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    Buried
    Buried
    Buried
    Ebook554 pages9 hours

    Buried

    By Graham Masterton

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    About this ebook

    Katie Maguire knows that in this part of Ireland, the past can never stay buried...

    In Blarney, Cork, an old millworker's cottage guards its secrets. In 1921, a mother, father and their two young children disappeared from this house. Now their mummified bodies have been discovered under the floorboards.

    As DS Katie Maguire investigates a ninety-five-year-old murder, the flames of old family rivalries flare up once more... and Katie is caught in the crossfire.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateDec 10, 2015
    ISBN9781784081362
    Author

    Graham Masterton

    Graham Masterton (born 1946, Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton's first novel The Manitou was published in 1976 and adapted for the film in 1978. Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Mirror. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, an imaginative reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Masterton's novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers. Visit www.grahammasterton.co.uk

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    Reviews for Buried

    4/5

    15 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Ah, Katie Maguire, I'm surely gettin' ta know ye...

      Let's see how many of the typical story elements show up in this one, shall we?

      1 - Katie is either moving toward John or away from him...or both. Check.
      2 - A good cop gets killed. Check.
      3 - Katie does something that pisses off her superior officer. Check.
      4 - An awkward sex scene that goes on too long. Check.
      5 - There's a long-standing cop on the force who's somehow in league with the bad guys. Check.
      6 - A villain shows up at Katie's home. Check.
      7 - Katie walks her dog. Check.
      8 - Katie disregards any longstanding or unresolved relationships to have indiscriminate sex. Check.
      9 - The only ones Katie trusts are asked to help her, to their own peril. Check.
      10 - The villains have unreasonably strong beliefs in either religion or some sort of historical aspect of Ireland. Check.
      11 - In the end, Katie solves the case, but it does nothing to help her standing, station, or career. Check.

      Yup. This one's got it all.

      I'll try one more, but these are getting a little old, and the gruesomeness is beginning to feel like it's simply grue for grue's sake.
    • 5/5
      Buried – Another Katie McGuire MasterclassThe Katie McGuire series is rapidly becoming one of the best police procedural thriller series around today. Graham Masterton has a real ear for the genuine Irish burr which he has always used to full effect throughout the previous outing of Katie McGuire and continues with this one. Detective Superintendent Katie McGuire is feisty principle character, a red headed dynamo who is not afraid to take on corruption, bullying and downright lies – and that is just in the Cork Garda station. Once again Masterton gives us a masterclass in thriller writing, with plenty of twists and turns and plenty of guts. It is little wonder that he is one of the most exciting thriller writers of the moment, who writes with style, who is always original and simply a brilliant story teller. In Blarney, outside of Cork, a couple of workers on renovating an old millworkers cottage, when they discover a secret that it has been hiding for over 90 years. A family are found under the floorboards and looking by the bullet holes they have been executed, but by whom and when are the questions Katie McGuire has to ask. At the same time, she needs to tread very carefully she does not want to stir up a hornet’s nest of historic hatreds.At the same time, she is forced to confront a bully criminal who is involved with Irish terrorism, and who is suspected of murdering or knowing who did, of one of her detectives. At the same time, she is also investigating his cigarette smuggling and Bobby Quilty is not a very happy criminal. Even though everyone in Cork knows Quilty is a criminal he is able to walk out of court every time for a variety of reasons, most of them crooked.Throughout the investigation she is aware that Quilty is always one step ahead of the Guards and she knows she will have to find the mole who is helping him. It is when Quilty takes her ex-boyfriend, John, hostage does she understand the depths he will go to protect himself and his enterprises and helps to drive her on even more.As her investigations continue she knows that whatever she does she needs to find the mole at the station, take out Bobby Quilty and rescue her John. All this throws up some of the motives and actions that she takes and would probably be illegal if uncovered, but that is artistic licence for you.With unpredictable twists and turns, Buried is a great crime thriller that is a pacey read that will take us on a course of memory and the ability to forgive and forget. Another great crime thriller from a brilliant storyteller, who always delivers on every level of excitement and intrigue.

    Book preview

    Buried - Graham Masterton

    One

    ‘Are you coming inside or not, you useless collop?’ Declan demanded.

    It was obvious, though, that Christy wasn’t going to come any nearer. He stood on the front doorstep, his black and tan fur bedraggled by the rain, and Declan had never seen him look so apprehensive. His eyes were wide, and his nostrils were twitching, and every now and then he tilted his head sideways as if he were trying to peer inside the hallway and in through the living-room door, because he was sure that there was something frightening in there.

    Colm called out, ‘Declan, for feck’s sake, will you stop discussing the weather with that mutt of yours and give me a hand with this fecking fireplace?’

    ‘I’ll tell you something, Christy, you’re some jibber,’ Declan told him. ‘If you want to stay out there getting yourself soaked, that’s your lookout. But if you die of pneumonia, don’t come blaming me for it.’

    He left Christy and went into the living room where Colm had knocked the brown-tiled fire surround loose from the wall and was now trying to lever it further away with a crowbar. The air in the tiny room was filled with dust and the floorboards were gritty underfoot so that the soles of his boots made a scrunching sound.

