Free Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) by Graham Masterton Page A

never forgive you if you’ve hurt him,’ said Shelgah Hagerty.
    ‘He’s living and breathing, Shelagh, as God is my witness,’ the man replied. ‘If you do exactly as I’ve told you, and no funny business, you’ll be seeing him again before you know it. Two o’clock on the dot tomorrow, second level, Merchants Quay car park. G’luck to you so.’
    With that, he switched off his phone. Immediately, though, the technician said, ‘He’s less than a hundred and fifty metres away from Mayfield Shopping Centre. In fact, it’s most likely that he’s calling from the car park or somewhere right outside.’ He swivelled one of his laptops around so that Katie could see the map on his screen, with a small red icon flashing. Mayfield Shopping Centre was less than five kilometres to the north-east of Cork City centre, and only six minutes north of Tivoli Estate, where they were now.
    Detective Horgan said, ‘I’ll have Dooley go up there. I don’t think we have much hope of catching this fellow without knowing what he looks like, or what kind of car he’s driving, and he’s more than likely driven off by now. But if we check out the shopping centre’s CCTV we may be able to pick out somebody in the car park making a phone call at a time that tallies.’
    ‘Well, you can try,’ said Katie. ‘These days it seems like everybody’s walking around with a phone glued to their ear.’
    ‘So what should I do?’ asked Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Do you really think they’re going to let Derek go?’
    ‘Do exactly what your man told you to do. We’ll have the money ready for you by tomorrow morning and we’ll bring it round here. Then just drive down to Merchants Quay and follow his instructions.’
    ‘What will you do? Follow them? Supposing they see you?’
    ‘I can’t tell you what we’re going to do, Shelagh, but I promise you that we won’t take any action that might jeopardize your husband’s life.’
    ‘I’m trying very hard to believe that,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Right now, though, I’m wishing that I’d never told you. I could have raised that money somehow, and at least I’d be sure that Derek wouldn’t be hurt any more.’
    ‘Shelagh, there are never any guarantees with people like these. But if we let them get away with it once, they’ll do it again and again, and you don’t want another wife to suffer the way that you’ve been suffering, do you?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Shelagh Hagerty. ‘Right now, I don’t care very much about anybody else.’

9
    That night, she was woken at two-thirty by the sound of shouting and screaming from the Kanes’ house next door. She turned over and covered her ears with her pillow, but the noise continued, as well as door-slamming and clattering and a sudden burst of loud pop music, as if a radio had been turned on full and then immediately turned off again.
    At last, after more than twenty minutes, there was silence, but by now Katie was so wide awake that she climbed out of bed and went to the window. She pulled the curtains aside, but the Kanes’ house was in darkness. She went back to bed, switched on her bedside lamp and picked up the crossword she had been trying to finish before she had grown too sleepy.
    One of down clues was ‘Together, the top and bottom of the world are manic’. The answer was ‘bipolar’.
    ***
    Next morning, as she came back with Barney from his early-morning walk, she found David Kane standing in her porch with the collar of his grey raincoat turned up. It was raining hard now and Barney had been stopping every few yards to shake himself.
    ‘Good morning, Katie,’ said David. ‘That’s the trouble with dogs, isn’it? You have to take them out to do the necessary, whatever the weather.’
    Katie lowered her umbrella and shook it. ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ she asked him.
    ‘No, I couldn’t. If my patients smelled another dog in the house, whether they were dogs themselves or cats or whatever, they’d find it