Three Marys Read online

  When she picked up, Feeney put on a headset.

  ‘Galway 844772,’ she said in a squeaky voice.

  The man said, ‘You got the money?’

  ‘It’s in hand.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Where’d you get it from?’

  ‘Joseph’s employer provided it.’

  ‘All right, take this down. Here’s where the cash is to be left.’

  Feeney scribbled and held up a note: Proof of life.

  ‘I need to know if Joseph is unhurt.’

  ‘He’s right as rain.’

  ‘I need proof of life.’

  There was a pause. ‘Who told you to ask for that? You didn’t call the police, did you? I told you that would go bad for him.’

  Feeney shook his head vigorously.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I heard the term in a film.’

  The man snorted. ‘A film, eh? And in this film how’d they go about it?’

  Feeney pantomimed clicking a camera shutter.

  ‘A photo with the day’s newspaper,’ she said.

  ‘All right. Proof of life. Then we want the cash. You’ll hear from us.’

  She remembered she was supposed to ask for the photo to come to the house. ‘But—’

  The line was dead.

  She began to fret and then get weepy. Feeney was impassive, intent on calling Sullivan to recount the call, so it was left to Cal to lend a shoulder.

  Riordan complained to the young Garda officer passing him binder after binder of mugshots that the suspects were beginning to look all the same. And besides, he’d missed his midday pints and was beginning to get a bit shaky. His session with the e-fit technician had gone badly. One of the final products came out as a dead ringer for Daniel Day Lewis and Riordan admitted neither e-fit really looked anything like the men.

  ‘Getting the face right is harder than it looks,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Here’s another one,’ the officer said, plonking the heavy binder down in front of him.

  ‘Have mercy, will you?’ Riordan said.

  ‘Be brave,’ she said, barely hiding her disdain. ‘I’ll be down the hall.’

  He shifted in his chair like he’d done ages ago as a distracted schoolboy, opened the binder and yawned.

  Cal was wondering if it was possible to overdose on tea.

  It was late in the afternoon but the sun was still bright as midday. He’d persuaded Mrs Murphy to have a lie down and he sat in the lounge using his phone judiciously as he’d forgotten to bring his universal charger from the hotel. Sergeant Feeney, bored to the core, was at the dining room table flipping through one of Mrs Murphy’s women’s magazines. Then his radio crackled with the voice of the Garda officer outside the house on stakeout.

  ‘Young male, jeans, Galway football jersey, white trainers approaching postbox.’

  Feeney sprung up to peek through the gauzy curtains.

  ‘See if he makes a drop, then detain. I have eyes on him,’ the sergeant said.

  The teenager pulled an envelope from his back pocket, slipped it into Mrs Murphy’s post box and began to amble off.

  The Garda outside shot out of his car and Feeney ran down the path. Both officers shouted at him to drop to the ground and show his hands. The teenager was immobilized by fear and soon found himself tackled and cuffed by two ask-questions-later fellows.

  ‘What did I do?’ the kid asked, face down on the sidewalk.

  Feeney went to the mailbox and pinched the envelope by a short edge to avoid contaminating it with his prints. Inside, he carefully opened it with a paring knife and pulled out a color print of Joe Murphy in close-up, standing in some dark place, holding a copy of today’s Connacht Tribune under his chin.

  The teenager quickly divulged the little he possessed to the younger officer. He’d been hanging out near the Corbett Court Shopping Centre when a guy on a motorbike waved him over and gave him a fiver to deliver the envelope to this address. No, he couldn’t identify him because he was wearing his helmet with the visor down. The bike was a blue Honda.

  The commotion woke Mrs Murphy and Cal held her hand as she looked at the photo. Murphy looked scared as hell and she took it badly.

  Feeney flipped the photo over with the tip of a ballpoint pen and called the station.

  ‘He’s alive, Inspector,’ he said, explaining the photo and its delivery. ‘And I think we’ve caught a break. Our lads aren’t masterminds. The photo’s printed out on Fuji paper with the store’s name on the back of it. They’ve gone to the self-print kiosk at Corbett Shopping Centre. There’ll be CCTV footage to beat the band.’

