Death in Dublin
Page 1
Bartholomew Gill
Death in Dublin
A Novel of Suspense
For Maddie and the McGs entire.
And for the wood woman whose lover
was changed into a blue-eyed hawk…
because of something told under the
famished horn of the hunter’s moon that
hung between night and day.
Contents
A Note About the Book of Kells
Prologue
EVERYBODY HAS AN INNER VOICE, WHICH IS THE VOICE of…
CHAPTER 1
PETER MCGARR STEPPED OUT OF THE LANEWAY INTO Dame Street,…
CHAPTER 2
SEVERAL OF THE REPORTERS HAD STARTED AFTER McGarr, but he…
CHAPTER 3
RAYMOND SLOANE HAD LIVED IN A SECTION OF THE Liberties…
CHAPTER 4
AFTER TENDING TO MCKEON’S INJURIES, WHICH REQUIRED medical attention, McGarr…
CHAPTER 5
GOING HOME, BEING HOME, ENJOYING THE HOME HE once loved…
CHAPTER 6
MCGARR FOUND NIALL FLOOD IN THE PUB OFFICE, going through…
CHAPTER 7
AT HOME MCGARR WENT UP TO MADDIE’S ROOM, where the…
CHAPTER 8
APART FROM THE TINTED WINDOWS AND THE BATTERED body, Ruth…
CHAPTER 9
MCGARR AWOKE WITH A START. THERE WAS A HAND ON…
CHAPTER 10
“YOU AWAKE?” HUGH WARD ASKED INTO HIS CELL phone from…
CHAPTER 11
THE POLICE PRESENCE AT TREVOR PAPE’S HOUSE WAS already significant…
CHAPTER 12
MCGARR LEFT KARA KENNEDY’S FLAT EARLY, AROUND half six, taking…
CHAPTER 13
IT WAS DUSK BY THE TIME MCGARR, MCKEON, AND Kara…
CHAPTER 14
“DRINK!” SWEENEY KEPT SHOUTING AS THE OLD Sikorsky limped home.
CHAPTER 15
THE ADDRESS WAS FANCY INDEED—FITZWILLIAM Square, one of the…
CHAPTER 16
SHEARD’S HOUSE WAS NESTLED IN A CROOK OF THE Dublin…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Bartholomew Gill
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Note About the Book of Kells
Scholars believe that the Book of Kells was created both at Kells in County Meath, Ireland, and on the island of Iona near Scotland around A.D. 800.
In 1185, the historian Giraldus Cambrensis was allowed to peruse the Book of Kells. Of it, he wrote:
“It contains the concordance of the four gospels according to Saint Jerome, with almost as many drawings as pages, and all of them in marvelous colors.
“Here you can look upon the face of the divine majesty drawn in a miraculous way; here too upon the mystical representations of the Evangelists, now having six, now four, and now two, wings.
“Here you will see the eagle; there the calf. Here the face of a man; there that of a lion. And there are almost innumerable other drawings.
“If you look at them carelessly and casually and not too closely, you may judge them to be mere daubs rather than careful compositions. You will see nothing subtle where everything is subtle.
“But if you take the trouble to look very closely, and penetrate with your eyes to the secrets of the artistry, you will notice such intricacies so delicate and subtle, so close together and well-knitted, so involved and bound together, and so fresh still in their colorings that you will not hesitate to declare that all these things must have been the result of the work, not of men, but of angels.”
More recently, Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist and medievalist, called the Book of Kells “the product of a cold-blooded hallucination,” perhaps because the illustrations meld Christian images with zoomorphic and other iconography that harkens back through the Celtic period to the very beginnings of European civilization.
Many of the designs and details partake of such subtlety that any reference to their meaning has been lost.
Yet few would deny that the enigma that is the Book of Kells is one of the premier creations of Western civilization.
PROLOGUE
EVERYBODY HAS AN INNER VOICE, WHICH IS THE VOICE of God, Ray Sloane had been told by his mother.
