Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Read online

  ‘Shelagh’s here,’ said Katie. ‘What do you think Shelagh would say to you? The more information that you can give us, the sooner we can catch these scumbags, and the sooner you can go back to living a normal life. They won’t be able to hurt you if they’re inside.’

  ‘Shelagh’s here?’

  ‘Yes, she identified you earlier, when you were asleep.’ She was tempted to say ‘pretending to be asleep’, but she stopped herself. ‘It was Shelagh who first informed us that you’d been taken hostage, well before Norman called us.’

  ‘Shelagh told you?’

  ‘Yes … she was very brave, but she also needed to find a way to raise the ransom money. She couldn’t manage it on her own.’

  ‘She was warned that she shouldn’t! Jesus! This whole fecking thing’s turning into a nightmare!’

  ‘What “thing”, Derek?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I said nothing.’

  ‘I need to speak to this Norman and his wife,’ said Katie. ‘Do you have any idea where they live, or how I can contact them?’

  Derek Hagerty stayed silent.

  ‘Derek,’ said Katie, gently. ‘I badly need your help here. Don’t make it necessary for me to arrest you.’

  Derek Hagerty looked up at her. ‘I’m absolutely shitting myself,’ he said. ‘You might say that you can protect us, but Holy Mary, Mother of God, you don’t know what these people are like.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t know what they’re like, not completely. But I do understand that they’re ruthless and they don’t care who they kill to get their money. But maybe you’d like to enlighten me.’

  ‘I’m not saying any more,’ Derek Hagerty told her. ‘I’ve already said way too much. I’m a fool to myself.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ said Katie. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll tell Shelagh that you’re awake now. Maybe you’d like to discuss all this with her.’

  ‘I’m telling you straight,’ said Derek Hagerty, as Katie stood up to leave. ‘They’ll murder us. I mean it. You don’t know what they’re like. They’ll fecking cut our heads off and piss down our necks.’

  ***

  Less than five minutes after she had returned to her office, Katie’s private phone rang.

  She tucked the receiver under her chin so that she could prise the lid off her caffè macchiato. ‘Yes?’ she said.

  The voice that answered was hoarse and throaty, with a distinctive slur on the letter ‘s’. ‘Ah! Detective Superintendent Maguire! That is Detective Superintendent Kathleen Maguire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So glad to have caught you! I thought you might have been out somewhere, chasing bombers!’

  ‘Who is this?’ said Katie,

  ‘Well now, who do you think?’

  ‘I have no idea. Who are you and what do you want? How did you get this number?’

  ‘Aha! Wouldn’t you like to know that? This is one of the High Kings of Erin.’

  ‘The High Kings of Erin?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Would that be the same High Kings of Erin who did for Micky Crounan?’

  ‘“Did for” isn’t quite the right way of putting it, Detective Superintendent. “Executed” is more like it.’

  At that moment, Detective O’Donovan appeared in Katie’s office doorway. Katie pressed her hand over the receiver and mouthed, ‘Patrick! Have this call traced and recorded! It’s on my private number!’

  Almost as if he had heard her, the caller immediately said, ‘By the way, don’t trouble yourself trying to find out where I’m ringing you from. You won’t be able to find me. In fact, you’ll never find me, nor any of us. You’ll just have to get used to the fact that we’re back, after more than eight hundred years, and we’re claiming our rightful place as the rulers of Ireland.’

  ‘And that’s how you’re going to rule, is it, by cutting off the heads of local businessmen?’

  ‘Micky Crounan wouldn’t bend the knee so Micky Crounan got what was coming to him. Anybody else who defies us will suffer the same. Like Derek Hagerty.’

  ‘It was you who took Derek Hagerty hostage?’

  ‘I can’t say that you’re not cute! No wonder they put you in charge of all the detectives! Of course we took Derek Hagerty, and that’s the whole reason I’m ringing you. The High Kings of Erin are claiming responsibility for the bomb at Merchants Quay.’

  ‘So you murdered Garda Brenda McCracken?’

  ‘That was tragic, I’ll grant you. But we share the blame for that more or less equally, Detective Superintendent.’

