The Death of an Irish Tinker

by Bartholomew Gill

“Oh, I’m devastated. Destroyed. I’ll have to do something nice for their mother.”

  “Because they worked for you.”

  “Ach, it’s more than that, isn’t it, Granny? Our families have been close for generations. But since you asked, Dermot and Donal did work for me. And I can tell you without qualification, they were model employees. Loyal, dedicated. And you know, I had the feeling they enjoyed what they did.”

  “And you’ve no interest in how they died?”

  The smile was back. “Your being here, I can imagine it wasn’t pretty. I’m sure I’ll read about it in the papers.”

  “Dessie, you should go over to their mammy now.” The old woman flicked her hand at her grandson. “See if she needs anything. See what you can do.”

  It would make the searches of the house and all the other premises owned by the Toddler that much easier. The operation would begin the moment that McGarr walked out the door with several teams working through the many buildings that the man owned here in Coolock.

  “Is there anything else, Superintendent?” The Toddler pushed back his chair and stood. “The number of the sports club? The name of the manager? I’m there so often I even remember the numbers.”

  From the pockets of the cardigan the Toddler removed a small pad; he reached for the biro on the table. “Ask for Vinnie. Better—interview him. Polygraph. The works.” He ripped off the page and slapped it on the table, startling Duggan. “Now then, I really should go over to her.”

  McGarr was tempted to go with him, just to witness what he’d say, how he’d act.

  Instead he waited in his car across the street and watched McKeon and three others from the squad present a search order to the Toddler, just as he was leaving the house.

  Nonchalantly, as though he had opened the door to a crew of workmen, the Toddler scarcely glanced down at the papers before stepping aside to let them in. Pulling on a leather jacket, he sauntered out into the night, his short but powerful body swaying from side to side.

  At a house several doors up the street, he paused by the gate and scanned the street for a good two minutes before waving to McGarr and making for the door. Without knocking, he entered the house of the two men he had just murdered. Of that McGarr was now certain.

  A moment or two later Solicitor Duggan was flushed from the granny’s house with what looked like a shoe box in his hand. McKeon would have examined it before allowing Duggan to leave, but McGarr only let Duggan drive his pricey BMW as far as the Malahide Road before pulling him over.

  “You’ve no right to do this. I’ve broken no law,” Duggan complained through an inch or two of open window. “If you persist, I’ll have you up on charges.”

  “Really? Name them, solicitor. Now, step out of the car, please.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to see if you’re sober.”

  “That’s nonsense. I haven’t had a drink all day.”

  “Then you need one, to steady your nerves. You’re shaking. Perhaps you’re not well. I’d say a blood test is in order.”

  There was a pause while Duggan considered his options; cars whipped by them on the busy artery that led into Dublin proper. Finally Duggan said, “What is it you want?”

  “The truth. How long was Bacon gone this evening? What time did he leave? What time did he return? I want it in writing. You can say that at the time he asked you to perjure yourself, you had no idea what he was about. He was your client, to whom you wished to be loyal. You might even make some statement about yourself that will elicit the sympathy of the court. I’ll give you all the help I can.”

  Again Duggan waited, as though wrestling with the pros and cons of telling the truth and the penalties either way. Now, staring straight ahead out the windscreen, he drew in a breath and let it out slowly. He shook his head. “I’m a solicitor. Desmond Bacon is my client. Our relationship is privileged.”

  “Even when he’s out murdering? Come now, solicitor, could you be over your head with this man? Think of the others who joined him in murder: Archie Carruthers, who supplied the car and venue for Mickalou Maugham’s murder. The Hydes, who helped him murder Gavin O’Reilly and Maugham, that we might have proved, and more than a few others that we could not. Now they’re gone. All murdered themselves.

  “And here you sit in—what?—a narcotic stupor?”

  “Hold on now. I don’t care for your tone.”

  “Tone?” McGarr nearly roared. “Good Christ, man, we’re not talking tone here. We’re talking murder, dozens of them, and cocaine, heroin, crack, crank, hashish. Is that what’s in that box?”

