Buried Read online

  He looked almost too young to be a detective, with an upswept quiff of blondish hair like Tintin and a button of a nose. Not that Detective O’Connell looked much older – she was dark-haired, petite but plump, with a pretty, heart-shaped face and lips that could have been the bright red satin bow on a birthday present.

  But their appearance was the reason why Detective Superintendent Maguire had picked them for this stake-out. They were supposed to look like typical stallholders at Mother Jones indoor market – youthful and slightly hippy-ish – so that they could watch their target without arousing suspicion that they were gardaí and then approach without him feeling immediately threatened. That was, if he ever put in an appearance.

  Detective O’Connell spread out her fingers to admire her nails. ‘Maybe the shipment never arrived,’ she suggested. ‘Or maybe somebody else stroked them.’

  ‘Sure, well, that’s always a possibility,’ said Detective Barry. ‘I know we told the customs to turn a blind eye, but if Billy Duffy knew the fags were coming, and when, don’t tell me that a whole crowd of other skangers didn’t know as well. Maybe Óglaigh na hÉireann got their hands on them before Quilty could pick them up. Or maybe they straight out robbed him.’

  ‘Go away, they’d have to be mental to do that,’ said Detective O’Connell. ‘Cross Bobby Quilty, Jesus! You might as well say, “Excuse me, boy, would you mind putting a bullet between me eyes?”’

  ‘I don’t know. That Brendan Ó Marcaigh, I don’t think he’s freaked by nothing or nobody. A pit bull went after him once and he got hold of its tail and bashed its brains out on a lamp post.’

  ‘Charming.’

  They waited another half-hour. The Flea Market began to fill up with even more customers, wandering in between its yellow-, pink-, green- and blue-painted iron pillars and browsing around the stalls. Detective Barry raised one eyebrow at Detective O’Connell, but he didn’t have to say anything because it was clear to both of them that although these new customers were picking up vases and dolls and old Wolfe Tones LPs and making a show of examining them, none of them was actually making a purchase.

  Just a few seconds after 4 o’clock a voice in Detective Barry’s earpiece said, ‘Quinn’s arrived. He’s just been dropped off outside.’

  A few seconds later Denny Quinn entered the Flea Market from the street, carrying two black vinyl rubbish bags, both of them bulging. He was skinny as a rail and pasty-faced, with a spattering of scarlet acne spots across his forehead. Since his last police photograph was taken his gingery hair had been shaved up the sides to give him a cockatoo crest, and he was sporting gold stud earrings in both of his ears as well as several gold chains and a heavy gold identity bracelet. He was wearing a red Cork GAA T-shirt, sagging grey tracksuit bottoms, and white Nike tackies.

  ‘Enter the schwaa,’ said Detective Barry.

  ‘At last,’ said Detective O’Connell. ‘Billy Duffy might have told us what time he was coming. He must have known, like. All of these people here do. Eejit.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Billy Duffy can’t think and speak simultaneous, you know that.’

  Without hesitation, Denny weaved his way between the pillars to the back of the market where there was a vacant alcove with a plywood table and chair. He dropped his black bags on the floor, pushed them under the table with his foot, and then sat down, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

  Almost at once, the six or seven browsing customers began to gravitate towards him. They were all different types: a middle-aged woman with jet-black dyed hair and a tight green satin top; a thirtyish man with a brown beard wearing a grey Marks & Spencer’s business suit; an older man with fraying white hair and thick-rimmed glasses and a purple nose; and a girl who couldn’t have been much more than school age, with long brunette hair, black eye make-up and tight black leggings. There was also a woman still wearing her blue Dunne’s Stores overall, and a thick-set man with a paint-spotted denim jacket and no front teeth who looked like a Polish builder.

  The middle-aged woman said something to Denny and then took out her purse and handed him fifty euros in folded notes. He leaned back to stuff the money into his tracksuit pocket before he reached into one of the black bags and lifted out two yellow bricks of two hundred cigarettes. As he passed the cartons across the table, Detective O’Connell had her iPhone held up high in front of her, frowning and prodding at it as if she were texting, although she was actually recording the transaction on video.

