A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1)

by Caimh McDonnell

  “None of the above, I’m afraid. I’m not as lovable as I first appear.”

  “Well isn’t that tragic. Who’ll be at your funeral?”

  “A lot of scumbags, I’d imagine. Just to make sure I’m really dead. They’d be too scared to dance on the grave though, afraid I’d reach up and take them down one last time.”

  “Ha,” said Fallon. “I’m sure you’re just being modest. I bet you’ve got lots of friends who’d miss you, and vica versa.”

  “Oh Gerry, you are humping up the wrong pant leg now, fella. Nobody likes me, not even me. That’s why I’m your worst nightmare. Ye see, I’m in danger of having just two things in my life, you and the booze, and I’m supposed to be cutting down on the booze.”

  Ryan appeared beside them, his pudgy face looking up at them nervously as he tried to figure out what this was. Two large men, well over six foot, all but banging together like rutting stags.

  “Is everything OK, Gerry?”

  Bunny McGarry looked down at him and flashed a tight smile.

  “This your pet, Gerry? Well isn’t he adorable.”

  “Yes, Michael, all fine. Officer McGarry was just giving me some advice on my swing.”

  The two men finally disengaged from the handshake.

  “That’s right, yeah,” said Bunny, “all part of the service. Remember what I said Gerry, keep your eye on the ball…”

  Before Fallon could react, Bunny hopped the golf ball up onto the hurley and bounced it once. Ryan squealed and dived to the ground to avoid the swinging stick’s flightpath as it sent the ball hurtling off into the distance.

  “…And follow through!”

  Bunny turned and nimbly hopped back into the golf cart, with a grace that belied his size.

  He looked up at Gerry, a twinkle in his eye. “Oh, and by the way, a jaffa cake is a cake and not a biscuit.”

  And with that, he was gone, throwing a wave behind him as he headed down the fairway in the opposite direction he’d come from.

  Fallon watched him go, his teeth grinding.

  “That is… outrageous!” said Ryan, still sprawled on the ground. “I will be lodging a complaint as soon as…”

  “Shut up,” said Fallon. “Add him to the thing.”

  “But Gerry, he’s a Guard. I must advise against…”

  Fallon turned sharply and glared at Ryan, so much so that the smaller man flinched.

  “I couldn’t give a shit what you advise. We’re in my area of expertise now. He goes on the list.”

  Ryan shook his head dumbly and slowly started getting back up.

  Fallon looked up at the green, one hundred and twenty yards away, where his ball was sitting front right, 6 feet from the hole.

  First green he’d hit all day.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine. You?”

  “Fine. How’s the shoulder?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Yep.”

  “Excellent.”

  Dorothy sat at the breakfast table, her head turning back and forth, as if watching a tremendously dull game of tennis. “Good God,” she said, “if it’ll help break the tension, I could shoot one of you?”

  She patted the old revolver that lay on the kitchen table beside her.

  “There isn’t…” started Paul.

  “There’s no…” continued Brigit.

  Dorothy barked a sharp laugh of dismissal. “Yes, yes, I’m old, not dead, remember? Although if this breakfast is an indication of the scintillating level of conversation I can now expect, someone book me a one way flight to Switzerland.”

  Paul looked across at Brigit, who blushed and proceeded to move the remains of her scrambled egg around her plate some more. Neither of them had said anything about what had happened, or rather hadn’t happen, the night before. The problem was they were struggling to find anything else to talk about. It was like last night’s events were a vast ravenous black hole, intent on sucking in all conversation around it. Paul had endured a fitful night’s sleep, the pain in his shoulder and the mortifying embarrassment in his soul taking turns to disturb him. He’d considered numerous possible approaches to broaching the subject of what had happened, dismissing each in turn. He’d then gone onto considering time travel and why those lazy scientists hadn’t invented it yet.

  “Pang Lee?” said Dorothy in a raised voice, tapping her knife against her plate. She then looked around her, with a look of confusion on her face. “Oh, of course – Saturday. She has her day off today.”

