Dublin Dead Read online

  Gerard O’Donovan was born in Cork and raised in Dublin. After a brief career in the Irish civil service, he travelled widely, working as a barman, bookseller, gherkin-bottler, philosophy tutor and English teacher before settling down to make a living as a journalist and critic for, among others, The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. In 2010 The Priest was published to wide acclaim. Dublin Dead is his second novel.

  Visit his website at www.gerard-odonovan.com

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9780748119349

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 Gerard O’Donovan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  For Angela

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Suicide estate agent a ‘financial casualty’

  Monday: 20 September 2010

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Thursday

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Friday

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The door. All he had to do was get to it. The breath burned in his lungs as he ran. Each rasping, aching heave of his chest was all he could hear above the thud of his feet on the sun-dried grass, the scuff of his trainers kicking up the powdery earth beneath, and the baleful thumping tread of the man pursuing him through the dark, fifty, maybe only forty metres behind, gaining with every stride. No way would he risk glancing back. He already knew what death looked like.

  Ahead, the boxy white walls of a low-slung house stood out spectrally against the dark slopes and shadowed gullies of the hillside behind and the moon-bright sky above. The door. That was all that mattered. La puerta. He had to focus on it. De duer. The door to his own house. Stout, defensible. In his mind he brought it forward, saw every detail, every swirling knot in its stained oak planking, the black wrought iron handle, the macho studwork so beloved of the Spanish, the twisted black metal of the grille, through which, even now, she would be staring, waiting.

  Sweat crawled like spiderlegs down his face, his limbs grown soft from too many years away. In his mind he was back on the streets of Dublin in the early eighties, pissing ahead of Tommy Hanrahan and his bunch of vicious little pricks. Eleven years old, quick as a switchblade and twice as sharp, he was laughing, cursing, taunting them over his shoulder, feeling the chill air run across his arms and legs like a pulse of power, the walls and balconies of the flats towering above, funnelling them all towards the corner alley where Sean Carmody and his gang, the ones who changed his life by taking him in, waited with bats and bricks to spring a savage surprise.

  A different world, a different time, a different life. Who would ever have guessed skinny little Dec would come so far? And for what? To end it here, with his face kicked flat in the Spanish dust? Fuck off. He felt his lungs expand to greet the extra oxygen he needed and a new surge of energy flood into his calf muscles, into his thighs. The heaviness of his doubt fell away and his speed picked up even as he reached the patio. The door was only five metres off when the crump of the shotgun reached his ears and he felt the first shower of pellets whistle past, then … Shit, oh shit … the scalding twist of pain in his right hip wrenched him round, sent him spinning like he’d been shoved by the hand of God, and he stumbled, wheeling, somehow still upright, clawing the air in front of him, throwing himself out towards the door.

  And he was there, slamming into the hard wood, and the door opened and he pushed through, falling, the shredded muscle of his thigh burning like a rod of molten iron, hope alive in him again. But where was she? Nowhere to be seen, and a wave of cold fear smashed into him as he heard the feet pounding up behind, the double click of hammers being cocked, and he turned, saw the dark man above him, face blank, eyes expressionless, just a halo of blond hair burnished by the moonlight behind and the gun glinting level at his waist, trigger finger tensing.

  Oh shit, oh fuck, where in the name of—

  Suicide estate agent a ‘financial casualty’

  By Siobhan Fallon,

  chief reporter

  The mystery surrounding the disappearance of millionaire Irish estate agent Cormac Horgan was solved yesterday when remains washed up on the banks of the River Avon in southwest England were identified as his.

  Horgan, 29, of Gorteen House, Skibbereen, Co. Cork, who vanished last week, was said to have been in despair after suffering catastrophic business losses in the downturn.

  His body was discovered by a dog walker two miles from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, a well-known ‘magnet’ for would-be suicides.

  Mr Seamus Horgan, an uncle of the deceased, said his nephew Cormac was ‘a pillar of the local community’.

  A business associate, who did not wish to be named, said Mr Horgan was under ‘unbearable pressure’ to repay debts of €6 million following the collapse of the family-run Horgans chain of estate agents.

  ‘Cormac was under fierce financial and emotional strain. The banks were turning the screw and he faced losing everything. I think it was just too much for him.’

  A spokesman for the Irish Property Association, Colm Donegan, said Mr Horgan’s death brings to 26 the number of ‘financial casualties’ from the property and construction industries to have taken their own lives in the past two years of economic turmoil.

  The Bristol Coroner’s Office will release Mr Horgan’s remains tomorrow, with a formal inquest to follow. Mr Horgan, who was …

  Turn to page 3

  – Sunday Herald,

  12 September 2010

  Monday

  20 September 2010

  1

  ‘The ads are up next and then you’re on, Siobhan.’ Siobhan Fallon glanced up from the monitor showing a live feed from TV5’s main studio and nodded at the bored-looking runner. It was a little after seven forty in the morning and her spot on the Full Irish breakfast show was slated for seven forty-five. She had been on the show before and knew the ropes, arriving with plenty of time to get through make-up. Still, a pang of unease clawed her stomach as she heard presenter Carl Magner giving viewers a rundown of the wonders awaiting them on the far shores of the next ad break.

