Blinding Lies Page 21

Kate stood up and began to pace the small living room.

  “If only it were that simple.”

  She leant against the mantlepiece and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Natalie had done a one-eighty. She wanted revenge for what Gallagher had put her through. And if I’m honest, I wanted it too. He had caused so much pain … he deserved to pay! I was so happy she was seeing sense. We should have left it at that.”

  “What did you do?” This sounded like a confession. Anna groaned internally. She knew now was the time to call Detective Taylor, but she was lost in the flow of her story.

  “Natalie and I convinced ourselves we had a chance of a better life, away from the Gallaghers. We owed it to the twins to get them as far away from David’s family as we could. Tom Gallagher, David’s father, was so overbearing, and his wife was worse – we knew we had to leave the country. But we needed resources. So, we came up with a plan. We decided to rob him and disappear, to start a new life. We needed enough money to stay hidden. We waited for the right opportunity. It took a while but we were willing to wait.”

  She sighed and began to pick at a cut on her hand, pulling the skin absentmindedly.

  “David was always storing things. Stolen goods, money, drugs – you name it, he had it tucked away in the attic of the house, or cupboards under the sink. He was reckless. He used to boast about it when he was high. He’d say things like ‘I have fifty grand under the mattress right now – what have you got?’ – a complete moron. He liked to pull out big wads of cash from various gear bags, as if it would be some kind of bait to keep Natalie with him, not that he ever thought she would really leave. He did all his business openly in the house, never caring that Natalie heard him, or the twins either! I mean, they are nearly four – the things they have seen and heard!” She shook her head. “Natalie said the house was always full of people David was doing business with. Two weeks ago, he stored diamonds and cash for a group he referred to as ‘The Germans’. He just left it stashed in the attic. I mean that’s hardly secure, but he said it was so simple no one would even think to look. About ten days ago he was particularly pleased with himself. He began waving cash in Natalie’s face and said there was plenty more where that came from, that he had hit on some big money-making scheme with a Dutch buyer. He said he had plans to show his father how real men made real money, not the small-time crap his father dealt in. There were tens of thousands of euro, all bound up in bundles, and he said that was only the first part of the payment. He stashed it in a bag and left it lying around. So … we decided to take it. David was supposed to be abroad on business and we didn’t expect him to be back for a few days. The day before the shooting we saw an opportunity and took as much cash as we could. We stashed it in my house, and we planned to leave that week …” Her voice trailed off. She saw the shock on Anna’s face and stopped speaking, unsure what was running through Anna’s mind. “You have to understand! Natalie hadn’t worked in years. I didn’t have enough money for us all to escape and leave the country – it seems drastic, but it was necessary, I swear!”

  Anna shook her head, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. “So, you robbed money from David … and then what? Did he catch you?”

  Kate held onto the mantelpiece now as if she was holding onto a lifebuoy. She felt faint. Recounting the story was draining her of all her energy. She stumbled to the sofa a few feet away and was surprised that frantic sobs escaped from her. She didn’t care that David Gallagher was dead, yet she couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Sinking into the soft cushions, she put her head in her hands and shuddered as tears poured down her cheeks.

  Anna gave her space to cry. She was an emotional wreck. No doubt fear and exhaustion had taken their toll on her, not to mention the trauma of the night Gallagher died. Anna didn’t know how to offer comfort – this was a terrible situation and she was still trying to gather her thoughts. She stayed where she was and watched Kate as she sobbed uncontrollably on the sofa. She wanted to believe that the girl she had known wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, hadn’t intentionally shot David Gallagher. But she had robbed him. And she had plenty of reasons to want him dead.

  Anna felt a chill in the room and moved toward the stove to add more logs.

  Kate’s sobs subsided. She sniffed and looked at Anna who was standing beside the stove.

  Kate took a deep breath.

