Dead Men Whistling, page 25
28
Garda Yasir Wassan was standing in the narrow kitchen stirring semolina in a saucepan to make sooji ka halwa for his breakfast. On his way here he had asked his security guard to take him to Aiysha’s Spice House on Shandon Street so that he could stock up on all the ingredients he would need to keep himself fed for the next three or four days, or at least until he had to go to Dublin to appear in front of His Honour Justice McGuigan.
Stephen MacQuaid had installed him in a pebble-dashed semi-detached house on Mount Farran, a steep residential road in Blackpool. He had assigned him three security guards to protect him in eight-hour shifts. The night guard had left about half an hour ago, and now the morning guard, Declan, was sprawled on the couch in the living room watching Today with Maura and Dáithí. Declan was a tall, muscular young man who looked like a boxer in his black polo-neck sweater, but he was very soft-spoken and polite.
‘What are you cooking up there, horse?’ he asked after a while, appearing at the kitchen door and sniffing. ‘It smells like you’re burning it.’
‘Semolina, and it is supposed to have this burned smell. It will be delicious by the time I have finished. You must try some.’
‘Thanks all the same, I think I’ll pass on that, like. I had sausages and grilled tomatoes this morning. I wouldn’t say no to a coffee, though, if you’re making some.’
‘I have lassi if you like.’
‘Lassie? I thought that was a dog.’
Garda Wassan shook his head. ‘Yogurt, water and mango pulp. With ice, and added sugar if you like.’
‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick to the coffee, like, do you know?’
‘I have been trying to introduce my Irish friends to Pakistani food.’
‘Good luck to you, horse. I don’t think you’ll have much success in Cork. If it isn’t crubeens or tripe and drisheen, or McDonald’s, they won’t want to know.’
‘You don’t like curry?’
‘It doesn’t like me, that’s the problem. I had a curry a couple of nights ago, when I was supposed to be on duty, but Holy Saint Patrick. No wonder that Mahatma Gandhi used to wear them nappies.’
Garda Wassan started to scoop the scorched semolina carefully out of the saucepan, but as he did so there was a loud hammering on the front door.
Declan immediately reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and pulled out a Vipertek stun gun, which resembled a flat black flashlight.
‘Go into the back room now, Yasir, and lock the door, like we rehearsed you. Nobody knows that you’re here, so it’s probably only some gom complaining about my parking. But get in there anyway.’
Garda Wassan left the kitchen and went into the room at the back of the house that had probably once been the ‘best’ room. As he crossed the corridor there was another loud hammering at the door, and the doorbell was rung, too, again and again. He quietly closed the back-room door behind him and turned the key, and then he stood there, hardly daring to breathe, while a green-faced portrait of a Chinese lady stared at him dispassionately from the wall above the fireplace.
Declan went gingerly up to the front door and shouted out, ‘Who is it? What do you want? Stop beating on the fecking door, will you? You’ll bust it!’
There was no answer, but the hammering and the ringing stopped. About twenty seconds passed in silence, while Declan waited, his stun gun raised, wondering if he ought to open up the front door to see who was there, or if they had given up and gone away.
He was reaching for the door handle when there was a deafening bang and a crack and a splintering of wood. He stumbled backwards as the front door fell flat into the hallway, and three men in black balaclavas stormed over it and into the house. Their leader was carrying a sawn-off shotgun, which he pointed directly at Declan’s chest.
‘You can throw that fecking stun gun down for starters!’ the man ordered. ‘Don’t give us any bother, head, and I won’t make any extra holes in you. Deal? Grand. Now, where’s the Paki? He’s here all right, don’t tell me he’s not. I can fecking smell him!’
The living-room door was slightly ajar and one of the men kicked it wider open. He peered inside and said, ‘Not in here, sham.’
‘Not in the kitchen, neither,’ said the other man.
‘Upstairs?’ said the man with the shotgun, stepping closer to the guard and pointing it less than five centimetres away from the tip of his nose.
Declan jerked his head towards the back-room door.
‘Thanks a million,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘Saves us a whole lot of running up and downstairs, do you know?’
With his free hand he tried the door handle, and as soon as he realized the door was locked, he said, ‘Hoggy – Patrick.’
