Authors: Graham Masterton
Almost all of the tables and chairs in the bar were occupied, but Detective Ó Doibhilin managed to find a leather armchair in the corner which afforded him a view of the bar. He sat down and texted Katie to tell her that he had found Maureen Callahan and that he was keeping her under observation. He even took a surreptitious photograph of her and emailed it as a follow-up to his text.
So far there was no sign of Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, but the bar was packed and it was difficult for him to see everybody from where he was sitting. He caught the barman staring at him as if he were wondering why he hadn’t bought a drink, but then a large gingery man came up to the bar to bellow out an order for another round, and the barman turned away.
Katie texted him to ask
ANY DEVELOPMENTS??
but he had to text back with a thumbs-down emoji.
He had only just sent that, though, when a very thin man with grey brushed-back hair stood up from a table by the window, turned around, and came walking across to the bar. Detective Ó Doibhilin half-covered his face with his hand, and pretended to be concentrating on his mobile phone. The man was Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, wearing a dark brown three-piece suit of Donegal tweed and carrying a brown leather briefcase. He stood close to Maureen Callahan, although he didn’t appear to acknowledge her in any way. He didn’t even turn to look at her. Instead he snapped his fingers for the barman and the barman brought over his bill.
Detective Ó Doibhilin texted:
J O’R’s here. He’s signed his bill. Now he’s leaving. Didn’t say word one to MC.
He had to keep his head right down as Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly passed him by, so close that he could have stuck out his foot and tripped him up. When he was able to look up again, he saw that Maureen Callahan was still joking with the barman. But he saw something else, too: when Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly had been signing his bill, he had set his briefcase down on the floor, next to the legs of Maureen Callahan’s barstool, and his briefcase was still there.
Detective Ó Doibhilin couldn’t really pick it up himself and run after him and say, ‘Stall the ball, sir, you forgot this!’ Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly would demand to know what the hell he was doing here, in the Fota clubhouse, and in any case Detective Superintendent Maguire had told him that it would mess up ‘everything’.
He quickly texted Katie and told her about the briefcase, sending her a picture of it, too. Katie texted him back.
If MC picks it up & walks out with it follow her. If she doesn’t hand it in or return it to J O’R lift her for theft. Don’t open it in case it’s a bomb.
Detective Ó Doibhilin waited another ten minutes while Maureen Callahan finished her glass of wine. During all of that time she didn’t look down at the briefcase once, and he began to wonder if she had even noticed that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly had left it behind. Eventually, though, she blew the barman a kiss and slipped down from the barstool, and without hesitating she picked up the briefcase and walked out of the bar with it.
Detective Ó Doibhilin followed her as she made her way out of the clubhouse and into the car park. She went straight over to her Audi, lifted the boot, and dropped the briefcase inside. As soon as she had slammed it shut, and opened the driver’s door, Detective Ó Doibhilin went up to her and held out his ID.
‘Detective Garda Michael Ó Doibhilin,’ he told her. ‘Would you please tell me your name?’
Maureen Callahan blinked at him in surprise, as if he had magically appeared out of thin air. ‘Maureen Callahan. What’s it to you?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what it is to me. Maureen Callahan, I am arresting you under section four of the Theft and Fraud Act, 2001, for appropriating property with the intention of permanently depriving its owner of it, namely a briefcase that a fellow left behind in the Spike Bar and you have just hobbled. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘C’mere to me?’ said Maureen Callahan. ‘What in the name of God are you talking about, boy? The briefcase belongs to me anyway. Your man was taking care of it for me, that’s all, and when he left he gave it back to me.’
‘Do you know who your man happened to be?’
‘I don’t know. Just an obliging fellow, that’s all. I didn’t want to have the briefcase down at my feet while I was sitting at the bar in case somebody tripped over it.’
‘Would your man corroborate this?’
‘Would he what?’
‘Would your man back you up and say that you were telling me the truth?’
‘Of course he would, if only I knew who he was.’
‘You must think I came up the River Lee in a bubble,’ said Detective Ó Doibhilin. ‘I know who he is, and
you
know who he is, and you must know that I know who he is. And I know that he knows who
you
are, and I know him well enough to know that he’d be the last person on the Planet Earth to mind a briefcase for any member of the Callahan family.’
