A Turn for the Bad (26 page)

Before Maura had time to react, her own mobile rang. She answered quickly: it proved to be Sean Murphy. Sean said formally, “We've a man here in Skibbereen, says he needs to talk to you.”

“Who is it?” Maura asked, although she had a pretty good idea.

“His name is Conor Tully—says he's John Tully's brother. Yeh told me you know him?”

“Yes, here at Sullivan's. Why is he there?”

“I can't say over the phone,” Sean hedged, “but he won't talk to us until he's talked to you. It's important, Maura, else I wouldn't ask. Can you come over?”

“Yes. Give me a few minutes to get things sorted out here and I'll be there. And tell Conor we've got him. He may talk to you then.” Maura hung up before Sean could ask any questions she wasn't ready to answer.

She turned to the others. “That was Sean Murphy. They have Conor at the garda station, but he hasn't told them anything yet. What do we do now?”

To Maura's surprise, it was Billy who spoke first. “Seems simple to me. The lads are bringin' John here. Call John's wife and tell her to come and meet us at the pub here—just say there's news of John. No doubt she's family staying with her, to look after the little ones. She'll be fine to drive over.
When John gets here, get him cleaned up and fed, and let him give his wife a proper greeting, not in that order, I'm thinkin'. Then the whole lot of yeh, head over to Skibbereen and sort things out together. I'm guessin' there'd be more of yeh than there are gardaí. Unless they've invited in the navy and customs and all their mates, in which case you'll have a right mess on yer hands, but nothing a lot of talk can't fix. After all, yer holding the trump card: John Tully.”

They had no more time to plan, because within minutes a battered car pulled up in front of Sullivan's and four men emerged: Gerard, whose car it seemed to be; Mick, untangling his long legs from the cramped rear seat; Harry, bounding out from the opposite side; and finally, more slowly, a man who had to be John Tully—Maura recognized him from the photographs plastered everywhere when he'd been missing. He was missing no more.

After a moment in which everyone stood staring at the door, Maura shook herself and hurried to unlock it, then stepped back as the four men tumbled in. She closed it behind them and locked it again: no need to advertise their successful mission until they knew what was what with the gardaí. “Welcome back, guys. John, I'm very glad to meet you.”

John Tully looked exhausted, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. “You'd be Maura Donovan, I'm guessin'. These fellas have been after tellin' me that you put together this mad plan?”

“It was a group effort, believe me. I'm happy I could help. Look, you must be starving. The gardaí want to see us—well, the ones of us they know about. We haven't told anyone about you yet, but your brother Conor's been picked up because of his part in this whole drug thing. You know about that?”

“I didn't before, but I do now. But yer right—I could do with a meal and maybe some drink and a quick wash, and I'd better talk to me wife or I'll never hear the end of it. Was Eoin safe?”

“He was. It was Conor took him back home to his mother. And your wife's on her way here.”

“Ah, grand. Point me toward the loo and find me a bite and I'll be right to go.”

“I've some bread and ham at my place,” Billy volunteered. “I can fetch it quick.” He hauled himself out of his chair and headed for the door.

“Loo's that way.” Maura pointed, and John stumbled toward it. As he passed, Maura agreed that he was in sore need of a good bath, although for now a quick scrub would have to do—there were other issues to deal with first. She realized suddenly that Harry had been uncharacteristically silent, especially since he'd actually earned the right to call himself a hero, under the circumstances. His silence was quickly explained when Maura saw him closely entwined with Gillian in a dark corner. Maura wasn't about to interrupt the reunion.

“All right, then,” she addressed Gerard and Mick, and Harry if he happened to be listening, which was unlikely. “You did a great job, and I'm sure you're all proud of yourselves, and you should be. But right now the gardaí are waiting for us, and they don't know our side of the story. We can distract them for a bit when we walk in with John, but that won't last forever. As soon as Billy gets back with some food, we need to sit down and hear what you saw and did. Maybe we should start with the yacht owner. What kind of shape is he in?”

“Last we saw,” Mick began, struggling to hide a smile, “he was takin' a bit of a nap in his cabin. He might have got tangled in a bit of rope, fer we didn't want him to be callin' his friends, now, did we?”

“And the other guy from the boat?”

