Blood Sisters Read online

  ‘Good timing, superintendent,’ he said. ‘I’m just on my way to the tractor shed myself.’

  ‘How’s progress?’ she asked him. ‘And for goodness’ sake call me Katie, or Kathleen if you want to be formal.’

  They walked together across the yard and then around to the back of the stables where there was a huge dilapidated wooden building, more like a barn than a shed, with a sagging Killaloe slate roof. Katie could smell the horses before she saw them. They were giving off a ripe, cloying stench that she could actually taste on her tongue. She always thought that decomposing humans smelled green. This smell was darker – greenish-mahogany. She took out the perfume-soaked handkerchief that she always carried in her coat pocket and held it up to her nose. Tadhg Meaney saw what she was doing and gave her a wry smile.

  ‘Don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘I always dab some Vicks up my nose, myself, and suck a Fisherman’s Friend.’

  The large double doors at the front of the shed were wide open. Tarpaulins had been spread out all over the concrete floor and on top of them lay the bodies of the twenty-three horses and foals, in three rows, with the most badly decomposed nearest the front. Some of them were little more than skeletons draped with hairy skin, like horses out of a nightmare, their eye sockets empty because the seagulls had pecked out their eyes. Towards the back of the shed they were mostly intact, except that their stomachs had ballooned out enormously.

  ‘Holy Mary,’ said Detective Horgan, flapping his hand in front of his face. ‘That’s some peggy dell of benjy coming off of this lot.’

  The shed was brightly lit by portable halogen lamps on tripods, so that it looked like a film set. Two ISPCA vets in white protective suits and face masks were crouched down beside one of the horses in the second row. One of them was taking blood samples with a large hypodermic syringe, while the other was slowly waving a Detect-a-Chip scanner from side to side between its shoulder blades.

  ‘With any luck, we’ll have them all checked out by the end of the day,’ said Tadhg. ‘There are three four-year-olds, seven three-year-olds, nine two-year-olds, and four foals. None of the foals has been microchipped.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘I just thank God that the salt water helped to preserve them and that the weather’s been as cold as it has. Otherwise, you couldn’t have seen past the tip of your nose for the flies.’

  Katie took the handkerchief away from her face and tried not to breathe in too deeply. ‘You said that the microchips of the first three horses you tested didn’t tally with any numbers registered at Weatherbys.’

  ‘That’s right. And like I said, that’s the whole mystery of it. We’ve scanned another nine horses since those three, and they’re all the same, microchipped but unregistered. They all have standard ISO transponders and out of the fifteen numbers on each of them the first eight numbers are correct, starting with 372 which is the country code for Ireland. But their personal identification numbers have never been officially recorded. The problem is that we don’t have the poor creatures’ passports to see if the numbers match, or if they’ve been tampered with at all. That’s if they ever did have passports.’

  ‘Sounds like one of your good old racing scams to me,’ said Detective Horgan.

  ‘It does, yes,’ said Katie. ‘But the usual reason for forging a passport is to get a sick horse accepted by a slaughterhouse, isn’t it? You can get six or seven hundred euros these days for a horse that’s fit for human consumption. But these are racehorses. You couldn’t get enough meat off the whole lot of them to make a pound of sausages. In fact, you’d have to pay a knackery to dispose of them.’

  ‘I’m thinking that they could well have been ringers,’ said Tadhg. ‘It’s been much harder for racehorse trainers to substitute one horse for another since microchips became compulsory. But there are still ways and means of forging passports and changing microchips, as you well know. The whole racing business is even more chaotic than ever these days, Katie, to say the least. Not to mention corrupt. And don’t get me started on the cruelty.’

  ‘How long is it going to take you to analyse the blood samples?’ asked Katie.

  ‘We’ll be testing for just about everything, although mainly for bute, but I should have some early results for you tomorrow or the day after.’