  The girl with the black eye make-up paid Denny twenty-five euros – one crumpled ten-euro note and the rest in assorted loose change. He gave her one yellow carton which she pushed into a duffel bag and hurried out of the Flea Market with it slung over her shoulder.

  Detective Barry leaned close to Detective O’Connell. ‘One more sale should do it,’ he said, speaking very quietly and looking in the opposite direction as he did so, so that Denny wouldn’t guess he was talking about him. ‘He might be able to tell the court that one sale was a favour. He might even be able to explain away two. But three – that’s a pattern.’

  Detective O’Connell said nothing but continued to video the young man as the thirtyish man with the brown beard gave him what looked like at least 200 euros in twenty-euro notes.

  ‘I’m sure I reck that feller,’ said Detective Barry. ‘I think he works for that estate agents on Marlborough Street, what are they called, Callaghan Screws or something like that? He looks like an estate agent, any road.’

  The young man took out four yellow cartons and set them on the table. Detective O’Connell started to stand up, but Detective Barry said, ‘Stall it a second, Aislin. Wait till your man actually lays his hand on one.’

  The thirtyish man with the brown beard pulled a folded Tesco shopping bag out of his coat pocket and opened it up. As soon as he picked up the first yellow carton, Detective Barry said, ‘Right, that’s it. Let’s go. But real easy, like.’ Into his r/t microphone, he said, ‘We’re hauling him in now, okay?’

  The two of them stood up and ambled slowly towards the alcove at the back of the Flea Market, pretending as they went that they were having a conversation. Denny took no notice of them at all as they approached. He had half-turned away from them to serve the elderly man with the wild white hair and thick-rimmed glasses.

  Detective Barry reached under his jacket at the back and felt for the handcuffs that were fastened to his belt. ‘Okay, then, just as we rehearsed it,’ he told Detective O’Connell, nodding his head and smiling as if he were talking about a joke that somebody had told him last night. ‘I’ll grab him and put the cuffs on him, and you can caution him while we’re heading for the door. We need to get him out of here so quick that nobody decks what’s happened until we’re off and away.’

  Detective O’Connell smiled and said, ‘I have you, Gerry, don’t you worry.’

  They had almost reached the alcove now, where Denny was rummaging in one of his black bags for more cartons. The thirtyish estate agent with the brown beard had stepped away and was struggling to push the last of his four cartons into his shopping bag. When he had managed it, however, he looked up and saw Detective Barry, and his face lit up with recognition.

  ‘Well, the dead arose!’ He grinned, showing his teeth. ‘What are you doing here, Detective Barry? Looking for stolen property, is it?’

  Instantly, Denny turned around. He saw Detectives Barry and O’Connell making their way between the jumble stalls towards him and he jumped up as if he had been sitting on a powerful spring.

  ‘Tell me, detective, did you ever nick that feller who was robbing those house deposits?’ asked the estate agent blithely, still grinning. Detective Barry ignored him and made a dash towards Denny, but Denny pushed the estate agent in the chest so that he stumbled sideways into a display of books and records and second-hand handbags.

  ‘Hey, what the feck?’ he exclaimed, but as he regained his balance Detective Barry pushed him, too, to get him out of the way, and this time he fell over backwards on t
o the floor, knocking a vase and a six-piece tea set off a shelf in a shower of shattered china and purple potpourri.

  Denny feinted and weaved between the pillars, trying to obstruct Detective Barry by tipping over antique chairs behind him and kicking over cardboard boxes so that religious figurines and ashtrays and other bric-a-brac scattered all across the floor. There were shouts of ‘Hoi! What do you think you’re doing there?’ from the stallholders, but none of them seemed to understand what was happening and none of them made any attempt to stop him.

  Instead of chasing after Denny, Detective O’Connell made her way directly back to the street door so that she could cut him off. As he neared the entrance, Denny pushed over a coat stand that was heavily laden with second-hand overcoats and hats, which fell across the floor in front of Detective Barry, but then he turned around to find Detective O’Connell standing between him and the street outside, her arms outstretched like a goalkeeper.

