Free Disappeared by Anthony Quinn Page A

on the right track. He went out to the coffee room where Irwin and Harland were trying to persuade a female officer to share her bag of crisps.
    A look, smooth as steel, slid across Irwin’s charming face when he saw Daly. He got up and made four cups of black coffee. Everyone at the station was used to taking it that way, since the milk in the fridge was usually well past its sell-by date.
    “I’m not disturbing you?” asked Daly, glancing at the retreating figure of the young female officer. Deep down, he wondered if he were alive at all.
    “No. And so what even if you were?” replied Irwin.
    The detective told Daly he’d been unable to get through to Father Aidan Fee. “The day after he found Devine’s body he left on some sort of a retreat,” he said. “Apparently, he’ll be gone for several weeks.”
    “What’s a retreat?” asked Harland.
    “They’re like second honeymoons for Catholic clergymen,” explained Irwin, winking at Daly. “Reinvigorates them when they get bored with the pope and all that Roman diktat. The priests go off somewhere nice and peaceful to spend a little quality time with God.”
    Daly smiled thinly. “What’s that funny smell, like pears?” he asked.
    “Perfume,” replied Irwin. “Not mine, I might add.”
    “Of course.”
    Irwin handed him a mug of black coffee and yawned.
    Daly sipped at the mug and eyed the younger detective over the rim.
    “Anything come through on the broken-down van?” asked Irwin.
    “It was stolen from a house at Mullenakill yesterday afternoon. The owner said two masked men broke into the house and demanded the keys.”
    “You think they knew what was in your car?”
    Daly shrugged. “Too early to say. If it was an ambush, they were quick off the mark.”
    “Maybe it was just a coincidence.”
    Daly’s raised eyebrow suggested he was a man who did not believe in coincidences.
    They moved on to discussing Devine’s career at the solicitors’, and what links it might have with his murder.
    “You still think a former client murdered Devine?” asked Irwin.
    “Not necessarily. But we need access to all the cases he was involved in to rule out the possibility. All we can do at this stage is scrape away the layers of paint to find what’s hidden beneath.”
    Irwin put down his coffee. “It won’t be easy extracting that kind of information from O’Hare’s firm.”
    Daly almost missed the question mark left hanging by the comment.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You don’t remember the senior partner, Brian Cavanagh? He died of a heart attack a few years ago. But back in the ’80s, he was a self-styled human-rights lawyer with an interesting client list. Let’s just say he wasn’t the type to spend his spare time rehearsing the Queen’s Oath.”
    An image went off in Daly’s mind like a flashgun. A shiny-eyed, shrewd firebrand of a solicitor reading an angry statement outside a courthouse. A series of high-profile cases involving IRA men had brought Brian Cavanagh media notoriety. To his critics, the solicitor’s interest in human rights extended only as far as the Republican prisoners he represented.
    In fact, within the security forces, there were unfounded rumors that he provided a constant stream of messages between prisoners and the IRA leadership. As a Catholic, Daly tended to believe the unofficial version: that Cavanagh, like many solicitors working for Republican clients, wasn’t politically motivated, his only interest was getting at the truth. Either way, the missing file began to take on a more menacing significance.
    “There’s something Mr. O’Hare’s not letting us in on,” said Daly.
    “He seemed preoccupied at Devine’s cottage.”
    “Any connection between Devine’s death and his firm will arouse a lot of public interest. We’ll let him sweat it out for now. See if the press comes up with anything interesting.”
    “By the way, Butler has sent a preliminary report on the forensics. He left you this.”
    He