“Never saw anyone else, not after two of 'em headed fer the shore with the small boat. We were gone before they came back.
If
they came back. They weren't our worry. John told us they only took orders, and spoke mostly Spanish.”

Billy appeared outside the far window, making his slow way back, clutching some plastic bags. The sound of clanking water pipes signaled John Tully's efforts to clean up. Maura sneaked a glance at Harry and Gillian, who hadn't budged from their location. There was no daylight to be seen between them, but now they were speaking only to each other, in low voices. “I'm going to make more coffee,” Maura announced, and went behind the bar to start it.

By the time the coffee was ready, everyone, including Harry and Gillian, their hands wound together, was sitting around the low table farthest from the windows, with chairs
pulled close. Billy had scrounged ham, cheese, a loaf of bread, and other odds and ends, and after John had helped himself the others began to pick at it. Maybe they'd skipped breakfast, or maybe dawn adventures on the high seas were good for the appetite. Maura doled out mugs, set the coffeepot on the table, and pulled up another chair. “All right, what happened?”

“Do yeh want to start at the beginning?” Mick asked, “or with John's tale?”

“Let John eat, and tell us about this morning,” Maura said. “John can fill us in when you're done.”

Harry took the lead. “We met at my boathouse at four or a bit past—damnation, it was dark! And cold. Like I told you, Tom O'Brien had kept the boat in sweet running order, so we sorted ourselves out and set off. We didn't want to let anyone know we were there, too soon, so we took ourselves out to open water with Gerard pointing the way and waited for a bit. We saw the launch from the boat head out, and Conor called us to say it had arrived on the shore. Two men on it, the South American and the pilot, I'm guessing. And all those bales of cocaine as well, of course. We hoped that meant that there was only the one man left on the big boat—the owner. So we started up the motor again, making plenty of noise, and bumbled our way toward it.”

“You wanted to distract the owner?”

“Couldn't hurt, now, could it? As we'd planned, we approached and played the fools, like we were only sloshing about the harbor after a long night of drinking. The owner was none too pleased to be distracted, but he decided it might be better to shut us up, so he actually invited us on
board, thinking we might quiet down a bit. And then he kind of hit his face on Gerard's fist, I think—it was dark, so hard to tell—and we laid him down nice and easy and tied his hands and feet and stuffed a cloth in his mouth, in case he happened to wake up and wanted to chat . . .” Harry was acting almost giddy. He couldn't stop smiling.

Mick picked up the tale. “The man wasn't going anywhere, and we knew the rest of his crew could be comin' back at any time, so we started to search the boat, lookin' fer John.”

“Led by me,” Gerard chimed in, “seein' as how I'm the one who knows boats.”

“That you do,” Mick agreed. “So Gerard tells us we need to head down, all the way to the engine room. They wouldn't have been keepin' the bales that far down, but it would be a good place to hide a man.”

“And so it was,” John finally said, swallowing the last of his second sandwich.

“Tell us what happened at the start, will you, John?” Maura asked.

“I hear I'm famous across the land,” John said, looking much more alert now that he had some food and coffee in him. “All the lads out searchin' fer days, and me stuck belowdecks missin' all the fun. So as to the story, I was takin' a walk on the shore with my lad, Eoin, mindin' me own business, and I see this boat with two guys in it, nosin' about, pointin' at the rocks and the shallows. I called out to ask if they were in need of assistance, and they all but jumped out of their skins—I'm guessin' they didn't expect to find anyone on the beach there. So they're pretty close in, and I can hear them jabberin' away in Spanish, I guess, and
then they jump out and come at me, God knows why. I only offered a bit of help. And I didn't want to get into anythin' with 'em, seeing as I had Eoin along, though I think he'd wandered off behind some rocks.” He paused to drink some more coffee, wiping his mouth with his grimy sleeve.

“So they're arguin', and I'm watchin', wonderin' what they're after, and then they turn on me and grab me, which I didn't take too kindly to. And I struggled with them, and one of them went down and I thought mebbe I'd taken him out of the picture and I could handle the other one on me own, but then he gets up again and the other one hits me over the head with something, and they pitch me into the boat and we're off. At least, that's how I remember it—my head was none too clear by then. They turn the boat around and head back to this other boat, a good ways out, and then they drag me up the ladder and hustle me down to the engine room, which was not a nice place, let me tell you, and they lock me in. I couldn't even say how long it was they kept me there. Now and then they'd throw some food in at me—mebbe they weren't sure what to do with me. After a bit I worked it out that me best hope would be to lie low and hope they'd let me go once they'd finished their business. I hadn't much else to go on.”

