Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Read online

  ‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘I expect the media will be here soon asking you questions about this. Can you please not make any comment to them until we let you know that it’s okay for you to do so? And when you do, can you keep any speculation down to the minimum?’

  The deputy manager blinked at her as if he didn’t understand what she meant.

  ‘For instance, can you please not tell the media that you think that somebody was deliberately trying to ruin this wedding ceilidh, or any other theory that might occur to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. No,’ said the deputy manager.

  Detective Horgan said, ‘We’ve been interviewing every single guest, but we’re not getting much out of them. The cake was already on display here when they arrived, so none of them could have tampered with it. The O’Malleys and the Gallaghers are both very popular, what with everything they do for charity and all, and not one of the guests can think of anyone who would want to spoil things for them.’

  Katie turned to John O’Malley and said, ‘You’ve had no arguments with anybody lately? No threats made against you, for any reason?’

  ‘I voted against the Lower Lee flood barrier last week, and that didn’t go down too well with some of the city-centre shopkeepers, but that’s about all. Nothing that would justify an atrocity like this. If I’ve upset somebody this bad, why didn’t they cut my head off and bake it into a cake, instead of whoever this is?’

  ‘How about the hotel?’ asked Katie. ‘Have you had any troublesome guests lately?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ said the deputy manager. ‘You get some of them drinking too much and making a nuisance of themselves, or making too much noise in their rooms. We threw out one fellow last week for nearly burning the place down. He was so langered he couldn’t work out how to turn up the heating, so he set fire to his mattress.’

  ***

  It was another forty-five minutes before the technicians arrived. Three of them came rustling across the function room in their white Tyvek suits, as if they had just arrived from a space mission.

  Katie said, ‘How’s your man in Ballea?’

  ‘Oh, dead,’ said the chief technician. ‘Very dead.’ He was very grey, with short grey hair and a grey, lined face. Katie imagined that all the horrors he had witnessed in his career had gradually leached all the colour out of him, in the same way that people’s hair was supposed to turn white when they encountered a ghost.

  ‘Apparently the victim suffered from epilepsy,’ he added. ‘Whatever the cause might have been, he fell backwards out of the seat of his tractor into a double-direction disc plough.’

  ‘Oh. Ow! Nasty.’

  ‘We had the devil’s own job getting him out of there, I can tell you. Have you ever got a lamb bone stuck in your mincer?’

  ‘Thank you, Bill. I feel sick enough as it is. Look at the state of this. The bride and groom were cutting their cake when they felt there was something inside it. Mr O’Malley here took it apart and this is what he discovered.’

  The chief technician leaned forward and examined the tip of the nose closely. ‘Partly decomposed and partly cooked,’ he said. ‘We’ll photograph this here, in situ, and then I think we’ll take it with us back to the lab. We’ll be able to scan it then with the ultrasound and test it for fingerprints and any other evidence before we cut it up any more. People often lick the spoon when they’re icing a cake so we may be lucky and find some DNA.’

  ‘I’ll leave it with you, then,’ said Katie. ‘But please send me an image of the victim’s face the minute you have one. The sooner we know who he is, the sooner we’ll be able to track down our Demon Baker.’

  3

  To Katie’s relief, Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy had already left the station by the time she returned to Anglesea Street.

  Katie’s working relationship with Bryan Molloy had been growing steadily more scrappy ever since August when he had been shipped in from Limerick to take over from Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll. Unlike Dermot O’Driscoll, Molloy believed that women were nothing but a nuisance in the Garda. They weren’t clubbable, like men, and they couldn’t be trusted to close ranks if one of their fellow officers was found to have bent the rules a little.

  Her phone rang even before she had taken off her coat. It was Detective Horgan, calling from just outside the Crounans’ house on Alexander Place, up by St Luke’s.

  ‘We went to the bakery on Maylor Street but all the shutters were down. There’s no sign on the door or anything, it’s just closed. Now we’re up at the Crounans’ but there’s nobody home and no cars outside or nothing.’