“It tells you right from wrong, good from bad, what you should think and do. And what you shouldn’t, especially when somebody’s trying to lead you down the garden path. Don’t let anybody lead you down the garden path, Raymond. Not ever.”
Which was the problem of arguing from the general (everybody) to the particular (Raymond Francis Sloane himself), who was standing in the darkness of the guardhouse at the Pearse Street entrance to Trinity College.
It was 2:37 A.M. of a perfectly soft night in early October. Fog off the Liffey had stolen up from the quays and now mostly obscured the gray stone Garda substation directly across from the gates. Orange halos ringed the cadmium vapor streetlamps.
The security guard on duty, who worked for Sloane, was on the floor by his feet, bleeding rather profusely from the back of his head where Sloane had sapped him from behind. He hoped the man wouldn’t die; it wasn’t in the cards for him to die.
True, Sloane continued to reason, everybody probably had an inner voice, the one that said, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be doing this or that” or “Get your bloody arse out of this pickle pronto, mate.” Sloane had that too; usually at the last moment his inner voice knew when to skedaddle.
But increasingly in recent years the problem for Sloane had been that his inner voice didn’t distinguish between good and evil, right action and wrong, positive and negative thinking. No.
For at least three years—ever since he’d got out of rehab and discovered Ox, which wasn’t tested for—Ray Sloane’s perverse inner voice had been leading him down paths with no garden in sight on any horizon. It then had wild fun watching him attempt to pluck his sorry arse out of the broth. For a completely accurate reason, Sloane called his inner voice I.V.
“Here they are,” I.V. now said as a big Merc with blackened windows pulled up to the gate, its headlamps flashing thrice as agreed. “No going back now, arsehole. No fecking way.”
Sloane didn’t know why, but even though he had come from a good family and was now chief of security at Trinity, his I.V. spoke like a navvy from the docks. Or like his connection.
With a gloved hand, he picked up the receiver, then dialed the four-digit extension of his own phone in security headquarters on the other side of the campus, which he had programmed to pick up on the second ring.
That way, it would look as if he’d been sitting at his desk when the call came through. Later, he’d return to his office and erase the tape on the answering machine, while the main security computer would contain a record of the time of the call and could be made to replay a tape of the conversation.
“Hello, Tom—what can I do for you?” he heard his prerecorded voice ask.
Holding a glove over his mouth, Sloane said, “Jesus, Ray—get here fast. I don’t know who these yokes are, but—” He then dropped the receiver near the unconscious man at his feet before punching the button that opened the gate.
The car pulled through; Sloane closed the gate.
“And what’s this now?” I.V. continued, as Sloane nipped out of the guardhouse and into the back of the dark car. “Pointed hoods over balaclavas, no less. Better find out who your bloody wonderful mates are, bucko. And why they need to hide their faces.”
“Who am I with?”
Neither answered, as the driver wheeled the car down the narrow lane toward the library.
“I’d like to know who I’m with.”
Raising an arm, the passenger swung round
with something in his hand. It was a handgun made larger by a silencer fitted to the barrel. Worse still, the man was wearing what looked like darkened welder’s glasses, and not even his mouth was visible. In its place was a round black disk with holes, like something in the drain of a sink.
“Oh, Jaysus,” said I.V. “Better shut your bloody gob, Raymond, and go through with the drill as planned. The less you know, the better off you’ll be.”
Should Sloane be subjected to a lie detector test, which, of course, he would. It was a clause in the contract of employment when theft was involved.
At the library, the passenger got out. Gun still in hand, he waited only a moment for Sloane to swing his legs out of the car, snatching up a handful of hair and wrenching him to his feet.
“Jesus Haitch Christ!” Sloane bawled. “Feck off, you bastard! I know the choreography.”
“What if you don’t?” I.V. asked.
The latex-gloved hand came away.