  ‘How can that be? You deliberately detonated a bomb in a public car park. It was a miracle that nobody else was killed.’

  ‘Well, you say that, but if Shelagh Hagerty hadn’t ignored our warning and squealed to you lot that her husband had been taken for ransom, we wouldn’t have needed to plant a bomb at all. If the Garda had known nothing about it, everything would have gone off peaceful, and Derek Hagerty would be home by now in the bosom of his family.’

  ‘There’s nothing peaceful about extorting money with menaces,’ said Katie.

  ‘Micky Crounan and Derek Hagerty and dozens of others like them have brought nothing but shame to Ireland and they deserve to atone for what they did. The High Kings of Erin are going to restore this country’s pride. If a few people get hurt in the process, it’s a small price to pay. Ch’an eil bàs fir gun ghràs fir. There is no man’s death without another man’s gain.’

  ‘That goes for women, too,’ Katie retorted. ‘You may believe that I won’t be able to find you, but I will, you can count on it.’

  ‘I’m not holding my breath, Detective Superintendent. Meantime, you’d better remind Derek Hagerty to keep his bake shut, otherwise we’ll have to shut it for him. Him and his missus, and those eejits who told you where to find him.’

  ‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, no? So how did you know where to pick him up, like? Saw it in your crystal ball, did you, Madame Maguire? Come on, I wasn’t born last Thursday.’

  Katie said, ‘Whoever you are, and whatever kind of a game you think you’re playing at, you’ve murdered two people already and injured a third, and I promise you now that I will have you. If you threaten one more person, or hurt them, or kill them, then you will suffer for it.’

  ‘Good luck to you, Detective Superintendent,’ said the caller. ‘Éirinn go Brách.’ With that, he hung up.

  Katie sat staring at the receiver for a moment, as if it could tell her who the caller was, but then she hung up, too. As she did so, Detective O’Donovan came to the door, shaking his head. ‘We tried, but he wasn’t talking for long enough, and he was using a stealth phone, and he was probably travelling in a car, too.’

  ‘It was one of the High Kings of Erin again,’ said Katie. ‘The same psychos who decapitated Micky Crounan. He claimed the credit for kidnapping Derek Hagerty, and for killing Garda McCracken. He also gave me the impression that they would go after the people who found Derek Hagerty in the road and brought him into the city, as a punishment for tipping us off. The trouble is, Derek Hagerty won’t tell us who they are. All he’s let slip so far is that the husband’s name is Norman.’

  ‘Tony Brennan has the CCTV recording from Grand Parade, but it doesn’t help much. There’s no camera coverage of the exact spot where Hagerty was dropped off, right outside the old Capitol Cineplex. It’s a blind spot, like.’

  Katie stood up. ‘Do you think Hagerty might have known that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t see how.’

  ‘But there is some general footage of Grand Parade?’

  ‘Yes, except that the camera’s fixed to the wall of the Cineplex itself, facing Finn’s Corner. So all you can see is the traffic going in and out of Washington Street and the pedestrians on the opposite side of the road.’

  ‘Let’s take a look at it anyway,’ said Katie. She was surprised that her conversation with the
so-called High King of Erin had unsettled her so much. Many criminals were boastful about what they had done, but it wasn’t often that they took credit for their crimes with such obvious relish, and his slow, slurred voice had made her feel distinctly shivery, almost as though he had been breathing obscenities into her ear. At the same time, though, it had strengthened her determination to track him down, him and his fellow High Kings, and to see them standing in the dock, charged with murder.

  As she followed Detective O’Donovan along the corridor, carrying her coffee, it occurred to her that this was why she hadn’t been able to follow John to San Francisco. It was her duty to be here, protecting the people of Cork.

  16

  They watched the CCTV footage from Grand Parade five times over. They could see the two patrol cars arriving at speed to pick up Derek Hagerty. They slewed to a halt outside the Soho Restaurant opposite the old Capitol Cineplex, and eight gardaí ran across the road to the bottom of the screen, and out of the camera’s field of vision. A few seconds later, the gardaí came back into view, two of them holding Derek Hagerty’s arms. They pushed him into the back of one of the cars and drove off.