  By now Detective Barry was climbing over the heap of fallen overcoats. ‘Stall the ball right there, boy!’ he ordered him, ‘You’re lifted!’

  The young man stopped, both hands raised, although he kept his head down and his back to Detective Barry.

  ‘Turn around,’ Detective Barry told him. ‘Hold out both of your hands.’

  ‘What for, like?’ said the young man. ‘I ain’t done nothing. Selling a few fags to some friends, that’s all.’

  ‘I said turn around and hold out both of your hands.’

  Denny started to turn around, but as Detective Barry approached him with his handcuffs raised, he swung back to face Detective O’Connell. With no hesitation at all, he seized her hair with his left hand and swept his right hand diagonally across her face. Detective O’Connell didn’t realize what had happened to her at first, but then bright red blood spurted out of her cheek, all the way from the side of her left eye to her chin. She gasped and lifted up her hand, and blood flooded down her wrist and soaked the sleeve of her pale blue blouse. She staggered back and then dropped to her knees.

  Detective Barry tried to snatch Denny’s arm, but he twisted it away and was bounding through the open door and out on to York Street before Detective Barry could catch him.

  Detective Barry crouched down beside Detective O’Connell and put his arm around her shoulders. She was pressing her hand against her cheek and blood was dripping between her fingers, but she managed to wave her other hand and blurt out, ‘Go after him, Gerry, for Christ’s sake!’

  Two women were hurrying over from the Flea Market cafe to help, so Detective Barry left her where she was and ran outside. He looked left, up York Street, but there was no sign of Denny running up towards Wellington Road, and in any case the hill was so steep that he wouldn’t have been able to make it all the way to the top. He must have turned right and run off along MacCurtain Street instead.

  Detective Barry went to the corner and again he looked right and left. Between the pedestrians on MacCurtain Street he caught a glimpse of Denny’s red GAA T-shirt as he sprinted flat-out past Dan Lowery’s Tavern, in the direction of Brian Boru Street. That would lead him to the Brian Boru Bridge across the River Lee, and if he managed to reach the city centre before Detective Barry could catch him he could easily mingle with the Friday afternoon shoppers and get away. Detective Barry started after him, calling up the two gardaí who were waiting in Little William Street as he did so.

  ‘Quinn assaulted Detective O’Connell and gave us the slip,’ he told them. ‘He’s done a legger down MacCurtain Street, heading east.’

  He had run only a few more paces before he heard the whooping sound of the patrol car’s siren start up. Got you now, Denny, he thought. By the time he had reached the blue-painted LeisurePlex building on the corner with Brian Boru Street, however, the siren didn’t seem to be coming any closer. He turned his head to see that a mustard-coloured Volvo had turned the corner into York Street and stopped. Since York Street was only one-way, uphill, it was obviously preventing the patrol car from coming down the hill and turning into MacCurtain Street.

  He looked ahead and saw that Denny was already crossing the road at St Patrick’s Quay towards the Brian Boru Bridge.

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he asked over his radio. ‘Denny’s crossing the river already. I don’t want to lose him in the bus station or the shopping centre.’

  ‘Some gowl’s blocking the street and he won’t fecking budge. Mulliken’s got out to tell him to shift but it looks like he’s arguing the toss about it.’

  ‘Jesus. Arrest him. Or push him out of the way. And check if there’s any uniforms on Pana who can give me some backup. Come on, urgent, like! You saw Denny yourself. Rebel County T-shirt. Grey tracksuit bottoms. Hair sticking up like a fecking red rooster.’

  Although the traffic was so busy, and the pedestrian light was red, Detective Barry stepped off the kerb and zig-zagged his way across St Patrick’s Quay. A bus and two cars honked their horns at him and one of the drivers shouted out, ‘Looking to get yourself killed, you nickey?’

  Denny was almost halfway across the bridge now, but he had slowed down so that he was half jogging and half walking and he was clearly out of breath. Detective Barry was in better shape now than he had ever been: he still played Gaelic football for St Finbarr’s whenever he could and he regularly worked out at the RB Fitness Centre. Even if the patrol car didn’t turn up for another three or four minutes, he reckoned he still had a good chance of catching up with Denny before he reached the bus station and Merchants Quay shopping centre – and holding him, too. And smashing him on the gonk for cutting Aislin. He could always plead reasonable force while the suspect was resisting arrest.

