Whatever it Takes by Tadhg Coakley

Author:Tadhg Coakley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mercier Press
Published: 2020-04-08T10:33:26+00:00

42

Collins passed the two queues in the vestibule of Anglesea Street Garda Station.

Immigrants lined up on the right, trying to get visas or to extend them. A mixture of races and features, most people trying not to appear worried or guilty. On the left, the queue for driving licence and passport signatures and people who wanted to report something.

He waved to the desk sergeant.

‘Quiet, Tom?’

‘Hectic here, Collins.’

The open-plan office area on the first floor was empty. Christmas decorations bedecked the far corner where June and another female colleague had hung them. He took off his coat and draped it over his chair. He walked to June’s desk and saw that her coat and handbag were there too.

She worked with Clancy’s team now that Collins had been removed from active duty. She was running down the time until her early retirement in a few months. He went outside and noticed movement in the Incident Room down the hall. Four people stood around Clancy, who was seated and talking on speakerphone.

Collins entered the room. June, O’Regan, Mick Murphy and Michael O’Mahony all turned to him. Clancy ignored him.

‘Did he get a reg?’ Clancy said into the phone.

‘No,’ came the reply. ‘“A big blue van” is all I’m getting.’

‘Any descriptions?’

‘The girl is maybe twenty, dressed in a black skirt with black tights and blue denim jacket and black boots. Long blonde hair, thin face, he says. One hundred and sixty centimetres in height, whatever that is – she’s fairly small. The boy is taller, one hundred and eighty centimetres, longish dark hair, thin, wearing a grey hoodie and blue jeans. He says he’d recognise them again.’

Collins couldn’t place the garda’s voice, but it was an East Cork accent. He got it: Jim O’Toole.

‘Any description of the assailants?’

‘They wore balaclavas. One was about one seventy or one eighty – I’ve no idea how tall that is, five-eleven I think. He said he was the same height as Jones here, who’s about that. He had jeans on and a black jacket. Well built, a bit of a gut. The balaclava was pulled off him at some point, but he didn’t get a good look at the face.

‘He says the other guy is very big. He says well over two metres and fat. He was wearing some kind of a grey tracksuit and boots. He’s very fat, the witness says.’

‘What are those heights?’ Clancy said.

‘The girl is five-two,’ Collins said. ‘The boy six feet. The two men are five-eleven and over six-six.’

Clancy glared at him and returned to the phone.

‘Where’s the witness from again?’ he asked into the phone.

‘Bilbao, he says. The Basque Country.’

‘That’s Spain, isn’t it?’ O’Regan said.

‘Don’t we have a South American woman doing some placement on the first floor?’ Collins said to June.

‘Yes, she’s on work experience. From Peru, I think.’

Clancy reasserted himself. ‘Bring him in; we need to quiz him a bit more here and get Finbarr to stay and organise the door-to-door. We need his prints too. I’m sending June and Michael out there now with the tech gang.

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