Hoggy went out of the front door and came back carrying a red battering-ram. He swung it twice and then he slammed it into the door and knocked it off its hinges. It tilted sideways at an angle and Patrick kicked it flat to the floor.
Garda Wassan was kneeling on the window sill, all tangled up in the nylon net curtains. He was trying to wrestle the window open, but it was locked. The man with the shotgun crossed the room and said, ‘You can come down now, head. You and me need to have a little conversation, like, do you know what I mean.’
‘Who are you?’ demanded Garda Wassan. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘Oh, really? That makes a change. You had plenty to say to Chief Superintendent O’Malley.’
‘What I had to say was between him and me.’
‘What you had to say has already caused a rake of trouble, Garda Wassan, and if you repeat what you said to Chief Superintendent O’Malley to Justice McGuigan, you’re going to cause double the trouble. There’s good men going to lose their livelihoods because of you and your cribbing.’
Garda Wassan climbed down from the window sill. ‘What do you want me to do? Go to the tribunal and say “Sorry, Your Honour, I was only messing? All that bullying and all that racism I was complaining about, I only invented it, so that I could get my fellow gardaí into the shite. Sorry.” Is that what you want me to say?’
The man with the shotgun cocked his head to one side as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing. ‘You have some fecking nerve, boy, I’ll give you that. But come on, let’s get out the gap. There’s plenty more to get sorted before dinnertime.’
The two other men came into the back room and seized Garda Wassan’s arms. They pulled them behind his back and one of them clipped handcuffs on him.
As they pushed him out of the door, Declan stepped forwards and said, ‘Stall it a second. Where are you taking him?’
‘Oh, I forgot about you,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘You were supposed to be taking care of our Paki friend here, weren’t you?’
Declan didn’t answer that, but stood with his hands hesitantly half-raised, like a man who isn’t sure if a dangerous animal is going to spring at him.
‘You made a pig’s mickey of that, didn’t you, head?’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘If I was your boss, do you know what I’d say? You’re fired!’
He lifted his shotgun and with a brain-numbing bang he let off both barrels at once. He had wedged a shotgun shell sideways between the two triggers so that he could pull them simultaneously without skinning his fingers. Half of Declan’s head was blown off and splattered against the wall at the end of the hallway, and he spun around on one foot and flung up his arms like a ballet dancer before he tipped over on to the floor.
‘What a fecking eejit,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘Now let’s sketch.’
Hoggy wiggled one fingertip in his ear and said, ‘What? I can’t fecking hear you.’
‘I’m not in the mood, Hoggy. Let’s just clear out of here before somebody starts getting nosy and calls the shades.’
Garda Wassan twisted and struggled against his handcuffs so that he could turn around and see the guard’s body lying in the hallway.
‘You shot him!’ he shouted, and he was almost screaming. ‘He did nothing at all and you shot him! Right in cold blood! Aap aik rakshas hain! You are a devil!’
The three men pushed and pulled him down the steeply sloping steps in front of the house and forced him into the back of a black BMW saloon that was parked close behind the guard’s green Ford Kuga. Then they swerved away from the kerb and sped down Mount Farran to Assumption Road.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Garda Wassan demanded, still struggling as he sat in the back of the car between Hoggy and Patrick.
The man with the shotgun turned around in the passenger seat and said, ‘We’re taking you where all whistle-blowers should go, Garda Wassan. Somewhere you can whistle to your heart’s content, and nobody will hear the treacherous tunes that you’re playing.’
29
The finest of fine rains was falling as they turned off Grange Terrace in Ovens and headed north up Grange Road. The fields all around them were deserted and the only sign of life was the crows perched on the telephone wires.
‘Whatever you’re intending to do, you’re cracked if you think you can get away with it,’ said Garda Wassan.
The man with the shotgun turned around again and grinned at him. ‘Don’t you believe it, head. We have friends in high places.’
‘Supposing I told you that I would withdraw my complaint.’
‘Too late for that now. And how could we trust you anyway? The minute we let you go, you’d go scurrying off to grass on us, I’ll bet you.’
‘Supposing I swore that I would withdraw it.’