  Denny had reached the far side of the bridge, but there was so much traffic on Merchants Quay that he was teetering on his Nikes on the edge of the kerb, unable to cross. Detective Barry had to dodge his way past two women with baby buggies and a hugely obese man in a mobility scooter festooned with shopping bags, but he was sure that he had Denny now. Because he had his eyes fixed ahead, though, he hadn’t become aware of the silver-grey Land Rover that was burbling slowly across the bridge, keeping pace with him, so that it was holding up all the cars behind it.

  For most of the bridge’s 200-foot width, cars and pedestrians were separated from each other by steel railings and by the massive cast-iron structure of the bridge itself, which originally used to lift up to allow boats to pass through. The steel railings, however, didn’t reach all the way across. As Detective Barry neared the far side, where they came to an end, the Land Rover’s engine suddenly roared. With a loud bang from its front suspension, it mounted the pavement, swerved sideways and collided with him, crushing him against the bridge’s balustrade.

  Detective Barry felt as if a bomb had exploded right behind him and that he had been blown apart. The Land Rover had smashed his legs and snapped his pelvis in half. Even at only 5 mph it had rammed him against the balustrade so hard that his stomach had burst open and his intestines were sliding out between the blue-and-white cast-iron uprights and dangling in loops over the river.

  He was so stunned that he felt almost nothing, but as the Land Rover backed away from him and jolted back on to the road he grimly gripped the top of the balustrade to keep himself upright. I mustn’t fall over, he thought. If I fall over, I’ll die for sure. He could see the river and the buildings alongside it, and St Patrick’s Bridge, and the blue summer sky, and the clouds. He heard the sound of traffic and a woman screaming. What do I do now? he thought. But then he heard somebody talking to him and when he managed to turn his head he saw that standing beside him there was a grey-haired man with a reddish face. He smelled strongly of stale Murphy’s.

  ‘You just take it easy, boy,’ the man was saying, although his voice sounded very muffled. ‘You’re going to be grand altogether, so long as you don’t move. Somebody’s called for a white van, okay? Don’t move, though.’

  Unexpectedly, the sky began to darken. ‘Is it night?’ whispered Detective Barr
y. ‘I’m killed out, like. I think I need to lie down.’

  The reddish-faced man gripped him under his left armpit to help him stay on his feet. ‘You’re going to be grand altogether so long as you don’t move. You’re all intertwangled with the railings, like, do you know what I mean? If you move at all you’ll just pull yourself apart.’

  Detective Barry closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he was dead or simply sleeping, but he could still hear voices and traffic so he assumed that he couldn’t be dead.

  Most of the voices sounded very distant, but then he heard somebody speaking so close to his ear that he could feel their breath.

  ‘My son, my name is Father O’Flynn, from the Holy Trinity Church.’

  ‘Don’t let him get away, father,’ said Detective Barry, and as he did so blood slid out of both sides of his mouth.

  He felt slippery fingertips touching his forehead. He heard Father O’Flynn saying, ‘With this anointing, may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.’

  He heard sirens. Fantastic. His backup had caught up with him at last.

  ‘Don’t let him get away,’ he repeated. ‘He’ll have made it across the road by now. Denny Quinn. Rebel County T-shirt. Don’t let him get away.’

  Three

  Katie was gathering up the papers she needed for her meeting with the County Council Joint Policing Committee when Detective O’Donovan knocked quickly at her half-open door and came straight in. He looked flushed and sweaty and his pink stomach was bulging out of his shirt.

  ‘Garda Brophy just called in,’ he told her. ‘Gerry Barry’s been hit by a car on the Brian Boru Bridge.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Katie, immediately dropping the folder back on to her desk. ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘Brophy’s still at the scene,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘He says a hit-and-run driver mounted the pavement and smashed him into the railings at the side of the bridge. The paramedics are working on him now but it’s not looking hopeful.’