Maureen Callahan blinked at him again, as if she hadn’t understood a word that he had said. ‘I’m saying nothing,’ she snapped.
‘What’s inside the briefcase?’
‘I told you. I’m saying nothing.’
‘Right. I’m taking you in to Anglesea Street Garda Station, where you’ll be formally charged. Will you open up the boot for me, please, so that I can take out the briefcase.’
Maureen Callahan stayed where she was for a few seconds, breathing deeply, as if her patience with the world was just about exhausted. Then she went round and opened the Audi’s boot. Detective Ó Doibhilin took a forensic glove out of his pocket, snapped it on, and lifted the briefcase out.
‘You muppet,’ said Maureen Callahan. ‘I can promise you this, boy – there’s a fair few people who’s going to be fierce sorry about this by the end of the day, and I can promise you this, too – one of those people won’t be me.’
Detective Dooley dialled Lorcan Fitzgerald’s number and then passed the handset to Conor. They were sitting on the couches in Katie’s office – Katie and Conor and Detectives Dooley and Scanlan – and they could all hear the ring tones on her conference phone.
After only three rings, a recorded voice said, ‘Lorcan speaking. Tell me what’s on your mind and leave me your number and I’ll get back to you. Or not, as the case may be. If I don’t get back to you, don’t ring again.
Slán go fóil
.’
Putting on a strong Tipperary accent, Conor said, ‘Lorcan? This is Redmond O’Dea from the Firmount Kennels in Carrigahorig. It was Bartley Doran give me your number. I have some grand dogs suitable for training up to gameness. A Neapolitan mastiff, he’s the star of the show. I’m not codding you, he’s a beast of a yoke. And a couple of bull terriers, too. They’re real aggressive. They’d bite the leg off of an ironing-board. Any road, this is my number. Looking forward to hearing from you.’
‘That was perfect,’ said Katie. ‘Now all we have to do is wait.’
‘I think he’ll call back all right,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘It’s the Neapolitan mastiff that’ll swing it. They’re fecking
yuge
, those dogs. My brother had one once and when it was fully grown it was bigger than him, and my brother’s not what you’d call a midget.’
Detective Ó Doibhilin knocked at her open door. ‘I’m back now, ma’am, and I have Maureen Callahan down in the interview room. I have the briefcase, too. I took it over to the Technical Bureau and they’ve X-rayed it. There’s no explosives inside of it.’
‘I didn’t think there would be,’ said Katie. ‘It’s better to be sure than have yourself blown into five thousand pieces. I’ll come down now and have a chat with Ms Callahan.’
She stood up. ‘I shouldn’t be long, but if Lorcan Fitzgerald rings back while I’m away, be sure to page me, won’t you?’
When she and Detective Ó Doibhilin went downstairs to the interview room, they found Maureen Callahan sitting with her arms crossed, scowling. Detective Scanlan was sitting at the end of the table, while Sergeant Daley was sitting directly opposite, laboriously filling out the charge sheet against her, his thick-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and his tongue clenched between his teeth. The brown leather briefcase, still unopened, lay on the table between them.
‘Well now, Maureen, here’s a contradictory situation,’ said Katie, pulling out a chair and sitting down next to Sergeant Daley. ‘One minute you’re helping us out with a valuable tip-off, and the next you’re stroking our Assistant Commissioner’s briefcase.’
‘I’m saying nothing,’ said Maureen.
‘You told Detective Ó Doibhilin here that the briefcase belongs to you. Is that true?’
‘I’m saying nothing until I can ring my solicitor, and then I’m saying nothing. The law gives me the right to say nothing.’
‘It does, yes, Maureen. But if you choose to say nothing when you could have said something to prove your innocence, the court will take a fierce dim view of that, I can tell you. They don’t care to have their time wasted, and neither do I.’
‘I’m saying nothing.’
‘Let’s see what’s inside this briefcase, shall we?’
‘You’d have to be having a warrant for that.’
‘If it’s not your briefcase, why should you care? In any event, we can search you and your personal property without a warrant if we have reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed.’
