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  ‘Very eloquent, Mr Gerrety,’ said Katie. ‘Is that the closing speech that you’ve prepared for your defence?’

  ‘How many of the women on your website are addicted to hard drugs?’ asked Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán, in that flat, toneless voice that had earned her the nickname of Sergeant O’Polygraph.

  ‘Don’t answer that, Michael,’ said James Moody, immediately, without even looking up from his notes.

  ‘How many of the women on your website are illegal immigrants?’ Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán persisted.

  James Moody shook his head at Michael Gerrety and Michael Gerrety said nothing, although he kept on smiling.

  ‘Of those women who are illegal immigrants, how many of their passports or other identity papers are you holding?’

  ‘My client declines to answer that,’ said James Moody.

  ‘How many of them owe you money or believe they owe you money?’

  ‘My client declines to answer that, too, and I strongly object to this line of questioning. These women are not my client’s personal responsibility and you cannot hold him liable for any addictions they might have or for their status as foreign nationals. It was my understanding that we were meeting here today to come to some broad agreement about these thirty-nine extremely shaky charges of living off immoral earnings.’

  Katie said, ‘We are, yes. If your client agrees to all of the conditions that I listed at the beginning of our discussion, then I’m prepared to go back to the DPP and tell her that we’re prepared to suspend all charges against him, provided he complies with them and undertakes that he will continue to comply with them in the future.’

  ‘You’re asking far too much, detective superintendent,’ said James Moody. ‘Essentially, you’re expecting my client to admit without due process of trial that he has committed an offence and to accept punishment by surrendering a very substantial amount of his assets to the CAB. You’re also asking him to abandon a campaign for human rights in which he fervently believes.’

  Michael Gerrety sat down and folded his arms. ‘I will fight you on this one, believe me. Not for myself, but for all of those women who rely on me for safer working conditions. I treat my sex workers like royalty. I will fight you, and you just watch me – I will win, because I always win.’

  Katie stowed her document wallet back into her briefcase, clipped it shut, and stood up. ‘In that case, gentlemen, I have nothing more to say to you. The DPP will be in touch with you in due course, I’m sure.’

  As James Moody opened the door for her, however, she stopped and said, ‘Mr Gerrety, there is one thing I was meaning to ask you.’

  ‘Not for a date, I should imagine,’ smiled Michael Gerrety.

  ‘Oh, I would, yeah. Do you think I’m a masochist? It’s that African friend of yours I wanted to ask you about – the one who wears the purple suit. When was the last time you saw him?’

  Michael Gerrety kept on smiling, but Katie could see that all of the amusement had drained out of his expression. ‘I have no idea at all who you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh well, don’t worry about it. They say that the camera never lies, don’t they? But in this case perhaps the camera was a bit guzz-eyed. We’ll see you in court.’

  ‘What camera? What camera?’ asked Michael Gerrety, but Katie walked off along the corridor without answering him, and without looking back.

  They had been given a lift to James Moody’s office by Detective O’Donovan, but Katie chose to walk back to Anglesea Street because the afternoon was so sunny and bright and she needed to calm down. Michael Gerrety always made her feel like grinding her teeth. She wanted to text John, too, to tell him that she shouldn’t be late home tonight, and that she had bought a lamb stew dinner for two from Marks & Spencer’s. He had frozen the Mexican-style meatballs.

  As they walked back along South Mall, Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán said, ‘I was reading through the files on Michael Gerrety this morning.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Katie, jabbing away at her iPhone.

  ‘Almost all of the evidence against him comes from the women who work in his brothels or rely on his website. No wonder he’s so cocksure.’

  Katie finished her message to John with a row of XXXs and dropped her iPhone back in her pocket. ‘You’re right, of course. That’s exactly why we’ve been planning Operation Rocker. Gerrety is smooth enough to persuade a jury that he only has the women’s best interests at heart. And like you say, we have plenty of witness statements, but most of them come from women who depend on him in one way or another.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have waited until we had more material evidence before we charged him?’

  ‘Well, I wanted to. But Dermot O’Driscoll was dead set on charging him as soon as we had witness statements. He’s been burning to nail Michael Gerrety for years, like it’s almost been a holy crusade. Maybe he suspected that he wasn’t well, and wanted to see Gerrety convicted before he had to quit.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to be at all easy to get a conviction with what we have so far,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. ‘Like, some of the statements of drug abuse and beatings are pretty damning, aren’t they? But now I’ve met Gerrety … Jesus. He’s a cute hoor, isn’t he?’

  ‘And then some,’ said Katie. ‘He may come on all saintly, but he won’t hesitate for a moment to send his scobes around to threaten any of those women who have spoken out against him. No – we need much more hard evidence, even Dermot recognizes that. We need medical reports on how many of the women who work for him are addicted to drugs, and how many of them rely on him for a regular fix. We also need independent witnesses to say how many of those women he’s coercing in other ways to act as prostitutes. We need to be sure how many of them are illegal immigrants, who he should have reported to the Immigration Bureau. How many of them don’t even speak English, for instance? How many of them have passports or ID papers, and how many of them have had their papers taken off them? I’ll bet you money that Operation Rocker will find their papers in Gerrety’s safe at Amber’s – or maybe even James Moody’s safe. Now, that really would make my day!’