  “We planned to fly to Paris on the Thursday. He wasn’t due back until Sunday. Then on Wednesday he returned unexpectedly and he was frantic. Natalie was terrified. David said the Germans had made contact – they wanted the gear he was holding for them and to complete the sale for the Dutchman. Whatever that meant. David was stressed that they had come in person. He searched the house but couldn’t find what he was looking for. He never would have suspected Natalie of robbing him – he thought she was too beaten down. He left, and Natalie rang me, terrified. I convinced her to pack a bag and get the next flight out of Cork. I was at work. I went straight home. I packed a bag and gathered the money I had in my house and was about to join Natalie at the airport when David showed up.”

  “Christ!”

  “He had gone home again, and realised Natalie had cleared out. So, he came looking for her at my house. He saw my packed case and he put two and two together. He was in a complete rage – his eyes were literally bulging out of their sockets. He told me John was on his way over. He was real nasty, pushing me around – well, trying to – but I’m not Natalie! I pushed back!”

  “The crime scene report said David Gallagher suffered an assault before he was shot.”

  “It wasn’t an ‘assault’ – they didn’t see my injuries! My neck is still hurting where he half-strangled me – I have bruising all over my body! It was a fight, but I’ve had worse.” She shrugged. “Yeah, I gave as good as I got, and he wasn’t used to it. He pulled a gun.”

  Anna sat down next to Kate who had begun to tremble.

  “He had the gun pointed at me,” she went on, her voice shaking. “He said we would wait for John. I could have knocked him out cold if I could have got closer, but he kept the gun pointed at me the whole time. The threat of John scared me though – he’s even worse than David. He’s a sadist. David used to tell us things he had done, in revenge, or sometimes just for fun. I was panicking. I was terrified of David and John together. In the end, I had no choice. I had to get the gun. I lunged at him, taking him by surprise, and for a while we both had the gun, wrestling for it between us. The next thing I know, David is lying dead on the ground and everything is quiet.”

  Her voice faded into silence and she sat still, her eyes glazed, watching the film-reel of that night that wouldn’t stop replaying in her mind.

  Eventually, she sighed, her eyes firmly fixed at a spot on the floor.

  “After I shot him, I panicked. I knew he was dead. I figured John would come for me, or the Gardaí. And I thought that if I was taken into the Garda station it was only a matter of time before his contact there would turn me over to Tom Gallagher. Or I could get convicted of manslaughter. I couldn’t go to jail – Gallagher has employees all over the place, some of his female employees are in prison and still loyal to him. And that niece … I’d be dead within a week!” She was leaning forward as she spoke, her hands trembling. She clasped them between her knees as she looked up at Anna. “I heard someone banging on the front door and I just ran. I fled the house. Forgetting my passport. I just grabbed this bag, which had a lot of the money in it, and fled. I hopped on the first bus that passed me and found myself wandering the streets in town. After what must have been an hour I checked into a hotel and continued panicking. But, eventually, I pulled myself together. I realised I had to get some fake documents and get out of Cork.”

  Anna stared at Kate, unsure what to say, feeling torn between shock and pity. She still didn’t know what to think. She shivered involuntarily, despite the heat from the stove. What a mess her old friend was in! She had been through so much in such a short space of
time. And her self-defence story was muddied now. She had admitted shooting David and robbing him too. Anna cringed. The charge of theft would surely be added to whatever Elise Taylor decided was the appropriate charge for killing David Gallagher. What had at first seemed to Anna to be a clear-cut self-defence case was now seriously a murky pool of uncertainty. Kate, a kick-boxing champion, had killed a man, robbed him, and left the scene.

  Yet Anna didn’t feel the woman sitting huddled on her sofa was a devious killer. She looked utterly wretched as she sat there, shivering, her shoulders hunched over. When she spoke of that night, her anger was obvious, but she looked scared and haunted by the memories. All she had wanted to do was protect her sister and nieces and escape the man who abused them. Now all she wanted was to escape this city and join them. Anna couldn’t help but feel pity for her. Her good intentions had spiralled out of all control and now she was in huge trouble.