  Katie pressed her handkerchief against her face again but the Chloé perfume did little to mask the overwhelming smell of dead horse, and in a way the strong floral scent made it even more sickening. Her stomach made a gurgling noise and she hoped that Tadhg hadn’t heard it.

  ‘Thanks, Tadhg,’ she told him. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you so.’

  Tadhg stared at the horses and said nothing. He looked so defeated and sorrowful that Katie wished she could think of something to say to console him, even if it was only, ‘Tadhg... this wasn’t your fault.’

  She turned away and left him standing there, and it was only when she and Detective Horgan were about to round the corner by the stables that he called out, ‘Thanks for coming by, Katie! I’ll be in touch as soon as I can!’

  * * *

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Katie asked Detective Horgan as they drove back down the narrow country road to rejoin the N20.

  ‘Well, it stinks all right, and not only of dead horses. Like we said, it must be some kind of a racing scam. But what I can’t understand is, if you’re cute enough to pull off a racket involving twenty-three thoroughbred horses, why throw them off a cliff where somebody’s bound to stumble across them sooner or later? Why not cremate them, or bury them in a bog, or fill them full of rocks and take them out to sea where nobody’s going to find them?’

  ‘Maybe they thought the tide would carry them away.’

  ‘That’s possible, but tides turn, don’t they? And even if the tide had taken them out, it might well have washed them back in again. Whoever threw them off that cliff either did it for some fiendishly clever reason, or else they’re incredibly thick.’

  Katie couldn’t help shaking her head and smiling. ‘This is Cork, Horgan. I think the chances of it being done for some fiendishly clever reason are pretty remote. I’d go for thick.’

  They reached the N20. The only other vehicle in sight was a silver Mercedes parked in a lay-by about thirty metres to the north, on the left-hand side of the road but facing towards them. Detective Horgan was about to pull out when the Mercedes swerved out of the lay-by and came speeding in their direction.

  Katie instinctively grabbed his arm and said, ‘Back up!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back up!’

  Detective Horgan tugged the gear lever into reverse, but as he did so there was an ear-splitting crack! and his head jerked backwards. The Toyota slewed to the left and thumped into the high grass verge behind them. Katie’s head banged hard against the headrest but she immediately ducked down sideways so that she was hidden from view.

  A few seconds passed. The Toyota’s engine had stopped and there was silence.

  ‘Horgan?’ said Katie, with her head still resting against his thigh. ‘Hoggy, are you all right?’

  She felt a warm, wet drop on her ear and quickly sat up. The silver Mercedes had gone and the main road was deserted. There was a circular hole in the windscreen about two centimetres in diameter and when she looked at Detective Horgan she saw that his head was slumped forward on his chest and that blood was dripping from his forehead. The back of his head was a tangle of hair and blood, with a large lump of pinkish-grey brain matter drooping down on to his shirt collar.

  She touched her earlobe with her fingertips and they came away red. She took out her handkerchief and wiped them, and then wiped her ear, and then she reached over for the car’s radio microphone to call Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

  ‘Francis?’ she heard herself saying. ‘Yes, this is Detective Superintendent Maguire. We’ve been shot at and Detective Horgan is down. Yes. I’m at the junction of the N20 with the Dromsligo road, about a kilometre north of Mallow. Can you ask Superintendent McCarthy to se
nd some local back-up, and can you get up here yourself, as soon as you can. Bring O’Donovan with you. I need a technical team, too, and a white van.’

  She climbed out of the car and stood beside it with the cold wind ruffling her hair. ‘The shot came from a silver Mercedes saloon,’ she said. ‘Put out a bulletin to stop every car of that description within a thirty-five mile radius of Mallow. Be warned that the occupants could be armed and dangerous.’

  ‘Consider it done,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘You’re not hurt yourself, are you?’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. They might have been trying to hit me, but they took out poor Horgan instead.’