Maureen said nothing, but continued to scowl. Katie stood up, took a pair of black forensic gloves out of her jacket pocket, and tugged them on. Then she flicked the catches on the briefcase and opened it up. Inside, under several layers of bubble-wrap, it was packed with bundles of €20 notes. She lifted up the bubble-wrap, picked up one of the bundles of notes and looked at what was printed on the label – €1,000.
There were twenty bundles altogether. She checked all of them, flicking through the notes to make sure they were all genuine, and not just bundles of paper with €20 notes top and bottom.
‘So you were sitting in the bar at Fota Golf Club with twenty thousand euros in small-denomination notes in your briefcase, but because you were frightened that somebody might trip over it, you gave it to a total stranger to look after? Is that your story?’
‘I’m saying nothing.’
‘You might be saying nothing, but I’m saying that these twenty thousand euros are a pay-off to you from Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly to meet me and give me information about an illegal arms shipment.’
‘You can say what you like, girl,’ Maureen retorted. ‘How are you going to prove it, that’s the thing?’
‘I shall ask Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly, right to his face. And I shall also be sending this briefcase back to our technical experts to check it minutely for fingerprints and DNA. If there’s any forensic evidence at all that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly left any trace of himself inside of it – if he handled this money or this bubble-wrap, then you’re going to be in deep, deep trouble, and so is he.’
‘Away to feck, DS Maguire. You’re only saying that to scare me. Well you won’t scare me, I can tell you that. Nothing scares me, girl – nothing!’
Katie closed the briefcase and sat down again.
‘You can refuse to answer if you like, Maureen, but let me ask you this – there’s no arms shipment, is there?’
‘I want to make a phone call. I’m entitled to make three phone calls.’
‘You can make all the phone calls you want to, but later. There
is
no arms shipment, is there? You were helping Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly to set me up, and that’s why he’s given you twenty thousand euros.’
‘You’re dreaming, girl – you’re dreaming. All I can say is, dream on.’
Katie leaned forward and said, ‘If you admit this now, Maureen, the law will be very light on you. In fact you’ll probably get off scot-free for being co-operative.’
‘I’m saying nothing.’
‘But you did tell me about this arms shipment, didn’t you? All these AK-47s and Skorpion machine pistols and Semtex? That was how you were going to get your revenge on your father and your sister Bree?’
‘That’s right. They told me all of these arms were coming in, but if they didn’t, that’s not my fault. That’s what they told me, that’s all. You can’t blame me for believing something that I was told.’
‘They told you they’d murdered Branán O’Flynn, didn’t they? And you believed that, too, did you? Although you could have checked if they really
had
murdered him, just by ringing him?’
Now Maureen was beginning to realise that Katie was talking her into a corner, and she said nothing.
Katie took out her iPhone, found the photograph of Kyna sitting at the bar in Las Palmas Airport, with Branán O’Flynn sitting directly behind her, and held it up in front of Maureen’s face. Maureen glanced at it, and flinched, and then looked away.
‘That’s your dearly beloved Branán sitting there, isn’t it, chatting away on his mobile? Can you guess when that picture was taken, Maureen? And where?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Maureen. ‘You’re heartless, you are. I’m grieving for him.’
‘That picture was taken yesterday evening in Gran Canaria. If your father and sisters
have
murdered Branán, they could only have done it after five past seven this morning, after he got back from Las Palmas.’
Maureen took a deep breath. ‘You said if I co-operated, like, you’d let me off.’
‘I said that the courts would probably go easy on you, that’s all.’
‘I will co-operate, but only if you don’t press any charges against me at all. You couldn’t charge me with theft, any road, because you can’t be guilty of stroking something when you was given it.’
‘So you’re admitting that Assistant Commissioner O’Reilly gave you the briefcase with twenty thousand euros in it?’
‘Only if you don’t charge me with nothing.’
‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘You have a deal, conditional on what you tell me.’
‘O’Reilly calls me and says that he wants me to meet you and spin you that story about Branán being done for, and how I wanted my revenge for it, and the arms shipment and all.’
‘You and Branán – are you really doing a line?’