  Minutes later the phone rang.

  ‘Did you see your proof of life?’ the man asked Mrs Murphy.

  ‘He didn’t look well,’ she said.

  ‘All he needed to do was look alive. It’s time for the cash. You got a pencil? Cause I’ve got some instructions. And if we see any guards about at the drop point, the next time you see your boy he’s going to look dead.’

  Mrs Murphy was left in the hands of a female victim liaison officer so Feeney could see to collecting the CCTV files and Cal could pick up the ransom cash from the bank. A carrier bag with the money was to be left at a rural signpost about ten kilometers north of the city. Cal had volunteered to do the drop. Plain-clothes officers would be positioned to follow whoever picked up the bag and hopefully be led to the priest’s location – at least that was the plan until Feeney came barreling into the station.

  He tossed the printed images of a tall, thin man holding a motorcycle helmet at the Fuji kiosk and said, ‘I know the cunt. He’s Brendan Doyle.’

  ‘What’s he done?’ Sullivan asked.

  ‘More like what hasn’t he done,’ Feeney said. ‘He’s been involved in all manner of trafficking in drugs and stolen goods.’

  ‘Kidnapping a bit above his pay grade?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘I’d say so. I’ve got a recollection that he’s been done a number of times with an associate. Can’t recall his name. Give me a few ticks.’

  ‘See if Riordan’s still here? We need to have him take a look at this Doyle.’

  Riordan had left a while back. Now he was extracted from his local and shown assorted mugshots of Brendan Doyle and Keenan McElroy.

  ‘That’s them,’ he declared.

  The officer who had babysat him for hours was apoplectic. Riordan had passed over their mugshots earlier in the day.

  ‘I do better with a few skins of Guinness in me,’ he said.

  Doyle rented a flat not far from the center of town. McElroy lived some ways out in a rural area about five kilometers from the ransom drop point. The cottage had belonged to his parents who drank themselves to death at an early age. The plan came together quickly. Cal would leave the bag at the signpost and a team of Gardai would apprehend and arrest the pick-up man or men. At the same time, two teams of armed officers from the Garda Emergency Response Unit would hit the Doyle and McElroy properties.

  ‘You good with your part in this, Professor Donovan?’ Inspector Sullivan asked.

  ‘Drive the car. Drop the bag. I think I’ve got it,’ Cal said.

  It was overcast and at half-past ten, the N84 was pitch dark with few passing cars. With the exception of an industrial estate or two, the land was agricultural. Cal kept his eyes peeled for a red and white lettered sign advertising the sale of a plot of acreage, and when he saw it, he slowed and pulled onto the verge, perilously close to a drainage ditch. He put the car into park, grabbed the carrier bag, and swore when he opened the door. It was a straight drop down into the ditch. As he was trying to decide whether to climb over the center console to exit from the passenger side a heavy lorry rounded a bend and passed in the opposite direction. He turned his head to the left to avoid the harsh beams and saw the headlights catch something in the field. The illumination lasted only a second but it looked like a couple of people lying on the ground.

  Doyle saw it
too from his hiding place in the ditch.

  He sprang up and got into the back seat of Cal’s car and pointed a gun at him.

  ‘Drive away. Now.’

  Cal felt the barrel against his head and did as he said.

  ‘You police?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Father Murphy’s.’

  ‘American. Drive faster. There’s police in the field.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  At a lay-by Doyle told Cal they’d just passed his motorbike. He reached over the seat and took the carrier bag.

  ‘Keep going while I count.’ After a short while he grunted and made a call on his mobile. ‘I got the cash. Slight complication. Nothing I can’t handle. Go ahead and do him.’

  ‘You don’t need to hurt him!’ Cal exclaimed.

  ‘Shut up and kill your beams. OK. Now! Sharp left.’

  The car was on a dirt road heading into a farm. After a bit, Doyle told him to stop and park. He exited and told Cal to get out too.

  ‘You don’t want to do this,’ Cal said.

  ‘Penalty’s the same. One or two.’

