The Death of an Irish Tinker

by Bartholomew Gill

When Ward moved beside the door, ready to kick it open, the Toddler took perfect aim. He then waited the requisite full second for his sighting to pulse in, before squeezing off two quick shots at the heavy edge of the door.

  The first smashed it open. The second swung it past the Biddy, who stood there, gun locked in her hands.

  Ward with his gun out too now rushed the door, ready to fire.

  With the heel of a fist, the Toddler punched out the rheostat, dousing the chandelier. The hall was suddenly pitch-black.

  Pop! Pow! The first report Ward’s, the second her gun, the big gun. The force of it was unmistakable.

  Then Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! from below, as McGarr fired up into the boxroom at what little he could possibly see of the person who had fired at Ward.

  Sprinting as well as he was able, the Toddler rushed down the hall toward the back of the house and the stairs that would take him to the basement.

  Pausing at the kitchen table, he placed the barrel of his Wesson at the weal of bruising at the back of Tag Barry’s neck. And fired. The bullet nearly severed the head.

  Down in the basement he took time—less than a minute—to reload, his eyes on the stairs leading down from the kitchen. If McGarr materialized there, he’d have to kill him, which would ruin everything. If he didn’t, it could mean only one thing: Ward was in a bad way, and McGarr was tending to him.

  No McGarr. The Toddler allowed himself a thin smile.

  Loose ends? Only one: the guns. It would have been better to have exchanged his for the Biddy’s. But now if his were never found, why, he’d walk away from any trial guiltless, he was sure. No proof, no guilt, no problem. Which would be theirs in even getting him in the dock. He’d hire the best legal help obtainable; he’d spare nothing.

  At the back of the coal bin the Toddler slowly and carefully opened the hatch of the chute and then waited with what he thought of as sublime patience, given the situation. Hearing nobody, he pulled himself up into the window well and closed the hatch after him. Again he waited, listening, lifting his head just to the level of the grass to scan the side lawn.

  There was a light on now in the front of the house, and he thought he could hear a man’s voice, speaking brusquely. McGarr, it would be, calling for emergency services for Ward, his protégé, or for the Biddy. Or both, the Toddler hoped. The operation had been brilliant altogether.

  Only then did he push himself out of the window well, a bit at a time, keeping himself well concealed in the shadows. Quickly, expertly he crawled the twenty-five feet to the wall, where a mulberry tree helped him to the top. There he paused briefly to admire the effect of the dome lights of the police cars in Raglan Road, splashing bloody light on the Edwardian facades.

  And again when having traversed the wall of three other back gardens, he let himself out the final gate and arrived at the rental car he’d parked by the curb that afternoon. A flying squad was racing by, sirens and claxons blaring. Lights blazing.

  “What’s the fuss?” a man on the footpath asked as the Toddler fitted the key in the lock.

  “Beats me. Tea time? Coffee break?”

  “Or false alarm.”

  Hardly, thought the Toddler, driving away.

  CHAPTER 20

  Stake!

  THE TODDLER HAD seldom felt such elation when he arrived at his warehouse in Ringsend only a mile away from the house on Raglan Road.

  Here in the fortieth year of his life he had been challenged by the one problem that could have destroyed everything that he had ever worked for. In fact, the problem that had nearly killed him.

  He examined his leg, which was now paining again, as he changed clothes and disposed of them and the gun at the bottom of a deep vat. A century ago the building had been a brewery. Later he would retrieve the items and make their disposal more complete.

  And then there was Cork. He’d have to ring up the Monck and Baileys and find out how that had gone, though he wasn’t finished with the Maughams and Nevinses. He wouldn’t let any of her Knacker family off; he’d put a curse on them all. To make an example, to send a message, to enhance his rep, which was his stock-in-trade and would now be revived. To the max.