  Anna rubbed Kate’s hand. “This can all be sorted out, I’m sure of it. You were in a terrible situation – anyone could see that! And, really, it was an accident!”

  Kate nodded and kept her eyes on the floor. Tears still fell, although gently this time, and she wiped them away occasionally with the back of her hand.

  “So David was selling something to a Dutch buyer, and the Germans were somehow involved, and had come to collect?” Anna said. “Do you have any idea what David was selling?”

  Kate looked up into Anna’s face and nodded. She retrieved the bag from the other end of the sofa and rooted around in it for a few seconds. Pulling out a small USB flash drive, she handed it to Anna. “This, I think. I’ve no idea what’s on it. I haven’t had access to a computer. But I presume it was part of the deal. David was beside himself when he couldn’t find it.”

  Anna turned the memory key over in her hand, intrigued. So, whatever was on here was enough to bring the Meier gang over to Cork from Germany, enough to make David attack Kate. Was it the reason John Gallagher was missing? Was this the big money scheme David Gallagher had bragged about?

  “There’s only one chance of finding out – a slim chance as I expect it will be passport-protected. Come into the kitchen – my laptop is on the table.”

  Kate followed Anna through the archway into the adjoining kitchen.

  40

  “I have no idea what this is,” Kate said.

  Anna chewed her bottom lip as she clicked the mouse, moving between the pages of the spreadsheet in front of them, hoping for clarity to strike. She had to agree with Kate. She had no idea what they were looking at.

  The contents of the memory key had opened without a security password, much to their surprise and relief. But they were clueless as to what the key actually contained, other than the fact that the names and Eircodes of all the major hotels in Cork were listed on one page of the spreadsheet.

  Kate had had a lot of time to think in the confines of the small hotel room. As well as making plans for her future, hopeful plans involving Natalie and her nieces, she had sought to drive out her memories of the night she shot David by trying to figure out what was on the memory key. She had lain on the hotel bed for many hours, turning it over and over in her mind. All she knew for sure was that the contents of this memory key were the money-making scheme David had boasted about. But why had he cut his father out?

  That part of David’s plan had intrigued her the most. From what she knew of the Gallaghers, they were a tight close-knit family. They were ruthless with anyone who came between them, or anyone who disrespected one of them. She had been on the periphery of the Gallaghers’ world for years and had watched as Tom brought David further into the business every year. He had trusted him with the nightclubs and had given him more and more responsibility. So why was David cutting him out? Why was David showing his father such disrespect?

  “What’s the point of anyone making a list of the city hotels and their coordinates?” she wondered aloud as she perused the page. All the city’s four and five-star hotels were listed.

  “Let’s look at page two,” Anna suggested, clicking on to the second page of the spreadsheet.

  This page contained a list of initials in Column A, clearly referring to the hotels listed on the previous page – RL referring to the River LeeHotel, IM referring to the ImperialHotel, HM for Hayfield Manor, and so on. There was a list of eight hotels on page one, and a column of eight initials on page two, in column A. In column B, beside the initials of the hotel names, were further initials and codes. Column C contained even more codes.

  “RL is linked to the initials TM in column B, which is linked to ‘a. pers.’ in column C,” Anna said. “IM is linked to the initials AM in column B, which links to ‘a. pers.’ in column C. HM is linked to the initials LV in column B, which links to ‘a. pers.’ in column C. What on earth does it all mean?”

  There were twelve lines in total, each one linking a city hotel with more initials and rows of question marks after ‘a. pers.’. One hotel was repeated, the River Lee, with more initials linked to that hotel than the others. Anna read all the letters aloud, hoping that by hearing them she might be able to decipher them. But her thoughts wouldn’t go there.

  She shook her head as though to clear it. “I can’t make any sense of it.”

  “What’s ‘a. pers.’ about?”

  Anna sat, deep in thought. “I don’t know.”