  Duggan’s head snapped to the box on the passenger seat, as though he’d forgotten it. “Hashish?”

  “No, of course not. Not you. Not hashish. Cocaine’s more your speed, I’d say. Pity he hasn’t seen fit to give you something for those shakes. Yet. But there’ll come a day. I’m sure he’ll know when.

  “You don’t seem to realize, Cornelius.” McGarr went on in a gentler tone, since it seemed to be in question. “You’re not back in university or in some club consorting with somebody of your own class. Not even with some of the major thieves and very grand larcenists you’ve represented in the past.

  “And it’s not just your career that’s in question. That man—the one we just left, who already owns you body and soul? He wouldn’t turn a hair snuffing you out. Me to you? He’s probably already planned it—you and Vinnie out there at the shooting range of the sports club. Wrap everything up in a neat little packet.

  “So you’re going to have to choose, and soon, just how much of your life you can salvage. I could be wrong, it could be too late. But like I said, I’ll help you every step of the way if you’ll let me.

  “Now, for tonight, I’ll see what’s in the box, then let you go. Regardless.”

  “Your man already has, back at the house. Sergeant…”

  “McKeon,” McGarr supplied. “But he was assuming you were just the Toddler’s attorney and not his accomplice in two murders. I know better. Now, open the other door, and I’ll get in.”

  After yet another pause Duggan tapped the electric door latch, and McGarr walked around.

  There were shotgun shells in the shoe box—twenty-gauge, No. 6 shot Remingtons. Six boxes of twenty-five. McGarr removed one and snapped on the reading light for the passenger seat. Taking out his penknife, he placed it on the box top and had to punch the blade down to cut through the thick plastic wrap of the cartridge.

  Shot, then a grayish powder spilled out. McGarr wet a finger, touched the powder, and held it to his nose. There was no sulfur smell, which was the most easily detectable constituent of gunpowder. He then touched it to his tongue. The taste was bitter, acrid, biting.

  His eyes swung to Duggan. “Packs a punch, I’d say. And so well done! The man’s a bloody genius, he is. How does he manage the color?”

  It had begun to rain, and the wipers came on automatically.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  “What?”

  “I said, hold out your hand.”

  It was trembling, but McGarr managed to slide the powder onto it anyway. “You probably need that to get home.” He opened the door. “Remember, I don’t want you, I want him. If you help me, I’ll help you right down the line, any way I can. And you know you need it.

  “Now then, I’ll be expecting a call and soon. Keep in mind you don’t have much time. Your man is quick to cover his arse.”

  “And yours,” went unsaid.

  Two days later Cornelius Duggan disappeared, leaving an apologetic note to his wife telling of a love affair, a mistress, and an “inability to cope with the duplicity of my life.” But nothing of the Toddler and murder.

  Duggan was never heard from again.

  PART II

  1996

  CHAPTER 8

  Recover/Uncover

  BIDDY NEVINS HAD become Beth Waters from the moment she got off the ferry in Folkstone twelve years earlier. But the Toddler had remained the Toddl
er, even down to the way he looked. The only difference seemed to be his hair, which he’d lost more of.

  And there he was, standing in the doorway of the picture gallery on Dawson Street in Dublin, where a show of Beth Waters’s work had just opened. They were photographs of women as beauty and porno queens, as rockers and gang molls, the color adjusted, the grain of the print exaggerated to obscure the image and make them look more seductive even than advertising models, no matter what they were acting out in the picture.

  Having signed the gallery guest register, Desmond Bacon glanced up at the chrome-framed image of a beautiful young woman with a strap cinched tight around her arm and a spike poked deep in a vein. She had just depressed the plunger, and now two seconds later her eyes were half closing in ecstasy, her mouth was open, and her full lips were slightly puckered. One of her young nipples could just be seen in the shadow beneath the vent in her blouse. The caption, which was part of the composition, said, “Diabetes, the trip. Can you handle it?”