  Back in the car, it took the Toddler a full hour to climb the Wicklow Mountains, careful not to call attention to his driving. But rounding the final bend, he caught sight of his mountaintop estate, lit now at one in the morning in welcome for his return, and he relaxed. More when he glimpsed the burned-out shell of the Volvo by his shattered gates. And he congratulated himself for having trained such an excellent team. Cambodians, he had long thought, were a dutiful and eminently educable people. Here was proof.

  He would throw a party, he now decided as he traversed the switchback road up to his aerie. Champagne and caviar for the staff, and a hot Jacuzzi for himself and the new girl that Lo-Annh had just brought over. Her niece, he thought from the little he knew of their language.

  A pretty thing, how old? It was difficult to tell with those people, but young. “Gorblimey!” the Toddler said to the windscreen, remembering his Gibraltar years, the lessons of which had served him so well.

  But there was no staff lined up in the hall, as required to greet him with their hands together, bowing, their eyes lowered. Subservient. And the computer at the security control panel in the kitchen reported only one breach, which would have been the Biddy at the gate. He scrolled back through the day.

  There was the report earlier in the evening of Lo-Annh and the niece, Soh, having left on his orders but not yet having returned. But if the four others were gone as well, why was there no record of the chip that they carried on their employment IDs logging them out?

  Could Lo-Annh have turned on him? he wondered, she having been in his employ long enough to have figured out how to defeat the system.

  “Hell-low, anybody home?” he asked through the electronic pager that projected his voice into every one of the twenty-eight rooms and twenty baths, the garage, the gymnasium, the solarium, the pool, the shooting range, and the library. Not to mention the eight rooms in the servants’ quarters. Echoing around all the stone and tile, nothing but the best.

  “If somebody’s here, please respond immediately.”

  The Toddler waited. But nobody buzzed the control panel, as he expected at least of Lo-Annh, who managed the estate when he was away and was responsible for the rest of the staff. She was always on call. Maybe somebody had reported rifle fire, and she had been picked up by the police, which would be unfortunate for her. He couldn’t have her telling stories in or out of court, say, for a long-term visa or Irish citizenship. And the business of the others being gone without the computer recording their identities and times of departure was disturbing, no two ways about it.

  He pulled himself out of the chair and moved to the gun locker in a kitchen closet, where he removed a twelve-gauge Benelli 90 automatic shotgun that he kept fully loaded with sabots that could punch through steel. With a short (twenty-inch) barrel, it was an ideal close-quarters weapon.

  He locked the gun case and left the kitchen along one of the several converging hallways that joined a central atrium, like spokes in a wheel. He peered into the rooms he passed to see if anything was amiss. But all was normal: spotless, neat, in place.

  Taking the lift to his personal quarters on the third floor, he decided that it was rather a good thing that the girls weren’t there. The wound in his leg was now calling attention to itself, and he’d jack up the heat in the Jacuzzi to some barely tolerable temperature, then lace the water with an antiseptic he’d used on other wounds in Vietnam. And let it soak.

  He’d close his eyes; he might even sleep some before ringing up the Monck and Baileys for the report on Cork. Talk about a day at the office!

  Over an hour later Peter McGarr pulled his Mini-Cooper into the lay-by that the Cambodian woman Lo-Annh indicated. It was about a mile from the Toddler’s house.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked her.

  “He kill me if I don’t.”r />
  “Has he killed others that you know about?”

  She nodded. “Six.”

  “Cambodians?”

  “He say they go back. They no go back.”

  “Do you have proof of that?”

  She shook her head. “Mr. T very careful.”

  Which was a point for McGarr to observe as well. He reached across her and opened the door. “You’re on your own now, you and them. You’ve never seen me, spoken to me, or ridden in this car.”

  She nodded. “And you help me be citizen.”

  McGarr nodded, which was the only part of the deal he liked. But the whole thing of bringing the Toddler to justice—of any sort at all—had been necessary now for at least a score of years. Waiting another would only produce more corpses, and the woman beside him might easily become one. With Ward in hospital fighting for his life and Biddy Nevins dead, he’d settle for it.

  Done right “You should be on your way.”

