Authors: Graham Masterton
He disappeared from her view, but he returned a few moments later pushing a small metal trolley with bottles tinkling together and a metal kidney bowl. He lifted the sleeve of her nightgown and wiped her upper arm with a cold medicated tissue. Then he pierced one of the bottles with the needle of a hypodermic syringe, held it up to the light, and tapped it.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Only a little sting, nothing worse than a gnat-bite, and you’ll be in dreamland. When you wake up, Siobhán, I can promise you this, my dear, you won’t know yourself.’
As she drove through the drizzle into the city, Katie’s iPhone pinged every few seconds with messages and emails, and when she reached her office she found a stack of messages and files waiting for her on her desk. The red light on her phone was flashing.
She was still shaking out her wet raincoat when Detective Dooley knocked at her door. He was looking exceptionally smart this afternoon, in a tight navy-blue suit. He had trimmed his beard and his hair was brushed flat, too, instead of vertical, as it usually was. Most of the time he wore skinny jeans and sloppy Aran sweaters and could easily be taken for a college student. That was why Katie frequently sent him to Cork’s dance clubs and discos to check up on the peddlers of MDMA and other recreational drugs.
‘I’m in court this afternoon,’ he told her, before she could even ask him. ‘That Shalom Park rape.’
‘Serious?’ said Katie. ‘I didn’t think they were hearing that until the middle of next month.’
‘It’s only a preliminary hearing. One of the defendants changed his plea to guilty last night and he’s prepared to shop the other three. I did text you about it.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve had a rake of messages this morning and I haven’t had a chance to check them all yet. Well, that’s good news. I thought it was going to be touch-and-go, getting a conviction for that one. Which defendant was it?’
‘Bryan Neeley, the youngest. The GAA player.’
‘What changed his mind, do you know?’
‘It’s only hearsay, like, but I think the girl’s father might have got a message through to him. Something along the lines of, “If the court doesn’t punish you, then me and my friends will, some dark night when you least expect it, and I don’t suppose you want to be spending the rest of your life singing like a Bee Gee.”’
‘I’ve gone deaf all of a sudden and I didn’t hear that,’ said Katie. ‘But fingers crossed for a good result, anyhow. Was there something else you wanted to see me about?’
‘Oh, yes. This shooting at Ballinroe East. Detective Sergeant Begley went down there again this morning, like, to see how the Bandon cops are getting on with it.’
‘And?’
‘They let the kennel owner go home about lunchtime, but he’s given them an inventory of all his dogs that were taken. I’ve already circulated all of the pet shops and all of the breeders I know of. I’ve also passed a copy to Inspector O’Rourke, so that he can contact all of the Travellers he’s pally with, in case any of the dogs get offered for racing. I’ve been in touch with C and E at Ringaskiddy, too, warning them to keep an eye out for any dogs being exported. I know it’s too early to expect any kind of response, but you know what these Spaniel Snatchers are like. Once they’ve lifted a dog, it’s spirited away before you can say Brandy Traditional Meat Loaf.’
‘We still haven’t identified the victim?’
‘Not so far. His body’s been sent off to CUH, and the technical experts are taking DNA and blood samples. We won’t be able to circulate pictures to the media, though, because he doesn’t have what you might describe as a face.’
Katie sat down at her desk. On the top of the stack of papers in front of her was a confidential security report on the Cork Islamic community, which numbered about five thousand, and in particular the school that was being set up in the new Muslim cultural centre at Turners Cross. She lifted the cover and read the first page and then let the cover drop back. As if her life wasn’t under enough pressure already.
‘All right, Robert, thanks. I’ll ring Inspector O’Brien and see what the latest is. There isn’t too much we can do, though, until we put a name to this dead dognapper. I can’t afford to send you all out hunting for missing dogs, as you very well know. I simply don’t have the manpower available, or the budget.’
Once Detective Dooley had left, she shuffled through all of the paperwork on her desk to see if there was anything that required her urgent attention. At the same time she listened to the voicemail messages on her phone and checked her texts and her emails. She had taken only one morning off and already she felt that she was being buried under a blizzard of paperwork.