    ‘Never known him act like that before,’ said Declan, picking up a shovel and wedging it into the opposite side of the fireplace. ‘It’s almost like he’s scared of something, do you know what I mean? Maybe there’s a ghost in here, like.’

    ‘That wouldn’t fecking surprise me at all,’ said Colm, violently wrenching the crowbar from side to side. ‘The old feller who used to own this place, they discovered him dead down the bottom of the stairs, that’s what that girl from Sherry Fitzgerald’s told me. Tripped over his cat, so she reckoned. Broke his neck like a fecking stick of celery and they didn’t find him for a month.’

    Colm had reckoned that it would take them at least two weeks to renovate the whole house. It was a small two-bedroom property in Millstream Row, Blarney, in a terrace of eleven cottages that had been built sometime in the 1860s to house woollen workers from Mahony’s mill.

    Although the previous owners had lived in it since 1952, they had decorated it only once during the whole of their years there, with dingy brown floral wallpaper. In 1964 they had built a single-storey lean-to extension in the backyard to accommodate a bath and a twin-tub washing machine, but that had been their only concession to modernization.

    Now that the widowed owner had died, the house had been sold to a young professional couple for 123,000 euros as their starter home.

    Together, grunting like two prize hogs being prodded to market, Declan and Colm manhandled the fire surround out of the house and into the rain. Christy was still sitting there, soaking wet, and when he stepped back to allow them to shuffle out of the front door he shook himself furiously.

    ‘You’re a lunatic, do you know that?’ said Declan, after he and Colm had heaved the fire surround, with a deafening crash, into the empty skip that was parked in the narrow road outside. ‘Why don’t you go in and get yourself dry?’

    He bent down and took hold of Christy’s collar, but when he tried to drag him into the house Christy stiffened his legs and growled. When Declan pulled harder he scrabbled his claws against the wet pavement and barked, refusing to step over the threshold.

    ‘Sure look at him,’ grinned Colm. ‘I bet you’re right about a ghost. How about it, Christy? Can you see a ghost in there, boy? Woooooo!’

    ‘Maybe there’s just a smell he doesn’t like, dead rat or something,’ said Declan. ‘Most people don’t know it, but your Kerry beagle has an even more sensitive nose than a bloodhound.’

    ‘Yeah, but come on, Dec. How much of him is Kerry beagle and how much is some stray mongrel that gave his mother the lad when her owner wasn’t looking?’

    ‘It’s all very well you skittin’, boy,’ Declan retorted. ‘This feller can smell if somebody’s farted in Limerick, I swear to God. He can smell tripe boiling even before you’ve lit the gas.’

    He yanked at Christy’s collar one more time, but Christy snarled and bared his teeth, and Declan gave up. ‘Okay, have it your way. You need a bath any road.’

    Declan and Colm went back into the house. Now they needed to pull up all the floorboards in the living room because the new owners were going to replace them with hand-scraped Victorian oak.

    Colm lit a Johnnie Blue and took three deep drags before pinching it out and tucking the butt behind his ear. Then he picked up his crowbar and used it to jemmy the skirting board away from the wall underneath the window. While he lifted the skirting board over his shoulder and toted it outside to the skip, Declan bent over and gripped the exposed end of the central floorboard, tugging at it again and again until he dislodged the nails out of the joists underneath. He tilted it up and dropped it to one side with a clatter.

    Declan was used to finding builder’s rubble underneath the floorboards of these old houses, as well as the skeletons of rats and mice. Once he had discovered a black tin box containing thirty-five pounds in Saorstát, the banknotes issued by the Irish Free State, a tarnished harmonica, and a Valentine’s card for ‘my own dearest Muirgheal’.

    In this house, however, it looked as if several bundles of old clothing had been stuffed between the joists – a man’s suit, a woman’s maroon dress, a girl’s yellow pinafore, and a baby’s pink nightgown. They were all faded until they were almost colourless and covered thickly in fine grey dust, so it was anybody’s guess how long they had been hidden there.

    Declan pulled up another floorboard, and then another, the nails screeching in protest, and he was just about to start pulling up a third when he saw that a hand was protruding from the cuff of the man’s green coat.

    He stared at it for a long time, feeling as if his scalp was shrinking. The hand looked papery and dry, and it was almost completely flat, but he could tell that it was a real human hand all right. Some of the knuckle bones had broken through the desiccated skin and it still had all of its fingernails, even though they had turned amber with age.

    He knelt down to examine it more closely, but he didn’t have the nerve to touch it. Instead, he reached out and gently squeezed the sleeve from which it was protruding. There was no question about it: there were two stick-like arm bones inside it.

    ‘Lord lantern of Jesus,’ he whispered.

    He was breathing hard through his nostrils now and his heart was thumping. He let go of the sleeve and cautiously patted the back of the coat, as if he were frisking it. Underneath the fabric he could feel the hard curved bones of a ribcage.

    He sat back on his heels. Holy Mary, Mother of God, if there’s a mummified feller inside of this coat, what’s inside of the woman’s dress? And the children’s clothes, too?