  ‘Ah, this is useless,’ said Detective Horgan. ‘Look how many vehicles are passing up and down the street there. Hagerty could have been dropped off by any one of them.’

  Katie leaned forward and frowned at the screen. ‘Can you run it just once more?’ she asked the spotty young garda who was controlling the playback. ‘Take it back about four minutes before the patrol cars arrived.’

  The garda ran the recording again and this time Katie said, ‘There – see the fellow in that green Audi? He turns left into Washington Street. But only a couple of minutes later, here he is again, coming back out of Washington Street, turning right, heading the way he first came. We lose sight of him then because he’s driving through the camera’s blind spot. But there’s another camera, isn’t there, at the junction of South Mall and Princes Street? You must have caught him on that.’

  It took the garda two or three minutes to find the recording from the South Mall camera, but Katie was right. The green Audi A3 appeared around the corner from Grand Parade and then turned right into Princes Street, heading south.

  ‘It could be a coincidence,’ said Katie. ‘It might not be our man at all, but that’s the only vehicle that appears twice in the time segment when Derek Hagerty might have been dropped off, coming and going.’

  ‘He could just as easily have been dropped off by a vehicle coming into Grand Parade from Patrick Street,’ Detective Horgan put in. ‘Then we would have seen him only the once.’

  ‘Not today he couldn’t,’ said Crime Prevention Officer Tony Brennan. ‘Bord Gáis are digging up Pana just outside Tom Murphy’s, so there’s a diversion for westbound traffic.’

  The garda froze the image of the green Audi and Detective Horgan made a note of its number plate. It began 132-C, followed by its number, which told them that it had been registered in Cork City in the latter half of 2013.

  ‘Give me two minutes,’ said Detective Horgan. Katie looked at her watch. It was five minutes to five now and she wanted to talk to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy before the media conference at 5.15.

  While they waited for Detective Horgan to trace the Audi’s owner, the garda at the control desk followed the Audi’s progress out of the city centre as far as he could, checking the recordings from CCTV cameras at every successive road junction. He had taken the South City Link Road as far as the Old Blackrock Road, but after that they lost him.

  ‘He must have turned off somewhere,’ said Tony Brennan. ‘He could have taken the next turning for Ballintemple, or maybe the turning after that for Douglas, either one.’

  ‘I would guess that he doesn’t live too far away,’ said Katie. ‘Think about it, it was hardly more than twenty minutes between the phone call that tipped us off and Hagerty being picked up. Traffic’s pretty slow in the city centre at the moment, what with all the roadworks, and it took your man at least four minutes to turn into Washington Street and then come back out again. Considering what little time he had, I doubt he had to drive into the city more than two or three kilometres. Ballintemple is a very fair guess, I’d say.’

  Detective Horgan came back, his cheeks flushed from hurrying, and read out what he had scribbled on a sheet of notepaper. ‘Here you are, ma’am. The Audi is registered in the name of Norman Anthony Pearse, Ard na Fálta, Boreenmanna Road, Ballinlough. He’s fifty-three years old and the manager of Faraway Travel, Marlboro Street. He’s married to Meryl Saoirse Pearse, née Collins, thirty-one years old. She was formerly an assistant at Faraway Travel but now she’s working in the stationery department at Eason’s bookstore in Patrick Street. Pearse has one conviction for speeding, 1997, but there’s nothing else recorded against him.’

  ‘Right,’ said Katie. ‘I want you and DS Ni Nuallán to go out and question Mr and Mrs Pearse. Ask Mr Pearse why he drove into the city today, and why he turned into Washington Street and then immediately turned round and came back out again.’

  ‘Okay, sure.’

  ‘Ask Mrs Pearse if she was the one who found Derek Hagerty lying by the side of the road up at Ballynoe, and brought him back home. If she says yes, don’t forget to ask her who was with her when she found him. Derek Hagerty said she had a friend with her, so this friend is another potential witness.’

