Dead Men Whistling Read online

  DEAD MEN WHISTLING

  Graham Masterton

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Dead Men Whistling

  A garda sergeant is found beheaded with an Irish tin whistle sticking out of his neck. He was due to give evidence at a major inquiry into police corruption. His murder sends a clear message to any future whistleblowers: only silence is safe.

  The inquiry hinges on the arrest of one of Cork’s most ruthless drug dealers. Though there was evidence to convict him, he walked free. DCI Katie Maguire is determined to expose the full truth.

  But when another officer is murdered in the exact same way, Katie finds that murder is the best way to stop people talking.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Dead Men Whistling

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  About Graham Masterton

  About the Katie Maguire Series

  About the Scarlet Widow Series

  Also by Graham Masterton

  From the Editor of this Book

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Níl a fhios ag aon duine cá bhfuil fód a bháis.

  Nobody knows where they will die – Irish proverb

  1

  The O’Regan family were in the middle of breakfast when their front doorbell started urgently ringing, again and again.

  ‘Somebody’s at the door, Daddy!’ said three-year-old Grainne, with porridge all round her mouth.

  Kieran looked across the kitchen at Moira, who was standing in front of the oven frying colcannon cakes. Her eyes widened, and she laid down her spatula as the bell began to ring continuously.

  ‘Shall I go?’ asked five-year-old Riordan, slipping down from his chair.

  The ringing carried on, but then somebody started beating their fist against the door, too. Kieran laid his hand on Riordan’s shoulder and said, ‘No, no, I’ll go. Whoever it is, it sounds like they’re pure vexed about something.’

  ‘Kieran,’ said Moira, taking the skillet off the gas. It was eight o’clock and gloomy in the kitchen. The window was speckled with fat glistening raindrops.

  ‘It’s all right, it’ll only be old Roddy, moaning about the kids playing long slogs down the street and denting his car again. Just because I’m a guard he thinks I should be keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on the whole neighbourhood.’

  He stood up and went to the kitchen door, but as he did so Moira said ‘Kieran,’ again, and she had to raise her voice because the ringing and the banging were so loud. Little Grainne covered her ears with her hands, still holding on to her drippy porridge spoon.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, love,’ said Kieran, by which he was reminding Moira that these days he kept a pistol in the pocket of the duffle coat hanging by the front door.

  He had only just stepped out into the hallway, though, when there was a louder bang and a splintering, shuddering sound and the front door was kicked wide open. Three men came bursting in out of the rain, all wearing black balaclavas to hide their faces, black leather jackets and jeans. The leading man was toting a sawn-off shotgun.

  Kieran took two stumbling steps back into the kitchen. He tried to slam the door shut but the leading intruder kicked it open again with his boot and lifted his shotgun so that it was pointing only thirty centimetres away from Kieran’s face.

  ‘Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, head, don’t even fecking think about it,’ the man told him, in a thick, rasping voice. ‘Not unless you want your wains to be eating their daddy’s brains along with their breakfast.’

  Grainne dropped her spoon and let out one piercing scream after another, while Riordan began to sob and twist the front of his jumper in distress. Moira stepped forwards, ashen-faced, and said, ‘Get out of our house! Just get out!’

  ‘Will you get that fecking babby to hold her whisht or else I’ll fecking shut her up myself,’ the man retorted.

  ‘Don’t you dare to touch my children,’ said Kieran. ‘I don’t know what it is you want but you’re going to be in deeper shite than you could ever dream of. Now get out of here.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not going without what we came for,’ said the man, still keeping his shotgun pointed at Kieran’s face. ‘And for Christ’s sake shut that fecking wain up, will you?’

  Grainne continued to scream. Her face was scarlet and tears were rolling down her cheeks. Moira came across the kitchen to pick her up but the man was quicker. He sidestepped around Kieran, transferred his shotgun to his left hand, and smacked Grainne hard around the side of the head, so that she tipped off her chair on to the floor, still screaming.

  Kieran seized the man’s arm and tried to twist the shotgun out of his hand, but the man kept his hold on it and fired it with a deafening blast into the ceiling. Plaster showered down all around them like a snowstorm, and even when it had settled acrid grey smoke was still sliding sideways across the kitchen. Kieran swung a punch at the man but only managed to hit him a glancing blow on his shoulder. Before he could punch him again, the two other intruders came bustling into the kitchen and seized his arms. Kieran was short but he was blocky and fit, yet these men were much heavier and stronger. He could smell the stale cigarettes and alcohol on their breath.

  ‘Right, that’s enough of this fecking scrapping,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘You’re coming along with us for a ride in the country, like, so that you and me can have a bit of a blather.’