  She touched the back of his hand, her pretty almond eyes fixing his. “Thank you.”

  “Godspeed. Remember, the van is big, old, and loud. You’ll hear it before you see it. Don’t show yourself to any other car. They’ll be going slow, looking for you.”

  The woman got out of the car, shut the door, and, lifting her tight gold dress high on her thin legs so she could walk, moved quickly up the road toward the house.

  McGarr knew what he should do from a self-interested perspective: leave the area immediately. His old car was distinctive, and later there might be some question about what he was doing there.

  But he couldn’t just abandon the group of women to the Toddler. Lo-Annh had said she had disabled the security system, told the others of the staff to flee, and then switched the grid back on before leaving with her niece. And before Biddy had arrived there in the Volvo.

  Which might lull the Toddler and make him believe that his staff had been lifted by the police and that was the extent of the damage he had taken that evening.

  On the other hand, he might have some backup system that she did not know about. Or missing her and the rest of the staff, he might now suspect that something, like what was about to occur, was afoot. Against a high-power weapon, the old van with its thin sheet metal sides would not stand a chance. Or anybody in it.

  Finally McGarr could not expect the women in the van—some of them hardly that—to take a chance that he wasn’t willing to take himself.

  After backing the Cooper as far off the road into the bog as possible, McGarr got out, a pair of binoculars in his hand. He positioned himself behind a hillock of turf where he could see but would not be seen from the road. And where he could sight in the Toddler’s mansion on the hilltop.

  As he scanned the veritable fortress, the lights in the topmost floor—his living quarters, the Cambodian woman had said—switched off, leaving the entire building dark. Could it mean that the Toddler had gone to bed?

  Why not? thought McGarr. After his…coup of the night the man must be tired. And certainly the compound would be locked and secured by sensors, although—again—the Cambodian woman claimed she could defeat the system.

  It was chill, where McGarr was standing, and blear, a wet wind sweeping off a bog lake in the distance that was a shimmering expanse of silver in the moonlight. Overhead the sky was clear, the stars myriad and deep, and McGarr said a silent prayer for Ward, hoping the man’s youth and strength and all the conditioning he had put himself through over the years would carry him through.

  “If he survives,” the surgeon had said, going into the operating theater, “he’ll have limited use of that shoulder and lose whatever lung that’s been damaged,” the .44-caliber, three-hundred-grain bullet having struck him in the upper chest. Just missing his heart.

  McGarr again thought back on Ward’s decision—reported to him by phone—to return the gun to Biddy Nevins, there at the Royal Dublin Hospital, where he was now himself. It had been courageous but foolish. But McGarr would have done the same himself, since they could in no way have guaranteed Nevins’s safety in jail, save placing a squad staffer in her cell around the clock. For how long?

  Nor could they have protected her in her house, as it turned out, the Toddler having acted fast even to supplying her with a car and a note from “Ward.” It had been discovered in her purse by one of McGarr’s detectives. No, there could only be one solution for the Toddler, and McGarr now hoped he could help supply it.

  Headlamps had appeared on the road maybe three miles off but visible across the treeless mountain bog. McGarr raised the field glasses. Then…two pair of headlamps, the second hanging well back. It would be Bresnahan, as they had discussed.

  McGarr waited what seemed like another dog’s age, until he could hear the clacking engine of the old Bedford van, and he lowered his head behind the hillock. The fewer who knew of his presence, the better.

  But once it had passed, McGarr returned to his Cooper. Rolling forward to the edge of the road, he waited for the second vehicle, which was indeed Bresnahan. She pulled her “plain brown wrapper” into the lay-by and joined him.

  “What do we do?”

  “Wait,” said McGarr.

  “In case they don’t come out?”

  McGarr nodded. “He’s a jackal if there ever was one.” Their one hope was that the Toddler’s pride in his stealth, his deceptiveness, and his killing prowess—pride of the sort that McGarr had glimpsed in the granny’s kitchen the night after he’d shot the Bookends—had impaired his caution, at least for the night.