‘On what? The Bible? You’re a Muslim, aren’t you?’
‘I would swear it on my honour.’
‘Do you hear that, Hoggy? He says he’d swear it on his honour! You call that honour, sneaking on your mates, just because they can’t stand the currified benjy off of you!’
They drove about a kilometre up a narrow hedge-lined lane until they reached a stone wall with a black iron gate. Beyond the stone wall was a derelict graveyard with grass growing as high as the headstones, and an abandoned church with a grey slate roof.
They parked, and Patrick pulled Garda Wassan out of the back of the car. The morning was almost silent except for the soft prickling sound of rain in the trees and the cawing of crows. Between them, Patrick and Hoggy marched Garda Wassan to the gate, which they opened with a jarring squeal. Then they half-pushed and half-dragged him through the overgrown graveyard until they reached the church building.
‘Welcome to Athnowen Church,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘It’s been out of use for a brave few years, but we couldn’t think of anywhere more suitable for a ritual like this. What you might call a ritual of absolution.’
The oak front doors of the church were wide open, and Garda Wassan could see that a metal bar had been prised away from them, and a rusty padlock was hanging loose. The man with the shotgun led the way inside, where it was chilly and dark and the floor was gritty underfoot.
Sitting at the foot of the font were two Garda officers, both of whom Garda Wassan recognized at once – Sergeant Dolan MacAuley and Garda Eamon Ó Grádaigh. A fourth man in a black balaclava was sitting on the steps beside them, nonchalantly jiggling an automatic pistol.
Both Sergeant MacAuley and Garda Ó Grádaigh were handcuffed behind their backs, and Garda Ó Grádaigh’s left eye was bruised purple and so swollen that it was almost closed. Sergeant MacAuley was wearing only a pale green T-shirt and cargo shorts, while Garda Ó Grádaigh was dressed in a blue ribbed sweater and jeans. It was deathly cold inside the church and both men were shivering.
‘Here we are then, gentlemen,’ said the man with the shotgun, and his voice echoed eerily from the aisles. ‘The three wise monkeys all together. You saw some evil and you heard some evil but thank the Lord you’re never going to have the chance to speak about it.’
‘Go away to fuck,’ said Garda Ó Grádaigh.
‘Hey – you don’t have to be so dark with me. I never told you to go creeping off and telling tales to Chief Superintendent O’Malley, now did I? Patrick – Sean – tie these three monkeys together, would you? Back to back, like we talked about. Hoggy – you can start up the saw now, head. I’d like them to have a good long listen to the sound of it before we get down to business.’
Sean stuffed his pistol into the belt of his jeans, and then he and Patrick forced Garda Wassan to sit on the floor next to Sergeant MacAuley and Garda Ó Grádaigh. They bumped and shuffled all three men until they were pressed back to back, and then Patrick produced a green-and-white nylon rope and trussed it around their chests and their shoulders at least seven or eight times before knotting it tight.
Hoggy, meanwhile, was tugging at the pull cord of his chainsaw. He had to tug it again and again before it eventually stuttered into life, probably because the church was so cold. He stood beside the font, revving it up, and waving it slowly around in circles.
None of the three whistle-blowers spoke. Sergeant MacAuley’s eyes followed the chainsaw as Hoggy waved it around, as if he were trying to make it break down by willpower alone. Garda Ó Grádaigh looked away, into the gloom of the transept, while Garda Wassan closed his eyes and prayed. The roaring and surging noise was deafening, and the man with the shotgun tilted it over his shoulder so that he could press his fingers in his ears.
‘Which one first?’ shouted Hoggy, leaning towards him.
‘Order of seniority!’ the man with the shotgun shouted back.
‘What the feck does that mean?’
‘Sergeant first, white garda second, Paki last!’
Hoggy stepped up to Sergeant MacAuley, his knees bent to brace himself. Now Sergeant MacAuley closed his eyes, too, and his lips moved as he prayed to God for final forgiveness.
The chainsaw’s teeth ripped into his Adam’s apple and blood and fragments of flesh were spattered into the air like an angry swarm of red hornets. Hoggy revved the chainsaw even harder as he cut through Sergeant MacAuley’s vertebrae, and almost as soon as he had done that, the sergeant’s head rolled off his neck and dropped down at his feet. It bounced towards the man with the shotgun and lay there staring up at him, and the man with the shotgun gave it a desultory kick with the toe of his boot.
