Private Dublin

Chapter 89

Mo-bot, Sci and our LA team sent the evidence we’d accumulated to Eli Carver, who referred it to Marie Silver, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. From there the FBI got involved and coordinated the effort with the Garda, who wanted to interview me. I refused, saying I didn’t feel they could guarantee my safety.

I’d used the sensation of Lawrence Finch’s arrest to slip away from the Curragh, and had booked myself a room in a new hotel in the city, from where I’d asked Mo-bot and Sci to communicate with the Irish authorities and inform them that I was only willing to give my statement on neutral ground, to senior representatives of Irish law enforcement, government and the judiciary, and that these had to be people with reputations that were beyond reproach.

We suggested Kearney Stud as the meeting place, and Noah and Mary were only too happy to host. I felt safe with them because I knew they’d made an enemy of Lawrence Finch before I’d been drawn into this case. They felt they owed their lives to me and were eager to do whatever they could to repay their perceived debt.

The Irish government agreed to my terms and sent the Secretary General of the Department of Justice, a serving judge, and the detective chief superintendent in charge of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, to take my deposition.

And so, two days after Lawrence Finch’s arrest, I found myself in Noah and Mary’s dining room being served coddle, a delicious sausage and bacon stew, alongside Mary’s homemade soda bread, sharing what I knew with Judge Nessa Boland, Department of Justice Secretary General Helen Higgins, and Detective Chief Superintendent Kieran McQuinn.

“Lawrence Finch has many enemies,” Helen said. As a senior civil servant she had seen a succession of politicians come and go, and probably knew more than most about Ireland’s rich and powerful. “I wouldn’t worry about him evading justice. Not this time. The people he has acted against will ensure he is held to account. And his friends won’t want to be tainted by scandal. I bet not a man in Dublin will admit to knowing him tonight.”

“Will you cut a deal with him, to get him to give up the membership of Propaganda Tre?” I asked, after I finished the last mouthfuls of the delicious coddle.

“We can certainly try,” Judge Boland said. She was thoughtful and severe, and I could easily imagine her intimidating criminals. Even someone as arrogant and entitled as Lawrence Finch would shrink in her presence. “We have legal arrangements that enable us to reduce time served in exchange for cooperation.”

“Would you like some more, Mr. Morgan?” Mary asked, offering me the serving dish.

I nodded. “Only to be greedy. It’s delicious. Thank you.”

“You’ll never have to thank us,” Noah said, and Mary smiled and nodded. “And you’ll always have a home here in Ireland. We owe you a debt we can never repay. You’ve freed our family from those cruel men. Saved us.”

“We all owe you a debt,” Detective Chief Superintendent Kieran McQuinn added. “These people were a blight on our country.”

“I just want to see them stopped, so I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” I said.

“We’ll do our very best,” Helen assured me.

“What about Raymond Chalmont?” I asked.

There had been no sign of him since he’d fled the scene of Andi and Sam’s murders, and it worried me that the man with the vendetta that had started this investigation was still at large.

“He’s gone to ground,” Kieran said. “But we want to assure you we’re doing everything possible to find him.”

It was no reflection on the Irish authorities, but I couldn’t trust our futures to that assurance. Mary’s food lost some of its flavor as my unease deepened. For so long as Raymond Chalmont was free, my life and Justine’s would always be in danger.