“When did you figure out what that business was?” Gillian asked. Maura noticed she was still sitting very close to Harry.

“After a day or two, I'm guessin'. There weren't many things they could be doin', hangin' about on that part of the water, and I didn't see any fish. So I figgered it had to be the drugs, right? Wouldn't be the first time around here.”

“Sure and yer right about that,” Gerard said.

“Did you wonder why they didn't just kill you and get rid of you?” Maura asked.

“I had plenty of time to think on that, and I never did figger it out. It woulda made sense.”

The group around the table fell silent for a moment, contemplating what must have gone through John's mind as he waited in the dark engine room for what turned out to be days.

“What day is it, then?” John asked suddenly.

“It's Sunday,” Maura told him.

“God help me, I've been gone near a week? Did one of yehs tell me my wife's on the way?”

“We called her and said to come meet us here, but we didn't go into details,” Maura told him.

“Do the gardaí know?”

“Not yet. We wanted to sort things out before we talked to them, but we promised we'd be there soon. We thought you might want to see your wife first.”

“That's God's truth. And this would be her now,” John said, rising from his chair and heading for the door, while a sturdy woman in her thirties parked askew at the curb and climbed out of the car. John wrestled briefly with the unfamiliar door lock until Maura stepped in and opened it quickly, and Nuala Tully all but fell in, straight into John's arms.

They held on to each other silently for a few moments before Nuala stepped back far enough to thwack him on the shoulder, hard. “That's fer goin' off to think on yer own, yeh gobshite. Yer lucky Conor was at hand to bring the boy back.”

“Good to see you too, luv. Eoin's all right, then?”

“He's fine, no thanks to you. He came back babbling about pirates, and he's been askin' after his da all week. But no harm done.”

“What was Conor doin' there?” John asked. The members of the rescue team exchanged wary glances.

“I sent him to haul yer sorry ass home, is what,” Nuala said. “The cows were waitin' for the milking. What did yeh think?”

“Sorry, sorry. It was a fine day, and I lost track of the time. But all's well?”

“The cows're fine, but yeh've had half the country combing the beaches and harbors to find yeh. It was on the telly, even. Yer famous—fer being stupid enough to get yerself lost. Whatever happened to yeh?”

Maura felt a spurt of panic. If they started telling the story now, the details in the later tellings might get jumbled, and the gardaí would not be happy with that. But what was she thinking? The truth was the easiest to remember, and they'd done nothing wrong. Or not exactly. They'd found John Tully when half the country couldn't, so shouldn't they have a little credit to cover the slightly shady things they might have done?

“Guys?” She looked around at her conspirators. “We go with the truth, right? If we start inventing stories now, we'll end up in a worse mess. You all okay with that?”

John and Nuala were looking at them with confusion, which was not surprising. “What're yeh going on about?” John asked.

Maura took a deep breath and wondered how the heck she'd ended up as the spokesperson for this whole thing. “John, the guys who took you and held you this past week
were drug smugglers, like you figured out. We think they were carrying a really big shipment of cocaine. The ones you saw, who grabbed you, were checking out the beach before landing the coke and putting it into trucks for the next leg, but they didn't expect to find anyone there.” Maura debated briefly with herself whether she should mention Conor's part in that, but decided that could wait. “We're guessing they were low-level crew, and they didn't want to make the decision to kill you without orders from somebody else, higher up. So they grabbed you and took you back to their boss to tell them what to do.”

It looked like John went pale under the remaining grime and oil on his face. “Why didn't they kill me on the ship, then?”

This was going to be the tricky part. “Because your brother Conor was in on the deal, and he told them he'd tell the gardaí and the navy and just about anyone else who would listen about the shipment of coke if they harmed you. That's why they kept you alive. And that's why we had to hurry up and get you off that ship this morning, because they were handing off the drugs. Once they'd made the delivery, Conor's threat didn't matter.”