The Drowned Read online

  ‘Okay,’ said Katie. ‘All you can do is keep looking. I’ll go and see Mathew McElvey in the press office and tell him to put out some appeals on the social media.’

  After she had talked to Mathew McElvey, Katie went up to her office. She had enough cases on her hands at the moment not to worry too much about five missing lads from Mayfield. Two men had been arrested in Togher yesterday afternoon after they had been involved in a road-rage incident on the South Ring and were found to be carrying guns, and a young Romanian girl had been badly beaten by her pimp in a Grafton Street brothel after she had refused to have sex with three men at once.

  Later that morning, Kyna came in to tell her that she had managed to have a private conversation with Niamh Nolan, the younger of the two girl students who had complained of being gang-raped.

  ‘I took her for coffee at The Bookshelf, where it’s quiet and friendly and nobody would know her. I tell you, she poured her heart out.’

  ‘Will she give evidence in court?’ asked Katie.

  ‘I think so. I hope so, but I’m not so sure about the other girl, Aileen. Up until this happened Aileen was Ruarí Barrett’s steady girlfriend and Niamh said she’s still fierce afraid of him. Apparently he used to beat her if he caught her even chatting to another lad.’

  ‘Ruarí Barrett sounds like one of those scummers I’d love to see locked up on Rathmore Road. Preferably sharing a cell with a violent psychopath.’

  ‘Well, me too. But listen to this. This gang-rape happened a week ago yesterday. Ruarí took Aileen and Niamh and another two students into the city for a Chinese. After that, around eleven o’clock, they all went to Havana Brown’s. Niamh said that everything was grand up until then and she was really enjoying herself. They had a few scoops, like, and a bit of a dance, then they met up with five other lads. These five other lads weren’t UCC students, but it seemed like they knew Ruarí and the other two really well.’

  ‘Five other lads?’ said Katie. ‘Did she know where they came from, or catch any of their names?’

  ‘She said that they were right gurriers. She was getting quite langered by then but she thinks that one of them was called Darragh, he was the loudest, and another one was called Aidan, and he was a bit quieter.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ said Katie. ‘Are we talking about those five who’ve gone missing? Those two names are the same.’

  ‘I can’t say for sure. But when it was closing time at Havana Brown’s, Ruarí said that he knew of an all-night party that another student was having at his apartment at Davcon Court. So off they all went. It’s only a five-minute walk to Barack Street but Niamh says she was pure langered by then. She was very unsteady on her feet, so two of the lads helped her along, in inverted commas, but they were both groping her while they were doing it.

  ‘She told Ruarí that she was going to call it a night and carry on walking back to UCC, but he told her not to be a wuss. Any road, the long and the short of it is that there was no party. When they reached this student’s apartment there was nobody there. So what you had was eight lads and two girls. Plus a whole lot of pot and MasterCards and whiskey and beer.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Katie grimly.

  ‘They stripped the girls and held them down on the bed while they raped them, over and over. Oral, anal, sometimes two or three of them at once. Finishing up with bukkake, for those who could still manage it.’

  Katie stood up and went over to the window. The Elysian building, the tallest in Ireland, was gleaming pale green in a hazy sunshine. Huge white cumulus clouds were sailing high above it. Her granny had always told her that each cloud had its own crew of angels, but after what she had witnessed in her time in the Garda she knew for certain that there were no angels, and that the clouds were nothing but ghost ships sailing to nowhere.

  Kyna came and stood close beside her. She lifted her hand as if to touch her shoulder, but then lowered it again. At work they were detective superintendent and detective sergeant, not friends.

  ‘From what Niamh told me, this wasn’t the first time that Ruarí and these five other lads had got together for the same purpose,’ she said. ‘While they were raping her, she kind of blanked herself out, like, but she caught one or two snatches of conversation between them and it sounded like they were making comparisons with other girls they’d assaulted. Like, “At least these two have decent diddies, unlike that last one.”’

