Blood Sisters (34 page)

Fionnuala didn’t answer, but frowned and suddenly came towards her, with her left hand uplifted. Katie took a step back, wondering what she was doing, but Fionnuala said, ‘It’s okay, ma’am, just hold still for a moment.’

She came right up to Katie, lifted the hair at the right side of her head and then tugged gently at her earlobe. Then she held up in front of her a hard, dark-red droplet that looked like an earring. ‘Dried blood,’ she said. ‘You’ve grazed your ear, that’s all.’

As soon as she passed the open door of his office, Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin called out, ‘Katie!’

She stopped and went back.

‘How are you?’ he asked her, standing up and coming around his desk. ‘You weren’t hurt at all, were you?’

‘Couple of minor cuts, that’s all,’ said Katie, holding up her right hand to show him her sticking plaster, as if she were swearing an oath of allegiance. ‘But honestly, sir, I’m in bits. We’re all in bits. Those two young guards. We were ready for a bit of trouble, like, but nothing like that. Do you have their names yet?’

Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin went back to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Garda Darragh Mullan, he was twenty-three years old, and Garda John Burns, twenty-two. Garda Mullan only passed out of Templemore eighteen months ago, and Garda Burns had only just got married. Michael Pearse has already gone off to notify the families.’

They stood there in silence for a few moments, with Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin looking more mournful than ever. Then he said, ‘You’ll take yourself for a check-up, Katie, just to make sure?’

‘I’m grand, don’t worry. I just need to brush myself down and give my hair a quick wash.’

‘You should go home and have a good rest. I don’t want you coming down with that what-d’ye-call-it, that post-traumatic stress disorder. Francis O’Rourke can keep things ticking over for you.’

‘Really, sir, I’m shaken, I admit, but I’m grand altogether and I want to get straight back to this investigation. It’ll help me get over the shock. Besides that, I want to catch up with anything new that they might have found up at the Bon Sauveur Convent.’

‘Oh yes. The Bon Sauveur Convent. We had the diocesan legal advisers on the blower this morning. I’ve left a note on your desk. They were asking for a meeting with the assistant commissioner, but he’s away in Kinsale today and won’t be back till tomorrow. There was somebody else called for you, too. Those two wastes of space from the Ombudsman. I told them you’d been involved in a major incident and that you probably wouldn’t be back into the station for a couple of days at the earliest.’

‘I – oh – thank you, sir,’ Katie told him. She didn’t know what else to say. Up until now she had never heard Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin use any kind of derogatory language about anybody. Not only that, he had never treated her so protectively. She couldn’t say that he had been actively hostile towards her appointment as detective superintendent, unlike some of the other male officers at Anglesea Street. On the other hand, he had always appeared to be indifferent – more wrapped up in his own perpetual gloom than concerned about her welfare.

‘So, what’s the current situation up at Spring Lane?’ he asked her.

‘It’s stable now. We’ve sealed off the area all around Paddy Fearon’s caravan and the technical team are down on their hands and knees picking up the bits. Before it gets dark, we should be able to allow most of the Travellers to go back to their homes. I have to say, though, that this incident has done no good at all to our relationship with the Pavee community. Some of them have even got it into their heads that it was
us
who blew up Paddy Fearon – a controlled explosion to force open his caravan door that got out of control – even though two of our officers got killed.’

‘What about witnesses? Did any of the Travellers see anybody acting suspicious around Fearon’s caravan?’

Katie shook her head. ‘No. But even if they had, they wouldn’t tell us, would they? Travellers never rat to the law. I know it sounds racist, but I think Detective Dooley has a point. When he went there to set up that knackering deal with Fearon, he said that everybody on the whole site seemed to be acting suspicious. It’s just the way that Travellers are. They don’t trust anybody and nobody trusts them.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’

‘Have a cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich if the canteen have any left. Then I’m going up to the Bon Sauveur to see how the search is getting on – they should have the ground radar working by now. First of all, though, I want to see if Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán has made any progress in locating the remaining four nuns from the Sacred Seven that Mother O’Dwyer told me about. That’s if any of them are still alive. It’ll save us all a fierce amount of work and worry if they’ve all passed away already.’