The most pressing message had been sent by Inspector Noonan. Somebody had deliberately started a fire at the new €5 million housing estate built at St Anthony’s Park to rehouse the Travellers who had previously lived on the halting site at Knocknaheeny. The Travellers had moved to their smart new houses only under protest, partly because they had wanted financial compensation but mostly because they hadn’t been allowed to take their horses with them. Several of them had threatened to vandalise the estate, and now it looked as if one of them might have carried out his threat. At least the city fire brigade had quickly contained the blaze and nobody had been injured.
Katie knew that it would take more than detective work to solve this problem. If it turned out that a Traveller had started the fire, she would have to meet with the Traveller Visibility Group to see if something could be done to settle the Romas’ outstanding grievances. Then again, it could have been set by a disgruntled local resident who objected to so many Travellers moving in nearby.
Her phone rang. It was Inspector O’Brien, calling from Bandon.
‘Oh, Terry,’ she said. ‘Thanks a million for ringing. You saved me from ringing you, as a matter of fact. What’s the story on this shooting?’
‘We’re more than slightly puggalised, to tell you the truth,’ said Inspector O’Brien.
‘Why’s that? From the sound of it, it was pretty straightforward.’
‘On the face of it, yes. A gang of dognappers breaks into a boarding kennels in the early hours of the morning and starts making off with the dogs, so the owner comes out and takes a potshot at them.’
‘So what’s the mystery?’
‘On closer consideration there’s a couple of things that don’t exactly fit, like, do you know what I mean? The victim wasn’t armed but there was a hurley lying on the ground next to him, as if he’d dropped it when he was shot. The technical experts used a scanner right then and there for fingerprints and the victim had definitely been holding the hurley himself prior to having his brains blown out. However there were scores more prints all over it – handle and bas both – and these all matched the kennel owner, Eoin Cassidy.’
‘So the hurley was probably his? Eoin Cassidy’s?’
Inspector O’Brien said, ‘That’s right, and when we questioned him back at Weir Street he admitted it was. First of all he tried to make out that he’d been carrying the hurley along with his shotgun, and that the victim had snatched it from him, but we pointed out to him how unlikely this was. It would have been fierce awkward for him to be carrying a shotgun in one hand and a hurley in the other. Not only that – even if he really
was
carrying the both of them, why did he allow the victim to get close enough to snatch the hurley, when he was also holding a shotgun? And how did the victim manage to get so far away with it before he shot him, and how come the victim was facing him when he fired?’
‘What did he say to all of that?’ asked Katie.
‘He retracted his first explanation, and said that he was under such stress that he was confused, and that maybe he hadn’t been carrying the hurley after all. When we asked him again how the victim had managed to lay his hands on it, he said he plain couldn’t remember.’
‘How about you, Terry?’ asked Katie. ‘Do you have any theories?’
‘I don’t have a bull’s notion, ma’am, to be honest with you,’ said Inspector O’Brien. ‘But Sergeant Doherty talked to Cassidy’s wife, and
he
came away with the very strong impression that Cassidy wasn’t telling us the truth. Not the whole truth, any road.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She was totally in pieces, that’s what he said.’
‘Come on, that’s understandable, surely. Her husband had just killed a man, and all of their valuable dogs had been stolen. I think I’d be more than a little upset, too, if I was her.’
‘I don’t know – Doherty reckoned there was more to it than that. She was crying and shaking so much that she could hardly get a word out, and her face was bruised, too, although she kept trying to hide it from him with her hands. He didn’t want to push her any further, like, because she was so distressed, and he didn’t want to be accused of harassment. But I’d say she needs talking to again, preferably by a woman officer.’
‘I see,’ said Katie. She sat back in her chair, thinking hard. Then she said, ‘Did anybody else get a sconce at these dognappers? I mean, apart from the Cassidys?’
‘Nobody,’ said Inspector O’Brien. ‘Well, that was hardly surprising at four o’clock in the morning, right out there in back of leap. We’ve checked all the CCTV cameras on the main roads between Kinsale and Clon, but there’s no trace of a white van or a Range Rover, which is what Eoin Cassidy said they were driving, so they must have come and gone by some back route. That’s always assuming he wasn’t lying to us.’