  Katie said, ‘Bring that Ruarí in here for questioning. Arrest him if he refuses. And make sure the other girl knows that she has nothing to fear from him at all – what’s her name, Aileen. Tell her that he’ll only have to scowl at her and we’ll charge him with threatening behaviour.’

  ‘It’ll be my pleasure,’ Kyna told her.

  Katie turned around. ‘Even if it turns out that these five lads who joined him for that gang-rape are the same lads who have disappeared, that still doesn’t explain where they’ve gone.’

  ‘I can tell you where they haven’t gone,’ said Kyna. ‘And that’s to Heaven.’

  *

  A little over an hour later, Mary Buckley and Shelagh O’Reilly came into the station to see her. Katie invited them to sit down on the couches by her office window and asked Moirin to fetch them two cups of tea.

  ‘Is there any news at all?’ asked Mary. ‘I can’t believe that nobody’s seen them for nearly three days now. Like, you know, big strapping lads like that, they don’t just vanish into thin air.’

  Shelagh looked desperately stressed, clutching her handbag as tightly as if she were riding pillion on the back of a motorcycle. ‘We was thinking of calling in the missing persons search people. You know, those fellers who go up and down the river in them little boats, looking for people what might have drownded.’

  ‘We didn’t know if you’d object to us doing it, like,’ said Mary. ‘We know that you’re doing everything you can to find them and we don’t want you think that we don’t appreciate it.’

  ‘I’ve no objection at all,’ said Katie. ‘Maybe you’re calling them a little sooner than most people do, and we’ve no evidence at all that your sons might have drowned, but if it reassures you to have them looking – then, by all means. They do wonderful work and we always keep in very close touch with them.’

  By the ‘missing persons search people’, Shelagh meant the volunteer group Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery (CCMPSAR) – twelve men who provided a compassionate service to the families of people who had gone missing. When they were first contacted by worried relatives they would put out appeals on social media before they initiated a search, but in this case Katie had already arranged for that to be done. Now the CCMPSAR would launch their two inflatable boats and cruise up and down the river Lee with a sonar scanner, looking for unusual shapes under the water. In a single year they would expect to find at least five bodies, often more. The River Lee was the last resort for the drunk, the depressed, and the desperate.

  ‘I’ll have a word with Superintendent Pearse, who’s in charge of the uniformed officers,’ said Katie. ‘He’ll have one of his sergeants get in contact with the missing persons unit. We don’t want them searching unnecessarily, because they’re all volunteers and all their expenses come out of donations, or out of their own pockets.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Shelagh. ‘They found my uncle Tommy when he went missing three years ago. He had the panchromatic cancer and he couldn’t stand the pain any longer. When they found him he was going around and around in Tivoli Harbour. They knew it was him straightaway because he never wore socks.’

  ‘I promise you we’ll let you know as soon as we have any news at all,’ said Katie. ‘No – don’t rush. Finish your tea. I’m going to go and see Superintendent Pearse. Moirin will show you out.’

  ‘I hope we’ve done the right thing,’ said Mary. ‘I don’t know – asking them fellers to go looking for my Tadgh in the river – it’s almost like admitting that he’s dead already.’

  ‘Don’t think like that,’ Katie
told her. ‘You’d be surprised how many missing people turn up alive and well and totally mystified why anybody should have missed them.’

  *

  Kyna came in and said, ‘I have Ruarí Barrett downstairs in the interview room. He gave me no bother at all this time when I asked him to come in for questioning. Even opened the door for me when we got here.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or not,’ said Katie. ‘Suspects are usually cooperative because they have their story all sewn up in advance. You’re more likely to get the truth if you have to beat it out of them.’

  ‘Oh, you know me,’ said Kyna. ‘I can be very persuasive.’

  She can, too, thought Katie. She had seen Kyna coax some extraordinary confessions out of suspects who had come into the station clearly determined to give nothing away. She picked up the folder of photographs of the missing boys and then she and Kyna walked together along the corridor to the lifts. She felt like holding hands, but this was the station and she resisted it.

