Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [107]
But the crowning bit of news came when Noel Clancy told him that a petition to the judge would be made that very Monday morning asking for the proceedings to be closed, which, under Irish law, effectively barred any written publication or public broadcast of the particulars surrounding the case.
“It seems we’ve been dealt a cold deck of cards,” Clancy had said.
“Or the Americans have sweetened the pot by offering to outsource a thousand or more jobs to a wholly owned Irish subsidiary to keep the Celtic Tiger roaring,” Fitzmaurice replied.
“You have a very pessimistic view of the world.”
“No,” Fitzmaurice said, “it’s just politics I don’t like.”
“Well, let it go, Hugh. You’ve done your job and now it’s in the hands of the politicians, whether you like it or not. Don’t go off and dig yourself a pit to fall into.”
At his office that morning Fitzmaurice placed a call to Sara Brannon to inform her of the situation, only to be told that she’d been reassigned and was no longer at the Pentagon. After completing a summary report on the Spalding case he faxed the official notification of Spalding’s capture to Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Pentagon, before leaving to visit Cloverhill Prison.
Located in Clondalkin, five miles south of the city on the bank of River Camac, Cloverhill was a modern facility that housed over four hundred inmates. Inside he met with the assistant governor of the institution and asked to see Spalding’s visitor records. According to the sign-in roster the solicitor representing Spalding had visited him last Saturday, accompanied by another man, one Major Stedman, a United States Marine Corps officer attached to the American embassy.
When Fitzmaurice asked if there might be any surveillance video of the solicitor and the Marine officer, he was escorted to a closed-circuit monitoring station and shown a clip of the two men registering at the visitors reception area. Major Stedman was one of the men who’d bustled Sara Brannon off to the airport.
He left the prison feeling both angry and dispirited, and the next day he went about his job trying to sort out what, if anything, he could do on his own to stop the cover-up. All of his reports and supplemental information had been sealed by the court, and he was obligated to let the matter drop. But surely there had to be a way to get around it. He had DVD copies of Spalding’s and Paquette’s interrogations, but he needed to hit upon a scheme that would allow him to put them to use without making a target of himself.
On Wednesday he had an idea that took him to Spalding’s motor yacht. He searched it, and the following morning he took a page from Spalding’s book of tricks and, using an alias, bought an inexpensive mobile phone with prepaid minutes. On St. Stephen’s Green he stood across the street from Paquette’s hotel, slipped one of the forged documents he’d found hidden on the motor yacht into an envelope, addressed it to Paquette, sought out a young lad passing by, and asked him to deliver it to the hotel bellman.
“What’s in for me, then?” the lad asked in a distinct Irish brogue that left no doubt of his Dublin roots.
“Ten euros,” Fitzmaurice replied. “Here are five for you now. Tell the bellman to delivery it straightaway and give him this fiver for his trouble. You’ll have your second five when you report back to me that it’s done.”
The young boy took the envelope, stuffed the bills in his pocket, and gazed up at Fitzmaurice with mischief in his eyes. Before he could dart away ten euros richer, his job left undone, Fitzmaurice grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, opened his jacket, and let him take a good long look at his holstered handgun.
“You do not want to be skipping off without doing your little task, now, do you, my lad?” he asked pleasantly.
The wide-eyed boy gulped, shook his head, ran across the street clutching the envelope, and disappeared into the hotel. Within a few minutes he came back into view, returned for his fiver, and took