Red Light by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

something about four feet wide.
    ‘But this girl—?’
    ‘This girl was skinny, and all dressed in black. Black jeans and a black jacket, with a black scarf tied around her head. He said she was very black herself, like, but very pretty. That Rihanna, that’s who he said she reminded him of.’
    ‘Okay, I see. Did he see where either of them went?’
    ‘After the girl had gone by, he stepped out into the street to take another look at her, but she was gone. So either she was a real quick walker, because it’s all uphill there, or else she disappeared into one of the shops.’
    ‘How about the man in the purple suit?’
    ‘No sign of him, neither.’
    Katie sat down. The pale sun that had come out briefly had been swallowed up behind the clouds again and her office became so gloomy that she was tempted to tell O’Donovan to switch on the overheard light. A few drops of rain sprinkled against the window.
    ‘Did the butcher boy see if the girl was carrying anything? Like a bag, or a sack? Maybe a golf bag, something like that?’
    ‘If he did, he didn’t say so. You’re thinking how she got the shotgun into the premises, if it was her who did it?’
    ‘Well, of course. And you should have thought of that.’
    ‘I’ll go back and ask him. I have to go back anyway because one of the fellers who works in the African restaurant saw the feller in the purple suit and he thinks the cook there knows who he is, but the cook hadn’t come on for his shift yet and the feller didn’t know where he lives.’
    ‘Okay, Patrick, if you can do that, please. Anybody else see them? The girl, or the purple suit man?’
    ‘If they did, they’re not saying. But Horgan’s asking around the various African communities to see if anybody knows who they are. There can’t be too many black fellers strutting around in purple suits now, can there? And if we don’t have any luck there, we’ll canvas the menswear shops and the tailors’.’
    Katie said, ‘I’ll have a word with Maeve Twomey.’ Maeve Twomey was her ethnic liaison officer and closely in touch with the various immigrant groups who had settled in Cork, especially the Poles and the Lithuanians and the Africans. ‘She can talk to Emeka Ikebuasi, he’s the big cheese in the Nigerian community. And that Somali, whatever his name is. Geedi something. The one who keeps jiggling up and down while he’s talking to you like he’s doing a rain dance.’
    ‘A rain dance, that’s rich. In Cork, how would you ever know if it had worked or not?’
    As if to emphasize his point, rain lashed against the window, hard and brittle, and the hooded crows on the car parked opposite took to the air, as if at last they had lost their patience with being rained on.
    Once O’Donovan had gone, Katie eased the lid off her coffee and opened the manila folder in front of her. This contained a list of all the charges they had brought against Michael Gerrety relating to his sex website, Cork Fantasy Girls, as well as his financial connections to at least seven brothels and three so-called massage parlours and fitness clubs, including the notorious Nightingale Club on Grafton Street.
    Gerrety had contended that he had done nothing legally or morally wrong. By allowing girls to advertise on his website, he said, he was making sure that their business was all out in the open and they were much safer than if they had been obliged to rely on cards in newsagents’ windows or small ads in the local papers, or walking the streets.
    Women’s and immigrants’ support groups in Cork had combined together to start a campaign called Turn Off The Red Light, the aim of which was to eradicate local prostitution and the trafficking of women for sex. In retaliation, Gerrety had launched Give It The Green Light, to fight for the decriminalization of sex work.
    Give It The Green Light had produced posters of pretty, smiling women saying ‘I’m Happy In My Job – And I’m a Sex Worker’. If Gerrety hadn’t