  It was supposed to be blackly humorous, and was, according to a woman critic from The Times. She was standing beside “Beth” and “simply” loved “the macabre mise-en-scène and counterpoint of your comment lines. What tension, what…dichotomy!”

  Watching the Toddler now turn her way, Biddy placed the glass of wine that she’d been holding, not drinking, on a table and looked behind her for a door. She tried to remember what the critic had been saying, so she could respond. It would be not on to alert her to any other type of story.

  Or for Biddy to act any different from the bored veteran artist, which she now was, suffering through yet another interview that she’d gone through so many times before in London. It was all part of the “opening act” that an artist had to assume to make a success of herself anywhere—London, Dublin, New York, Paris.

  Biddy had been to those places in the last few years. You had to appear above it all, as if there were something beyond their enthusiasm, something they could not see. “Once they think they’ve got you sussed,” another artist had once told her, “you become simple to them, and you’re sunk. Keep it all smoke and mirrors. Then they can write what they want, which they like better anyway.”

  Biddy now smiled and nodded to the critic, not knowing what had been said or what she should answer. Hoping it was enough. All the while madly thinking what she should do. Would the Toddler recognize her? So much time had passed, and she had changed so much, even the color of her eye. The right one, the blue one.

  At Cheri’s insistence she had gone to an optician and bought a contact that could change the color of the eye to brown. Biddy hated the feel of the thing, riding over her eyeball like a filter. But it was essential whenever she was out of the house.

  As for the “Beth Waters” identity, it was the name of the English girl Biddy had gone to rehab with who had killed herself the day they got out. “This is quicker,” said the one line of the note she left Biddy. Little could she have known she had given Biddy far more: a way to carry on after the Toddler. The new identity had remained good up until now.

  Biddy’s first full day in England, she had gone straight to London, where she knew from a dope run years earlier there were shelters for women. Immediately she used Beth’s cards to get herself on public assistance. Then one lucky turn after another—based on the schooling of Beth Waters and Biddy’s own talent for art—landed her in a small advertising firm where she took over the drawing and helped lay out pages, anything she could do to make herself useful. They loved her drawing, and she’d work around the clock when they had business.

  What she liked most was the photographers, getting them props and watching them arrange their compositions when they were shooting, later seeing what came out. It all could be made to seem so real, but unreal. When asked, she would make a suggestion or two, maybe put one thing here and another there. She had only wished to be helpful.

  One older woman said, “You seem to have a knack for this. Let’s see what you can do on your own.” And Biddy did, apart from her utter ignorance of cameras, film, everything about the technical side of photography. The photographer—Cheri Cooke, who was rather well known in advertising circles—remedied that, taking Biddy under her wing in the house that she owned near Reigate outside of London. It also contained a large, well-equipped darkroom.

  Next, Oney arrived, at Cheri’s insistence. Biddy’s child was delivered over to England in 1986 by her father and mother, who took the precaution of driving up to Swords near Dublin Airport on the pretext of buying a new van. They even got out and talked price with the owner to see if they were being followed by the Toddler or any of his thugs. Only then did they dash over to the airport and buy tickets at the last minute for Birmingham, where a Traveler cousin was waiting. Immediately he drove them down to London, taking back roads to make sure they weren’t followed. Biddy could not be too careful.

  Granted Cheri’s house, Cheri’s tutoring, even Cheri’s money that she gave Biddy as “pay” she called it while Biddy was learning did not come without strings. But as a lover Cheri Cooke was not demanding and seemed to need sharing and companionship most. And after Mickalou and what happened to him, Biddy had given up on men who were always deceiving in one way or another.

  Yes, she knew it was wrong to blame Mickalou. After all, he had died, not she, because of a scrape that she had got into herself. But why had he been so foolishly brave with the likes of the Toddler? It was something only a man would do. Women, on the other hand, were dependable.