  Dorothy stood, placed her plate on the counter and then shuffled towards the patio doors leading into the large back garden. “I’ll leave you to it. I’m off to swear at some plants.” With that, she opened the patio door and walked out into the cold winter sun.

  Brigit watched her go and then reached under the table and produced a notepad and pen.

  “Right,” said Brigit, “while you were asleep, I did some research.”

  “Wait, where? How?” said Paul.

  “On Dorothy’s computer of course.”

  Paul looked out into the garden, at the woman currently having an animated if one-sided conversation with some roses. “Dorothy has a computer?”

  “Yes,” said Brigit. “In her computer room.”

  “Oh,” said Paul, slightly ashamed of his own assumptions, “fair enough.”

  “FYI,” said Brigit, “she doesn’t know how to delete her search history. She has Googled some very specific terms regarding the actor Tom Conti.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I know! Still, if you want to get her a birthday present, a shirtless picture of him would be a big hit.”

  Brigit smiled, then caught herself doing it and looked away nervously. The concept of sex existing, much less people having any urges whatsoever in that area, was clearly off the table.

  Paul ran his finger between his shirt collar and neck. While by no means the biggest reason, it was another cause of his discomfort. He wasn’t used to shirts, especially not ones with starched collars. He was also uncomfortable sitting there in a dead man’s clothes. When he’d woken this morning, the light blue shirt and red sweater had been lying at the end of the bed, presumably put there by Dorothy. She’d also laid out a pair of slacks, ironed with a crease so sharp they could probably cut glass. He declined to wear those, his own jeans thankfully passing the sniff test. Between the shirt that was a little too tight and his own, fresh on, extra itchy underpants, he felt like his skin was alive, and not in the good way they’re always talking about in those ads for shower gel.

  “So anyway,” said Brigit, “I checked all the news websites. A picture of the bomb squad blowing up your car made the front of the Irish Times.”

  “Oh, right. I don’t suppose any of the reports mentioned whether or not that would be covered by third-party fire and theft insurance?”

  “Funnily enough, no. Seems like the cops are calling it a ‘non-terrorism related gangland incident.’ There’s a whole opinion piece in the Indo about the shocking rise of drug-related crime in Dublin.”

  “Oh brilliant, now I’m a suspected drug dealer too. That’ll look good on the CV.” Paul would have a hell of a time explaining that to Greevy, assuming he lived that long.

  “The point is, they’ve not publicly linked the bomb with McNair or Rapunzel. The death of Pauline McNair is mentioned in separate reports but they’ve not released her name or anything. There is also no mention of her father being alive and then dead.”

  “Is this good news or bad news for us?” asked Paul.

  “I have no idea,” replied Brigit. “Either the press don’t know or the cops are somehow keeping a lid on it for the minute.”

  “Can they do that?”

  Brigit shrugged. She’d read about that kind of thing happening in books, but had no idea about how it would work in real life.

  “So,” said Paul, “the Gardaí aren’t talking to the press but they’re ta
lking to Gerry Fallon. I’m glad I don’t pay taxes.”

  “Which brings me to this,” said Brigit, holding up her pad. “As I see it, we have four possible sources of clues as to what is happening.”

  “Hang on a sec, are you Nancy Drewing this?”

  “Look,” she said, throwing the pad down onto the counter. “We can either try and get a grip on our situation or sit here with our thumbs up our arses, waiting for whatever is going to happen…” Brigit paused, “to happen. Personally, I’m sick of the feeling that someone is trying to screw me.”

  Brigit winced slightly at her own unfortunate choice of words, but maintained a defiant eye contact with Paul. “I’m just saying, hear me out and let’s see if we can do something better than hiding and praying.”

  Paul looked at her for a long moment. He had wanted to run, he still wanted to run, but he’d not come up with any ideas on how to do that.

  “To be honest,” he said, “I’d not even thought of the praying thing. OK. What’ve you got?”

  “Right,” she said, “like I was saying, I reckon we’ve got four possible sources of info. Number one – the Gardaí.”