    Still kneeling, he shuffled himself sideways to the space between the next two joists where the woman’s maroon dress was lying crumpled up, with buttons all down the back. He hesitated for a moment, because it didn’t seem right to be touching a woman without her consent, even if she was long dead. Then he reached out and gently pressed against the bodice. Beneath the coarse dyed linen he could again feel ribs, although these ribs were looser, as if they had become detached from the spine.

    These weren’t bundles of old clothes at all, these were bodies. Years and years ago somebody must have laid them face-down beneath the floor and then nailed the boards down over them. Declan still hadn’t pulled up enough boards to be able to see their shoulders or their heads, but it looked to him as if a small family had been hidden there – father, mother, daughter and baby.

    He stood up, wiping his hands on his black denim jacket. As he did so, Colm came back from outside, relighting his cigarette.

    ‘Jesus, it’s lashing,’ he said, his head half hidden in smoke. Then he glanced down at the gap in the floorboards and frowned. ‘What the feck’s all them old clothes doing down there?’

    ‘They’re not just old clothes, boy, they’re bodies,’ said Declan. ‘Man and a woman and their two wains, too, by the looks of it.’

    ‘You’re codding,’ said Colm, but Declan pointed to the man’s dried-out hand. Colm leaned forward and squinted at it short-sightedly, and then he said, ‘Feck.’

    ‘I’d say they was probably murdered,’ said Declan.

    Colm stepped over the gap and crouched down to see if he could make out what the bodies’ heads looked like. ‘You don’t know that for certain,’ he said. ‘They could have died of the flu or something. People used to die like flies in them days, of all sorts. My old man’s youngest sister died of the chickenpox when she was only three years old.’

    He stood up straight again and nodded at the bodies. ‘Maybe their relatives couldn’t afford a funeral.’

    ‘Oh go ’way. Even if you can’t afford a funeral you don’t bury your nearest and dearest face-downwards underneath the fecking floorboards.’

    ‘I don’t know. My Uncle Patrick was buried lying on his left side. That was the way he specified it in his will. Serious. He said that when my Auntie Saoirse was buried next to him he wanted to be looking at her.’

    ‘What, he had X-ray vision did he?’ asked Declan. ‘He could see through coffins?’

    ‘Don’t be soft – he was dead, wasn’t he?’ said Colm. ‘He was just being romantic, do you know what I mean, like?’

    ‘Romantic? Stone-hatchet mad, more like. Anyway, give me a hand to take up the rest of these floorboards.’

    Between them, Declan and Colm lifted up all of the floorboards in the living room and carried them outside to the skip. When they had finished they stood and looked in silence at the four bodies lying between the joists. It had stopped raining outside and a silvery sun had appeared behind the clouds, so that the living room was filled with colourless light like an over-exposed photograph.

    The man was lying furthest away from the window, with his left arm by his side. His right arm was crooked up, with his forehead resting on it. His hair was thick with dust but it was still brown and curly. The woman had long black hair, very straight, fastened with a simple brown horn slide. The little girl had brown curly hair, too, tied with ribbons into bunches. The baby had a single dark tuft, like a leprechaun.

    ‘Ah, the pity of it,’ said Declan.

    With a succession of hideous screeches, they prised up the last two floorboards. Underneath they discovered that the space between the joists was crammed with a tangle of thick grey hairs, which at first looked as if it could have been a coat or a shaggy blanket of some kind. Colm took his shovel and prodded at it, and then tried to pick it up. As he lifted it up, however, the blanket tore softly apart and one half of it dropped with a dull thump back into the floor space. Colm immediately dropped the other half, too, because now they could see that what they had uncovered was not a coat or a blanket but the dried-up bodies of two young Glen terriers.

    ‘The family pets, I’ll bet you,’ said Declan. ‘Whoever did this, Jesus, they didn’t leave nothing alive, did they? Surprised there’s no fecking goldfish down here.’

    Because the adults’ hair was so thick and so dusty it was not immediately obvious what had happened to them, but Declan and Colm could tell from the baby and the little girl how this family had died. They had all been shot once in the back of the head, including the puppies.

    Declan crossed himself. ‘You’d best ring the guards,’ he told Colm.

    Colm nodded and took his mobile phone out of his shirt pocket. Both of them had been deeply sobered by what they had discovered. They could have been sleeping, this dust-covered family, like characters in a fairy tale. Declan was surprised that he wasn’t frightened or horrified by them, only saddened. He almost felt as if he had known them, despite the probability that they had been nailed down under the floorboards long before he was born. They didn’t smell – not as far as he could tell, anyway – although Christy must have picked up the scent of human decay, even if it was decades old, and that was why he had refused to come inside. Either that, or he was psychic and Colm had been right about a ghost. Or ghosts, plural.

    Colm had got through to 112. ‘That’s right,’ he was saying. ‘Millstream Row, Blarney. You have it, just past the factory. You’ll find it easy, there’s one of O’Brien’s green midi skips directly outside. No, we won’t touch nothing. No. Well, if they are, they must be about a hundred and ten years old by now, so I don’t reckon they will be. No. Thanks a million.’