  They crossed the Parnell Bridge and a warm south-west wind made Katie’s hair blow across her face. Twenty or thirty gulls were screeching and flapping over something tattered and brown that was floating slowly down the river. Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán paused for a moment and shaded her eyes so that she could see what it was.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, catching up with Katie. ‘It’s only a dead dog.’

  Seventeen

  Bula said, ‘You can’t make me do it. You don’t have the neck.’

  The woman shrugged, as if he could think whatever he liked and it would make no difference to her. ‘That is what Mânios Dumitrescu said at first. But I changed his mind. Soon he was sawing at his wrist like it was the middle of winter and he was freezing and he had to have wood for the fire.’

  ‘You won’t change my mind, you witch.’

  ‘You do not believe that I will really shoot you between your legs?’

  Bula let out a dismissive pfff! and shook his head. He was slurring his words now and hiccupping, and every now and then he would jolt with pain, but his eyes kept darting towards the workshop door. He was working out a plan to knock this woman over, snatch her gun from her, and then hop over to the door on one leg, using the backs of dining chairs and sofas to support himself, like a series of crutches. A mahogany table leg was resting against the opposite end of the couch he was sitting on, and he reckoned that if he could lunge over and seize that and then swing it around and smack her hard enough on the side of the head, he might be able to concuss her. He might even be able to kill her. At school, he had once smashed a classmate on the head with half a brick and he had seen his brains squirt out. He even remembered the boy’s name, Abayomi. The boy had survived, but he had never been the same again. He had never been able to stop dribbling.

  ‘So … are you going to do it?’ asked the woman. �
��You can stay where you are if your leg hurts too much. I can move the saw over to you, so that you can easily reach it.’

  ‘You really think I’m that fecking stupid, to cut my own hand off?’

  ‘As I said, Bula, the choice is yours. But you cannot escape your punishment.’

  Bula thought: I’ll take five deep breaths, and then I’ll go for the table leg. Grab the thin end of it and swing it around, so that I hit her with the thick end – whakkk! She’s moved in much closer now, I should be able to catch her on the cheek, or the eyebrow. Maybe I can even knock her eye out.

  Three, four, hold it, then five.

  Bula rolled himself sideways and snatched the table leg. He lifted it up, but as he did so the thicker end of it got caught under the arm of a nearby chair. He managed to jostle it free, but the woman had smartly stepped back and when he reared up from the couch and flailed at her, he missed. His damaged leg gave way and he dropped heavily on to the floor.

  He lay on his side, breathing harshly, but still gripping the table leg. The woman stood over him and said, ‘Let go of it.’

  ‘I swear I’m going to kill you,’ Bula panted, although he was staring at the floor. ‘I swear to God I’m going to beat the fecking shite out of you.’

  ‘I said, let go of it,’ she repeated.

  Grunting with pain from his mangled knee, Bula attempted to use the table leg to lever himself up. Without hesitation the woman lifted her high-heeled boot and stepped on his wrist. With an audible crunch of tendons his fingers opened up, so that she was able to kick the table leg across the floor with her other foot and out of his reach. He tried to seize her ankle with his free hand, and shook it, and then punched it, but he was too weakened with shock to force her foot off his wrist.

  ‘You are a fool, Bula,’ she said. ‘You are cruel and you are stupid and you do not even know how to atone for what you have done. You thought you were such a big man when you abused Nwaha, and all those other girls you treated no better than animals. I know all about you. But look at you now. You are not even man enough to choose your punishment, even though you know you deserve it.’

  ‘You are so dead,’ murmured Bula, with saliva sliding out of the side of his mouth. ‘I promise you. You are so fecking dead.’

  The woman bent forward, and with her boot still firmly planted on his wrist she pressed the muzzle of her small grey gun against the palm of his hand and fired.

  He screamed like a girl. The flesh was blasted from his hand in a fan-shaped spray of scarlet and the bones of his middle two fingers were shattered into sharp white splinters. The woman lifted her boot off his wrist and stepped away from him, and he lay there staring wildly at his devastated hand.

  The woman thoughtfully licked her lips. Her eyes remained hooded and she showed no emotion at all. She glanced towards the workshop door as if she was reassuring herself that no passers-by in Mutton Lane had heard the shot. Then she reloaded her pistol and tucked it into her waistcoat pocket.

  ‘It seems that you have made your choice,’ she told Bula. ‘That hand will have to come off. So, in a way, you are lucky. Better to lose your hand than your azzakari.’

  She forced her hands under the hot, sweat-soaked armpits of his yellow Hawaiian shirt and pulled him up. Although he was so bulky, she was very strong, and he didn’t try to resist her. Once she had managed to manoeuvre his left buttock back on to the bloodstained couch, he even straightened his right leg to make it easier for her to shift him into a sitting position.

  Sitting there, he now looked more like a giant toad than a human being, in spite of his Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. His face was grey, but it was so shiny with perspiration that it was almost silver. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was dragged downwards, and he spoke in croaks that the woman could barely understand. His eyes kept rolling upwards, and his head dropped and then jerked back up again, but he didn’t lose consciousness. The pain in his knee and his hand was too overwhelming.

