Free The Nameless Dead by Brian McGilloway Page B

have someone else out here selling tomorrow,’ McCready said.
    I nodded. ‘Perhaps. But for tonight, O’Connell getting taken will royally piss him off.’
    McCready smiled, but I could tell he was questioning the value of what we were doing. O’Connell was selling drugs, but he was doing so with the permission of, and paying commission to,
Vincent Morrison. Morrison had cleared the decks of drug dealers along the border in a previous case I had worked, persuading a dissident paramilitary group to take out his competition, so that he,
ultimately, controlled drugs in the borderlands. Two factors complicated things: firstly, we could not prove that he was behind the drugs. Secondly, and more problematically for me, Morrison had
saved my daughter’s life following a riding accident, by taking her to hospital. The depth of gratitude I felt for his having so done was surpassed only by my determination to bring him down
over his drug dealing.
    A few moments later a Ford Fiesta pulled up in front of the house. As best we could tell, despite the mist of condensation on the windows, there seemed to be three young men in the car, the
thumping of the bass beat from the radio audible even from our distance. They parked up and one got out, glanced around, then swaggered up to number 67, banging on the door with his fist three
times, then stepping back. O’Connell came to the door, his rolling gait visible in silhouette against the lantern he’d lit when he entered the house. He opened the door, and the two
slapped hands then slid them apart, tugging one another’s fingers before separating. They banged shoulders lightly in embrace, then both went into the house.
    ‘I’ll go in,’ I hissed. ‘You take the two in the car. Keep them quiet; we need O’Connell with drugs.’
    We got out of my car, which I’d parked around the curve in the road from number 67, our approach hidden from the Fiesta’s occupants by the condensation of the car’s windows. I
headed straight for the house, the door lying slightly ajar where the visitor had neglected to pull it shut behind him; he wasn’t planning on staying long.
    We were just drawing abreast with the car when the rear door opened.
    ‘I’m going in for a slash,’ a voice said, and a youth stood up from the car, his hands already reaching for his fly. He stared at us stupidly for a minute, his eyes glazed, the
opened door releasing a waft of cannabis smoke into the night air.
    ‘The guards!’ he shouted, struggling to get back into the car.
    ‘Take him down,’ I shouted to McCready, heading for the house. As I anticipated, before I had reached the door, the driver of the car had begun blaring the horn.
    I pushed open the door and moved into the hallway, my gun drawn, though I had no expectation of using it; O’Connell didn’t strike me as the type to pull a gun on a garda. Morrison
wouldn’t want that kind of heat, for a start.
    ‘An Garda, on the floor!’ I shouted.
    In the kitchen two figures stood at a table on which sat a battery lantern. O’Connell looked up at me, a plastic bag in his hand. The younger man, who had only just arrived, looked around
in panic. O’Connell pushed him to the ground, in effect blocking the doorway for a moment, then turned and ran.
    I clambered over the young man, who lay prone, his hands pulled up in front of his face for protection. I had initially assumed that O’Connell was making a run for the back door, but he
ran past it into the small room to the rear of the house. The door slammed. I ran at it, putting my weight against it. The door gave enough for me to see that O’Connell was standing legs
apart, one trying to hold the door shut, while he stuffed the plastic bag down the toilet. I shoved again, though by now he had shifted his own position and was leaning against the back of the
door. I heard the flush then shoved a third time, almost falling into the room as O’Connell stepped back, his hands now empty.
    I