Blinding Lies Page 13

  TWO BODIES FOUND IN CITY CENTRE CAR SEARCH was the first item of breaking news.

  Anna read quickly. Two males thought to be in their late forties or early fifties had died violent deaths. Their bodies were discovered in the boot of a car after Gardaí detained and searched a vehicle in the city centre. The report went on to speculate that the victims were killed elsewhere. Anna knew this particular piece of information would have been assumed due to lack of blood where they were found. Gardaí were appealing to the public for information.

  She sat back and thought of DS Taylor, wondering if she was at the crime scene this morning. She had been irate last night. Anna felt a twinge of guilt – maybe she should follow Elise’s advice and not get involved in Kate’s predicament. It didn’t feel like advice though, it felt like an instruction, and it irritated her. Going to a club was hardly inserting herself into the investigation, although she did admit to herself she had hoped to speak to Kate.

  Anna had saved the detective’s mobile number into her phone – she had wasted time last night returning to the station to look for it. If she did run into Kate again, she wanted to be able to call DS Taylor immediately.

  She realised she herself had had a lucky escape last night. She felt thankful that her father’s enthusiasm for Taekwon-Do had rubbed off on her.

  She thought of Kate, wondering what was going through her mind this morning. Things did not look good for her old school friend – a man had been shot dead in her house, after which she had fled and was hiding out somewhere. She had dyed and cut off her hair in an attempt to go undetected. Her sister had taken her children and left the country. Anna had been so sure of Kate’s innocence, and that the shooting had been self-defence. But last night she had seen with her own eyes that Kate was extremely capable of defending herself – without a gun. All of those facts added up to a woman with secrets, a woman desperate to evade both the Gallaghers and the Gardaí.

  Anna sat forward again, fingers poised over the laptop keys.

  It was time to do some investigative work of her own.

  20

  Detective Superintendent Doherty was keenly aware it was four days to the conference; Janet McCarthy was apoplectic about the discovery of two dead bodies in the boot of a car. William Ryan was bothering him about some sexual assaults, the Gallaghers wanted their son out of the city morgue, there were suspected German criminals running about, and now this. Doherty was sure he would need to get his blood-pressure medication refilled before the end of the day. He observed the gathering crowd of onlookers near the park – journalists and civilians with their cameras out. Doherty moaned to himself. Elise Taylor had better have this under control.

  Elise had expected to be joined by her colleague William Ryan at the crime scene, but she stood alone near the entrance of the park, behind the parked car. Apparently, William was trying to get a warrant to follow up a lead on the serial sexual-assault cases. Elise was unhappy to let him take the initiative on that; she was next in line to take over the investigation on those cases, but she couldn’t be in two places at once. William was newly transferred in, and Elise didn’t think he had enough experience to wrap things up. But she had bigger problems. She could clean up that mess when she was done here.

  Elise had been in discussion with a member of the forensic team regarding the expected arrival time of the pathologist, and now stopped to watch Doherty approach, his face bright red, his eyebrows almost joined together. Elise sighed. She had few answers, and that wouldn’t be what Doherty wanted to hear. She felt a migraine forming at her temples.

  “Taylor,” Doherty said by way of greeting.

  “Superintendent Doherty.”

  He observed the bodies lying in situ in the boot. The Garda Technical Bureau team were in the process of finalising the preliminary examination before the bodies were moved.

  “Fill me in,” Doherty ordered, shaking a tablet into his palm before hurtling it into his mouth and chewing fiercely. He bent over and inspected the bodies briefly. A large, dark gash in one man’s neck made his stomach turn; he stepped back quickly.

  Elise’s voice betrayed her exhaustion.

  “The deceased are Seán and Bill Addams, cousins and both known employees of Tom Gallagher. We’ve met these two guys before – they worked security at the entrance to Gallagher’s property. Cause of death appears to be knife wounds to the throat – the bodies were transferred to the boot after. Both are carrying their wallets, which appear untouched, so we have no reason to suspect a robbery. We need to talk to Gallagher, and the victims’ friends and family. I want to find out if they were into anything more dodgy than usual.”

  “And the driver and passenger?”

  “They both have records, minor stuff. They are in custody and refusing to answer any questions.”

  “Surprise, surprise.” Doherty rubbed his jaw in thought. He surveyed the scene. “Could this have anything to do with David Gallagher’s death?”

  “It’s possible, certainly. The Gallaghers are having a bad week.”

  “That’s an understatement. We know the Meier gang are in Cork. Do you think this is an inter-gang war?”

  “Possibly, sir, and don’t forget John Gallagher is missing.”

  “That’s not our problem until someone reports it. Bloody hell! Janet McCarthy is going to have a fit. We have the Taoiseach’s security team breathing down her neck, not to mention multiple European state offices looking for detailed security plans. We cannot have this hanging over the conference. Get this wrapped up, Taylor. I want an update by lunchtime!”

  Doherty stormed back to his car, his trench coat flapping at his calves. Elise gritted her teeth. She’d been awake for twenty-five hours now, and it looked like sleep wouldn’t come until she could convince Doherty, and Janet McCarthy for that matter, that the streets were safe. Doherty was a tough man to please – now that pressure was mounting on his shoulders, Elise knew dealing with him would become even more difficult.