Hoggy moved around to face Garda Ó Grádaigh. The short-cropped hair at the back of his head was already dripping with Sergeant MacAuley’s blood and he stared at Hoggy in total terror.
Hoggy lunged the chainsaw towards his face to taunt him, and Garda Ó Grádaigh screamed at him, his mouth stretched wide open, his one good eye bulging. Hoggy lunged again, laughing, and this time Garda Ó Grádaigh soaked his jeans.
‘See!’ shouted the man with the shotgun. ‘They can’t keep anything to themselves, these sneaky bastards! Not even their piss!’
Hoggy adjusted his stance now and leaned closer to Garda Ó Grádaigh. He swung the chainsaw to one side and it cut through Garda Ó Grádaigh’s skin and neck muscles as smoothly as if it were cutting through a log, except for a brief few seconds when it snarled against his vertebrae. His head tipped backwards and fell behind Garda Wassan and Sergeant MacAuley’s decapitated body and Hoggy had to reach down and lift it out by one ear, before tossing it on to the floor.
Garda Wassan didn’t scream as Hoggy came around to face him. He looked up at him and then he closed his eyes again and his expression was one of absolute calm. Nobody else could have known it, and nobody else ever would, but he was thinking of his young sister, Afrah, who had died of pneumonia when she was only five. He could picture her laughing as she ran through the garden, chasing their cat.
He felt a devastating jolt, and an instant of tearing pain, a pain so agonizing that he couldn’t even recognize it as pain. It was only an instant, though, and then his head fell on to the floor next to Garda Ó Grádaigh’s.
Hoggy switched off the chainsaw and set it down next to the font.
‘Look at the fecking state of me la. I’ll be needing a bath after this.’
‘Long overdue, too,’ said Patrick.
Hoggy gave him the finger. Meanwhile the fourth man came forwards with a black dustbin bag. Wrinkling up his nose in disgust, he picked up the three severed heads by their hair and dropped them inside, twisting the top and tying it up.
Patrick produced three tin whistles from inside his anorak. He tootled each of them in turn and then pushed them one by one into each of the bloodied necks.
‘There,’ he said, standing back. ‘I reckon we’ve seen the last of the whistle-blowers. If any other guard has the balls to rat on his fellow officers after this, I’m a Chinaman.’
‘Well, if that happens, head, don’t go complaining to Chief Superintendent O’Malley about racism,’ said the man with the shotgun. ‘We’ve run out of whistles.’
30
James Gallagher, the forensic accountant, arrived punctually at eleven o’clock, carrying his laptop and a large leather briefcase. Moirin brought him up to Katie’s office, where she was making arrangements for the state funerals of Detectives Buckley and O’Brien. She couldn’t personally see why Garda O’Regan didn’t merit a state funeral, too, but it was a sensitive issue, particularly with the Garda Representative Association, whose members would be expected to line the streets.
He was a short, brisk man, James Gallagher, with a clipped moustache and rimless spectacles and a navy-blue three-piece suit. When he sat down and crossed his legs, Katie could see that he had shiny brown shoes and canary-yellow socks.
‘As I told you on the phone, Detective Superintendent, Jimmy Ó Faoláin’s financial affairs were fierce complicated, and deliberately so. He set up Erin Investments, promising his clients a staggeringly high return for their money, but basically this was nothing but a Ponzi scheme, and all he was doing was paying his older clients from the money invested by his newer clients – and keeping a large proportion of that money for himself. Erin Investments never invested a single cent in anything.’
‘What about the shares he was buying?’
James Gallagher opened his laptop and showed Katie the figures. ‘He was buying up whole blocks of them, mostly from companies who were suffering from something of an economic downturn. Of course his purchase would inflate their price, and he would give out all kinds of buoyant forecasts about them. But as soon as he had sent his clients their latest financial update and boasted how much profit their investment was making for them, he was dumping the shares and keeping the proceeds. It’s not quite as simple as that, but you get the idea.’