  “No way, don’t trust ’em.”

  Brigit nodded. “I agree, although let’s not write them off entirely. We should stay in contact with that Detective Inspector Stewart via your lawyer lady.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Number two,” said Brigit, “Gerry Fallon.”

  “What the?”

  “I’m not saying we go to him, I’m just saying – he clearly knows what is going on.”

  “Yeah, he’s doing it!”

  “But I was thinking, maybe your friend and his auntie could help us out if…”

  Paul raised his hand. “Not going to happen. They’ve already got themselves in enough crap. Lynn was very clear on that. As far as they’re concerned, we are now toxic.”

  “OK. Number 3 – Daniel Kruger.”

  Paul raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yer man, the horrible hubby fella?”

  Brigit nodded.

  “And how’re we going to do that? Isn’t he away off in South Africa?”

  Brigit shook her head. “Nope. He disappeared from view but he’s still living in Ireland. Not even that far away, up in the Wicklow Mountains.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “He’s well into his 70s now, remember. I’m in a group on Facebook. It’s a load of nurses I trained with. I asked them, they asked about, somebody had worked for him…”

  Brigit grinned sheepishly. Paul could tell she was delighted with herself for this bit of investigating, although she was trying not to show it.

  “Holy crap, finally a use for Facebook,” said Paul. He had tried it briefly but Number 11 had changed their WIFI password and that had been that.

  “Which brings me to number 4.”

  She held up the copy of Hostage to Love with a flourish.

  “The book?” asked Paul, not trying to hide his disappointment. “You think that trashy fairytale, which we already know is at least partially bollocks, is going to tell us something useful?” Paul shook his head. “If I were you, I’d have put the Kruger thing fourth, as that was your big ta-dah moment.”

  Brigit stuck out her tongue and flipped to the back of the book.

  “Not the book smartarse, the guy who wrote it, Mark Brophy.” She held up the page showing the picture of the author. A bright-eyed young go-getter of a reporter. At least he had been back in the 80s. “I was reading through it again and it hit me. It even says it in the introduction; names have been changed to protect people’s identities and for legal reasons. The book isn’t all he knows, it was all he could print.”

  She tossed it down onto the table with a flourish.

  “So how do we get hold of him?” asked Paul.

  “His website just has contact details for his publisher.”

  “Dear Fairytale Press,” said Paul in a sing-song voice, “we’re being hunted by psychos, any chance of a chat with what’s-his-face?”

  “Or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or…”

  Brigit let it hang in the air. Paul smiled, raised his eyebrows expectantly and waited.

  “We head to Brogan’s pub tonight where the man himself is quote ‘Mad keen for a feed of pints after watching Ireland v the All Blacks.’”

  “How did…?”

  “Twitter.”

  “You’re yanking my chain.”

  “Nope.” Brigit extended her arms and took a bow. “Ta-fecking-dah.”

  “So, Sherlock, your entire investigation is being conducted using social media?”

  “Yep. And imagine how much easier that would be if some gobshite hadn’t thrown away my phone?”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “This is a terrible idea,” said Paul, not for the first time.

  “So you keep saying,” Brigit replied, “and yet here we are, doing it anyway.”

  Paul spread his legs and leaned back against the rough stone of the wall.

  Brigit looked at Paul, then up at the wall, all twelve feet of it.

  “This is totally doable.”

  “My arse.”

  Brigit put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “If you’ve not got anything positive to say, don’t say anything at all.”

  “A day and a half ago, you asked me to do you a quick favour in exchange for a lift home. Since then, I’ve been stabbed, had my car blown up and I’m on the run from some kind of criminal Godfather who has the Gardaí in his pocket. I’m now assisting you in breaking and entering. If I restricted myself to only talking when I’d something positive to say, I’d be a fecking mime by now.”

  “Breaking? What’re we breaking? We’re hopping a wall!”

  Before Paul could reply, Brigit took three steps back and started rocking back and forth on her heels.

  “Woa, woa, woa, what’re you doing now?”

  “I’m taking a run up.”