  Elise knew finding Kate Crowley was crucial to restoring normality around here. It seemed that in shooting David Gallagher she had unleased a river of bloodshed into the city, and it was falling to Elise to stem the flow.

  Balling her hands in fury, she turned back to the gruesome crime scene.

  21

  When Mae Gallagher opened her eyes, she was momentarily paralysed with fear. She had no idea where she was. A clock on the wall read one o’clock, and she guessed from the light outside that it was one o’clock in the afternoon, not the middle of the night. She was lying in a double bed, covered in a heavy, flowered duvet. She clutched it to her chin as she took in her surroundings. An oak bedside locker and matching wardrobe, a chaise lounge under the window … recognition pulled at the edge of her consciousness and she sat up.

  Yes, she knew where she was now; a black-and-white photograph on top of the bedside locker, of two young girls digging sandcastles on the beach, confirmed it. Mae was at her sister Christina’s house.

  So, Tom had got rid of her. Shipped his wife with her whiskey and her vials of Xanax off to her sister’s house, the better to have her out of the way.

  Mae could have felt offended in that moment, but she knew her husband. In many ways, he was a very predictable man.

  Removing his fragile wife from the house could only mean one thing – Tom Gallagher was preparing for war. It was better to remove any innocent bystanders than risk them getting hurt. Mae smiled as she lay back against the pillows. She wouldn’t fancy being in those German boys’ shoes right now. Nor Kate Crowley’s either. Tom was about to right some wrongs, and Mae felt positively giddy with anticipation.

  22

  Anna had a Facebook account, but only to keep in touch with her friends from college or to see whatever photos Vivian posted online. She barely used it. And if she was honest with herself, when she did use it, it was mainly to search for her parents’ names, just to see what came up. Not that she imagined they had set up social-media accounts if they were living some
where with full amnesia.

  Sitting at her kitchen table, Anna entered Kate Crowley’s name and got a handful of results, but none of them the Kate Crowley she was looking for. She tried searching with the forename Catherine and got the same result. Spelling Catherine with both a K and a C yielded nothing. Kate Crowley did not have a Facebook account.

  She chewed her bottom lip, thinking. She needed to widen the search. She keyed in Natalie’s name, but again, there were a handful of Natalie Crowleys with Facebook profiles but none of them were the one Anna was hoping to find. She included Twitter and Instagram in her search, as much as was possible not having either account herself. Another dead end.

  Now what? She had already exhausted Google and LinkedIn, both yielding only professional details relating to Kate’s work as a graphic designer.

  Anna tapped her pen against the notebook; she hadn’t expected her search to crash out so quickly. She leant forward as an idea struck her. Trying to remember the notes she had typed up, to recall the date the twins moved to Cork … 2014. They had graduated that year and had returned to Cork after finishing college.

  Anna began to type, concentrating on the colleges in Dublin … Trinity College, Dublin City University, University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology… searching for posts with the caption “Class of 2014” or graduation photographs.

  This time she got results. Profile after profile flashed on the screen, responding to her instructions, and she rejected one after the other, until one grabbed her attention and caused her breath to still.

  It was the Facebook profile page of a woman named Pauline Forde. She currently worked in AIB Bank in Dublin and had recently celebrated her birthday in Temple Bar. But it was her profile uploads from 2014 that had drawn Anna’s attention.

  She read out loud into her small, empty kitchen: “So sad to say goodbye to my BFFs. UCD’s been a blast, but the 6 musketeers are no more. Luv you, guys!!!”

  Anna clicked on the photograph underneath and it enlarged, showing a smiling group of six graduates in long gowns, most of them holding on to their caps to stop the wind carrying them off. It looked to be a blustery day; their gowns were captured by the photograph in various states of disarray, long hair whipping around their grinning faces. There was Pauline, centre stage, flanked by her BFFs, as she had put it.

  Anna touched the one face that seemed familiar: a young woman standing to the far left of the group. She was smiling broadly, her arm linked with the woman beside her.

  Kate Crowley.

  Or Natalie, Anna realised. The women were identical twins after all. Anna sat back in her chair, adrenaline pulsing in her veins. She wondered which twin was featured in the photograph, looking carefree and happy with her friends. Her fingers flying, Anna began to search Pauline Forde’s profile page.

  Pauline Forde had been close to both Crowley sisters in college, and it was easy to piece together a profile of their friendship from Pauline’s Facebook page. The banker kept her security setting at Public, allowing access to whomever wanted it. She didn’t appear to be on Instagram or any other public platform, but Facebook gave Anna more than she had hoped for.

  Both Kate and Natalie Crowley had led an active social life in college. They were involved in a drama club, and Natalie in a French cooking club. In their earlier college years, they socialised more frequently judging from the copious number of bleary-eyed photographs the sisters were tagged in, in a variety of clubs and bars in Dublin.