‘Very good,’ said Chief Superintendent MacCostagáin. He looked down at his desk with two fingertips pressed against his lips, as if he were having trouble remembering something. As Katie turned to leave, he said, ‘You will be very careful, won’t you? I mean, after what happened to Detective Horgan, and now this.’

‘Of course,’ she said, with half a smile. ‘I’m always careful.’

He raised his eyes. She could tell that he didn’t really want to say this, but if he didn’t he would never forgive himself later. ‘It’s just that you’re a very attractive woman, Katie, and we don’t want a similar tragedy befalling you, do you know what I mean?’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Katie, and left his office. Walking along the corridor towards her own office, though, her eyes were wide open and she could hardly believe what he had just said to her.
You’re a very attractive woman
? Denis MacCostagáin had called her a very attractive woman? And what a moment to choose, when she and everybody else in the station was still deeply in shock.

Perhaps that was why he had chosen this moment, thought Katie. Perhaps he had believed that he couldn’t shock her any more than she was shocked already.

* * *

She went into her office, hung up her coat, and immediately went across to her bathroom. She switched on the light, locked the door and leaned back against the wall, facing the mirror over the washbasin. Her stomach felt as hard as a medicine ball.

Please God, let everything be all right. Whatever trouble this child is going to cause me, please don’t let any harm come to it
.

She unfastened her holster and laid her revolver on top of the waste bin. Then she unzipped her skirt and tugged down her thick black tights and her thong. To her relief she could see that she had wet herself a little, probably when the bomb went off, but that was all. She stood there massaging her stomach, her eyes closed, and gradually her muscles began to relax.

When she came out of the bathroom, carrying her holstered gun in her hand, she found Detective Inspector Inspector O’Rourke waiting for her.

‘Mother of God,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The only lucky thing about it was that more of us weren’t killed.’

Katie sat down at her desk. She held out her hands in front of her and they were trembling uncontrollably. ‘Look at me!’ she said. ‘Still got the shakes! The worst thing about it, there was no warning at all. And it was obvious that Paddy Fearon wasn’t expecting it. But whoever planted that device, I’m seriously wondering if they knew that we were coming for him.’

‘Well, the media were tipped off, weren’t they, so what are the chances that half of Cork knew about it, too? Next time we’re planning on making an arrest perhaps we ought to cut out the middleman and announce it ourselves on Red FM.’

‘There’s no future in being bitter about it, Francis,’ said Katie. ‘We had the same problem when Bryan Molloy was in charge. The whole station was leaking highly classified information like a colander – mainly for Molloy’s financial benefit. I’m not going to let that happen again and I’m not going to tolerate any more lives lost.’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke sat down opposite her. He watched her for a moment as she tried to steady her hands and then he said, ‘When you’re suggesting that the bombers might have known that we were coming to lift Fearon, and that was why they bombed him, I think you’re thinking in the right general direction.’

‘I’m convinced that they were specifically out to get him,’ said Katie. ‘I certainly don’t believe that it was a racist attack against the Pavees in general.’

‘I agree with you, ma’am. Sure, there’s been bad blood for donkey’s years between the Travellers and the residents of the Park Court estate overlooking the halting site, but I can’t see any of those council tenants taking things that far. No – instead of asking ourselves who may have gained the most from Paddy Fearon being killed, I think we should be asking ourselves who would have lost the most if he
hadn’t
been. I’ve known him by reputation for years and I can tell you that he was known for ratting on people if ever he found himself in an awkward situation, like. He was lucky he didn’t get himself killed a few times before. Tómas Ó Conaill always swore that he’d a stick a chisel in him if he ever got the chance.’

‘Like he did with his pregnant girlfriend?’

‘Yes, not a pleasant feller at all, Ó Conaill. A total scumbag, in fact. He’d sell you the eye out of your own head and stab you if you couldn’t pay for it.’

