

‘No, but it’s Jilleen, see. If we’d met in Ma Reilly’s, they’d be asking her all kinds of questions after about what she was doing talking to me, like, and who the divil were you, and she didn’t want to go to the trouble of making stuff up. The guards are about as popular here as a dose of the scutters.’

‘My brother was Donie Quaid,’ said Jilleen, as if that explained everything. She was wearing a strong, oily perfume and it was beginning to make Katie feel short of breath, almost as if she were asthmatic.

‘The Quaids were one of the Moyross estate families who were always feuding with each other, like the Ryans and the Keane-Collopys,’ Gary Cannon explained.

‘Yes, I’ve heard about them,’ said Katie. ‘The Quaids were always fighting with the Duggans, weren’t they?’

‘That’s right,’ said Gary Cannon. ‘It was all hell let loose between those two families. Shootings, stabbings, beatings, setting fire to each other’s houses and blowing up each other’s cars. I think the death toll was nineteen altogether, in the space of just three years.’

‘I thought that was one of the feuds that Bryan Molloy put a stop to.’

‘He did. There was a big article about it in the
Leader
, how Molloy had persuaded the Quaids and the Duggans to bury the hatchet, and this time not in each other’s heads.’

‘So? Whatever we think about him, surely that was something he was rightly commended for.’

‘Ah, but it was
how
he did it,’ said Gary Cannon. He turned to Jilleen and said, ‘Go on, Jilleen, you tell her.’

Jilleen quickly looked around and then said, ‘He paid my brother Donie to murder Niall Duggan.’

‘Am I hearing this right?’ said Katie. ‘Bryan Molloy gave your brother money to shoot Niall Duggan?’

‘Two thousand euros. He bought a motorbike with it.’

‘I’m surprised that Niall Duggan allowed a Quaid get anywhere near him. Didn’t he have security?’

‘He did, yes. But the thing of it was, Donie was always kind of a mediator, if you know what I mean. He never carried a knife himself and he never got himself involved in any kind of trouble. When things got really bad between the Quaids and the Duggans, he would try to calm down the both of them. He was the only Quaid that Neil Duggan would ever give the time of day. That’s why Molloy chose him.’

‘Without Niall, the Duggans were Ebenezer Screwed,’ Gary Cannon put in. ‘The twins were too young to run a gang like that and in those days they were both caked out of their heads on coke most of the time. Lorcan Devitt could have maybe taken over but Molloy deliberately put it about that it was Devitt who had paid to have Niall Duggan murdered in order to take over the gang himself, so none of the Duggan family trusted him for two or three years after that. It was only because Devitt stuck with them and found some backers to set up the Shenanigans nightclub for them that they started to believe that it wasn’t him who did it.’

‘But nobody ever knew that your brother had done it?’

Jilleen shook her wiry black hair and her bracelets jingled. ‘Even
I
didn’t know until he was dead and we were the closest that brother and sister could ever get. Talk about your poetic justice, he fell off of the same fecking motorbike that he had bought with the money that Molloy had given him to shoot Niall Duggan. He left me a letter saying that he’d done it and if he ever died sudden and didn’t get the time to ask for forgiveness could I please light a candle for him in Saint Munchin’s and tell God that he was mortally sorry.’