Eye for an Eye by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

suspected as strongly as she did that Dermot Breen had killed Father Fiachra, and they were both aware that Redmond Keane had probably put him up to his satanic ‘prank’. But there had been no eye-witnesses and none of the forensic evidence was conclusive. Clodagh had seen Redmond talking to a man in a hood, but even if Clodagh hadn’t been killed her evidence would have carried very little weight in court.
    Katie stared at her reflection. If only she and her reflection could be twins, and one Katie could go on a few days’ holiday to Gran Canaria while the other Katie stayed here in Cork, questioning Dermot Breen until he broke down and admitted what he had done – not that she believed for one moment that he would admit it. He was physically gigantic and mentally impervious and she could tell that he had never been afraid of anyone in his life.
    But then she thought: maybe one twin could ask him what had really happened in Mary O’Donnell’s garden. Not a twin of herself, but Father Fiachra’s twin, Deaglán. If Father Fiachra had lived until he was eighty-three, there was a remote chance that his brother had, too, even if he had led the life of a gangster.
    She picked up her phone and rang Detective Aileen Brody, who was on night duty.
    ‘Aileen? It’s DS Maguire. See if you can find me a fellow called Deaglán Caomhánach, He has a whole rake of criminal convictions so it shouldn’t be too hard to find him, if he’s still living and breathing. The family came from Fair Hill, originally. That’s right, Caomhánach. Call me back if you have any luck, or even if you don’t.’
    *
    He was sitting by the window in the residents’ lounge with a tartan blanket over his knees, white-haired, his cheeks deeply lined, staring at the small brick-paved courtyard outside, where pigeons were pecking at some slices of soda bread.
    Katie walked over and stood close beside him, but he continued to stare at the pigeons, making small sipping noises with his false teeth and occasionally clearing his throat.
    ‘Deaglán?’ said Katie, after a while.
    ‘Who wants to know?’ asked Deaglán, still without looking up at her.
    ‘My name’s Kathleen – Kathleen Maguire. I’m a detective superintendent from the Garda station at Anglesea Street.’
    ‘Are you now? Are you shades still going to be bothering me when I’m lying in my casket?’
    ‘I’m not after you, Deaglán,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve come about your brother, Fiachra,’
    ‘My saintly brother Fiachra, God rest his soul,’ said Deaglán. ‘Don’t worry, Detective Superintendent, the matron told me yesterday what had happened to him. Of all the people in the world who didn’t deserve to die a horrible violent death like that, it was Fiachra.’
    ‘We have a suspect in custody,’ said Katie. ‘We’re ninety-nine per cent sure that he murdered your brother, but he’s denying it of course and our evidence isn’t exactly what you’d call watertight.’
    Deaglán turned his head around and looked at Katie for the first time, and he looked so much like his brother that it was unnerving. Of course she had never seen Father Fiachra alive, but she doubted that his eyes would have been so cold and so penetrating. Deaglán had the appearance of a man who didn’t care how much he hurt people, so long as he got what he wanted.
    He sipped at his false teeth again and then he said, ‘Why don’t you bring your man around here and leave me alone with him for half an hour? I’ll make sure that justice is done.’
    ‘I think I have a better idea,’ said Katie. ‘One that wouldn’t entail me having to arrest you afterwards for manslaughter.’
    Deaglán suddenly grinned, and then just as suddenly stopped grinning. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘What’s your better idea, Kathleen?’
    *
    When Katie and Detective O’Donovan entered the interview room, Dermot was drumming his enormous fingers on the table top and he didn’t stop drumming when Katie sat down