    Once he had finished his call they went outside. Colm took out his pack of Johnnie Blues and handed one to Declan. They lit up and stood beside the skip, smoking.

    ‘Did the guards tell you how long they’d be?’ asked Declan.

    ‘Fifteen minutes at least. The Garda station on The Square isn’t manned at the moment.’

    ‘What was that you was saying to them about somebody being a hundred and ten years old?’

    ‘The feller on the switchboard asked me if there was any chance that the person who hid the bodies could still be lurking around, like. You know, in case you and me was in any kind of danger because we’d discovered what he’d done.’

    ‘Holy St Joseph, and they say that criminals are thick.’

    ‘No, fair play to him, I hadn’t told him how old the bodies were, like. Well, we don’t know how old they are, do we? All I told him was, we’d found some people who looked like they’d been shot.’

    ‘Then you’re three times thicker than he was. These people must have been shot practically before guns were invented.’

    Normally, the two of them would have carried on bantering, but now they lapsed into silence, smoking and stamping their feet to keep warm. Although he was shivering, Christy stayed by the open front door, still looking inside with his head tilted inquisitively, almost as if he was expecting to hear somebody calling out to him.

    After a few minutes, a white Garda patrol car came speeding round the curve in front of the woollen mills, its blue lights flashing. It was followed closely by a second patrol car, and then an unmarked blue Focus. There was a chorus of slamming doors.

    ‘You realize we’ll be in all the papers,’ said Declan, as the uniformed gardaí came towards them.

    ‘So long as they don’t print my fecking address,’ Colm told him. ‘I don’t want that Big-Arsed Blathnaid coming after me for child support.’

    Two

    Detectives Aislin O’Connell and Gerry Barry had been sitting at their stall in Mother Jones Flea Market since it had opened and so far they had made 67 euros from selling two mismatched table lamps, three party dresses and a pink lace-up corset, as well as a stack of old copies of Ireland’s Own.

    It was 3.15 in the afternoon now, but there was still no sign of Denny Quinn, the young suspect they were waiting for. Detective O’Connell had found the time to paint her nails turquoise and Detective Barry had stepped outside five times on to York Street for a smoke, and they were both beginning to think that their informant had either been mistaken or else had been stringing them along. They had been given false tip-offs with increasing frequency lately, almost as if somebody was deliberately trying to waste their time.

    A Garda patrol car with two uniformed officers was parked further up the steep slope of York Street, just out of sight in the cul-de-sac of Little William Street, and Detective Barry had been keeping in touch with them via an earpiece and r/t microphone. They had started by regularly keeping in contact with each other, but as the day wore on almost all he heard from them was yawning and complaining that they were busting for a piss.

    Detective Barry checked his watch and said, ‘I feel like a right gom sitting here. I’ll bet money your man never shows.’

    He looked almost too young to be a detective, with an upswept quiff of blondish hair like Tintin and a button of a nose. Not that Detective O’Connell looked much older – she was dark-haired, petite but plump, with a pretty, heart-shaped face and lips that could have been the bright red satin bow on a birthday present.

    But their appearance was the reason why Detective Superintendent Maguire had picked them for this stake-out. They were supposed to look like typical stallholders at Mother Jones indoor market – youthful and slightly hippy-ish – so that they could watch their target without arousing suspicion that they were gardaí and then approach without him feeling immediately threatened. That was, if he ever put in an appearance.

    Detective O’Connell spread out her fingers to admire her nails. ‘Maybe the shipment never arrived,’ she suggested. ‘Or maybe somebody else stroked them.’

    ‘Sure, well, that’s always a possibility,’ said Detective Barry. ‘I know we told the customs to turn a blind eye, but if Billy Duffy knew the fags were coming, and when, don’t tell me that a whole crowd of other skangers didn’t know as well. Maybe Óglaigh na hÉireann got their hands on them before Quilty could pick them up. Or maybe they straight out robbed him.’

    ‘Go away, they’d have to be mental to do that,’ said Detective O’Connell. ‘Cross Bobby Quilty, Jesus! You might as well say, Excuse me, boy, would you mind putting a bullet between me eyes?’

    ‘I don’t know. That Brendan Ó Marcaigh, I don’t think he’s freaked by nothing or nobody. A pit bull went after him once and he got hold of its tail and bashed its brains out on a lamp post.’

    ‘Charming.’

    They waited another half-hour. The Flea Market began to fill up with even more customers, wandering in between its yellow-, pink-, green- and blue-painted iron pillars and browsing around the stalls. Detective Barry raised one eyebrow at Detective O’Connell, but he didn’t have to say anything because it was clear to both of them that although these new customers were picking up vases and dolls and old Wolfe Tones LPs and making a show of examining them, none of them was actually making a purchase.

    Just a few seconds after 4 o’clock a voice in Detective Barry’s earpiece said, ‘Quinn’s arrived. He’s just been dropped off outside.’