  ‘Coming up in a few minutes we have Siobhan Fallon, chief reporter at the Sunday Herald, talking about her new book, a gripping account of her shocking encounter with the Dublin serial killer they called “the Priest”, and how she very nearly didn’t survive it.’

  A blare of brassy theme
music, then a shot of the book cover filled the screen. It was all lurid reds and golds against a background of the Papal Cross, with the title screaming out in stark white, ‘Crucified: How I Crossed the Priest and Lived to Tell the Tale.’

  God, she loved that cover. Underneath it, in smaller print, was her byline, or, rather, her name. Despite weeks dictating the book onto her digital recorder while she was in hospital – and long months revising and rewriting, getting it lawyered and correcting proofs – she still hadn’t got used to the idea of being an author. It sounded so much better than chief reporter, and her agent said there was even a chance Hollywood could come calling.

  ‘Through here,’ the runner said, pulling back a corner of heavy, black soundproof curtain and guiding Siobhan into the dark fringes of the studio, indicating that she should sit on a straight-backed chair and wait to be called. It was nice and cool in the wings, away from the lights, and oddly calming. She watched as the presenters larked about off air at the far end of the studio, rehearsing in her own mind the points she wanted to get across about the book.

  ‘How’re ya, Siobhan? Two minutes now.’ The floor manager’s silhouette loomed out of the glare of the studio lights to shake her hand. Then he invited her to move over to the curving red sofa on which Full Irish guests were interviewed. By the time she sat down, Magner and his co-presenter, Denise Redmond, were there, too, sleek and welcoming, giving it the full mwah-mwah, the pally shoulder-squeeze, settling her in with practised ease.

  ‘Twenty seconds, guys,’ came the call from behind the camera.

  The two presenters kept up the chit-chat as the floor manager counted them down, asking how long she’d been back at work, whether she was still having to do the physio, whether she’d mind if the camera guy did a close-up of her hands …

  Her hands. She looked down at them, clasped in her lap. On the back of each was a raised starburst of dead white flesh, indelible reminders of the night that bastard Sean Rinn had hammered huge homemade nails through them into a cross made from old wooden planks and hoisted her aloft, trying to rip the life from her. She had scars on her feet and ribs, too. Horrible, ugly stigmata that even now made her shudder every time she showered or had to rub moisturiser into them. But it was the hands that bothered her most. She hated the way other people obsessed over them, wanted to see and touch them, like some awful talisman. No matter how much she’d excised the trauma of her nightmare experience over the intervening months, nothing sapped her spirit like these physical, visible relics of that night.

  ‘Look, I’d prefer if you—’ she said, but it was too late. The floor manager had run out of countdown fingers and both presenters were swivelling their knees, faces and full attention towards the camera.

  ‘So, what would you do if a serial killer chose you as his next victim?’ Magner asked his viewers chummily. ‘Well, with us this morning is a woman who, amazingly, can answer that question.’

  ‘Yes,’ the lovely Redmond took up the theme. ‘Last year Siobhan Fallon, one of Ireland’s best-known newspaper reporters, had an extraordinarily lucky escape after she was attacked and almost died at the hands of the savage serial killer known as the Priest. Welcome, Siobhan. You’re looking amazingly well for someone who only fourteen months ago was nailed to a cross … ’

  ‘Drugs lord, my arse,’ Ford said, flicking a dismissive hand at the newspaper.

  Detective Inspector Mike Mulcahy looked up from his Irish Times, marvelling at Liam Ford’s ability to materialise from nowhere. At six foot one himself, Mulcahy was no midget, but his detective sergeant was a good three inches taller than him, and a few inches wider as well. On that dull September morning, the rain outside sucking all the light and life from the day, he’d rolled up to Mulcahy’s desk as silently as a fogbank furling in off the sea.

  ‘Somebody thought him important enough to spend money on,’ Mulcahy replied. ‘It looks like a professional job.’

  Up against a dreary tribunal report, a factory in Tuam gone bust and yet more stormy economic forecasts for the stumbling Irish economy, the headline they were talking about was not the biggest on the front page. But for two members of the Garda drugs squad’s International Liaison Unit in Dublin Castle, it was the only one likely to be of any real interest: DUBLIN DRUGS LORD SLAIN IN SPAIN

  Mulcahy stood up and handed the newspaper to Ford, who held it at arm’s length as he read the report of how thirty-seven-year-old Declan ‘Bingo’ Begley, a career criminal from Crumlin, had been discovered dead on waste ground in the southern Spanish resort of Fuengirola the day before.