  Armed police stormed the two properties simultaneously, breaking down doors and lobbing in flash-bangs. The first property, a second-floor flat in town, was cleared in a matter of seconds. The second was more challenging. It was an old rural cottage with two modern additions and a root cellar with a bulkhead access. In the cellar, a team of three men shone tactical lights from their short-barreled assault rifles toward a muscle-bound fellow standing over a cot.

  ‘Drop it!’ one of them shouted.

  A second later, McElroy was dead.

  Two officers approached the cot slowly while the third scanned the rest of the cellar for more threats. There was a man on the cot curled into a ball.

  An officer touched him and the man recoiled.

  ‘Joseph Murphy?’ the officer said.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Murphy said. ‘I’m not injured. Is he all right?’

  ‘Far from it,’ the other officer said, checking the victim.

  Murphy got himself to a seated position. ‘If you could get me out of these handcuffs I’d like to administer last rights.’

  Cal was looking down the barrel of a snub-nosed revolver pointed at the driver-side window. He played it out in his head. If he was lucky he’d live for another couple of minutes, the length of time it took to march him to a spot that the gunmen found auspicious for a murder. If unluckier, he’d be shot the second he got out of the car.

  ‘I said get out,’ Doyle said.

  Cal took a deep breath. There was nothing to lose.

  He pointed excitedly at the floor of the car and shouted as loud as he could, ‘Holy shit! Look!’

  Doyle took two steps forward to peek in and when he did, Cal opened the door into him as hard as he could, laying the full force of his shoulder into it.

  When he was out of the car he fell on to a prone Doyle who briefly reached in vain for the gun that had gone loose, then used both arms to try to protect himself from Cal’s fists landing on his face.

  Cal presented himself at the desk of the police station and had a very short wait. Inspector Sullivan and Sergeant Feeney came running into the lobby.

  ‘Good God, man,’ Sullivan said. ‘We lost you. What happened?’

  Cal had a bigger concern. ‘Is Murphy OK?’

  ‘He’s at the hospital getting checked out but he’s unhurt,’ Sullivan said.

  Cal blinked in gratitude then asked them to come outside.

  ‘Sorry, it’s a no-parking space,’ Cal said, fumbling for his keys. He unlocked the trunk and the officers looked down on a battered and bloodied Brendan Doyle looking up at them pleadingly.

  Cal had upgraded Murphy at the airport and the two of them sidled up to the bar of the first-class lounge.

  The bartender, a pretty redhead with classic Irish freckles, gave Cal the once-over but, good Catholic that she was, served the priest first.

  ‘What can I get you, Father?’

  Cal got a kick out of Murphy, the non-drinker as far as he knew, surveying the Irish whiskeys and saying, ‘Bushmills. A large one, please.’

  Cal asked for a Grey Goose on the rocks – ‘A larger one’ – and the two of them settled in for the wait. They’d talked plenty the past day and a half and they enjoyed their drinks in silence, interrupted only when Cal got a text from Inspector Sullivan.

  The police had been interrogating Doyle in his hospital bed on the same ward where Cindy Riordan had met her end. Sullivan, ever cagey, had told him things might go easier for him on the kidnapping charge if he told them what he knew about Mary Riordan’s disappearance.

  So, Doyle started to sing like a bird – a bird, as it happened, that had little knowledge about higher-ups on the conspiracy ladder. He volunteered that he and McElroy had been the bag men between a fellow whose identity he didn’t know and Kenny Riordan. He confessed that he’d gotten the order by phone from a blocked caller to get rid of Murphy. The man had an American accent. But he vehemently denied any involvement in Cindy Riordan’s death. Sure, he’d been there with McElroy the night she passed but it was just to warn her to keep her mouth shut. Finally, he told the police that the last he saw Mary Riordan was the night she was dropped off at the stairs of a private plane at the Connemara Airport in Inverin.

  After the interview, Sullivan sent Cal a text: Have learned the destination of Mary’s plane was Boston, Massachusetts. No further information. Keep those fists flying, Prof.

  Cal showed the text to Murphy and said, ‘At least we know the Marys are probably in America, but that’s all we know.’

  ‘To the girls,’ Murphy said, clinking Cal’s glass.

  ‘To the girls.’

