The Angel Tapes (23 page)

“You can't do this!”

“I've just fucking done it, head. File a complaint later.”

The cottage was tiny. The first floor consisted of a single room with a small kitchen beyond; a staircase ascended at an angle of forty-five degrees. Although the sun shone brightly, the little room, crowded with worn furniture, was gloomy and cold.

“Sit down, Mr. Slattery,” Blade ordered.

Slattery sat.

“What do you want? I haven't done anything.”

Blade said nothing. Silence was best when dealing with a nervous suspect. Maintain silence long enough and he'll be the first to break it. Birdcalls from the backyard and the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece were the only sounds for almost a minute.

Slattery broke the silence.

“I'd nothing to do with it. Honest to God.”

Sweetman had her notebook out. “To do with what, Mr. Slattery?”

His eyes were wild. “Nothing!”

“Fair enough,” Blade said. “We'll talk about this ‘nothing' later on. What we want at the moment is information on the gelignite that disappeared in 1989.”

Slattery went white. “I know nothing about that.”

“Right. That's why McCarthy fucked you out, is it? For knowing nothing?”

Blade stood up and walked slowly behind Slattery's chair. Before the man knew what was happening, Blade had grasped him by the left wrist and wrenched Slattery's arm viciously up behind his back. He screamed.

“Sir!”

“Don't worry, Sweetman. I'll leave it in its socket like God intended it.”

“Is that you, Colm?” came a faint voice from upstairs. “Is everything all right?”

“Answer your mammy now, Colm,” Blade said. “Tell her you're fine.” Another wrench.

“I'm fine, Ma!” Slattery gasped. “Everything's okay.”

“I thought I heard voices.”

“Tell her it's the telly.”

“It's only the telly, Ma.”

“Sir, this is
wrong,
” Sweetman said, as Blade forced the unfortunate man down on his knees, left arm still firmly pinioned at his back. Slattery moaned.

“So is mass murder, Sweetman. And we haven't time for niceties.”

He forced Slattery farther down until the man's nose was touching the pile of the thick, sheepskin rug on the floor. Then he placed a foot on his head.

“I want answers, Slattery. I want them quick and I want them now. Who took the gelignite?”

No answer.

Blade rammed his foot down hard on Slattery's head. There was a muffled shriek as his nose burst asunder on the rug.

“Sir, for God's sake!”

He ignored Sweetman and wrenched Slattery's wrist higher until his thumb touched his neck.

“
Who,
Slattery? Who took the fucking gelignite?”

“I don't know!”

Blade kicked Slattery's face down again, harder. Blood spattered the white sheepskin. Macken stomped down on the back of his head; once, twice. The man went into convulsions.

“One more time,” Blade said coldly. “Who took the gelignite?”

Slattery said something. His voice was barely audible.

“What? Speak up.”

Blade removed his foot from the man's head and pulled him up by the left arm. Slattery cried out and Sweetman turned away in horror when she saw the gory ruin that was Slattery's face. Blood flowed freely down his shirt front, staining the white rug. Some of his teeth were missing.

“Carol,” he moaned. “Carol.”

Sweetman saw something bestial cross Blade's face; it was the feral look of a carnivore. It would haunt her dreams for weeks to come. She knew at that moment why Macken never talked about his time as a soldier. Oh yes, he would mention the places he'd visited during his tours of duty: exotic places that she'd probably never see. The bars, the clubs, the beaches. But never the combat. And now Sweetman knew why.

“Carol,” Blade said in a half-whisper. “Carol who?”

“I d-don't know. I don't know. She never told me her second name.”

“Okay,” Macken said, and allowed Slattery to fall to the rug amid his own blood.

So Angel had a name: Carol. Blade relaxed, went to the little window, and stared out past the flowerbox on the outside windowsill. Carol, Carol.

When he turned at last, Sweetman was wiping the man's face with a tea towel. Already Slattery's right eye had swelled and purpled. He was whimpering softly like a puppy.

“Colm Slattery,” Blade announced, “I'm arresting you on suspicion of being an accessory to murder.”