  ‘Where did they get all this stuff about Russians?’ Ford asked, an eyebrow raised in scepticism. He scratched the back of his neck, frowning as he read how the assassination was rumoured to have been carried out on behalf of an expatriate Russian mafia kingpin living in the Marbella area. Begley, allegedly, had beaten up the man’s nephew in a bar fight a couple of weeks earlier. Big mistake.

  ‘No idea,’ Mulcahy said. ‘That story’s the first I heard of it. Probably the local journos getting inventive.’

  The supposed Russian connection was the only part of the story that wasn’t already familiar to Mulcahy. The day before, within hours of the body being discovered, he had received a call at home from Javier Martinez, an old colleague from his years with Europol in Madrid, urgently requesting background information from the Garda Siochana. The dead man, Begley, had been a mid-ranking dealer in one of Dublin’s more vicious drugs gangs before he’d retired, or more accurately – being only twenty-seven at the time – fled, to the balmier criminal climes of the Costa del Sol a decade earlier.

  ‘But over a bar brawl? It’s not exactly the Bingo we used to know, is it? He’d have got some eejit to have the brawl for him.’

  Mulcahy came round the desk, thinking back to the late 1990s, when he and Ford had fancied themselves the scourge of Dublin’s drugs gangs, heading up a task force to tackle the city’s out-of-control heroin epidemic. He’d encountered Begley more than once back then and knew that the man’s reputation, as more of a ladies’ man than your typical Dublin hard case, was well deserved.

  ‘A man can change a lot over the years. Anyway, like I said, Madrid didn’t mention anything to me about a Russian angle.’

  ‘How come they’re so positive it was professional?’

  It was a little too early for Mulcahy to appreciate Ford’s dog-with-a-bone act. Not that it was to be discouraged generally. Friendship aside, that belligerent inquisitiveness was the main reason Mulcahy had asked Ford to come work with him when he set up the unit twelve months previously. But there were times – like first thing on a Monday morning – when it wasn’t the most welcome of personality traits.

  ‘Martinez emailed me the preliminary report,’ Mulcahy said, ‘and some of the crime-scene photos. Here, have a look for yourself.’

  He sat down behind his desk again and swivelled his monitor so that Ford could see the screen as well. He opened a folder of JPEGs and clicked on the first.

  ‘Ah, Christ on a bike,’ Ford said, recoiling from the image: a close-up of a blackened, distorted, blood-caked mass of something that, apart from one open eye, was barely recognisable as a face. Not least because half the lower jaw was missing, exposing several inches of spinal column attached to a gore-spattered torso. ‘Are you trying to make me lose my breakfast?’

  ‘Sorry – wrong one,’ Mulcahy laughed, closing it down and drawing the cursor across to the next photograph. ‘This is what I wanted, the long shot.’

  This image was less repellent to the eye, initially at least. At its top was a clear blue cloudless sky, and at its base what appeared to be a dusty, abandoned building site. Smashed-up red clay roof tiles, rust-streaked chunks of concrete and peeling slabs of plasterboard were scattered all around a patch of scrubby, sun-baked ground. Here and there a yawning fridge or disembowelled washing machine added blocks of stark white to the scene, but the main focus was on a hummock of seemingly ordinary household waste, a metre hig
h and no more than four or five across. It was at the centre of this that Declan Begley’s body was splayed, on its back, fully clothed, with what was left of his jaw hanging loose and seemingly crying for justice to God in heaven above.

  ‘It’s an illegal dump, on an abandoned building site off the coast road between Marbella and Fuengirola, a few kilometres from where Begley lived,’ Mulcahy said. He zoomed in closer to the rubbish pile, pointing at the dead man’s domed abdomen. ‘Bit of a shock for the fly-tipper who found him. The body had been there a couple of days already, badly bloated – it averages thirty degrees Celsius there this time of year. Some pretty horrible rodent and insect damage as well.’

  ‘Nice.’ Ford grimaced. ‘Shotgun, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, old-style – both barrels in the face and chest.’

  ‘But he wasn’t done there?’ Ford asked, circling his finger round the body. It was all a bit too neat, not nearly enough blood and debris around for the incident to have occurred where the body was lying.

  ‘Right. The shooting took place at his house. Early hours of Thursday morning, they reckon.’

  ‘And they know all this how?’

  Mulcahy sat back, beginning to enjoy the inquisition, despite himself. ‘Well, ID was easy: he had a wallet, cards on him, and he’s well known locally. When they got to his address, they found the door open, the rest of his face decorating the hall.’

  ‘Stylish,’ Ford quipped. ‘No witnesses, then?’

  ‘He lived alone. The house is in the hills, on its own parcel of land, no near neighbours.’

  Ford nodded, getting the picture. ‘So whoever did it wanted him found quickly. And who’s going to risk dragging a corpse to a dump unless they want to make a point, right?’

  ‘That’s what they reckon: classic gangster job. It’s a message, a warning.’

  ‘So maybe the Russian-mafia thing isn’t all that farfetched, then?’