“Scares you, don’t it? Feckers look like surgeons. Or undertakers. And what’s with the X-Files costume, the bloody drains in their bloody gobs, and whatever it is that’s strapped to their foreheads?”
Under the hoods and protruding from the forehead area of their balaclavas were miner’s or caver’s headlamps that were glowing red.
“Professionals?” I.V. asked. “Could it be? Maybe they’re not the people you’ve been dealing with, Raymond. Maybe they have a different agenda.”
At the door to the gift shop, which was also an entrance to the Old Library where Kells and the other old manuscripts were displayed, Sloane stopped, removed an electronic key from his pocket, and turned to them. “Once we’re in, I’m going to start speaking. For the record, as we agreed. Right?”
Only the shorter man reacted, again flicking the barrel of the gun.
Having to stoop to find the slot of the electronic key, Sloane fumbled with the card and also with the key that turned the secondary lock.
“Jitters, eh?” I.V. asked. “Me—I’d turn and split, were I you. First chance you get. They don’t know this place like you do. And they dare not switch on the lights or spend much time looking for you.”
Which was what the goggles and miner’s lights were all about, it now occurred to Sloane. Infrared. Unlike him, they could see in the dark.
“Strikes me, you’re in over your head, Raymond.”
And perhaps very much without it. Soon. How’d he get into such a mess?
“You mean meth. What we wouldn’t give for a touch of that right now. Eh, lad?”
Stepping into the gift shop, Sloane tried to hold the door for the other two but was shoved forward. And—once the door was shut—he was spun around, both keys were pulled from his grasp, and something like a foot was placed against the small of his back.
In one wrenching thrust, he was launched clean off his feet into the darkness, where he fell heavily and brutally, the skin of his face grating over the flagged floor.
I get it, Sloane said to himself. They’re playing the script to the letter. It’s here I should begin objecting.
“Script. Choreography? What does it matter?” I.V. put in. “Fact is, you’ve no control here. You’re a fecking sheep being led to the slaughter. Get out now, man. Run, while you still can.”
But where?
Hauled to his feet, Sloane was shoved forward toward the Treasury room, which was off the gift shop on the ground level of the Old Library. Even in the pitch dark he knew the way.
“Haven’t you spent most of your adult life here?” I.V. asked. “You know the aisles, the display cases, where the doors are. Think of them as escape hatches.”
But suddenly a great sadness fell over Raymond Sloane: that in the fifty-second year of his life when, in fact, he had been an exemplary citizen in every regard but one, here he was involved in perhaps—not perhaps—the most culturally heinous crime possible in Ireland. Far worse than any mere bombing that killed only people.
He had to make sure that, if the worst were to happen, he’d be viewed as a hero. A martyr. And certainly not a coconspirator, in spite of the money he’d already taken from them.
“Agreed. If we’re going to go out, boyo. Let’s go out with glory. You should start now.”
From his uniform jacket, Sloane now removed another electronic key, saying in a loud voice, “You don’t know what you’re doing. If you take away what’s in this room, the police will hound you into your graves.”
The card was ripped out of his hand, and he heard the door click open.
Again he was shoved forward until he was standing before the glass case that contained the Book of Kells.
“Use your hand. Kill the alarms and open it up,” said a voice that sounded like Darth Vader’s.
“Could he be speaking through a voice scrambler?” I.V. asked. “These yokes have thought of everything, which scares me.”
“Do it!” the husky, disembodied voice roared.
Suddenly it felt like his stomach collapsed or that a fist had found his backbone through his solar plexus. Sloane doubled up and again fell roughly, his head and knees slamming into the stone floor.
Then somebody had him by the back of his belt and began dragging him toward the control panel, which was located under the display case.
“Now, your hand.”
Grabbing his right wrist and tearing off his glove, they slapped his hand on the scanning screen. He heard the lock snap open.