  She lowered the microphone and then stood and waited, using the half-open car door to shield herself from the wind. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking, partly with cold and partly with shock, but she didn’t want to get back into the passenger seat. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at Detective Horgan, sitting behind the wheel with his head bowed, although she could see his blood-spotted hand resting in his lap. Her gorge rose and it was as much as she could do to stop herself from retching. She could still taste those dead horses, and Chloé perfume, and there was a strong smell of slurry on the wind, too, from the fields around her.

  It took the first patrol car only seven minutes to reach her, followed less than a minute later by another. Their blue lights were flashing, but the road was empty of traffic so they weren’t sounding their sirens. Four gardaí climbed out and approached her cautiously.

  ‘Jesus,’ said one of them, bending down to peer into the Toyota’s offside window. He crossed himself and added, ‘Right between the eyes.’

  A young female garda said, ‘You didn’t get hit, ma’am?’

  ‘No, thank God,’ said Katie. ‘I was haunted they just took the one shot.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who they were?’ asked another garda.

  ‘No idea at all. And I can’t think how they knew who we were, or how they knew that we were here in Dromsligo.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been mistaken identity, I suppose?’ the garda suggested. ‘We’ve had some trouble between a couple of the less-desirable families in the area lately.’

  ‘It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very likely. We don’t exactly fit the profile, do we?’

  ‘How about we drive you back to Cork, ma’am?’ asked another garda. ‘That must have been a fierce shock, like, seeing your man shot right next to you.’

  ‘That’s appreciated, but I’ll stay for a while,’ said Katie. ‘Detective Inspector O’Rourke is on his way here from Anglesea Street and I want to talk to the technical team, too, when they arrive.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit in our car then, ma’am?’ said the female garda. She was plump, with china-blue eyes. ‘You’re looking fair foundered there and at least it’ll keep you warm.’

  Katie was about to decline that offer, too. Detective Horgan had been shot dead, but she was almost sure that the shooter had been aiming for her, and she didn’t want to walk away and leave him sitting there. God, he had celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday only two weeks ago. But she was trembling now, and she was beginning to feel as if the Tarmac was tilting underneath her feet, so she smiled and nodded and said, ‘Yes, thanks, I think I will.’

  ‘I have some hot tea in the car, too, if you’d like some,’ said the garda as she led her over to the patrol car.

  Katie sat in the back seat and took out her iPhone so that she could check on Detective Inspector O’Rourke and see how long it was going to take him to get to Dromsligo. She had a message from John. Hope ur not 2 busy 2nite. Ive booked us a table @ Hayfield 2 celebr8 amazing flu vaccine sale!

  She started to send him a text in reply, telling him that Detective Horgan had been killed while she was in the car with him, but after only a few words she deleted it. How could she use Horgan’s death as an excuse not to go out to dinner?

  Far worse than that, she was going to have to break the news to his girlfriend, Muireann.

  11

  She stayed at the scene until Detective Inspector O’Rourke and Detective O’Donovan arrived, followed ten minutes later by a team of four technicians. The Mallow gardaí had closed the N20 for nearly two hours now and three more officers and seven Garda reserves had arrived to help search the road surface on their hands and knees for any possible evidence.

  There were tyre tracks in the lay-by where the silver Mercedes had been waiting for them and the technical experts would take photographs and casts of those, but the shot had almost certainly come from a rifle, so it was highly unlikely that they would find a spent cartridge. Katie was feeling warmer now, and her stomach had settled, so she climbed out of the patrol car to watch the technicians at work and to talk to Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

  ‘Was there any case that Horgan was working on that might have put him at risk of his life?’ asked Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

  ‘He arrested Jurgis Walunis last week,’ said Katie. ‘He’s the younger brother of Algis Walunis, that Lithuanian drug-dealer we were talking about the other day. Walunis can be very violent to anybody who crosses him. We’ve arrested him God knows how many times for assault, but can we ever find a witness to stand up in court?’

  ‘You think Walunis might have done this?’