  ‘Have you tried ringing them on their mobiles?’

  ‘Of course, yeah. But Micky’s is switched off and we couldn’t get an answer from his missus.’

  ‘What about the bakery staff? They must know why the bakery’s closed and where the Crounans are.’

  ‘Well, that’s our next plan. But first of all we have to find out who the staff are, and how to get in touch with them. We’re going to try asking at the shops next door, and some of the other bakers. Somebody at Scoozi’s might know.’

  ‘Okay, then. Keep me in touch.’

  Katie began to leaf through the files that had been left on her desk, but almost at once there was a knock on her open office door and Inspector Liam Fennessy came in. With his circular spectacles and brush-cut hair and his tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows he looked more like a lecturer in English from Cork University than a Garda inspector.

  ‘We’ve had a sighting of Roisin Begley,’ he said. ‘One of her school friends saw her in a car driving along Pope’s Quay less than an hour ago. She said that Roisin didn’t appear to be distressed at all. In fact, she was laughing.’

  ‘She was sure it was Roisin?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. Blonde hair, red and white woolly hat. She says she waved to her, but either Roisin didn’t see her, or else she didn’t want to.’

  ‘Who was with her?’

  ‘Some man. The friend couldn’t really describe him, because she was too busy trying to catch Roisin’s attention. She thought he was wearing a blue tracksuit top because it had the two white stripes down the sleeves, but that was all she could remember.’

  ‘At least Roisin’s still alive, thank God. I thought we’d be after finding her drowned in the river. But if she was laughing, it sounds like she’s run away, and that could make her much more difficult to find. I’ll have the press office get in touch with the Begleys and see if they can’t put out an appeal on the Six One News. You know – “Please come home, darling, we aren’t cross with you at all, and Woofy misses you.”’

  ‘Woofy?’ asked Inspector Fennessy.

  ‘Well, you know, whatever they call the family dog.’

  She told him about the wedding cake. He listened, shaking his head. ‘Jesus. That’s nearly as bad as that woman in Curraheen who fried her old feller in lard and fed him to her cats.’

  ‘The technical boys are doing an ultrasound scan and maybe then we’ll be able to see who it is.’

  ‘How do you bake a head in a cake, for the love of God? And why would you?’

  Katie closed the file in front of her and pushed her chair back. ‘The day we can answer questions like that, Liam – that’ll be the day that you and me are out of a job.’

  ***

  She went home early that afternoon. This would have been her day off if she hadn’t had to appear in court. She had planned to go shopping at Hickey’s for new curtains and a new living-room carpet, but that would have to wait until the weekend now. She had almost finished redecorating her living room. All the Regency-style wallpaper that her late husband, Paul, had chosen had been stripped off and all the gilded furniture had gone. Maybe she would never be able to forget Paul’s selfishness, and his unfaithfulness, and his self-pity, and how their marriage had gradually disintegrated, especially after the death of little Seamus – but at least she wouldn’t have to live with his idea of luxury decor any more
.

  She lived on the west side of Cobh, overlooking the River Lee as it widened towards the harbour and the sea. The sun was still glittering on the water as she arrived home, but a chilly wind was rising and the trees along the roadside were dipping and thrashing as if they were irritated at being blown about.

  When she turned her Focus into her driveway, she saw a man in a long grey raincoat standing in her porch. He turned around as soon as he heard her and raised his hand in greeting.

  ‘Perfect timing,’ he said, as she opened her car door.

  She reached across to the passenger seat for her shopping bag, and then she said, ‘You haven’t come to sell me double-glazing, have you?’

  He laughed and said, ‘Nothing like that. We’ve just moved in next door and I came to say hello, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, okay then. Hello. Welcome to Carrig View. Let me just open the door and put down this shopping.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, and took the bag from her.

  She unlocked the front door, switched off the alarm and beckoned him inside. As soon as she opened the kitchen door, her Irish setter, Barney, came bustling out to greet her, wagging his tail.