  Anna clicked open the third page which was a programme of some sort, listing activities by time: 11:30 press call, 12:30 lunch, 16:00 informal drinks, 17:00 dinner. It seemed innocuous.

  Then Anna felt a tremor of trepidation creep into her consciousness. A simple programme of events . . . but why should David Gallagher or any other criminal show so much interest in it? This did not bode well.

  “Click on to page four,” Kate said.

  The fourth page was a map of the city, scanned and uploaded. It had been drawn on with red ink. The city-centre hotels were circled.

  Anna clicked on a fifth page and immediately felt a heightened sense of unease. This page featured a drawing: it appeared to show pipes or tunnels, with lines drawn here and there, and hotel initials written on it at different points in the same red ink. On a sixth page was the same map, but the Rebel Event Centre was circled.

  “I’ve heard the name of the new event centre mentioned recently, but I can’t remember the context,” Anna said.

  Suddenly she stood up.

  “I need to get this in to work,” she said. “This needs to be deciphered as soon as possible.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re leaving?” Kate asked, panicked.

  Anna pulled on her boots and began to tie up her laces. “I have to. Who knows what’s going on here, but it must be important. There’s a guy at work, Myles, who’s really good with computers. I’m sure he can help, even though he’s really busy with this political conference that’s happening on Thursday …”

  Anna stopped suddenly, looking at Kate. Her mouth had fallen open in shock and her hands shook slightly. She felt as though someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water over her head. Of course! She abandoned tying her shoelaces and jumped back onto her chair, clicking the mouse between the screens again.

  “What is it?” Kate asked quietly. She knew Anna had figured it out but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to this riddle.

  “Jesus Christ,” Anna whispered. She turned the screen so Kate could better see what she was pointing to as she spoke. “Column B lists the heads of state that are coming to Cork for the conference. Column A tells us what hotel they are staying in. I bet ‘a. pers.’ refers to whether they have armed personnel staying with them at the hotel, or in their immediate vicinity. Oh my God, this information must be classified. David Gallagher was going to sell it!”

  “But where would he have got it?”

  “He was a gangster – he could have got it anywhere.”

  “Why would anyone want it?”

  The question hung in the air, bu
t the answer was obvious.

  “Someone wants to harm one of the politicians or compromise the whole thing. Anything politically sensitive has heightened security – criminals like David Gallagher don’t usually have a download of the details!”

  Anna pulled a notebook and pen from her bag which had been hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She wrote down the initials one by one, drawing lines to connect them.

  “See?” she said, turning the page to Kate. “TM must refer to the British Prime Minister Theresa May; she’s staying in the River Leehotelwith armed personnel I’m sure. I bet AM refers to Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. The letters refer to initials of politicians attending the conference. Oh my God!”

  Anna pulled the laptop towards her again, shut down the spreadsheet and began to search the internet. With a few well-chosen search words, she quickly found an article about the upcoming political conference. She clicked open the webpage of the Irish Examiner and both women silently read the news piece.

  On Thursday November 29th, the Rebel Event Centre will host a political conference, featuring heads of state from many European nations. Our Taoiseach, who lobbied fiercely and successfully for Ireland to be chosen as the venue for this timely event, said there has never been a greater need for unity in politics. As Brexit discussions enter a critical phase, it is hopedBritish Prime Minster Theresa May will attend, but her spokesperson has yet to confirm. The Mayor of Cork is proud that the city will play host to such a variety of nations. “Cork may not be Ireland’s capital city,” he said, “but our newly opened state-of-the-art event centre and our famed hospitality rival any capital city in the world. We are ready and waiting to welcome the European political leaders to Cork. Unity and international cooperation will be at the forefront of discussions. This is truly an historic event, happening on our own shores, and a wonderful way to close 2018 for Cork.”

  Cork city hotels will open their opulent doors to our European visitors from Wednesday to Friday, with the conference taking place on Thursday and through to Friday morning. The visiting dignitaries will of course take in some of the famous sights while in the city, including the now famous English Market, visited by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2011.