  She checked her watch again. ‘I have a media conference now. It might still be going on by the time you get some answers out of them, but text me anyway.’

  ‘Supposing the Pearses deny all knowledge?’

  ‘I’ll be asking Derek Hagerty some more questions later, so if it really was them who took him in, whatever they say, I think he’ll probably come out with it in the end. He’s trying his best not to tell me anything, but I think he knows that he and his family won’t get any kind of realistic protection from anybody else except us. When it comes down to it, he doesn’t really have a lot of choice.’

  ‘If the Pearses admit it, though, we’ll bring them straight in,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán.

  ‘Of course, if only for their own safety. If these High Kings of Erin are anything like as murderous as they claim to be, the Pearses will be needing us to give them round-the-clock security, too. We may even have to hide them away for a while. Derek Hagerty called them saints, but they don’t want to be joining the rest of the saints for a while yet.’

  ***

  Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was gathering his papers together to go to the media conference when Katie knocked at his open office door.

  ‘Well?’ he said, without looking up. ‘Did you get anything more out of Hagerty?’

  ‘Not much, but I think we may have identified the people who picked him up and drove him into the city. A travel agency manager called Norman Pearse and his wife. They live in Ballinlough.’

  ‘You’ve sent some of your people out to interview them?’

  ‘Of course. Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán and Detective Horgan. We should be hearing from them very soon, with any luck.’

  ‘That’s good. At least I can tell the media that we’re making some positive progress.’

  ‘Wait, that’s not the end of it by any means,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve just been called by a man representing the group that calls itself the High Kings of Erin – the same group who said they kidnapped Micky Crounan.’

  Now, Bryan Molloy slowly lowered his clipboard and raised his head to stare at Katie with those bulging blue pit-bull eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘He claimed that the High Kings of Erin were responsible for the bomb at Merchants Quay, and also for the kidnapping of Derek Hagerty, and for killing Micky Crounan, too.’

  ‘Did you trace the call?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘We couldn’t, no. He was using a stealth phone and he wasn’t talking for long enough. But I’m ninety-nine per cent convinced that it wasn’t a hoax. For instance, he knew that Shelagh Hagert
y had contacted us, although I can’t think how. Our security has been ultra-tight. The media don’t even know that Derek Hagerty was kidnapped yet, do they, let alone that he managed to escape? Or claims he did, anyhow.’

  ‘Well, they’re about to find out,’ said Bryan Molloy, picking up his clipboard again and glancing at the clock on his office wall. ‘We’re going to need all the help we can get on this one. You may have had a call from the High Kings of Erin but I’ve had a call from Jimmy O’Reilly about the money.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’s exactly delighted with us.’

  ‘Delighted? You’re messing, aren’t you? He’ll be back from Dublin tomorrow, and if I had any choice in the matter, I think I’d rather go head to head with these High Kings of Erin or whatever they call themselves than Jimmy O’Reilly when he’s throwing a sevener.’

  ‘So what are you going to say to the media about all of this?’

  ‘There’s not much else I can say except to tell them the truth. I think you’ll agree that we’ve made a bags of this and we’re just going to have to admit it.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure that we have made a bags of it, not yet. It’s a bit early for us to be saying that we misread the situation at Merchants Quay. We may find out later it wasn’t our fault at all. Sure, I think you can tell the media that Derek Hagerty appears to have been kidnapped but is now a free man, but I don’t think you should give them much more than that. Come on, Bryan. We’re not at all sure yet that his story rings true.’

  Bryan Molloy took his uniform jacket off the hanger on the back of the door and shrugged himself into it. ‘The media are going to want more details than that, Katie. Otherwise they’re going to be thinking that we’re hiding something.’

  ‘Of course we’re hiding something. We have to, for the time being. Listen, we don’t yet know for certain that it was Mrs Pearse and her friend who picked Hagerty up, or that it was Mr Pearse who called us. And we can’t yet be sure if there really is a gang of kidnappers called the High Kings of Erin, or whether somebody’s just stringing us along. It’s happened enough times before, God knows, people claiming credit for crimes they had nothing to do with. Even murders.’