Twenty-eight

“Came as soon as I could,” Humphrey Bell told the assistant commissioner in an accent that never failed to set Duffy thinking of boating on the river Cam, girls in white hats and frocks, and champagne picnics on green lawns. “Traffic accident at Loughlinstown. Cars backed up for miles.”

“Sunday drivers,” Duffy said equally laconically. “But we shouldn't complain; they're our bread and butter. And thanks for coming at such short notice, Humphrey. Cup of tea?”

Bell waved a hand impatiently. “Let's get it over with, Mr. Duffy. We've some friends coming by later this afternoon.”

Paddy Flynn and four other officers were clustered around a computer terminal in the incident room. They stood aside to make space for the IBM programmer from the Park. He sat down to the left of the keyboard.

“Right,” he said. “Show me these ‘locked' files of yours.”

Flynn showed him. One by one, he brought up the offending files contained in the folders of 1989 and 1990.

ACCESS DENIED: PASSWORD PLEASE?

“I see what you mean,” Bell said. “Except that these files aren't locked, Sergeant. We're actually
in
the file you have up at the moment. What you see is what you get, as they say. That's all there is; no more, no less.”

“I don't follow you, Mr. Bell.”

“Don't you? What I'm saying is that the file as it once was is no more. Somebody has written over it.”

Flynn scratched his chin. “Deleted it?”

“I'm afraid not. Whoever did this knew exactly what he was about. Had he simply deleted it, then we'd have stood a reasonable chance of retrieving most—if not all—of it. You see, a deleted file remains on the hard disk for a limited time, even though you'll not find it listed in the directory. Over-write a file, however, and the original is gone forever.”

“Jesus.”

Humphrey Bell smiled. “But all is not lost, Sergeant. Would somebody get me the Park on the telephone?”

Bell was shortly put through to the IBM room.

“Declan? Humphrey here. No, no, I'm at the Square. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to fish out last week's backup tapes for me? No, not all of them; '89 and '90—serious crimes. Good man.”

He turned to Flynn.

“Our friend was clever. But not clever enough. What he didn't know is that we back up the IBM once a day. It's a precaution that has paid dividends from time to time. You see, all the contents are saved on tape. So, should anything go awry, then it's simply a matter of working from the copy. Our friend may have wiped the files from the network, but their replacements should be on line in a minute or two.”

Flynn shook his head in admiration. Then he said: “Those weren't the only files, Mr. Bell. I was cross-referencing some data from other sources.”

“We'll get to them presently. First let's retrieve your own.”

The files came on line as Bell had promised. Another phone call led to the retrieval of the information that pointed a finger at Jim Roche. Bell stood up.

“Time I was getting along, gentlemen. I've some guests whom I can't keep waiting. Any idea who the culprit might be?”

“No, sir,” Flynn answered, “I haven't the foggiest.”

But when Bell had shut the door behind him, the detective sergeant turned to the others and told them of his suspicions.

“Christ! Do you know what you're saying, Paddy?”

“I know, I know. But who else could it have been? He was sitting right there when I was going through them files. He even asked for a printout.”

“Fuck
me.
Duffy'll have to be told; you know that, don't you?”

*   *   *

“Jayziz, what happened to
him?
” the desk sergeant asked as Blade escorted a battered and handcuffed Slattery into Harcourt Square. There were wisps of white wool sticking to the matted blood on his nose and cheeks.

“Walked into the back of a bus. It'll probably need a respray. Is there an interview room free?”

“It's a busy day, sir. We've that shooting in Tallaght and two rape cases.” He consulted his book. “Number two is free. He ought to get that face seen to, sir.”

“I'll take care of it. Listen, can you ask someone to get hold of last Saturday's paper and have it sent down there?”

“Which one, sir?”

“It doesn't matter. The
Times,
the
Herald,
anything.”

Sweetman opened the door of the interrogation room, admitted Macken and his captive and locked it from the inside. Blade unwrapped a Hamlet and lit it. Sweetman started the recorder.

