Death in Dublin

by Bartholomew Gill

  Located in Sandeford, a village south of Dublin, the school was private and nonsectarian.

  Among the Mercs, Audis, Volvos, and Jags of the other parents, McGarr’s unmarked Ford squad car stood out like a rolling eyesore. But, truth was, one day his own daughter would be wealthy if not rich.

  Fitz—Noreen’s dad, who had died with her—had been a key member of the Dublin in-crowd that had thrived in good times and bad, no matter the vicissitudes of politics. Nuala had been Fitz’s heir, and Maddie was hers.

  Which was a felicity that McGarr rather feared for his daughter, knowing little of its demands. How should he prepare her for the responsibilities and burdens? Or direct her toward happiness, which was, really, all he had ever wanted for her? And what, he suspicioned, had been lost because of who he was? If he’d been a banker or a barrister, like the fathers of some of the other students who were filing out of the handsome, half-timbered building in front of him, Noreen and Fitz would be alive.

  Watching Maddie now, as she larked down the stairs with her classmates, she appeared happy enough, smiling and laughing with her friends, all of whom were wearing charcoal blazers with the school crest on the pockets.

  But at home, where so much of Noreen lingered, she was often different. Somber. Given to sudden tears. And her need for his time, his attention, and the constant reassurance of his love was nothing short of pitiable. Which only jacked his guilt sky-high.

  Pulling open the door, Maddie tossed her book bag on the floor and slid in. “H’lo.”

  “H’lo.”

  She leaned over and brushed her lips against his face.

  “How was school?” McGarr eased the car down the drive.

  Her brow furrowed. “You know—you always ask that, Peter.”

  In the last year, Maddie had gone from calling him Daddy to Father and now by his first name. “Can’t you think of something original to ask?”

  “Well, I’m interested in how your day went. In school.”

  “And you always say that.”

  “Because you always say what you say.”

  “And the next line is—how were your classes? Did you learn something interesting, something I don’t know, something that will keep me from being the obvious dolt that I am?”

  McGarr glanced at her, noting how much she had begun to resemble her mother. Like Noreen, she was fine-boned with a thinly bridged nose and dimpled cheeks. While fair, her coloring was darker than that of either of her parents, and her skin still carried a golden hue from the summer she had spent on Nuala’s estate in Kildare.

  Noreen’s eyes had been green. McGarr’s own were a very light gray. Maddie’s were starburst blue, like McGarr’s own mother’s had been.

  “Well, here’s something that might interest you. Picture this: There we were in the buttery, taking lunch, and Eithne says, ‘Maddie, isn’t that your father thumping those cameramen?’ And everybody—I mean the entire blessed school—looks up, and there you are, my special da, on the teley.

  “Your face in the camera, elbows out, and your eyes—well, your eyes are only your eyes, when you’re mad. And there you were shoving the entire bloody lot out into the street.

  “The truly great thing, of course, was when you raised your foot and vaulted that last man from the house. Before slamming the door.

  “What you couldn’t have seen, since you were on the other side of the door, is how he landed. On his face with the camera smashing to bits.

  “Of course, we kept watching. I mean, how often do we see somebody’s father on television when, you know, they’re not running for a political office or announcing a corporate merger?

  “And, sure, they did show why you did what you did—Bernie all bloody and down on the floor in the hallway of the house. But they kept running the shots of the cameraman flopping down on the footpath and his camera crashing into the street.

  “It was then—” Maddie turned to him, and he watched her slight smile crumble. “It was then Brianna Cauley said—” She looked down at her hands, which she had placed palms up in her lap. “She said, ‘No wonder somebody murdered her mum. That man must have lots of enemies.’”

  Tears burst from her eyes, and McGarr looked for a place to pull over, so he could comfort her.

  Clinging to him as she now often did, Maddie sobbed into his chest, and he stroked her brow. When she had quieted, he asked, “Did you say anything back to Brianna?”—who was one of Maddie’s earliest friends and had probably overheard the assessment from her parents.

  Maddie shook her head. “I didn’t have to. Cassie said, ‘Maddie’s dad does what he does to protect society from the likes of you, arsehole.’

  “And Brianna shot back, ‘Really? Since when has he begun protecting us from television?’ That’s when somebody else told her to shut her bloody gob, and a teacher came over.”

  McGarr let some time pass before offering his handkerchief. Then: “Don’t think I haven’t thought of just what Brianna had to say.”

  Maddie straightened up and blew her nose. “You mean, if you weren’t who you are, Mammy would still be alive?”

  McGarr nodded. “And your grandfather.”