  Would he be expecting the police? Probably. But the security system that was already in place could deal with that. A direct, personal attack? Probably not so soon after Biddy Nevins’s death. Travelers were nothing if not a traditional people, and they’d want to mourn and bury her first. And only then seek revenge.

  “I only hope the Cambodian woman knows what she’s about with the security system. We’d better make sure.” He started the Cooper and moved forward, toward the house. Headlamps out. Driving by the light of the moon.

  In his Jacuzzi on the third floor of his manse, the Toddler was reclining in the swirling hot water at an elevation of exactly two thousand feet, announced one of the digital readouts on the security control panel that was only a reach away. As was the Benelli shotgun.

  The view out floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows was not diminished in the least, however. In the darkness the Toddler could see all the way to Wales, sixty or so miles away. Granted, the lights were dim, but they appeared to him like stars that had fallen into the Irish Sea. Gemlike and sparkling. The sight always soothed him.

  See? No monster he. Desmond Bacon, the Toddler, was capable of—in fact, all too vulnerable to—finer thoughts and higher emotions. Witness his taste for photographic art that had reintroduced him to Biddy Nevins and had nearly got him killed.

  But his great strength, which was cheering, was in never overestimating the worth of disinterested observations and sentiments. Because survival was the only impetus to be observed through every waking moment and protected by all means available. Again he glanced at the phosphorescent digital display.

  In her own way—the Toddler continued to muse—the Biddy had known that. It was why she had run there at the top of Grafton Street all those years ago. She knew who he was and what had happened. How she couldn’t live, having seen it. It was also why he had not forgotten.

  And the biggest lie? The preposterous idea of civilization that we lived in something other than a state of raw and vicious nature. But spread abroad—he supposed, smugly, reaching for a can of Diet Coke—the deceiving notion only made life (lived clearly and fully) easier for somebody like him.

  The Toddler had laced the water with antiseptic that was now soaking into the wound in his leg and galling him. Nevertheless, pain was good and both a lesson and a promise: that he should exercise greater caution and cunning in the future and that he’d survive.

  Leaning his head back against the lip of the Jacuzzi, Desmond
Bacon closed his eyes. After a while the pleasant, steady rush of the water and his own endorphins, kicking in to assuage the pain, lulled him, and he nodded off.

  How long the Toddler slept, he did not know. But it must have been some time, because what woke him was a draft on his forehead and face, the only parts of his body that were not immersed. Opening his eyes, he closed them, then lurched up onto the next shelf in the pool.

  “Something wrong with this picture?” a voice asked.

  It was still dark in the room, but the Toddler could make out the shapes of maybe two dozen people squatting and standing around the sides of the Jacuzzi with things in their hands. Craning back his head, he saw somebody right above him with something big, like a slane, in her hands. “Move, and I’ll split yehr fookin’ head in two.”

  The lights flashed on, blinding him momentarily.

  The voice said, “Bet you know why we’re here.”

  When his eyes cleared, he saw that she was young with a bright green Mohawk, rhinestone studs up one nostril, a black swath wrapping her breasts, and a bare midriff. Her denim jacket was frayed, as were her jeans. Squatting on the edge of the pool, she was holding a hurling stick in both hands, the shaft resting on a shoulder.

  The Toddler surveyed the others, who had clubs, iron pipes, two of them even long brush knives the size of machetes. His eyes rested on the one with the pruning sheers. It was the Tinker bitch’s get, the young one. Oney, she was called. Something had gone horribly wrong down in Cork.

  Why hadn’t he phoned up? What had made him forget?

  The Benelli 500 shotgun was where he had left it, right by the boots of the Mohawk one on the edge of the tub. Seeing his eyes light on it, she kicked out, and the gun slipped into the swirling water. “Oops—I hope that doesn’t ruin it. But you’ve got others.”

  Behind the girls, the door to the drying room was open, which was the cause of the draft. In it stood Lo-Annh, smiling.