“Sunday, the twelfth of July, 1998, approximately 4
P.M
. Detective Sergeant Orla Sweetman here. With me is Detective Superintendent Blade Macken and the suspect Colm Slattery—”

“—and the forecast for today,” said Blade, “is for right thundery showers of hail, followed by blustery gales, and belts of depression.”

“Sir,
please.
”

“Sorry, Sweetman.”

He frogmarched the suspect to the two-way mirror that extended the length of a wall and held Slattery's face in front of it. His unswollen left eye opened wide with horror.

“Look at the state of you, Slattery! Go on, have a good look at yourself. Believe me, you'll look a hundred times worse if you fuck with me now. I'm telling you, your poor sick mammy'll be a lot sicker when she sees you after I'm through with you. Do you follow me?”

He unlocked the handcuffs and propped Slattery in a chair.

“Right. This Carol woman, how did you meet her?”

“In the pub.”

“Which pub?” Blade asked.

A pause. “The Hamlet.”

“It's in Johnstown Bridge,” Sweetman assisted. “We turned off there for the factory.”

“Oh … right. I remember now.”

“We all used to drink there after work,” Slattery said.

“We?”

“The lads from IIE. Every Friday mostly.”

“Did she approach you, or did you approach her?”

“I … I don't remember. I—aagh!”

“Suspect has just fallen from his chair,” Blade said, “and Superintendent Macken is helping him to his feet. Are you okay, Colm?”

Sweetman looked appalled.

“Who made the first move?” Blade asked.

“Ehh, I did. But she was kind of leading me on, y'know.”

“I know. Did you go to bed with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Often?”

“Yeah.”

“How often?”

“Uh, I don't know. A lot.”

There was a tap on the door. Sweetman opened it and accepted a folded newspaper from a young officer.

“Was she good?”

“Jayziz, yeah.”

“Fucked like a baboon in heat, did she?”

“I … I don't—”

“The best fuck you ever had, eh Colm?”

“Hmm, yeah.”

Blade paused then; something about Slattery had struck a chord. How old was he? Older than Blade, that was for sure. Forty-eight, forty-nine? Yet, despite his earlier show of bravado, there was something innocent about Colm Slattery. Nine years ago, a forty-year-old bachelor is living with his mother in the one-horse town of Johnstown Bridge, where the world revolves around a job at the explosives facility, the football club, and a pub called The Hamlet.
Nothing ever happens in Johnstown Bridge.
It could have been a book title. Blade saw it all in his mind's eye: a young woman, a stranger, cunning as a vixen, walks into a country bar on a Friday evening, sits down in a corner with a glass of beer, and observes.

The men from the plant cluster at tables and line the counter, released for two days and three nights from the tedium of their jobs. They drink, make merry, and engage in the mating ritual with the local women.

The predator scans the faces of the drinking, laughing men; sees through the cigarette smoke a man who drinks faster and laughs more shrilly than the rest; catches his eye, and holds it. It's the first time Colm Slattery has ever been so blatantly propositioned with a look. He's hooked.

“Would I be right in saying that Carol was the
only
fuck you ever had?” Blade said. “You were a virgin, weren't you, Colm, before you met Carol?”

“Ehh…”

“It's all right, Colm. Nothing wrong with being a virgin. I used to be one myself, you know.”

Slattery bowed his head.

“What did she want the gelignite for? Did she say?”

“Yeah. She said it was for East Timor.”

“What!”

Slattery was scared that Macken would hit him again. His words tumbled out in a torrent.

“That's what she said—East Timor—she was helping the rebels there, her and some friends of hers—they were fighting for their freedom against the Indonesians.”

“I see. And you believed her, did you, Colm? You thought she and her friends were going to use the jelly to waste a few nasty little slant-eyed soldiers? No skin off
your
nose—if you'll pardon my indelicacy.”

“Uh, yeah, I did.”

“Do you know what she really wanted it for, Colm? Have a look. Have a
good
look.”

“Superintendent Macken,” Sweetman said, “shows suspect the front page of the
Evening Herald,
dated Saturday, the fourth of July.”