    A few seconds later Denny Quinn entered the Flea Market from the street, carrying two black vinyl rubbish bags, both of them bulging. He was skinny as a rail and pasty-faced, with a spattering of scarlet acne spots across his forehead. Since his last police photograph was taken his gingery hair had been shaved up the sides to give him a cockatoo crest, and he was sporting gold stud earrings in both of his ears as well as several gold chains and a heavy gold identity bracelet. He was wearing a red Cork GAA T-shirt, sagging grey tracksuit bottoms, and white Nike tackies.

    ‘Enter the schwaa,’ said Detective Barry.

    ‘At last,’ said Detective O’Connell. ‘Billy Duffy might have told us what time he was coming. He must have known, like. All of these people here do. Eejit.’

    ‘Oh, come on, Billy Duffy can’t think and speak simultaneous, you know that.’

    Without hesitation, Denny weaved his way between the pillars to the back of the market where there was a vacant alcove with a plywood table and chair. He dropped his black bags on the floor, pushed them under the table with his foot, and then sat down, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

    Almost at once, the six or seven browsing customers began to gravitate towards him. They were all different types: a middle-aged woman with jet-black dyed hair and a tight green satin top; a thirtyish man with a brown beard wearing a grey Marks & Spencer’s business suit; an older man with fraying white hair and thick-rimmed glasses and a purple nose; and a girl who couldn’t have been much more than school age, with long brunette hair, black eye make-up and tight black leggings. There was also a woman still wearing her blue Dunne’s Stores overall, and a thick-set man with a paint-spotted denim jacket and no front teeth who looked like a Polish builder.

    The middle-aged woman said something to Denny and then took out her purse and handed him fifty euros in folded notes. He leaned back to stuff the money into his tracksuit pocket before he reached into one of the black bags and lifted out two yellow bricks of two hundred cigarettes. As he passed the cartons across the table, Detective O’Connell had her iPhone held up high in front of her, frowning and prodding at it as if she were texting, although she was actually recording the transaction on video.

    The girl with the black eye make-up paid Denny twenty-five euros – one crumpled ten-euro note and the rest in assorted loose change. He gave her one yellow carton which she pushed into a duffel bag and hurried out of the Flea Market with it slung over her shoulder.

    Detective Barry leaned close to Detective O’Connell. ‘One more sale should do it,’ he said, speaking very quietly and looking in the opposite direction as he did so, so that Denny wouldn’t guess he was talking about him. ‘He might be able to tell the court that one sale was a favour. He might even be able to explain away two. But three – that’s a pattern.’

    Detective O’Connell said nothing but continued to video the young man as the thirtyish man with the brown beard gave him what looked like at least 200 euros in twenty-euro notes.

    ‘I’m sure I reck that feller,’ said Detective Barry. ‘I think he works for that estate agents on Marlborough Street, what are they called, Callaghan Screws or something like that? He looks like an estate agent, any road.’

    The young man took out four yellow cartons and set them on the table. Detective O’Connell started to stand up, but Detective Barry said, ‘Stall it a second, Aislin. Wait till your man actually lays his hand on one.’

    The thirtyish man with the brown beard pulled a folded Tesco shopping bag out of his coat pocket and opened it up. As soon as he picked up the first yellow carton, Detective Barry said, ‘Right, that’s it. Let’s go. But real easy, like.’ Into his r/t microphone, he said, ‘We’re hauling him in now, okay?’

    The two of them stood up and ambled slowly towards the alcove at the back of the Flea Market, pretending as they went that they were having a conversation. Denny took no notice of them at all as they approached. He had half-turned away from them to serve the elderly man with the wild white hair and thick-rimmed glasses.

    Detective Barry reached under his jacket at the back and felt for the handcuffs that were fastened to his belt. ‘Okay, then, just as we rehearsed it,’ he told Detective O’Connell, nodding his head and smiling as if he were talking about a joke that somebody had told him last night. ‘I’ll grab him and put the cuffs on him, and you can caution him while we’re heading for the door. We need to get him out of here so quick that nobody decks what’s happened until we’re off and away.’

    Detective O’Connell smiled and said, ‘I have you, Gerry, don’t you worry.’

    They had almost reached the alcove now, where Denny was rummaging in one of his black bags for more cartons. The thirtyish estate agent with the brown beard had stepped away and was struggling to push the last of his four cartons into his shopping bag. When he had managed it, however, he looked up and saw Detective Barry, and his face lit up with recognition.

    ‘Well, the dead arose!’ He grinned, showing his teeth. ‘What are you doing here, Detective Barry? Looking for stolen property, is it?’

    Instantly, Denny turned around. He saw Detectives Barry and O’Connell making their way between the jumble stalls towards him and he jumped up as if he had been sitting on a powerful spring.

    ‘Tell me, detective, did you ever nick that feller who was robbing those house deposits?’ asked the estate agent blithely, still grinning. Detective Barry ignored him and made a dash towards Denny, but Denny pushed the estate agent in the chest so that he stumbled sideways into a display of books and records and second-hand handbags.

    ‘Hey, what the feck?’ he exclaimed, but as he regained his balance Detective Barry pushed him, too, to get him out of the way, and this time he fell over backwards on to the floor, knocking a vase and a six-piece tea set off a shelf in a shower of shattered china and purple potpourri.