  ‘Well, now, there’s a fine fellow,’ the man said. ‘And what’s your name, boy?’

  ‘That’s Barney,’ said Katie. ‘Oh, just dump the shopping on the table, if you don’t mind. Thanks. That’s grand.’

  The man held out his hand. ‘I’m David ó Catháin, but most people call me David Kane. I’m a vet, so from next week you’ll start to see a lot of people coming and going during the day with various animals. Dogs and cats mostly, and parrots, but I have had to treat the occasional alligator.’

  ‘Katie Maguire,’ said Katie.

  She liked the look of David Kane. He reminded her a little of John, who had left her in the late summer to go back to live and work in America. He was tall, like John, and dark-curled, although his face was leaner, with a straight, sharp nose and a sharply squared jaw. He was thinner, too, but then John had built up his muscles working on his family farm, until Ireland’s collapsing economy had forced him to sell it.

  David Kane’s voice was rich and confident and deep, but it was his eyes that appealed to her the most. Brown, and amused, as if he found it hard to take life seriously. Katie’s day-to-day life was grim enough, and monotonous enough, and she appreciated anybody who could bring some laughter into it.

  ‘The woman from the letting agency told me that you’re with the Garda,’ said David. ‘We won’t have to be worrying too much about security, then, with you next door.’

  ‘Well, she really shouldn’t have told you that, but yes.’

  ‘Like, you’re speeding around in a patrol car all day? That must be exciting.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Sitting behind a desk mostly, sorting out mountains of paperwork.’

  ‘Oh. And what about your other half?’

  ‘The only other half I have at the moment is Barney.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that the letting agent kept talking about “the couple next door”.’

  ‘I think I shall have to have a word with your letting agent and tell her to be a little more discreet.’

  ‘Truly, Katie, I apologize,’ said David. He took hold of her hand between both of his and gave her a look that would have melted chocolate, as Katie’s grandmother used to say.

  ‘Don’t think anything of it,’ said Katie. ‘You would have found out anyway. There’s not much happens here in Cobh without everybody knowing about it two minutes later. Sometimes I swear that they’re gossiping about things even before they’ve happened. But why don’t you and your wife come round tomorrow evening for a drink and we can get acquainted? I’d ask you tonight but I have a rake of work to catch up with. What’s your wife’s name?’

  ‘Sorcha. She’s not what you’d call the sociable sort, but I’ll ask her.’

  ‘Yes, please do. Around seven-thirty would be good.’

  David suddenly seemed to realize that he was still holding Katie’s hand. He let go of it and grinned, as if to say, what am I like, holding on to your hand for so long?

  Katie showed him to the front door. As he turned to go, he said, ‘Would it be too intrusive of me to ask you what you actually do, in the Garda?’

  ‘Of course not. You’ll probably see on the nine o’clock news in any case. Detective Superintendent.’

  David raised his thick, dark eyebrows. ‘Detective Superintendent? How about that, then? You’re the capo di tutti capi.’

  ‘Not quite. I still have a chief superintendent to answer to, and an assistant commissioner above him.’

  ‘All the same, I’m impressed.’

  ‘Good to meet you, David,’ said Katie. ‘And it’s very good to know that if Barney ever gets sick, God forbid, I now have a vet living right next door.’

  David paused, looking at Katie as if he were about to say something, but instead he turned around and walked off down her driveway, lifting his right hand in farewell, like Peter Falk in Columbo. Katie stood in her porch watching him until he had disappeared behind the hedge.

  What an unusual, interesting man, she thought, as she closed the front door behind her. There was something about him that made her feel off-balance, or maybe it was just that she was missing John. But what had he meant about his wife Sorcha being ‘not what you’d call the sociable sort’? That was strange.

  She went back into the kitchen and started to unpack her shopping. Barney sat beside her as if he were guarding her, but more than likely he was simply waiting to be fed. Just like the males of every species, she thought. You think they’re protecting you, but all they have at heart is their own appetite.