  “And now we know what you’re breaking. Me.”

  “You’ll live. You’ve got one perfectly good arm, don’t you?”

  “At the moment, but it’s not even noon yet. I’m sure you can change that.”

  Brigit mimed a yawn.

  Paul hunkered down a little more and braced himself against the wall.

  “Terrible idea.”

  “Now, where have I heard that before?” asked Brigit.

  In his own defence, Paul considered the entire day so far to have been a rapid-fire succession of terrible ideas. While he’d agreed in principle with the idea of going to see Daniel Kruger, he’d not considered the practical considerations. For a start, they would need a car. It turned out Dorothy had one, and not just any old car. Oh no, a classic Bentley, no less, which had been sitting in her garage since her husband died. Its dark green paint had gleamed under the garage lights with a shimmer of regal elegance. Paul had tried to subtly point out to Brigit that it didn’t exactly fit the inconspicuous ‘on the run’ look they were going for, but she dismissed his objection. He’d also tried to point out the vehicle lacked any form of tax or insurance, and the Guards were traditionally mad keen on that kind of thing. They’d cameras and databases and all sorts these days. This had also been summarily dismissed. As Brigit said at the time, “Yes, and I personally love the bit in the movie where Jason Bourne rings up a call centre to update his insurance prior to engaging in a high speed chase.”

  Which brought him to his real objection. Paul was extremely keen to avoid ever being in a car driven by Brigit Conroy again. The idea of the car in question being worth more than a decent-sized house just made it all the more horrific. Putting Brigit behind the wheel of a classic automobile was like leaving your baby to play in the middle of the motorway. It didn’t tempt fate, so much as seal it. The problem he had was he couldn’t find any way of pointing this out without, well, pointing this out – and he didn’t want to do that either.

  In Brigit’s defence, she was clearly tryin
g to drive more carefully than usual. She’d barely clipped that lion on the way out of the driveway. In the lion’s defence, it was made entirely out of stone and could only bear a minimum of responsibility for the collision. She mumbled something about the car having a much bigger turning circle than she was used to. Paul thought of the winding narrow roads awaiting them in the Wicklow Mountains and shut his eyes. Then he kept them shut. He’d not intended it but, right there and then, the idea of pretending to fall asleep had struck him as one of sheer genius. He knew what he didn’t see could still hurt him, but at least this way the last thing to pass his lips before death wouldn’t be an embarrassingly girlish scream. From what sneaky peaks he’d taken, the view out the passenger window would’ve no doubt been spectacular, but it was very hard to enjoy the scenery while simultaneously being terrified of colliding with it.

  Brigit, for her part, let him sleep and only swore softly when the world got in the way of her driving. After they’d been going a while, she went around the radio dial a couple of times before finding a station she found agreeable. With the music and the hypnotic rhythm of the road, Paul felt his bad night’s sleep catching up on him. He drifted off, a smile on his face as Brigit hummed along to some raggle-taggle rock song about drinking all day.

  The next thing Paul knew, he was awoken by being poked in the head.

  “Gah – what’d we hit?”

  “Nothing, thank you very much.”

  “And why’re you poking me in the head?”

  “Would you prefer I shook your injured shoulder?”

  “Ah right, fair enough. So are we there?”

  “Kind of. I’ve followed Martha’s directions but I can’t see any big house. She said it was a big stately home kind of thing. I’ve seen nothing that looks like that.”

  Paul looked around him. They were in the countryside. It all looked alarmingly green. He was not in his element.

  They drove around for a while but Paul couldn’t spot a country mansion Brigit had somehow missed. Eventually, they’d stopped and asked for directions from a lady out walking four dogs. Once they’d convinced her that they really weren’t in the market to buy one, she’d set them right. Turned out, the reason they couldn’t find the Kruger place was that it was so big. The roads they’d been driving along were long and featureless because they served as boundaries to the Kruger estate, which took up half the side of the particularly nice mountain they were on. After some further doubling back, some arguments and a regrettable meeting with a holly bush, they’d eventually found the gates to the estate.