    Denny feinted and weaved between the pillars, trying to obstruct Detective Barry by tipping over antique chairs behind him and kicking over cardboard boxes so that religious figurines and ashtrays and other bric-a-brac scattered all across the floor. There were shouts of ‘Hoi! What do you think you’re doing there?’ from the stallholders, but none of them seemed to understand what was happening and none of them made any attempt to stop him.

    Instead of chasing after Denny, Detective O’Connell made her way directly back to the street door so that she could cut him off. As he neared the entrance, Denny pushed over a coat stand that was heavily laden with second-hand overcoats and hats, which fell across the floor in front of Detective Barry, but then he turned around to find Detective O’Connell standing between him and the street outside, her arms outstretched like a goalkeeper.

    By now Detective Barry was climbing over the heap of fallen overcoats. ‘Stall the ball right there, boy!’ he ordered him, ‘You’re lifted!’

    The young man stopped, both hands raised, although he kept his head down and his back to Detective Barry.

    ‘Turn around,’ Detective Barry told him. ‘Hold out both of your hands.’

    ‘What for, like?’ said the young man. ‘I ain’t done nothing. Selling a few fags to some friends, that’s all.’

    ‘I said turn around and hold out both of your hands.’

    Denny started to turn around, but as Detective Barry approached him with his handcuffs raised, he swung back to face Detective O’Connell. With no hesitation at all, he seized her hair with his left hand and swept his right hand diagonally across her face. Detective O’Connell didn’t realize what had happened to her at first, but then bright red blood spurted out of her cheek, all the way from the side of her left eye to her chin. She gasped and lifted up her hand, and blood flooded down her wrist and soaked the sleeve of her pale blue blouse. She staggered back and then dropped to her knees.

    Detective Barry tried to snatch Denny’s arm, but he twisted it away and was bounding through the open door and out on to York Street before Detective Barry could catch him.

    Detective Barry crouched down beside Detective O’Connell and put his arm around her shoulders. She was pressing her hand against her cheek and blood was dripping between her fingers, but she managed to wave her other hand and blurt out, ‘Go after him, Gerry, for Christ’s sake!’

    Two women were hurrying over from the Flea Market cafe to help, so Detective Barry left her where she was and ran outside. He looked left, up York Street, but there was no sign of Denny running up towards Wellington Road, and in any case the hill was so steep that he wouldn’t have been able to make it all the way to the top. He must have turned right and run off along MacCurtain Street instead.

    Detective Barry went to the corner and again he looked right and left. Between the pedestrians on MacCurtain Street he caught a glimpse of Denny’s red GAA T-shirt as he sprinted flat-out past Dan Lowery’s Tavern, in the direction of Brian Boru Street. That would lead him to the Brian Boru Bridge across the River Lee, and if he managed to reach the city centre before Detective Barry could catch him he could easily mingle with the Friday afternoon shoppers and get away. Detective Barry started after him, calling up the two gardaí who were waiting in Little William Street as he did so.

    ‘Quinn assaulted Detective O’Connell and gave us the slip,’ he told them. ‘He’s done a legger down MacCurtain Street, heading east.’

    He had run only a few more paces before he heard the whooping sound of the patrol car’s siren start up. Got you now, Denny, he thought. By the time he had reached the blue-painted LeisurePlex building on the corner with Brian Boru Street, however, the siren didn’t seem to be coming any closer. He turned his head to see that a mustard-coloured Volvo had turned the corner into York Street and stopped. Since York Street was only one-way, uphill, it was obviously preventing the patrol car from coming down the hill and turning into MacCurtain Street.

    He looked ahead and saw that Denny was already crossing the road at St Patrick’s Quay towards the Brian Boru Bridge.

    ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he asked over his radio. ‘Denny’s crossing the river already. I don’t want to lose him in the bus station or the shopping centre.’

    ‘Some gowl’s blocking the street and he won’t fecking budge. Mulliken’s got out to tell him to shift but it looks like he’s arguing the toss about it.’

    ‘Jesus. Arrest him. Or push him out of the way. And check if there’s any uniforms on Pana who can give me some backup. Come on, urgent, like! You saw Denny yourself. Rebel County T-shirt. Grey tracksuit bottoms. Hair sticking up like a fecking red rooster.’

    Although the traffic was so busy, and the pedestrian light was red, Detective Barry stepped off the kerb and zig-zagged his way across St Patrick’s Quay. A bus and two cars honked their horns at him and one of the drivers shouted out, ‘Looking to get yourself killed, you nickey?’

    Denny was almost halfway across the bridge now, but he had slowed down so that he was half jogging and half walking and he was clearly out of breath. Detective Barry was in better shape now than he had ever been: he still played Gaelic football for St Finbarr’s whenever he could and he regularly worked out at the RB Fitness Centre. Even if the patrol car didn’t turn up for another three or four minutes, he reckoned he still had a good chance of catching up with Denny before he reached the bus station and Merchants Quay shopping centre – and holding him, too. And smashing him on the gonk for cutting Aislin. He could always plead reasonable force while the suspect was resisting arrest.