Katie said: ‘All right, Terry. Detective Dooley’s put out feelers about the dogs around the city. You know, to pet-shops and breeders and vets. I have to say that dognapping doesn’t rank very high on my list of priorities, just at the moment. If there wasn’t such a strong chance that it could help us to identify our victim I’d put the dogs under “file and forget”. But I think you’re right. It sounds like there’s more to this than meets the eye. For all we know, there may have been something personal between him and this Eoin Cassidy, and this dognapping story is just a blind.’
A new message text popped up on her computer screen from Inspector Noonan. She paused to read it, and then she said, ‘Listen, Terry, I’ll tell you what, I’ll come down to Ballinroe East myself and talk to Cassidy’s wife.’
‘You mean yourself in person, like?’
‘Yes, me in person. Apart from anything else, I’d like to take a sconce at where this shooting took place. What’s the time now? I can be down there with you by half-past four.’
‘Are you sure about that, ma’am?’
‘You said yourself she needed a woman to talk to her. I’ll bring Detective Scanlan with me, too. She has a very sympathetic way with her, and it’ll be good experience for her.’
‘All right, then, that’s grand,’ said Inspector O’Brien. ‘I’ll meet you outside the kennels there in – what? – forty-five minutes, give or take. Maybe an hour.’
Katie put down the phone. She didn’t really have to go down to Sceolan Boarding Kennels herself. She could have sent Detective Scanlan down on her own to interview Mrs Cassidy, or detailed Detective O’Mara to ride shotgun with her if there was any risk of Eoin Cassidy giving them trouble. But after what Inspector O’Brien had told her, she sensed that there was something unusual about this case which might be worth looking into, and she seriously didn’t feel like spending the rest of the afternoon ploughing through her ‘in’ tray. She could make a start on that first thing tomorrow morning.
There was another reason she was tempted to drive down to Ballinroe East. Even though she didn’t like to admit it to herself she wasn’t in any great hurry to get back home to John. In fact the very thought of it filled her with a feeling that was close to dread. He had suffered so much, and the rest of his life was going to be one horrendous struggle, both physical and mental. How could she tell him to his face that she didn’t love him any more, and that he was going to be nothing but a burden to her?
She shrugged on her raincoat again and went along the corridor to Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin’s office. She knocked at his door and he called out, ‘Come along in!’ although when she went inside he was talking on the phone.
She sat opposite him while he finished his conversation. He seemed bothered about something, and he kept turning a pencil end over end and tapping it on to his desk. He always looked as if he were chewing a wasp, even when he was pleased, but now he was obviously angry, too.
‘No, I’m not at all happy about the way you’ve been dragging this out! Sergeant Lynch handled that situation perfectly correctly, and you need to inform him officially that he wasn’t guilty of any wrongdoing! The next thing I know, he’s going to be doing a Michael Galvin on us, and committing suicide because he thinks that his career’s over and he’s going to end up in prison!’
He paused to listen and then he snapped, ‘No! Absolutely not! Sort it out and then get back to me directly and let me
know
that you’ve sorted it out! Today! Yes,
today
!’
He banged down the phone and looked across his desk at Katie with his nostrils flaring.
‘Who was that? The Ombudsman?’ she asked him.
He nodded, still so angry that he was finding it difficult to speak. ‘They’ve already established that Sergeant Lynch committed no misdemeanour whatsoever. As you know, he wrote in his report that he’d seen Mrs Shelley standing on the pavement when he passed her by on the way to that hit-and-run on Grand Parade, but the CCTV showed her standing in the road.
‘He only glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye, for God’s sake, and she was less than three feet away from where he said she was. And it certainly wasn’t
his
fault that a taxi ran her over. I can’t imagine why the GSOC thought that was even worth investigating!’
‘And they haven’t yet told Lynch that he’s in the clear?’
‘No. But I shall do myself, right now. Holy Saint Joseph and all the carpenters – as if we don’t have enough accusations to put up with, without nitpicking inquiries like this!’
He paused to compose himself, and then he said, ‘I thought you were taking the day off, Katie. Weren’t you supposed to be meeting that poor fellow of yours, the one who lost his legs?’