Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Read Online Free PDF

laboratory. She was ready now to talk to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy.
    ***
    ‘It’s Micky Crounan,’ she told him, as she entered his office. He was sitting at his desk, binding grip-tape around the handle of a golf club. He had one end of the tape wrapped around his five-iron and the other clenched between his teeth.
    ‘Oh, and good morning to you, DS Maguire,’ he said, without opening his teeth. ‘I thought I asked you to report to me first thing.’
    Katie didn’t answer that but sat down opposite him, setting down on his desk the file she had received from Finola McFerren about Michael Gerrety’s acquittal. On top of that she opened the folder containing the technicians’ photographs and the ultrasound scan of Micky Crounan’s head.
    ‘Micky Crounan? Why would anybody want kill Micky Crounan?’ said Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy. ‘I knew Micky myself – not particularly well, but at least to say how-do to.’
    ‘Well, that’s for me to find out, isn’t it?’ Katie told him. ‘At the moment Crounan’s Bakery on Maylor Street is all shuttered up and the last time we called at the Crounan house there was nobody home. Bill Phinner estimates that he’s been dead for nearly a week.’
    Bryan Molloy finished binding the handle of his mashie and propped it up against the side of his desk. ‘Somebody’s trying to make a point, I’d say. We had a similar case in Limerick once, a restaurant owner who defaulted on his loan from one of the local sharks. They found his head in his own kitchen, in an Irish stew, simmering away with the carrots and the onions. Believe me, everybody else who owed that fellow money, they paid up quickly enough after that.’
    ‘I don’t know yet if Micky Crounan upset anybody, or had any serious debts,’ said Katie. ‘The first thing we have to do is find his wife, Mary. I have an officer keeping an eye on the family house for me, in case she comes home.’
    ‘Very well,’ said Bryan Molloy. ‘I’ll let you get on with it. But there’s two other matters I want to discuss with you before you go.’
    ‘I assume that Michael Gerrety is one of them.’
    ‘He is, yes,’ said Bryan Molloy. He paused for a moment, frowning, and then he said, ‘Michael Gerrety was acquitted yesterday of all thirty-seven charges of sex-trafficking and brothel-keeping and reckless endangerment, and so far as I’m concerned there’s an end to it. Finish. You will not pursue Michael Gerrety any further, and you will discontinue any surveillance on him or his employees or his premises. Any further investigation of Michael Gerrety would amount to harassment, and I don’t want us being accused of hounding a perfectly innocent local businessman because some female officer has got a bee in her bonnet about young women being exploited for sex, which as far as I understand it they aren’t. They’re all doing it voluntarily, and they’re enjoying it, and it gives them a standard of living far better than they could expect if they took some minimum-wage job stacking shelves at Tesco’s.’
    ‘I see,’ said Katie. ‘And what’s the other matter you wanted to rant about?’
    ‘Don’t you speak to me like that, DS Maguire,’ retorted Bryan Molloy. His eyes bulged and his face began to flush. ‘Dermot O’Driscoll has gone now, and this station is going to be run with discipline, and strict observance of the chain of command.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Katie. ‘I should have said “complain”, shouldn’t I? Not “rant”.’
    Bryan Molloy took several deep breaths and rocked himself backwards and forwards in his chair. Katie had seen him do this before and realized that it must be his technique for calming himself down. Eventually, he said, ‘One of your team has been asking questions about me. Questions related to financial transactions.’
    ‘Oh, you mean like backhanders? Payments for services rendered?’
    ‘Let me make this crystal-clear, Katie. I have never accepted