    Denny had reached the far side of the bridge, but there was so much traffic on Merchants Quay that he was teetering on his Nikes on the edge of the kerb, unable to cross. Detective Barry had to dodge his way past two women with baby buggies and a hugely obese man in a mobility scooter festooned with shopping bags, but he was sure that he had Denny now. Because he had his eyes fixed ahead, though, he hadn’t become aware of the silver-grey Land Rover that was burbling slowly across the bridge, keeping pace with him, so that it was holding up all the cars behind it.

    For most of the bridge’s 200-foot width, cars and pedestrians were separated from each other by steel railings and by the massive cast-iron structure of the bridge itself, which originally used to lift up to allow boats to pass through. The steel railings, however, didn’t reach all the way across. As Detective Barry neared the far side, where they came to an end, the Land Rover’s engine suddenly roared. With a loud bang from its front suspension, it mounted the pavement, swerved sideways and collided with him, crushing him against the bridge’s balustrade.

    Detective Barry felt as if a bomb had exploded right behind him and that he had been blown apart. The Land Rover had smashed his legs and snapped his pelvis in half. Even at only 5 mph it had rammed him against the balustrade so hard that his stomach had burst open and his intestines were sliding out between the blue-and-white cast-iron uprights and dangling in loops over the river.

    He was so stunned that he felt almost nothing, but as the Land Rover backed away from him and jolted back on to the road he grimly gripped the top of the balustrade to keep himself upright. I mustn’t fall over, he thought. If I fall over, I’ll die for sure. He could see the river and the buildings alongside it, and St Patrick’s Bridge, and the blue summer sky, and the clouds. He heard the sound of traffic and a woman screaming. What do I do now? he thought. But then he heard somebody talking to him and when he managed to turn his head he saw that standing beside him there was a grey-haired man with a reddish face. He smelled strongly of stale Murphy’s.

    ‘You just take it easy, boy,’ the man was saying, although his voice sounded very muffled. ‘You’re going to be grand altogether, so long as you don’t move. Somebody’s called for a white van, okay? Don’t move, though.’

    Unexpectedly, the sky began to darken. ‘Is it night?’ whispered Detective Barry. ‘I’m killed out, like. I think I need to lie down.’

    The reddish-faced man gripped him under his left armpit to help him stay on his feet. ‘You’re going to be grand altogether so long as you don’t move. You’re all intertwangled with the railings, like, do you know what I mean? If you move at all you’ll just pull yourself apart.’

    Detective Barry closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he was dead or simply sleeping, but he could still hear voices and traffic so he assumed that he couldn’t be dead.

    Most of the voices sounded very distant, but then he heard somebody speaking so close to his ear that he could feel their breath.

    ‘My son, my name is Father O’Flynn, from the Holy Trinity Church.’

    ‘Don’t let him get away, father,’ said Detective Barry, and as he did so blood slid out of both sides of his mouth.

    He felt slippery fingertips touching his forehead. He heard Father O’Flynn saying, ‘With this anointing, may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.’

    He heard sirens. Fantastic. His backup had caught up with him at last.

    ‘Don’t let him get away,’ he repeated. ‘He’ll have made it across the road by now. Denny Quinn. Rebel County T-shirt. Don’t let him get away.’

    Three

    Katie was gathering up the papers she needed for her meeting with the County Council Joint Policing Committee when Detective O’Donovan knocked quickly at her half-open door and came straight in. He looked flushed and sweaty and his pink stomach was bulging out of his shirt.

    ‘Garda Brophy just called in,’ he told her. ‘Gerry Barry’s been hit by a car on the Brian Boru Bridge.’

    ‘Oh God,’ said Katie, immediately dropping the folder back on to her desk. ‘Is it serious?’

    ‘Brophy’s still at the scene,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘He says a hit-and-run driver mounted the pavement and smashed him into the railings at the side of the bridge. The paramedics are working on him now but it’s not looking hopeful.’

    ‘Right, let’s get there now,’ said Katie. She crossed her office and took down her pale green linen jacket. ‘What about Aislin? Was she hurt at all?’

    ‘She wasn’t with him, so far as I know. It seems like Denny Quinn was making a run for it and Gerry was in pursuit of him on foot.’

    ‘Why was he chasing him on foot? We had a car there, backing him up, didn’t we?’

    ‘I’m not sure exactly why, like. Brophy said something about them being boxed in, but I don’t know the details.’

    ‘What about the vehicle that hit him?’

    ‘A Land Rover. He has a description, although nobody got its number.’

    Katie walked briskly along the corridor just as Chief Superintendent Denis MacCostagáin was coming out of his office in his shirtsleeves and braces, looking, as usual, like somebody’s miserable uncle.

    ‘Ah, Kathleen, you’re on the way to Merchants Quay, then. Michael Pearse has sent out backup already and called Bill Phinner for a technical team. Terrible thing to happen. Terrible. Let’s pray to God that young Barry survives.’

    ‘I’ll keep you in touch,’ said Katie.