  The woman went over to the corner of the workshop and dragged over the table saw, positioning it right in front of Bula and flopping his arms up on to it. There was a long extension lead attached to it, which she plugged into the socket in the wall. She took off the plastic blade guard and then tested it with three quick bursts, so that the circular blade spun around with a soft, high-pitched screech. While she was doing this, Bula sat numbly on the couch, staring down at his smashed right hand and occasionally twitching.

  ‘There, Bula!’ said the woman. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Bula looked up at her and nodded.

  ‘Do you understand what you are going to do now? You are going to cut off your hand.’

  Bula nodded again.

  ‘I will turn on the saw for you, and then all you have to do is hold your right arm good and tight with your left hand, and push your wrist forward into the blade. Do it slow or your bones may catch in the teeth of the saw, so that your arm jumps back at you and hits you in the face.’

  ‘This hand’s wrecked whatever happens, right?’ said Bula, in a dull matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Even if you went to the hospital, no doctor could save it. Look at it. There is hardly anything left to save.’

  ‘If I cut it off, will it stop hurting so much? It has to.’

  ‘You will have to try it and see.’

  ‘You’re a fecking witch, do you know that? You’re like something out of a fecking nightmare.’

  ‘You can call me what you like.’

  ‘But you’re not going to shoot me in the mebs?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘You swear on the Bible?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘How did I get myself into this?’ Bula asked her.

  ‘You mistreated Nwaha. The gods could not forgive you for what you did to her. Neither could I. I am Rama Mala’ika.’

  ‘You’re an angel? The angel of what? You’re no fecking angel. I told you. You’re a mayya. You’re a witch.’

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you, Bula. It is time for your punishment.’

  She reached down and switched on the table saw and the thin whine of its electric motor drowned out what Bula said to her next. He may have been cursing her or he may have been praying. When his lips had stopped moving he sat there staring at the keenly shining blade for almost ten seconds, his tongue going around and around inside his toad-like mouth as if he were chasing the last fragments of his burger.

  Then, with great deliberation, he laid his right forearm flat on the metal surface of the table, with his elbow pressed against the side-fence to guide it. He gripped his forearm with his left hand, as she had told him, and slowly edged it towards the blade. His shattered hand hardly looked like a hand at all, but like a pigeon that had been crushed by a car.

  The woman took three or four paces back, and for the first time since she had captured Bula and brought him into this workshop, her head tilted back a little and her eyes widened and her lips parted. She was holding her breath, but Bula didn’t see that. He was concentrating on inching his wrist towards the circular blade, which was singing a high metallic song at more than 3,000 rpm.

  There was a sound like lumpy vegetables being blitzed in a food processor. Bula’s hand flew off the table and bounced on to the floor, while Bula himself tipped sideways on the couch, waving the stump of his right hand into the air, with blood spraying out of it.

  The woman quickly went over to the table saw and switched it off. All she could hear now was the shuffling of pedestrians’ feet along Mutton Lane, and the muted strains of fiddle music from the Mutton Lane Inn, and Bula’s self-pitying keening.

  ‘Look what you’ve done to me!’ he whined. ‘Just look what you’ve fecking done to me!’ He was covered in blood. Even his face was speckled with blood. He was holding up his right arm and it looked like a blood fountain.

  ‘No, Bula-Bulan Yaro,’ she said, although her voice was tighter now, as if watching him cut off his hand had excited her. ‘L
ook what you have done to yourself.’

  Eighteen

  Katie had only just returned to her office when both Detectives Horgan and Ryan came knocking at her door.

  ‘Who’s first?’ she asked, dropping the Gerrety files on to her desk. ‘Ryan, you couldn’t fetch me a Diet Coke, could you? I’m parched. Get yourself a coffee while you’re at it, or whatever you want.’

  ‘No problem at all,’ said Detective Ryan.

  Detective Horgan said, ‘That feller up on the Ballyhooly Road, we’ve narrowed his identity down to three possibles, and I reckon I know which one of them he is. Or was, before he had his face blown off.’

  ‘Okay. Have you heard from Dr O’Brien yet?’

  ‘He rang about twenty minutes ago and said he was dropping by to see you later, before five if he could make it. He’s completed his autopsy on the black feller, apart from some DNA test results. They’re going to take a few days longer. But he’s made a start on the other white feller, too. He’s confident that he can tell us what the two victims are – their nationality, like – even if he can’t tell us who they are.’

  ‘But the white one, you think you can?’

  ‘I checked up on his tattoos. The skulls inside the stars, they’re Romanian prison tattoos. They mean something like, “Mess with me, you gobshite, and the stars foretell your sudden extinction.” At the moment there’s only three Romanian pimps in Cork unaccounted for. I’ve heard that Cornel Petrescu is probably in Limerick, touting some of his girls around the clubs. That leaves only Radu Vasilescu and Mânios Dumitrescu. Unless there’s some other Romanian pimp that we don’t know about, which I think is unlikely.’