  “If you were instead—”

  “A banker or a solicitor or a businessman, say.”

  “But you weren’t. And you’re not. You are who you are, and Mammy’s dead.”

  Which was the painful—and, McGarr suspected, the ever-painful—reality of their lives.

  “Got much homework?” He twisted the key and put the car in gear.

  “Reams and reams of it.”

  When they arrived at their house on Belgrave Square in Rathmines, he reached for her before she could get out. “I want you to forgive Brianna, and be gracious when she apologizes to you.”

  “Peter! You think I won’t?”

  “No, I knew you would. But I thought I’d mention it.”

  Probably because he himself wished he could forgive whoever had worked the two deaths, but he knew he never would. It just wasn’t in him.

  And because he did not want the poison that had spilled into his life with the murder to spread to his child.

  The bar up the street from Raymond Sloane’s house was a relic from the Liberties of old—a low, dim kip clouded with smoke from the clutch of old men at the bar and a sooty fire that was smoldering in the hearth.

  McGarr pulled back a stool, the red leatherette seat of which was split and curled like the skin of an apple. He sat, noting that all conversation had ceased.

  The others were staring at him, one man even having rose from his seat to get a better look.

  Climbing down from her own stool positioned at the farther end of the bar, a slatternly old woman with a pronounced limp and a cigarette at the corner of her mouth approached, muttering something he couldn’t quite make out.

  He thought he heard, “Fookin’ cop shite…never see them…grass on the locals.”

  She stopped in front of him and raised her head to look through a pair of grimy glasses on the end of a long nose. Her wrinkled face was the shade of putty; her brown eyes were milky with age.

  “Yeh drink on duty, it’s said.”

  “By whom?”

  “It’s why you did what you did on the teley.” She flapped a hand at a screen that was showing a rugby match. “Drunken snit. It’s on all the channels. With young Sloane—who’s known as J.C. hereabouts—saying yous two broke in the back of his house, roughed him up, then grilled his mammy and sisters. Before he busted out.

  “Then there’s yourself, beatin’ the piss out of the press. Finally. At last. Feckin’ bunch of fakes, frauds, and fairies. What are ye havin’ besides the time of day?”

  “Malt.”

  She shuffled around to reach for a bottle. “If you want ice, you can go to feckin’ Iceland and hell in that order. We serve no feckin’ ice here.”

  Some of the others began laughing.

  She poured the drink and placed it before McGarr.

  He slid som
e Euros toward her, but she slid them back. “You gave me a laugh, which is hard to come by these days.”

  McGarr nodded thanks. “Why J.C.?”

  “Jesus Christ. It’s how he once looked, with a dust mop beard and feckin’ sandals in winter. And because ‘J.C.’ browned him off. But all that’s gone. Now he’s Kojak with a ring in his nose.”

  “Like a feckin’ bossy cow,” said one of the men at the bar.

  The old woman pulled the stub of cigarette from her mouth and flicked it at the man. “Another word from you, and you’re out of here. The man’s speaking to me.”

  “The father, Sloane, he came in here.” It was not a question.

  “Not to drink. No toper, Raymond Sloane.”

  “Why drink? How high is up?”

  “That’s it. You’re gone.”

  The man turned his head and smiled to the others. He did not move.

  “Feckin’ ee-jit.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Raymond?” She nodded. “Years ago. Him with a steady job but the family and no money, the missus told me. Any other place but Trinity—bein’ a college and all—would have booted his arse into Liffey, where it belonged. But he did the rehab, and then he was back acting…different.

  “At first we put it down to the ‘pink cloud’ thing—you know, clean. Off the shit. I get ’em in here all the time. Turning over a new leaf, clean—yous is all drunken mots and bowsies, they say. Then, sooner or later, they show up, worse than before. Locked—morning, noon, and night.”

  Turning her back to her customers, she lowered her voice. “But Raymond was different. He was better at first, then better than better, if you catch me drift. More…alive, smiling, happy”—her sad old eyes scanned McGarr’s face—“too feckin’ happy.

  “Chattin’ everybody up a mile a minute. Then he was, like, gone. Not there with you. You could say, ‘Raymond, you just won the Sweeps.’ He’d give you his contented cow look and say, ‘That’s gas, Lizzie. Gas.’

  “Pink feckin’ substantial cloud, says I to meself. Without a penny in it for me, more’s the pity.” Again she paused, as though to assess McGarr’s reaction.

  “Tell me now—why would anybody want to kill Raymond Sloane? So you nick the Book of Kells and them other two yokes. So you’re all dressed up in black and balaclavas, and you’ve disguised your feckin’ voices and all. Why off a feckin’ security guard like Raymond, who’d probably messed his britches the moment he sussed out what was happening?