    Detective O’Donovan had already pressed the button for the lift and was holding the door open. They went down to the ground floor in silence and out to the car park. The morning’s heavy showers had passed over and although the streets were still shiny and wet the afternoon was cloudless, with a warm breeze blowing from the south-west. Katie could hear two small children laughing as they ran down the street.

    As they sped up Eglinton Street, Katie said, ‘A hundred to one it was one of Quilty’s thugs. If not Quilty himself. I’ve said right from the beginning that the only way we’re ever going to stop him is if we nail him in person.’

    ‘Sure, I agree with you totally,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘The only trouble with that, like, is getting a conviction. None of his dealers is going to give evidence against him, are they? It’s a choice between getting your kneecaps shot off and making six hundred yoyos a week, and I know which of those I’d be going for.’

    Clontarf Street, which led to the Brian Boru Bridge, was one-way in the opposite direction, but it had been closed to traffic and Katie and Detective O’Donovan reached Merchants Quay in just three minutes. Five Garda patrol cars were parked at different angles, as well as an ambulance and a Ford Ranger rapid response vehicle from the fire brigade. The pavements were crowded with onlookers and further along the quay, by the bus station, Katie could see an RTÉ television van arriving.

    She crossed the road. Detective Barry was lying on a stretcher, with two paramedics kneeling beside him. His face was covered by an oxygen mask and one of the paramedics was holding up an IV drip. Three gardaí and a fire officer were gripping a blue plastic screen between them to shield him from the wind and from public view. The screen made a monotonous flapping sound, but apart from that there was almost complete silence.

    ‘Detective Superintendent Maguire,’ said Katie, as one of the paramedics stood up. He was a middle-aged man with flat triangular bags under his eyes, as if his skin were tissue paper, and very pale green irises. ‘What are his chances?’

    ‘Somewhere between zero and nil, I’d say,’ said the paramedic. ‘He’s suffered massive crushing injuries to both his legs and pelvis, and his abdomen was split open by the impact. We’ve done everything we can to replace his intestines and hold him together, but I can’t see him surviving this. I’m amazed he’s still with us, to be honest with you. The father over there gave him the last rites, so that side of it’s been taken care of.’

    ‘He’s not conscious at all? If I speak to him, will he hear me?’

    The paramedic shook his head. ‘We gave him fifteen milligrams of morphine while the firemen were cutting him free from the railings. It’ll wear off, of course, and he’ll be able to speak to you when it does, but he’ll most likely be dead by then.’

    Katie looked over towards the blue-and-white balustrade. Three of the uprights had been cut through at stomach height and there was rusty-coloured blood on the surrounding bars. Two firemen were packing away the Holmatro hydraulic cutters which they usually used for extricating dead and injured victims from car crashes.

    ‘We’ll be taking him to CUH now,’ said the paramedic. ‘We’ve already alerted them that we’re bringing him in, and what kind of state he’s in, so there’ll be surgeons there waiting for him. You never know. We’ve taken people in before who were knocking on heaven’s door and they’ve come out a couple of weeks later as fit as a butcher’s dog.’

    Katie bent over Detective Barry. His blonde hair was sticky with blood, but even under the oxygen mask he looked as if he had a smile on his face. She knew that a strong dose of morphine often gives people pleasant dreams, even when they’re dying.

    ‘God bless you, Gerry,’ she said quietly, and crossed herself.

    The paramedics lifted up the stretcher and carried Detective Barry to the ambulance. As they did so, Garda Brophy came over to Katie. He was broad-shouldered and bulky in his yellow hi-viz jacket, with a Neanderthal forehead and an S-shaped nose like a boxer. All the same, he looked grey and strained, and Katie thought he could be very close to tears.

    ‘Quilty’s wide to what we’re doing, ma’am, no doubt about it,’ he told her. ‘He definitely has his people hovering around to keep an eye on his dealers. Denny Quinn made a run for it, but as soon as me and Mulliken went after him a car turned into the bottom of York Street and boxed us in.’

    ‘How did Quinn get away? Was somebody keeping sketch for him?’

    ‘It’s possible, of course, but Detective O’Connell said that one of the customers in the Flea Market recognized Detective Barry just as they were about to put the cuffs on Quinn and blew the whole thing. She tried to stop Quinn but he slashed her face with a blade of some kind and took flight. That’s about all she could manage to tell us. Mulliken’s taken her to the Mercy.’

    ‘What about the car that boxed you in?’

    ‘It was a Volvo. We have all its details and Mulliken took the driver’s name and address. He may have been working for Quilty or maybe he was just being bold.’

    ‘All right, Brophy, thanks,’ said Katie. A white Technical Bureau van was approaching over the bridge, followed by an unmarked green Toyota. Bill Phinner, the chief technical officer, climbed out of the Toyota and came across to join them. He was thin and hollow-cheeked and sharp-nosed, and he always reminded Katie of Dr Van Helsing in Dracula, as if he knew all of the science necessary to catch vampires but found it a constant irritation.

    ‘How’s Detective Barry?’ he asked, his attention fixed on the gap

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