Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [87]
“This is an amazing place,” Sara said as she followed Fitzmaurice inside the Garda Carriage and Traffic Building. They walked down a long hallway, past offices where uniformed officers manned desks, to a suite of rooms that housed the drug unit. There Fitzmaurice introduced Sara to a detective named Colm Byrne and explained that he had need of an interrogation room.
Byrne, who had the look of a young tough who could street-fight with the best of them, gave Sara the once-over from head to toe.
“You’ve come up in the world,” he said to Fitzmaurice with a toothy grin. “Circulating with a much better class of people now, are you?”
Fitzmaurice smiled jovially. “I’m still knocking the north side riffraff’s heads together as need be, Colm, and if you keep drooling on the good colonel’s shoes, I’ll soon be adding your name to my list.”
Byrne threw back his head and laughed. “I want none of that. The interrogation rooms aren’t in use. Take your pick.”
The underground rooms had one-way mirrors that hid small viewing areas where digital video equipment was set up to record interviews and interrogations. The walls were a neutral beige and the rooms were well lit. The only furniture consisted of rectangular office tables and several straight-backed chairs.
“Perfect,” Sara said.
“Soon you’ll have Paquette in hand,” Fitzmaurice said, “which may put you in close reach of Spalding. But who are you really after?”
“Is it that obvious?”
He perched on the end of the table and studied Sara’s face. “Yes. You’ve skirted around Paquette until it has become absolutely necessary to confront her, you’ve relied on me as your intermediary to make it seem as though the investigation has been conducted completely independent of any involvement on your part. Except for being introduced to Colm Byrne, you have avoided all possible contact with Garda personnel other than myself. I’m half convinced that soon you’ll be asking me to delete all references in my reports of your presence in the Republic and your participation in the investigation.”
Sara shook her head. “I have no need to do that, and to ease your mind, I’m not setting you up.”
“Since I am an Irishman and a peeler, and therefore doubly suspicious both by disposition and training, normally I wouldn’t believe you.” Fitzmaurice rose to his feet and smiled. “But I do. However, you’ve severely limited my ability to assist you.”
“The person I want is outside of your reach,” Sara said.
“Fair enough, but when all is over, I expect to be told the truth, in the strictest confidence, of course, with no mention of it to be made in my official reports.”
“Fair enough,” Sara echoed. “How much time do we have before Paquette is picked up?”
“About a half an hour, more or less, I would say.”
“Then let’s go over all the facts and information we have before she gets here.”
Fitzmaurice opened the folder he’d been carrying and sat at the table. “I have a statement from Paquette’s driver you might find interesting, as well as a report from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that came in overnight, addressed to you, about Paquette’s rather precarious current employment and financial situation.”
Joséphine Paquette listened as Hayden LaPorte, the Canadian artist she had just finished interviewing, prattled on, mentioning for the third time that the Canadian ambassador to the Irish Republic would be attending the gallery opening of his one-man show on Friday night.
Bright overhead lights glared against bare walls where paintings were stacked, waiting to be hung. One of them was a large triptych of a band of Inuit, moving camp across the frozen tundra in a snowstorm, a work that captured the harsh beauty of the Artic. The gallery was uncomfortably cold in spite of the warm September day and the bright interior lights, as though a hundred or more Dublin winters had seeped through the stone walls and created a permanent chill that would never go away. The triptych only served to heighten the effect.
LaPorte, a stocky, bearded, nervous,