  SIXTEEN

  The charity auction was in full swing at the Delamar Greenwich Harbor, a seaside hotel in one of the wealthiest enclaves in Connecticut. The ballroom was packed with bankers, lawyers, and Wall Street traders – the kind of people who paid twenty million to be on the water but rarely saw it because of their all-consuming jobs in Manhattan.

  It was a tuxedo affair, the men largely indistinguishable from one another, the women in peacock mode, dripping in jewelry with designer gowns and salon hairdos. The event was in support of a women’s shelter in nearby Stamford, the auctioneer a popular radio DJ with a gold-plated and barbed gift of the gab. He was on the stage, microphone in hand, sweating, strutting, cajoling and now announcing the final item of the night, a ruby and diamond necklace donated by a local, high-end jeweler.

  The DJ was a Brit who tended to exaggerate his Cockney accent for Americans. He held up the necklace and had the cameraman zoom in so everyone could see it on the projection screen.

  ‘Would you feast your eyeballs on this extravagant piece of bling, ladies and gents,’ he said. ‘Apparently this necklace is worth a small fortune so I want you lot to dig deep into your bottomless pockets and bid a large fortune. And gents, remember, if you win this item for your lady you’ll not only go to heaven for supporting the shelter but you will so get laid tonight. Let’s kick this off at two thousand, shall we? Do I hear two thousand dollars?’

  The bidding climbed to fifteen grand and everyone dropped out except for two guys, both at the same table.

  ‘You really want this?’ a swarthy bond trader asked his wife, a blond with a plunging neckline that barely kept her implants in check.

  ‘I love rubies,’ she said, touching his lap under the table.

  He raised his paddle. ‘Sixteen.’

  The auctioneer shouted, ‘Brilliant! Will you look at this smashing couple? They’re an advert for everything that’s good and great about my adopted country. And while you’re at it, would you consider adopting me? Do I hear seventeen thousand?’

  The bond trader looked across the table and said with a slightly menacing grin, ‘Your move, Steve.’

  Steven Gottlieb refused to let his contempt for his adversary show lest he hand him a psychological victory. He vague
ly knew the guy. He’d played tennis with him at a match between rival tennis clubs and had lost, which rankled him. As a rule of thumb, he despised bond traders, viewing them as carcass-feeding parasites who just moved money around the big table. Steve, on the other hand, was a venture capitalist who made his money by building companies that made great products and employed thousands of people. He’d gotten rich by creating real value for the society – at least that’s how he saw it. His wife of twenty years, whom he’d met in high school, shifted her weight in her chair, uncomfortable with the proceedings. She wasn’t a glitz and glamor type and she considered the auctioneer to be tacky and common. When he had announced the final item, she had whispered in her husband’s ear, ‘Thank God.’

  ‘It’s a nice necklace, isn’t it?’ Steve had whispered back.

  She had done volunteer work at the shelter. ‘I really don’t need it but it’s a good cause.’

  Steve raised his paddle again.

  ‘Game on!’ the auctioneer shouted. ‘You sir, with the blond appendage, how about eighteen?’

  The bond trader was willing and he upped his bid.

  The bidding pinged back and forth between the two men at thousand-dollar raises until it got to twenty-five thousand. Now, neither man was smiling anymore and the room was quiet until someone at another table shouted, ‘Guys, you realize this thing goes for maybe five grand retail!’

  ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ the auctioneer shouted back. ‘The bid is to the gentleman who’s confident enough in his manhood that he’s foregone a hair transplant.’

  That ad hominem quip royally pissed off Steve and left his wife shaking her head.

  ‘OK, let’s finish this,’ he whispered to her.

  ‘Good. Let him have it.’

  That wasn’t what he meant. ‘Thirty-five thousand,’ he said, flashing his paddle.

  ‘Well, well. Very well played, sir!’ the MC shouted. ‘Is that going to be the last word tonight?’

  The bond trader looked across the table and said, ‘You’re out of your fucking mind,’ before waving his hand at his neck to signify that he was out.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ the Brit exclaimed. ‘Let’s have a round of applause for a generous man with an age-appropriate wife.’