  Kieran struggled to free himself from the two men holding him, and kicked out like a galloping horse, but they were gripping him too fiercely, and they almost wrenched his right shoulder out of its socket. Panting, wincing with pain, he stared into the hazel-coloured eyes of the man holding the shotgun and said, ‘I reck you. I’m sure I do. If you had the balls to take that mask off, I could put a name to you, I’m sure of it.’

  The man grinned. ‘Maybe you could, head. But this isn’t about me, like. It’s about you and the fecking hames you’ve made of everything. So why don’t you come along nice and co-operative, like, do you know what I mean? And we can get a few matters cleared up.’

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Moira challenged him, although her voice was shaking. She was holding Grainne in her arms now and rocking her to calm her down, while Riordan was clinging to her apron, his mouth turned down in misery. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’

  ‘Don’t you fret, girl,’ the man told her. ‘We jus
t wanted to take your old man somewhere dead quiet so we could talk about this, that and the other without being disturbed. I’ll tell you this, though, it wouldn’t be at all advisable for you to be calling the cops, like. We’ll know if you do, and the consequences for your old man here... well, they could be desperate.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt him,’ said Moira, her eyes crowded with tears. ‘He’s a very good man. The very best. And you wouldn’t be depriving these poor little wains of their father, would you?’

  Kieran said, ‘It’s all right, Moira. These fellows obviously have a grievance but I’m sure we can come to some kind of a compromise. Just stay here and try to keep calm, okay? I’ll be back as soon as we’ve sorted everything out. Do as he says, though. Don’t call this in. In fact, don’t call anybody. I love you. And I love you, too, Riordan, and you too, Grainne darling.’

  ‘That’s it with the fecking sentimental mush,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘You’ll have me fecking puking in a moment. Let’s go.’

  Kieran offered the men no resistance as they ushered him out of the broken-open front door and into the rain. From here, on St Christopher’s Road on the north side of Cork city, he could see the ragged black clouds racing in from the hills on the far side of the River Lee. He thought that they looked like a tumultuous horde of flying witches, with their torn cloaks trailing behind them.

  As the men led him up the street towards a silver Mercedes saloon his knees suddenly turned watery, and if they hadn’t been holding his arms he would have collapsed. Whatever reassuring words he had given Moira, he had never been so terrified in his life, not even when he had been shot at during a botched bank robbery in Macroom, and the garda standing next to him had been killed. He had to clench his bladder to stop himself from wetting his jeans.

  The men opened the rear door of the car and pushed Kieran inside. A driver was sitting waiting, smoking a cigarette. He too was masked in a black balaclava. The man with the shotgun climbed into the front passenger seat while the other two wedged themselves into the back, with Kieran in the middle.

  The driver reached across to the glovebox and took out a pair of Garda-issue semi-rigid handcuffs. He gave them to the man with the shotgun, who passed them back to the man sitting on Kieran’s left.

  ‘These are for health and safety, like,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘As in, our health and safety, not yours.’

  The man sitting next to him clipped the handcuffs on to Kieran’s wrists, and sniffed.

  ‘All right, where are we headed?’ asked Kieran, trying to sound brave, as the Mercedes pulled away from the kerb and turned right up Murmont Lawn towards Ballyvolane.

  ‘Like I promised you, head, somewhere dead quiet,’ said the man with the shotgun. It was now laid across his lap and Kieran had the grimmest feeling that he had come out this morning with every intention of using it.

  ‘So what’s this all about, then?’ he persisted. They were driving north now on the Ballyhooly Road and the rain was lashing harder than ever, so that the windshield wiper was whacking from side to side at full speed.

  He had guessed why these men had abducted him, and who they were, but he wasn’t going to say that he knew. Let them come out with it, and admit that they were involved in it.

  The man sitting on his left sneezed loudly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Without turning around, the man with the shotgun said, ‘For the love of Jesus, Hoggy! Do you want us all to catch our death?’

  The driver and the other man all chuckled at that and shook their heads. Kieran closed his eyes and thought: If I concentrate hard enough, maybe this isn’t happening, and I’m not really in this car at all, I’m back at home eating my colcannon cakes with Moira and Riordan and Grainne. But when he opened them again, they were just passing Dunnes Stores at Ballyvolane and the windscreen wiper was still whacking and he was still jammed in this car with these four rank-smelling gurriers. Apart from them, only the Lord God had any idea where they were taking him, or what they intended to do to him when they got there.

  ‘Did you see that fecking qualifier last night?’ said the man on his right. ‘Coen was shite. If he hadn’t been interceptimicated for that free, Connolly would never have got that fecking equalizer.’

  ‘Oh, that was a fecking blip, that’s all,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘The pace of the game at inter-county level these days, it’s fecking mental. You wait and see. Coen’s going to be a starlet when he gets himself up to speed.’

  They’re abducting me, thought Kieran. They’re abducting me and they’re talking about football. Somehow that filled him with even greater dread. The game that they had watched on television last night was more interesting to them than his life.