Katie said, ‘I’m going to get myself a coffee. Do you want to come with me? I think that you and I share a very similar feeling about Paddy Fearon. Dooley feels the same, too. Once he found out that Dooley was the law, Fearon was a fool to himself to keep the money that he’d paid him. That meant we could arrest him and put some pressure on him and I’ll bet you anything at all that whoever killed him didn’t want him to talk to us.’

‘About those racehorses thrown off the cliff, you mean?’

‘What else? As far as we know, the only other shady dealings that Fearon was involved in were stripping copper wire from the railway and fencing stolen bicycles – hardly worth taking the risk of blowing him up for.’

They walked along the corridor towards the lifts. As they waited for one to come up from the ground floor, Katie said, ‘Think about it, Francis. There’s mega money in horse racing. In my opinion, it’s become even more urgent for us to find out who those horses originally belonged to, and why they wanted to dispose of them, and why they chose Paddy Fearon to do it. I think he got seriously out of his depth.’

‘You do realize this is all guesswork,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke as they joined the queue at the canteen counter. ‘It might not have been Paddy Fearon who threw them off that cliff at all, in which case we’ll have to start looking for somebody who simply wanted to blow him up.’

‘Like I say, that wouldn’t really make sense,’ said Katie. ‘And if all they had wanted to do was kill him, they would simply have knocked on his door and shot him when he answered it. This was done by somebody who really wanted to make a point. Like, if you mess with me, this is what you get. Not just
pop
! you’re dead – you get blown to kingdom come in a massive explosion, and two gardai get killed, too, even if that wasn’t the intention.’

She carried their coffees over to a table by the window and then she said, ‘Whoever we’re looking for, Francis, they’re not scared of anything. They’re not scared of the Travellers and they’re not scared of us. Blowing up Paddy Fearon’s caravan and killing two of our officers was like putting two fingers up to the world.’

‘That means that they must have one hell of a motive,’ said Detective Inspector O’Rourke.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Katie. She was feeling much steadier now and she appreciated Detective Inspector O’Rourke’s reassuring presence, but all the same she still wasn’t far away from tears.

* * *

Katie had finished her coffee and was pushing back her chair when Detective Inspector O’Rourke said, ‘Before you go, ma’am.’

‘Yes, what is it?’

His expression was serious, so Katie slowly sat down again.

‘That security meeting at Phoenix Park I went to, ma’am.’

‘What about it?’ she asked him. ‘You’re going to write me a report on it, aren’t you? And you told them all about the new screening procedures we’ve set up at Ringaskiddy and the airport?’

‘I did, of course. But I thought you ought to know that in the bar after the meeting I earwigged on a couple of conversations between some of the officers who were present. Naming no names, but if I say Limerick and Kilkenny I think you’ll get the gist of who I’m talking about.’

‘What were they saying?’

Detective Inspector O’Rourke pulled a face. ‘I couldn’t hear all of it, and because I’m stationed here in Cork now they were obviously being cautious about what they said. But Bryan Molloy has a fair amount of support from some of those fellows and I believe that you and I know why. They all had a good thing going back in the days when they called themselves the High Kings of Erin – all that dropping of charges and wiping clean the driving licences of the rich and famous. They were making some very comfortable extra income out of that, but you helped to put a stop to it. I don’t think you have any notion how much they resent you, those stonecutters. Well, apart from the fact that you’re a woman. They’d be happy to see you dead, and I’m not codding.’

Katie suddenly thought of the bullet coming through the windscreen of their car when she and Detective Horgan were driving away from Dromsligo. But then she thought,
No, it couldn’t be, they wouldn’t take a chance like that
. Surely it was enough for Molloy’s old cronies that she was being investigated by the Garda Ombudsman.

‘Thank you, Francis,’ she told him, laying her hand on top of his. ‘I appreciate your loyalty.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve always said it, ma’am. If we don’t look after each other, nobody else is going to.’

* * *

Down in the squad room she met up with Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán, who was still sitting at her desk trying to trace the four remaining sisters of the Sacred Seven.

The squad room was hushed, although phones were still ringing and detectives were still tapping away at their laptops. The shock of the Spring Lane bombing had affected everybody in the whole building and there was none of the usual laughing and banter.