  ***

  She dreamed that night that she and John were riding a tandem down Summerhill, on the north side of the city, at such a speed that she couldn’t pedal fast enough to keep up.

  John was sitting behind her, so that she couldn’t see him, but she could hear him shouting at her over the wind that was blustering in her ears. She could tell that he was angry, really angry, but she couldn’t make out what he was so angry about. The trouble was, she didn’t dare to turn her head around because she might veer off the road.

  She kept applying the brakes, and every time she did so the brake blocks gave a shrill, penetrating shriek, but they didn’t slow the tandem down at all.

  ‘John!’ she cried out. ‘John, please stop shouting! The brakes won’t work! The brakes won’t work!’

  They jolted over the kerb and on to the pavement, heading directly for somebody’s front gate, but at that moment Katie opened her eyes. She sat up in bed, panting and hot, as if she really had been careering down Summerhill. Her bedroom was completely dark except for the small red light of her television and the clock on her bedside table, which read 2.25 a.m.

  The shouting, however, was still going on, and so was the intermittent shrieking. But it wasn’t John shouting at her, and the shrieking wasn’t the sound of bicycle brakes. The noise was coming from the house next door – a man who was obviously furious about something, and a woman who was screaming back at him.

  Katie sat listening for a few seconds. It was impossible to tell what either of them was saying, but then she heard a loud crash and a clatter like saucepans falling on to a tiled kitchen floor. She climbed out of bed, went across to her bedroom window and opened the curtains.

  Even through the beech hedge that separated the two properties, she could see that her neighbours’ kitchen window was lit up. The man was shouting in short, sharp sentences now, almost like a fierce dog barking. The woman wailed owww! owww! three or four times, and then she started to cry. Her crying sounded so despairing and so sorrowful that Katie was tempted to get dressed and go next door to make sure she was all right.

  It sounded as if the man had hit her, and if he had, it was Katie’s duty as a peace police officer to ask her if she wanted to press charges against him.

  She waited, undecided. The shouting had stoppe
d now, and so had the shrieks, although she could still hear occasional sobs of misery.

  After a long while, the sobbing stopped. Katie opened her window and listened intently. She could hear voices, much calmer now, but she still couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. It was a damp, chilly night; the sky was so overcast that she couldn’t even see the full moon. She gave a quick shiver and closed her window as quietly as she could. As she did so, the kitchen light next door was switched off.

  She went through to her own kitchen, opened the fridge, and took a swig of fizzy Ballygowan water straight out of the bottle. She didn’t know if she had just overheard an incident of domestic violence or not. Of course, all couples argued, and most of the time their arguments sounded much worse than they really were, even if they were hitting each other. Two years ago she had organized a campaign in Cork against wife-beating, called Gallchnó Crann, or the Walnut Tree, after the old rhyme ‘a woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat them, the better they be’. But in so many cases the wives would refuse at the last moment to give evidence in court, even when they had suffered black eyes and split lips and broken ribs. They made the excuse that it had been their fault for provoking their husbands. ‘I nag him something terrible sometimes, I don’t blame him for lashing out at me.’

  She climbed back into bed, although she didn’t switch off her pink bedside lamp. She lay there, with her eyes open, thinking about what she had just heard. She thought about John, too, and wondered what he was doing now. For him, in San Francisco, it would only be 6.41 yesterday evening, and the sun must still be shining. She wondered if he were thinking about her, or if he was sitting in a bar laughing with some other woman.

  Then she thought about David Kane, and tried to work out what it was about him that had made such an impression on her. Maybe it was something of the quality that made Michael Gerrety so charismatic – a sense that he was dangerous.

  ***

  The next morning, when she was standing in the kitchen eating a bowl of muesli, she heard a car door slam next door. She went through to the living room in time to see David Kane driving away in a silver Range Rover. He glanced at her house as he passed, but she was so far back from the window that she didn’t think he could see her.