  They drove through Upper Dublin Hill and then turned left at Kilcool into a narrow, hedge-lined road. They passed a few neat bungalows and then they arrived at a deserted car park beside a long grey stone wall. Over the top of the wall Kieran could see crosses and stone angels, and he knew where they had brought him. The man with the shotgun had described it perfectly, somewhere ‘dead quiet’. It was St Catherine’s Cemetery at Kilcully.

  The driver reverse-parked close to the cemetery gates, and they all climbed out. Although a chilly wind was still blowing, the rain had suddenly eased, and breaks were appearing in the clouds.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s go and pay our holy respects,’ said the man with the shotgun. There was nobody around, and so he was carrying the gun quite openly, tilted over his shoulder. Hoggy the sneezer opened the boot of the Mercedes and lifted out a large grey nylon bag, about the size of an airline carry-on case, but before Kieran could see clearly what it was, the other man had gripped his arm and was pushing him towards the cemetery’s small side gate.

  The black-and-gilded wrought-iron gate was locked, but the man with the shotgun gave it three hard kicks to break the latch and it swung open. He then led the way along the asphalt path between the gravestones and the statues. None of them spoke, and apart from the wind rustling in the trees, the cemetery was silent. Its shrubs and flower beds were all neatly tended, and in the distance Kieran could see the green hills of Ballynahina. The peacefulness only added to his fear, and he stumbled again.

  ‘Didn’t have a couple of cups of Paddy’s for your breakfast, did you, head?’ the man with the shotgun asked him.

  They reached a secluded plot at the back of the cemetery surrounded by yew bushes. An angel stood at each corner of the plot, three of them with their heads bowed and the fourth looking up towards the hurrying clouds. Between two of the angels there was a metal bench, and the man with the shotgun said to Kieran, ‘Here. This is the place. Let’s sit down and have that blather, shall we?’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ said Kieran. ‘I think I know who you are, and if you are who I think you are, then I’m keeping my bake shut.’

  ‘Fecking sit down, will you?’ said the man with the shotgun.

  ‘Do I have to repeat myself? I’ve nothing to say.’

  The man with the shotgun nodded to the man who was holding Kieran’s arm, and the man pushed him backwards towards the bench so that he was forced to sit down. The bench was still wet from the rain and he could feel it through his jeans.

  ‘Do you know who’s buried here?’ asked the man with the shotgun. ‘That grave right there, with that angel gazing up to heaven?’

  Kieran said nothing, and made a point of looking in the opposite direction.

  ‘That’s Billy Ó Canainn,’ the man continued. ‘And you know full well yourself who was responsible for the premature demise of our Billy, now don’t you?’

  ‘What do you want me to tell you?’ said Kieran. ‘I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t know your man, but I had nothing to do with him getting himself shot. The only person responsible for that was him.’

  ‘Oh, you think so? But it was you who shopped him, like, didn’t you, when all you had to do was make out that you hadn’t seen him. If it hadn’t been for you, head,
our Billy would still be walking and talking and drinking at the Gerald Griffin.’

  ‘He might have been walking and talking but he wouldn’t have been drinking anywhere. He would’ve been banged up in his cell on Rathmore Road, which is where he should have been anyway.’

  Hoggy was standing close behind Kieran and Kieran was aware that he had set his grey nylon bag down on the ground and was unzipping it. He half-turned his head but he still couldn’t see what the bag contained.

  ‘You’ve heard of live and let live, like, haven’t you?’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘Why couldn’t you have done that with our Billy? Like, what gave you the fecking right to think that you could be judge and jury and pass the death sentence on him? He had a wife and five kids to take care of. Now he’s lying there under that angel and he can’t take care of nobody. And it’s all because of you.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ said Kieran. ‘I didn’t bear Billy Ó Canainn any personal ill will whatsoever. I was only doing my job.’

  ‘Well, you should have been a musician rather than a fecking cop,’ said the man with the shotgun. He reached inside his leather jacket and drew out a shiny nickel low-D whistle, almost sixty centimetres long. He held it out to Kieran and said, ‘There. That’s your speciality, isn’t it? Whistle-blowing. Why don’t you give us a tune? How about “The Ships are Sailing”, or some fancy slipjig like “Drops of Brandy”?’

  Kieran looked at the whistle, and then up at the man’s eyes. He said nothing. Not only did he have nothing to say, but his lips felt numb. Even if he had known how to play the whistle, he wouldn’t have been able to. He could see that this was all leading up to some terrible dénouement and he could barely breathe.

  ‘You don’t want to give us a tune, then?’ asked the man with the shotgun. ‘Sure like, that’s not very generous of you, is it? Is it something I’ve said? From what I hear, you’ve been blowing the whistle fit to bust your fecking lungs, especially to Chief Superintendent O’Malley.’