During that time Fitzmaurice had been an undercover narcotics officer working the tough, drug-ridden north-side Dublin neighborhoods, and he had participated in the investigation that brought Guerin’s killers to justice.
“That was back when I was still young enough to do that type of work,” Fitzmaurice said. “Some days I would go home wondering if Edna and the boys would still be there when I arrived. I rarely saw them.”
Sara nodded sympathetically, her thoughts suddenly riveted on Kerney and Patrick. The emptiness that came from seeing Kerney so infrequently often weighed on her, and the unhappy prospect of being separated from Patrick for two weeks only served to enlarge that feeling.
Fitzmaurice read her gloomy expression. Sara quickly hid it with a forced smile.
“ ’Tis hard on family life, this work we’ve taken on,” he said.
Sara nodded. “Yes, it is. Will we have full access to Spalding’s bank records?”
“Indeed,” Fitzmaurice replied, noting Sara’s shift away from private thoughts. He understood completely. When family worries gnawed at the back of one’s mind, it was always best to focus on the work at hand. “The order allows a search through all records bearing the name of George Spalding and any of his known aliases.”
They flew into Galway City and in the distance Sara could see the banks of the river fed by Lough Corrib, which was apple green in the distance, ringed by fields and wetland thickets.
She remembered her day in the city with Kerney; visiting the museum at Spanish Arch, walking the nearby pedestrian streets, wandering in and out of the shops, gazing at the many medieval buildings, and listening to the Irish folk tunes played by buskers for spare change.
She recalled Kerney’s amazement at the fast-flowing rivers and waterways that coursed through the city, the lush green of the surrounding countryside, the delicate blue sky that turned the bay silver. The thought of that lovely time together with him cheered her.
After landing they were driven to the bank by a uniformed officer. In a sixteenth-century building on the corner of one of the pedestrian streets, the bank was beautifully preserved, with an arched window front and decorative stone carvings above the ground floor.
Inside, they were met by the bank’s solicitor, a tall man with a mustache who wore standard corporate attire: a dark suit, white shirt, and a conservative necktie. He inspected the order and escorted them to an upstairs room where two revenue officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau waited, seated at a table with desktop computers. Introductions were made and after Fitzmaurice politely dismissed the solicitor, work promptly began.
As the computer files were accessed it became apparent that Spalding, using the alias of Calderwood, his ex-wife’s maiden name, had been a client at the bank for a number of years, long before Kerney unmasked him. Millions of Canadian dollars had flowed into his original account from Swiss and offshore banks, converted first into Irish punts and later to euros when Ireland switched to the new currency.
From the original account the money had then flowed into various investment portfolios managed by a wholly owned subsidiary of the bank. At that point the audit trail became murky until well after nightfall, when the revenue officers linked a hedge-fund account to the new accounts Spalding had opened under his Bruneau and McGuire aliases.
During a short break for a meal of fast food takeaway one of the revenue officers had fetched, Fitzmaurice leaned back in his chair and flipped through a stack of hard-copy investment records.
“He’s been electronically siphoning off profits from his investments for years,” he said, “and sending the funds out of the country. It all looks on the up and up. The paperwork is in order, taxes on the earnings have been paid, and the money deposited into a numbered Swiss account.”
“Can we identify the owner of that account?” Sara asked.
“Yes,” Fitzmaurice replied, “but not until tomorrow morning when the Swiss bank opens. Do you have a particular person in mind?”
Although Fitzmaurice’s tone was mild, his eyes were watchful as he sat slightly forward in his chair, poised and waiting for her reply. Over the past three days he’d been more than patient with her, never once asserting the authority he could rightly have claimed over the investigation. Instead, he had done all in his power to help her and for that he deserved an honest answer. She wrote down a name on a slip of paper and handed it to Fitzmaurice.
Fitzmaurice’s eyes lit up. “Thomas Loring Carrier. I take it that this is the gentleman who is beyond my reach.”
Sara nodded.
Smiling broadly, he slipped the paper into his shirt pocket and turned to the revenue officers. “Let’s gather and compile the evidence we need.”
“What will you do with it?” Sara asked.
“Present it to a judge and ask for Spalding’s assets to be frozen and the villa and the motor yacht to be seized. That should put a damper on his plans to start a new life here.”
For the next hour the revenue officers printed hard-copy information from the bank’s mainframe files, while Sara and Fitzmaurice entered it into evidence. After the material was boxed and carried away by the revenue officers for further inspection, Fitzmaurice presented a list of the seized records to the bank’s solicitor on their way out the door. The man looked none too happy to receive it.
Outside, they hurried across the dark street through a light rain to a waiting Garda vehicle that would take them to the airport for the return flight to Dublin.
“Were I to do a computer search on Thomas Loring Carrier, what might I learn?” Fitzmaurice asked as he slid into the backseat next to Sara.
“Enough to confirm your suspicions about my assignment,” Sara answered.
“Why did you tell me about Carrier now?”
“Because I may need you to cover my back,” Sara said.
“Exactly who might I be protecting you from?”
Sara carefully considered her response before she answered. “They think of themselves as patriots,” she said.
“Ah,” Fitzmaurice said with a knowing nod. “We had our fair share of those during the Troubles.”
Each day that passed with no word from Sara made Kerney more anxious and worried about her. Patrick, who missed his mother badly, intensified Kerney’s unspoken concerns by constantly asking where she was and when she would return. Sara’s absence had shaken Patrick and made Kerney realize that up until now he’d been a sorry excuse for a parent.
Clearly, Sara was the linchpin in Patrick’s world and Kerney the absent father seen only occasionally. That point had been driven home to him midmorning when he’d been called to Patrick’s preschool. A mean, bossy kid had pushed Patrick down and kicked him during playtime. Patrick had thrown a tantrum and tried to run away. When Kerney got there, he found his son teary eyed, sullen, and miserable, demanding his mother, wanting to go back to his real home, his real school, his real friends.
Kerney took Patrick home immediately and tried to soothe him, but it wasn’t until after lunch, when he suggested an afternoon ride, that Patrick broke into a smile. After Kerney saddled up Hondo, a gray gelding, and put Patrick on the saddle in front of him, his son’s spirits lifted enough for him to start in again about wanting his very own pony. By the time they reached the pond, fed by a natural spring, surrounded by marsh grass and cattails, Patrick seemed to be over his preschool ordeal. In the coolness of the cloudy afternoon, with a slight breeze tinged with enough humidity to promise rain by evening, Kerney dismounted and led Hondo up a hillock, with Patrick still in the saddle clutching the pommel. At stone ruins that looked out at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, knife-edge sharp in a shaft of sunlight that cut through the cloud bank, he tethered Hondo to the thick branch of a cedar tree.