  Katie thought about it, and then shook her head. ‘It’s not really his style. He likes to hear his victims begging for mercy, and he usually uses a knife or a broken bottle, or a baseball bat.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘I know that Horgan was checking on two male suspects in Togher because he had information that they were members of the Real IRA and were both in possession of firearms. I’m not sure what the latest story was with that, but he told me yesterday morning that he was hoping to make an arrest this weekend.’

  ‘But what if it wasn’t Horgan they were after? What if it was you?’

  ‘Well, that was my first thought,’ said Katie. ‘Just at the moment there’s any number of serial scumbags who would breathe a deep sigh of relief if I could be disposed of.’

  Technical expert Denis McBride came waddling up to them in his Tyvek suit, holding up a bullet in a pair of tweezers. He was bespectacled and neatly bearded and deeply serious, and one of the best ballistics experts in the country.

  ‘I found this buried in the back seat upholstery,’ he said. ‘It’s a very powerful round indeed – 7.62 × 54 millimetre R – often used for sniper rifles, especially in Russia and Eastern European countries.’

  ‘Well, we know that a large proportion of the guns we find in Cork are smuggled in from the Baltic States and the Czech Republic,’ said Katie. ‘So, yes – I suppose it could have been Walunis, or one of his gang, but I still don’t think that Walunis would have been so clinical. This was a calculated hit. From what I’ve heard, Walunis has to work himself up into a frenzy first.’

  ‘Obviously I’ll have to examine this round more closely, back in the lab,’ said Denis McBride. ‘At a guess, though, I’d say it came from a Mosin-Nagant or Dragunov rifle, or a derivative thereof. They were manufactured under licence in many different countries – Finland, Poland, Norway – and usually they’re not too expensive, about six or seven hundred euros on the black market.’

  ‘Thanks, Denis,’ said Katie. She looked back at the Toyota. The interior was fitfully lit up by camera flashes, so that she could see Detective Horgan sitting behind the wheel and the blood that had sprayed all over the seat behind him. She turned to Detective Inspector O’Rourke and said, ‘I think I’ll be getting back to the station now, Francis, if you don’t mind driving me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke. ‘I should think you’ve had enough for one day. If I was you, and my missus was me, I’d give you a goody and send you to bed.’

  If the circumstances had been different, Katie could have smiled. She hadn’t been given a goody since she was off school with the chickenpox – white bread soaked in hot milk
with a spoonful of honey stirred in. But then again, it made her think of her mother, and that unexpectedly gave her a lump in her throat.

  * * *

  They had almost reached the city when Katie’s iPhone warbled. It was Detective Dooley ringing her.

  ‘I was wondering if you were still up in Dromsligo, ma’am.’

  ‘No, no, I’m on my way back,’ Katie told him. ‘I won’t be more than a couple of minutes. We’re in Blackpool, just passing the brewery.’

  ‘Jesus, that was an awful land about Horgan. None of us can believe it.’

  ‘I know, Dooley, I know. We can all get together later and talk about it. I think we’ll need to.’

  ‘You’re all right yourself, though?’

  ‘Shocked, like you are. But I wasn’t hurt.’

  ‘Thank God for that. I’ll see you when you get in so.’

  There was something in his tone of voice that made Katie think that he wanted to say more, but was hesitant.

  ‘Was there something else?’ she asked him.

  ‘No, no, it’ll keep. You’ll be back here directly.’

  ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘Well – that was why I wanted to know where you were. We’ve had a response to that appeal you put out on the television.’

  ‘About the dead horses, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. I think it might have given us a really good lead. In fact, better than good.’

  ‘Okay, that’s sounds encouraging. Tell me when I get in. I won’t be long now.’

  They crossed over the Christy Ring bridge and drove along Merchants Quay. It was growing dark now and the street lights along the river were coming on. Katie never liked this time of year. It always reminded her of the happy times that would never come back, and all the people she had lost.

  Detective Inspector O’Rourke turned into the station car park and tugged on the handbrake. ‘You’ll forgive me for saying this to you, ma’am, no disrespect meant, but you won’t be overdoing it?’