  As time passed, as the group of friends grew older and their course work more intense, the photographs changed to those of study groups in coffee shops or the college library. There appeared to have been few nights out, but Pauline had documented what little there were on her profile page. She was a supportive friend. A woman named Jules had her twenty-first birthday extensively covered, another named Hannah got first-class honours in her degree, celebrated with steak and champagne, the photographs uploaded for all to see. They seemed like a tight bunch of friends. Looking at the photographs, Anna felt a pang of longing to see Vivian again.

  It was the celebratory photographs and accompanying text that documented Kate Crowley’s extra-curricular achievement in her third year of college that left Anna stunned.

  “So proud of you babe, you did it!!!!! Retained your title, Inter-College Champion whoop whoop!”

  Underneath a photograph of Kate, dressed in a black martial arts pants and belted top, being presented with a trophy, were the words ‘Inter-College All-Ireland Kickboxing Championship’. Kate beamed at the photographer as she accepted the small trophy and shook hands with what presumably was the judge.

  Anna sat back into the wooden chair, absorbing this new information. It confirmed what she had realised the night before: Kate Crowley was skilled in self-defence. She had kicked one of Gallagher’s men so hard he was knocked out.

  So why then had she shot David Gallagher, when she could quite plausibly have incapacitated him instead?

  Anna rubbed her temples, thinking. Elise Taylor would have to be shown this. The shooting had happened only a few days ago, and no doubt Elise had her team working on getting background detail on Kate. Anna knew this information had never been mentioned in the case notes.

  Anna looked again at the group graduation photo of Kate and her friends. They looked so … hopeful about the future. With a pang of sadness Anna thought her old friends had no idea what was coming in their future – namely, David Gallagher.

  Taking the name of each girl tagged in the photograph, Anna searched online for as much information as she could. All of Kate Crowley’s old college friends either lived in mainland Europe or Australia, according to Facebook. Only Pauline Forde was still in Ireland, in Dublin. After graduation Jules had emigrated to Sydney, and Hannah was utilising her degree working in a large chain of jewellers operating out of Antwerp. A quick search of Crowleys living in the area also came up short; it appeared they were a small family.

  Anna closed her laptop with a firm thud. Her belief that Kate was innocent was truly shaken – Kate Crowley, wherever she was, had a lot of explaining to do.

  23

  Kate buttoned up her coat and wound her scarf around her neck. Jamming her hat down over her ears, she left her hotel and kept her head down. The wind stung her face and drew tears from her eyes. She walked hurriedly.

  At lunchtime on Sunday the streets were quiet. The footpaths were littered with the usual debris from a vibrant city’s Saturday night offerings. Today, though, council workers were out in force. Sweeping and power-washing away the beer cans, discarded chip packets and vomit puddles, soon they would have erased any evidence of the debauchery of the night before. Others were erecting crowd-control barriers lining the city’s main streets. The city was readying itself for the political conference. Kate had read about it in the newspaper over the last few weeks. She imagined all the city’s business owners sprucing their premises up in anticipation of a visit from any of the VIPs the conference would attract.

  She bought a coffee and a ham sandwich from a street vendor near the city library, grateful they were open even on a Sunday. She eyed the newspapers on a stand nearby as she waited for her coffee. Her heart raced as David Gallagher’s face looked back at her from the front page. The letters of the words in the caption above his face swam in a dizzying blur, refusing to focus. But David’s killing was relegated to only the top corner of the front page – there had been two bodies found in the boot of a car in the city the night before. She shuddered as she read the headline.

  “Here you go, love!” The ageing male barista leant over the counter and handed her a steaming, extra-large cardboard coffee cup. “Terrible business these killings!”

  “Yes.” She kept her eyes down. She longed to walk away but didn’t want to draw attention to herself by being rude. She took one step back, the man still talking.

  “What’s going on at all? A shooting last week, and now two men turn up dead in the boot of a car!” He shook his head. “Rum
our is they were working for Tom Gallagher, the fella that owns the nightclubs and bars. Terrible business his son being shot last week. Shocking!”

  She gripped her coffee tightly, the lid almost popping off. Tom Gallagher’s men, dead! Her mouth had gone completely dry and her legs began to shake. Drawing in a deep breath of cold air, she pushed her legs forward, one after the other, and walked hurriedly away.

  “Love! Your change!” the barista called after her, but she didn’t stop. She knew this was the work of the Germans. No one else would take on the Gallaghers in their own city. The timing was too coincidental; it had to be them.

  Fear wrapped her heart in its cold fist. If Tom Gallagher knew anything about what had gone on in the last week between her and David Gallagher, he would kill her. His men had found her last night. Going to the Mad Hatter had been so reckless. She had to leave this city forever, one way or another. She pressed on, the cold air burning her lungs, her legs pounding the city streets.

  24

  “If there’s a reason you’re at my front door on a Sunday, it had better be fucking good!”

  Tom Gallagher was clearly unimpressed to see Elise.

  She stood with her hands behind her back. He had answered the front door himself, a very unlikely scenario. Elise had left word at the station that she was headed here, as a precaution. She was glad of it. Tom looked a mess.

  “I’m surprised not to have heard from you. If my son was shot dead I’d be banging down the door to the Garda station until they found the killer. But you’ve been strangely quiet on that front. Being kept busy?”

  Tom glared hatred at Elise.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked.