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

by Caimh McDonnell

  She took out her transistor radio and placed it on the bedside cabinet, twirling the dial to turn it on.

  “Bit of company for ye. I’ll be back to see you later.”

  As she wheeled her bucket out and closed the door, the song on the radio came to an end.

  “And you’re listening 94FM, keeping it country 24 hours a day…”

  Epilogue 4

  From The Irish Times, May 14th

  Despite the lacklustre sales of his new book Hostage to Fear, his autobiographical account of being forced to support the fictitious version of events surrounding the infamous Rapunzel affair, author Mark Brophy claims he has been fielding calls from Hollywood.

  Collin Farrell is rumoured to be interested.

  THE END

  A Word From Caimh

  Hi there reader-person,

  I hope you enjoyed the book, thanks for taking the time to read it. The sequel, The Day That Never Comes, featuring Bunny, Brigit and Paul is out now. I’ve included the first two chapters here to whet your appetite. Or if you’re the decisive sort, just tap here to get it now.

  And if you’ve enjoyed this book, please do leave a rating/review on Amazon or elsewhere because it really makes a massive difference by helping other readers to find the book.

  Also, if you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll get How to Send a Message – an exclusive short story collection FOR FREE. A couple of the stories even feature Bunny McGarry at his belligerent best. Just tap here – to get your free copy.

  Now, on to that preview!

  The Day That Never Comes - Synopsis

  Remember those people that destroyed the economy and then cruised off on their yachts? Well guess what – someone is killing them.

  Dublin is in the middle of a heat wave and tempers are running high. The Celtic Tiger is well and truly dead, activists have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank, the trial of three unscrupulous property developers teeters on the brink of collapse, and in the midst of all this, along comes a mysterious organisation hell-bent on exacting bloody vengeance in the name of the little guy.

  Paul Mulchrone doesn’t care about any of this; he has problems of his own. His newly established detective agency is about to be DOA. One of his partners won’t talk to him for very good reasons and the other has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for no reason at all. Can he hold it together long enough to figure out what Bunny McGarry’s colourful past has to do with his present absence?

  When the law and justice no longer mean the same thing, on which side will you stand?

  Prologue

  Thursday 7 July 2016

  Detective Wilson took a long, deep breath and tried to steady himself. Even before his brain had begun to process the stench, his stomach had started to physically react and no amount of stiff upper lip was going to put the genie back in the bottle. His full Irish breakfast was being released back into the wild whether he liked it or not. He turned away and placed his right hand to his lips, his tongue already starting to spasm as his mouth filled with the warning wash of saliva. Now the 'what' of what was going to happen had been determined, the 'where' was everything. He tried to affect a determined but steady pace to exit the room the way he'd entered, like he was leaving to take an important call.

  The body – what was left of it – was seated in the large open-plan lounge. The house had once featured in a six-page spread in a glossy magazine, back before its owner had become an embarrassment to the elite who produce, feature in and consume such publications. Much had been made of the marble fireplace that dominated the room. At obscene expense, it had been shipped over all in one piece from a villa in Tuscany. Its owner, himself a property developer, had joked that it would have been cheaper just to move his whole house to Italy. It wasn't a terribly good joke but then the house's owner had enjoyed the kind of wealth that meant people laughed at your jokes regardless. He was now tied to a chair in front of that fireplace, his face twisted into a gruesome death-mask that, from a certain angle, could look like he was laughing, if all the other evidence had not so grimly excluded the possibility.

  The headline in this morning’s paper had been about twenty bus drivers winning the lottery. It had been a fun story. Tomorrow’s wouldn’t be.

  As Wilson fled the room with as much casual haste as he could muster, he bumped into the shoulder of one of the incoming Technical Bureau geeks, and then pinballed against the wall. He raised his left hand in half-hearted apology and continued on, not daring to risk speech. Nowhere inside. It couldn't happen inside. He had to make it to the fresh air. Find somewhere discreet. It had been eight months since the incident in the Phoenix Park and three weeks since he'd last heard the nickname 'Chucker'; he was really hoping it had died a death. The next thirty seconds would almost certainly determine whether it had, or if he was to be lumbered with it for the rest of his Garda career.

  In his own defence, he was hardly the only one affected. The poor cleaning lady who discovered the body had been damn near incoherent. Control had immediately dispatched a squad car and requested an ambulance with person-in-distress assistance training. The assumption had been that the woman would require sectioning under the Mental Health Act. All that could be made out from her screaming was the word ‘Szatan’ repeated over and over again. A translator brought in later on to listen to her 999 call in the hope it might provide a meaningful clue, would subsequently explain that it was the Polish word for Satan.

  As Wilson exited the front door, he passed the familiar figure of Doctor Denise Devane, the state pathologist. She'd been called away from a more mundane 'seatbelts are for suckers' autopsy as a matter of urgency. Death had been her daily business for over seventeen years and if you'd have asked her yesterday, she'd have said that she had become able to view it from a clinical distance. Still, late tomorrow evening, when she finds herself alone in her office detailing the long list of physical abuses that had been visited upon the victim, she will close the blinds, sit in the visitor's chair and shed a silent tear at the base brutality of mankind. Nobody deserved all of that, not even him. She gave Wilson a concerned look as he passed because, while she was necessarily cold by nature, she knew enough to recognise trauma in the living as well as the dead.

  Wilson spotted one of the distinctive Technical Bureau vans pulled up on the lawn to the left and made an instant decision. It was his best chance of cover amidst the hubbub. He made a beeline for it, ignoring the calls from Detective Sergeant Hickey trying to attract his attention. Like a sprinter leaning for the tape, he lunged the last few feet to get himself behind the van just in the nick of time. The contents of his stomach spewed forth. He'd made it.

  Almost.

  Detective Superintendent Susan Burns certainly knew how to make an impression. A striking woman, who even at forty-two – a remarkably young age to have reached such a senior rank – had an irrefutable air of authority. This, coupled with a spectacular success rate in dealing with gang violence in Limerick and the press's unerring knack of finding out about it, had led to her elevation to the role of head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a position she had so far held for all of one and a half days. She had the kind of piercing blue eyes that left a person with the unnerving feeling that she was focusing on a point three inches inside them, possibly where the soul was located. She was tall, with a rower's slender figure. Such women often avoided wearing heels so as not to make men feel uncomfortable. She wore them for precisely that reason. Also, clichéd as it may be, she had something of a weakness for shoes. They were her one indulgence in an otherwise strictly regimented existence. This last fact was of particular relevance to Detective Donnacha Wilson, or ‘Chucker’ as he would now be definitely known for the rest of his life. Two days ago Detective Superintendent Susan Burns had bought a pair of Louboutins as a treat to herself on starting her new job. Two seconds ago Detective Wilson had thrown up on them.

  The look on her face would stay with Wilson forever. It would, howe
ver, not be the memory that would cause him to wake up in a clinging cold sweat in the middle of the night. No. That would be another face; one frozen in unimaginable agony as its lidless eyes stared at the words scrawled on the wall above an obscenely expensive Tuscan fireplace. Tests would later confirm they had been written in the victim’s own blood, almost certainly while he watched.

  The words were simple.

  This is the day that never comes.

  Chapter 1

  The Previous Monday – 4 July 2016

  Paul slammed the office door, or at least he tried to. Due to its sagging hinges, it stuck on the worn carpet. He had to lift it up by the handle and then shoulder it into place to get it to close at all. When the lock finally clicked shut, he gave the bottom of the door a kick. This gave him a sore toe and none of the satisfaction that a slam would have provided.

  He was in a foul mood. It'd been a disastrous morning at the end of a bad week that was putting the finishing touches to the worst month of his life. Eight months ago several people had tried to kill him; he was beginning to think it had been a terrible mistake not to have let them.

  He'd just come back from a meeting with the Private Security Authority that had been nothing short of humiliating. Mr Bradshaw, the only human being left on the planet who still unironically wore a dickie bow, had been blessed with the most patronising manner imaginable. "So let me get this straight, Mr Mulchrone, you wish to set up a private investigation agency with your two partners, one of whom you've not spoken to in over a month and the other of whom you cannot currently locate?" Paul had gone for the ‘honesty is the best policy’ approach, thinking that his frankness would be appreciated. He had been dead wrong. He couldn't remember the last time he had been right about anything.

  He'd tried ringing Brigit for about the thousandth time last night. Her phone had made a funny noise; he was 95% sure she had blocked his number. She'd not spoken to him in the forty-two days since 'the incident', although she had screamed at him a few times, just to make clear her position vis-à-vis him being the lowest scum on God's green earth. The fact that Paul entirely agreed with her assessment was now the only thing they had in common. Well that, and the fact that their names were both on the application forms they had submitted to the PSA back in their pre-incident happier days.

  Bunny was a different story. Paul had left him about fifteen messages over the last three days, none of which he'd responded to in any way. The last time he'd seen him, Paul had gone to great lengths to impress upon Bunny the importance of the PSA meeting. Of the three of them, retired Detective Sergeant Bunny McGarry was the only one who had the required five years of relevent experience needed to qualify for a Private Investigator’s Licence. He may not have been everyone's idea of what a Garda officer should be, and his superiors may have thrown a parade when they finally persuaded him to take early retirement, but nobody could deny that Bunny McGarry had been a copper and, in his own hyper-belligerent way, a very effective one.

  Paul was vaguely aware that Bunny may have been struggling with the loss of the job that so defined him, but he was far too busy self-basting in his own misery to pay attention to someone else's. Besides, it wasn't like they had a particularly touchy-feely relationship. Prior to eight months ago they'd not spoken for fifteen years, until Bunny had decided to intervene in the whole 'people trying to kill him' situation. Whatever residual gratitude Paul felt about that had evaporated when Bunny had not shown up that morning and left him sitting there in the PSA's reception in his funeral suit, looking like an idiot.

  The last time Paul had worn the suit was just over two months ago, when Brigit's granny had died and he'd accompanied her to the funeral over in Leitrim. She had introduced him to people as her boyfriend. He'd liked it. He'd never been a boyfriend before. The week after, when Paul had finally lost the use of his great-aunt Fidelma's house, he'd moved in with Brigit. Life had been good. As he sat in the PSA's foyer that morning, he'd found a sausage roll in the suit's inside pocket. He must have slipped it in there at the funeral buffet for the drive back to Dublin and then promptly forgotten all about it. In a fit of food-safety-standards-defying sentimentality, he'd eaten it, then sat there alone, with a broken heart and stomach cramps.

  All of this was why he'd rolled into the offices of MCM Investigations in a particularly foul mood. Situated above the Oriental Palace Chinese restaurant, what their offices lacked in space, they made up for in dinginess. He thought of it as 'their' offices, but Bunny hardly ever put in an appearance and Brigit had never even been there. In his head, Paul had thought it might be funny to carry her across the threshold when they moved in. That thought now slapped him in the face every time he opened the door.

  He had been sleeping there ever since Brigit had kicked him out. He couldn't afford to rent anywhere else. He was broke. This agency had been Brigit's big idea to solve all of their problems – Paul's lack of a job, Bunny's lack of a purpose and her own lack of a desire to change one more bedpan, nursing having lost its appeal. Besides, he didn't want to find somewhere else to stay. Although he didn't deserve it and he had no logical reason to believe it would happen, he was hoping against hope that she might take him back.

  None of which was to say he was there alone. For the last two weeks he'd had company – Maggie. As he walked in, she was sitting in his chair behind his desk, calmly regarding him with those unreadable brown eyes. The room's only furniture was a bank of three desks pushed together, each with a chair behind it. She only sat on that chair because she knew it was his. She was constantly trying to assert her dominance in their relationship. When they went out, she dragged him from pillar to post, pointedly never going where he wanted to go. She was forever trying to engage him in a staring competition. Most of all, she did not like being left alone. This morning, she had elected to make that very clear by the most direct means available to her. She had shat in the middle of his desk.

  "Ah for fuck’s sake!" said Paul.

  He had awoken two weeks ago in the middle of the night, to find Bunny McGarry standing over him, playing with his phone. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Setting your alarm," said Bunny, "you've got to get up to walk the dog."

  "What – agh!"

  Paul had turned to find Maggie's face inches from his, giving him a canine version of the bouncer stare. "What the hell is that?"

  "Sweet mooning Mother Theresa, Paulie, you're a detective now. Four legs, waggly tail – work the clues. It's a dog, a German Shepherd to be exact."

  "What's it doing here?"

  "I got her for you."

  "But — how am I going to take care of a dog? I don't know if you've noticed but I'm barely taking care of me."

  "Exactly. You sit here alone all day looking like a eunuch at an orgy, it’s not healthy. Bit of companionship will do you the world of good. She's ex-police too. Sure, she'll be an asset to the agency and all that."

  Paul should have been suspicious as soon as Bunny had tried to justify his actions. Bunny never justified his actions. Along with the lazy eye, the ever-present sheepskin coat and the core belief that all of life's problems can be solved by walloping the right gobshite around the earhole, never justifying his actions was one of Bunny McGarry's defining characteristics.

  Paul had leant across to pet Maggie and been greeted by a warning growl.

  "Yeah, she's not big on being touched."

  And with that, Bunny had belched a waft of whiskey, tossed Paul his phone back and left them alone in the office. Paul stared at Maggie. Maggie stared at Paul. Since that moment, their relationship had been a never-ending battle of wills. A battle that had now ended. She had taken the nuclear option.

  "Right, that is it! That is absolutely it!" said Paul, pointing to the offending excrement presented in a surprisingly neat pile on his desk. "I know I said you eating my socks was it, but this, this right here – this – is absolutely definitely it. I don't care what Bunny says, you're out of here ye mad bitch—"

 
Paul was interrupted by the sound of a polite knock on the door. Both he and Maggie stared at the office door in silence, disbelieving their own ears. Paul quickly ran through the options in his head. It could be Mrs Wu, who owned the Oriental Palace restaurant below but she wasn't the polite knocking sort. She was the charge in, scream and then charge out again sort. It could of course be Bunny, but he had never politely knocked on anything in his life. Brigit – could it be Brigit? Paul's heart raced at the prospect but even as it did so, a voice of harsh reality sniggered at him from the back of his mind. Yeah, the woman you cheated on in a night of drunken stupidity is politely knocking on your door asking if you will come back to her. She's probably naked save for a decorative bow and a bottle of champers too. Idiot.

  All of which left Paul inclined to dismiss as fanciful the concept of anyone having knocked on the office door at all, when someone knocked on the office door again. This time they followed it up with a 'hello?' too. It was in a soft, breathy, female voice. Paul and Maggie looked at each other, then at the door, then at the deposit she had left on his desk.

  "Ehm, just a second," he said to the closed door.

  Maggie disappeared under the table. She seemed to understand that she shouldn't be there and if Mrs Wu or anyone else found out, she might be forced to leave. Paul had a sneaking suspicion that the dog was way smarter than he was. That still left him the issue of her dirty protest to deal with. The bags he used when he took Maggie for a walk were in the pocket of his anorak, at the bottom of the stairs, at the far side of the breathy female voice. Leaving it on the table and trying to pass it off as an unusual office toy didn't seem practical. He couldn't see anything that he could use to cover it up – that left disposal as the only option. He moved over and, with difficulty, opened the window. The old wood of the frame was warped and screeched a tiny protest as he forced it up.