“And the other two.” Said a different, higher, but similarly disguised voice.
Whichever one of them had him by the belt was strong and brutal, whipping Sloane up against another display case.
“Get on your feet and run, lad. Run.”
How could he run, when he could hardly breathe?
When his hand was placed on a second scanner, he realized what was happening. Not satisfied with two of the four volumes of the Book of Kells, they were also going to steal the even more ancient Book of Durrow and Book of Armagh, another ancient illuminated manuscript. All three, of course, were priceless irreplaceable treasures that would fetch a handsome ransom.
“I thought you said you were only going to take—”
With one heave, the man swung Sloane up against a third case. “Open your fist!” the deep voice roared. “Open your bloody fist or I’ll stomp it to bits.”
Sloane complied; his hand was placed on the scanner of the case with the Armagh book; the lock clicked; his belt was released.
Now, he would run, if he could. But as he tried to raise himself up to do as I.V. had suggested, something came down on his outstretched hand, and a blinding flash of pain seared his vision as he fell back onto the flags.
“You said you—” he began, tucking the damaged hand under his arm.
“I never said a thing,” the higher voice said.
“And me—I lied,” said the other, and they both rasped a horrible laughter, as Sloane, fighting through the pain, again tried to gain his feet.
But the moment he did, the tall one—silhouetted against the dim light from the open door to the library shop—took two quick strides and kicked him in the groin.
Sloane had never felt such total pain. Again he couldn’t breathe or see or think. The hand no longer mattered, compared with the galling ache that now spread through his body.
And the fear; he knew what was about to happen.
“Why did you ever think they’d let you live? Somehow you’ve just got to get yourself gone from here, me boy.”
In his need, Sloane had never once allowed himself to consider the possibility. And here it was.
“Give me a hand with him,” said the deep voice.
Sloane felt himself being seized under the arms; the other one had him by the ankles. “Right enough—up he goes.”
Opening his eyes, he could see enough to know what they were doing—stuffing him into the large Kells display case, which could be hermetically sealed by switching on a motor that sucked out the oxygen.
“No!
” Sloane roared, pushing himself up.
But a fist slammed into his nose, again and again and again. “Blood enough for you?” he thought he heard, as the top of the case was closing.
“Enough to be taken seriously,” said the higher voice. “Pity is—there’s not enough. A man like that deserves all this and more.”
And then the top was forced down, squeezing his shoulder, arm, hip, and head into the small space. It clumped shut, and the lock snapped.
“Serious,” said I.V. “That’s just the word. This is very serious.”
Panicked, terrified, Sloane tried to force his legs, shoulder, and hip up against the glass top and sides of the display case. And then, twisting around, his back and buttocks.
“Which are the strongest muscles in the body,” said I.V.
But not strong enough.
His feet—maybe if he banged them against the glass he could shatter it. But his sponge-rubber security-guard soles only thudded against the thick surface, which was slick now with his blood.
Only then did he remember the sap, the sock of coins that he had thumped the gate guard with.
“Too-da-loo,” said one of the voices, rapping on the glass.
“Ta,” said the other.
Sloane then heard the motor switch on, the one that sucked out the air, and suddenly he became hysterical.
“That won’t help,” I.V. remarked. “Not one bit.”
CHAPTER
1
PETER MCGARR STEPPED OUT OF THE LANEWAY INTO Dame Street, at the end of which stood the granite eminence of Trinity College about a quarter mile distant.
It was early morning—half 8:00—and the street was thronged with automobile commuters creeping to work. Cars rolled on a few paces, stopped, and their drivers looked away blankly, used to delay. Faces of passengers in double-deck buses, through windows streaked with urban grime, were careworn and bored.
A solitary articulated lorry appeared lost amid the clamor, its wide headlamps searching for a street that might lead to a highway and freedom.
Like Trinity itself, where McGarr was headed, the early traffic on Dame Street was a given of his day, something he seldom noticed.