  Ruarí was sitting at the table in the interview room chatting to the young garda who was watching him. He was a broad-shouldered, athletic-looking young man, with a ginger crew-cut and eyebrows and eyelashes so white that they were almost invisible. He had a broad face, with a snub nose, and the palest of pale blue eyes. He was wearing a red Cork GAA training jacket and jeans, and white Common Project runners that Katie estimated had cost at least €250.

  He stood up when Katie and Kyna came in and held out his hand, but Katie ignored it and said, ‘You’re grand altogether, Ruarí. Please sit down.’

  He sat down, smiling and casually crossing his legs, while Katie and Kyna sat down facing him, and Kyna switched on the voice recorder.

  ‘Has Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán made it clear to you why we’ve brought you in for questioning?’ asked Katie.

  ‘She has, yeah. Something to do with our party night last week.’

  ‘Party? Is that what you call it?’

  ‘There was music and drink and girls. I’d call that a party, yes, for sure.’

  ‘And there was sex?’

  ‘I’m not denying it. That happens at parties sometimes. Well, most of the time, at most parties. Sex.’

  ‘Did everybody have sex that night?’

  Ruarí shrugged and said, ‘All of us went away satisfied, like, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I do know what you mean. What was the ratio of boys to girls?’

  ‘The girls were gagging for it. That was why we went to Davcon Court in the first place. Those beours would have laid down in a bed of nettles, I tell you.’

  ‘How many girls were there?’

  ‘What difference does it make? They were begging us for it.’

  ‘How many girls were there?’

  Ruarí uncrossed his legs, leaned forward a little and cleared his throat. ‘Two. Aileen and Niamh.’

  ‘Aileen... she was, like, your steady girlfriend?’ asked Kyna.

  ‘Yeah. Well, sort of.’

  ‘Is she still your steady girlfriend?’

  ‘Why? What did she tell you?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions, Ruarí. Is she still your steady girlfriend?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Because of what happened at this so-called party?’

  ‘Girls can be like that,’ said Ruarí. ‘Come on, you know that as well as I do. Before they have it they’re begging for it but after you’ve given it to them they start crying rape.’

  ‘How many boys were there?’

  Ruarí smirked and counted on his fingers. ‘Me and Dermot and James and some other fellers we met at Havana Brown’s.’

  ‘How many other fellers?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Well, five altogether.’

  ‘So that makes eight. Eight boys and two girls. And you all went away satisfied?’

  ‘It’s that Niamh, isn’t it? She was loving it, I swear to God. She was loving every minute of it. Screaming the place down, she was. Good thing that Davcon Court has the concrete walls.’

  ‘These five fellers you met at Havana Brown’s,’ said Kyna. ‘Had you met them before?’

  Ruarí sensed a trap in this question. What if Kyna had already interviewed one or all of them and they had admitted that they had already known Ruarí and his two student friends before the night of the party?

  ‘Yeah. We’d bumped into them two or three times.’

  ‘And on those other occasions when you bumped into them, did you have similar parties then?’

  Ruarí’s pale blue eyes blinked, although he kept looking at Kyna directly. Katie guessed what he was doing. He had probably heard that liars always look up and off to the right because they’re supposed to be checking the creative lobe of their brain for an answer. But she knew from experience that was a myth. What was really giving Ruarí away was his hesitations and his exaggerated hand gestures and his strenuous efforts to appear nonchalant, even when a muscle in his cheek was twitching to indicate that he was grinding his teeth.

  ‘So what have they told you?’ he asked. It was becoming obvious to Katie that he hadn’t seen any of the appeals for the missing boys on the television or in the newspapers. He had probably been too busy catching up on his studies for his MEngSc.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they told us,’ said Kyna. ‘We want to hear your version.’

  ‘We did have parties, yeah,’ said Ruarí. ‘Three altogether. Two at Davcon Court and one at Abbeyville.’

  ‘The same kind of parties? With girls?’

  ‘They haven’t complained, have they? I mean, like, none of them’s come to you and said we mistreated them or nothing? Not before Niamh. And like I say, Niamh was really up for it, whatever she’s been telling you now.’