  Once Biddy had mastered her craft, success came quickly for the “Beth Waters” that she had become in the late eighties in London. “Beth” became one of the first “rephotographers,” as the technique of photographing photographs came to be known. Clipping shots from magazines, Biddy would arrange the pictures in ways that were visually interesting or erotic or shocking. Some of her larger works—blown up to wall size—fetched prices up to fifteen thousand pounds, and Biddy was suddenly selling nearly all the photographs she made.

  But Ireland beckoned. She missed the tranquil pace, and she yearned to provide a better life for her parents, who had lived rough for so long and were now getting on in years. They wanted most to “retire to the road, travelin’ here and there, like back when we was young,” said her mother, Maggie. But in style and not some old banger of a van. Now they could, since money was no longer a problem, thanks to Biddy.

  To be close to them and the rest of her large Traveling family, Biddy—who was now so thoroughly transformed that she sometimes actually thought she was Beth Waters—purchased a large house in Ballsbridge, an upmarket part of Dublin.

  In the fall of 1991 she quietly moved back with Oney and Cheri Cooke, who now functioned as Biddy’s “manager” and little else. Because at the same time Biddy fell in love again—with a man who was a Traveler, like herself, and reminded her not a little bit of her father when he was young.

  Fully ten years younger than she, Tag Barry was handsome, sometimes capable, always unpredictable, and not a little bit roguish. Now she wished she had brought him along to the opening—to distract the Toddler while she made her escape.

  “Amn’t I hearing an Irish inflection in your voice?” the woman from The Times now asked.

  “Oh, aye,” Biddy blurted out as she watched the gallery owner approaching the Toddler with a wide smile and both hands out; obviously the bastard had been in there before and bought something.

  Biddy took two steps away from the critic, so she could see into the office and if there was a door into the alley that would lead where? Into Duke Street. The city, it was her one advantage. Having grown up in Dublin as a homeless waif, she had its streets and laneways etched in memory.

  “Me mither is from Galway,” she now added in an exaggerated brogue that the woman found amusing.

  “Via?”

  “Hunger and poverty, like others in the West.”

  After shaking the gallery owner’s hand, the Toddler turned with his arm up, his index finger po
inting, and his thumb raised. As though shooting the photograph, the thumb snapped down. And then at the next and the next. Three in all. Quickly the owner moved forward and placed a small red dot in the lower left corner of each, indicating that the pieces had been sold.

  “What about your father? Is he Irish too?” The woman placed the nib of her pen on her notepad.

  “Christ!” Biddy muttered. Should she bolt? How could she explain it later? A call of nature. Cramps. A panic attack, which would only be the truth.

  But the gallery owner had turned and now had his own finger outstretched, pointing at her. That was it; she couldn’t flee now. The Toddler would know. She’d have to face him down, but unlike him—she told herself—she’d changed considerably in the dozen years, having put some weight on her gaunt form.

  Also, since her return to Ireland, she had taken the precaution of keeping her wavy blond hair dyed brown and cut short. She wore no makeup. After all the years that she had spent as a child out-of-doors, the skin of her face was creased and lined, like somebody much older. And she now only thirty-three.

  Almost as though for practice, Biddy said in the best Surrey tones that she had learned from Cheri, “Actually, he was a Yank.” Which was the truth for Beth Waters.

  “Who met your mother where?”

  Slowly, torturously, the Toddler was moving down the wall of photographs toward her. The owner—a tall, thin man dressed in a tawny stovepipe suit just the color of his hair—was bending to him, pointing to details in Biddy’s work, which he was explaining. And praising lavishly. It was his job.

  Biddy pulled in a large breath, squared her good shoulders, and let the air out slowly. Her bosom, which in her youth had been considerable, was now formidable and heaving. And suddenly hot, biting, visceral anger, which—she knew from her recovery program—was the flip side of fear, coursed through her.

  To think of who and how many mainly young, confused, misguided, or simply—like herself—abandoned people he had ruined and killed. Quickly, like the man under the bus and Mickalou up in the tree. Or ultimately, like Beth Waters, who couldn’t face a life without his drugs. Hundreds, no, thousands. He was a vulture, a viper, a prick.