  ‘The girls at your other three parties, where did they come from? Were they students, too?’

  ‘The girls at two of them were. The other one we picked up at Rearden’s.’

  ‘Am I hearing you right?’ said Kyna. ‘You had one of your parties with just one girl? Eight of you?’

  Ruarí smirked again and threw up his hands and said, ‘She loved it. Every minute of it. When we were all finished she wanted more. Inexhaustible, that’s what she was. We treated her good, though. We even paid for her taxi home afterwards.’

  Katie said, ‘These other five lads, do you know where they came from?’

  Ruarí was plainly relieved to change the subject. ‘Mayfield, they said.’

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘No. Never asked. I’m shite at remembering names anyway.’

  ‘After that last party, did any of these lads give you the idea that they might all be going off somewhere together? Taking a few days’ holliers, maybe?’

  ‘No,’ said Ruarí, and now he was growing uneasy.

  Katie opened up the manila folder she had brought down with her, and passed it over so that Ruarí could see the photographs in it.

  ‘Are these your five party friends?’ she asked him.

  Ruarí bent forward and looked at the photographs closely. ‘They are, yeah,’ he said. Then, ‘What? How did you—?’

  ‘You obviously haven’t been watching the news,’ said Katie. ‘These five lads have been missing without trace for the past three days. We thought you might have some idea where they are.’

  ‘Why should I? We only met up now and again. What do you mean, they’re missing? What, like – all of them?’

  Katie took back the folder and stood up. ‘That’s it for now, Ruarí. However, I have to advise you that I will be wanting to interview you again, as well as your friends, and that you shouldn’t think of leaving Cork until my inquiry is completed.’

  ‘I can go?’ said Ruarí.

  ‘Why, do you want me to arrest you here and now? Because I can, and I will if necessary.’

  Ruarí stood up and left the interview room as quickly as a frightened rabbit. After he had gone, Kyna said, ‘You could have arrested him, just on the strength of what Niam
h told me.’

  ‘Yes, I could have,’ said Katie. ‘But there were eight of them and I want all eight of them to be punished, one way or another. I’m quite prepared to wait until I have all of them standing in front of me.’

  *

  ‘I should have been a croupier,’ said Detective Dooley as he and Detective Scanlan walked to the Port of Cork marina in the first light of dawn. ‘They have to work late, croupiers, but at least they can have a good long lie-in every morning.’

  ‘Maybe you should change jobs,’ said Detective Scanlan. ‘I can just see you with a green eyeshade and a fancy waistcoat, spinning a roulette wheel.’

  When they reached the quayside they found that four members of the Cork missing persons unit were already there, preparing their rigid-hulled inflatable boat. Three of them were dressed in black dry-suits with red life jackets, while the fourth was wearing a black diver’s suit. The orange boat was tied up beside the dock, dipping and bobbing in the water, while one of the unit was testing the outboard motor and another was checking the Humminbird sonar scanner.

  It wasn’t raining, but the sky was unrelentingly grey, and the river was grey, too.

  One of the unit came forward to meet them, a stocky middle-aged man with a black woolly hat and gappy teeth.

  ‘John Brogan,’ he said. ‘I’ll be doing the piloting this morning.’

  He beckoned the man in the diver’s suit and said, ‘This is Fergus O’Farrell, he’s our latest volunteer. Ex-Navy.’

  Fergus lifted a hand in greeting, although he didn’t smile. He looked about mid-fifties, too, with bristling grey eyebrows and a furrowed forehead and a turned-down mouth, like a pugnacious bull terrier. Having his face squashed by his tight rubber wetsuit didn’t improve his appearance.

  ‘It was Fergus who brought up that couple that drowned off Blackrock last month,’ said John. ‘Fierce tricky dive that was, because they were all tangled up in netting and rubbish. But sad, too, because they were still holding on to each other, like lovers.’

  Fergus checked his watch and said, ‘I doubt I’ll be doing any diving the day, though. Even if we detect any anomalies on the river bottom, we’ll have to analyse them overnight first. But, you know, you never know.’