  “Because”—she glanced down at McGarr’s drink, which was untouched—“because Raymond must have been in on it.

  “Because the moment they got the goods in their hands, it was nightie-night, Raymond. No probable touts allowed, no druggie informers. They clapped him in the box and sucked out the air.”

  Although bemused by her detailed knowledge of the crime, McGarr waited. She had more to tell him.

  A cigarette came out of the pocket of her cardigan jumper, then a lighter. Her wrinkled lips jetted smoke at the teley. Then, with the palm of her hand, she vigorously worked the crook of gray flesh that was her nose.

  “Itchy. Bad air in here. The worst. But”—she drew on the cigarette—“I suppose it’s a condition of life, as I’ve known it.

  “Take them chancers behind me.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Years ago, a good half of them were beggin’ me to throw a leg over their lousy hides, don’t you know. Eyein’ me, buyin’ me little thises and thats, reachin’ for me hip when I passed.

  “Says I to meself, says I, Whatever would I want with anybody who comes in here? All they see in me is this bar, sorry as it is. The till. And me, an only child with an aged father. I’d only get the best of a bad lot.

  “No, I wanted a gent who would take me out of this motley shite. Somebody like the bloody tall man who came into the lounge over there with a lady maybe a fortnight ago to speak to Raymond.” She jabbed the cigarette at a low battered door, which was closed.

  “It’s hardly used. There’s a separate entrance. A buzzer goes off when the other door gets opened from the street, is how I knew they was in there.”

  “You get a look at them?” McGarr touched the drink to his lips.

  “Only when the door opened and closed. Raymond had been in here at least an hour before, nervous like.”

  “Playin’ with himself, as ever,” put in one of the men at the bar. “Sloane was a feckin’ wanker, if there ever was one.”

  “You too,” she warned through the laughter. “You can go as well.”

  “Nervous, how?”

  “Pacin’, looking at his wristwatch. Must have smoked a packet of fags.”

  “Describe the gent.” McGarr reached for his drink. “What did he look like?”

  “I only got a look at him when the door opened and closed, don’t you know. But I’d say he was a tall man. Early forties. Soap star looks. Cashmere top coat, silk scarf.

  “When Raymond come out saying he needed a gin martini and a glass of white wine, says I, ‘The feck would I be doing with vermouth?’ Says he, ‘Just fill it up with gin. Fecker’s got the bag on, he won’t notice.’ Fortunately, I found the bottle of white wine I made the mistake of buying years ago. For the lady.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Had her back to the door, but upmarket altogether. Tasteful coat, good shoes. Legs crossed to make a show of them. It’s all I saw of her.”

  “Hear any names?”

  “Only Raymond’s.”

  “He speak with you later?”

  “’Twas the last I seen of him. Ever, as it turns out.”

  “Big BMW up the street,” said one of the men behind her. “Midnight blue. Gold wheel covers.”

  Like Raymond Sloane’s new wheels, which, McGarr supposed, the son, Ray-Boy, had driven off in.

  “How long did they stay?”

  “The drink, is all. Fifteen minutes, twenty. They had business with Raymond, if you know what I mean. After it, he was out of here like a shot.”

  “Big shit-eater on his puss” came from one of the men.

  “He could see his future before him,” said another.

  “Notoriety. Front-page headlines.”

  “Stardom and a big glass box.” Laughter gurgled from the crew.

  “Warped arseholes,” the old woman opined. “Imagine swearing any one of them in a court of law.”

  More immediately, McGarr was interested in the possibility of one or another having got a good look at the man or woman who met Sloane in the lounge. “Would you mind if I sent an artist over here?”

  “Depends on her act. If she gets the lads all riled up, then leaves, no telling what might happen.” Behind the soiled lens of her eyeglasses, one rheumy eye winked.

  McGarr tossed back his drink, put a ten on top of the singles, then slid the bank notes forward. “Buy the lads a drink and one for yourself.” Warped or not, later he might need them.

  “Where’d you learn about the balaclavas and all the…crime scene details?” He slid off the stool.

  She swung her jaw at the teley. “Some big fella—one of your own—was on twice. Once at Trinity, a second time from Garda headquarters in Phoenix Park.”

  Sheard. What possibly could he hope to gain in releasing those details? McGarr wondered. “Your name?” He held out his hand.

  “Does it matter?”

  He nodded. “You’ve been helpful.”

  “Foyle. Annie Foyle, like the name of the place. But I don’t think I’d do you much good in court, either.”

  McGarr now remembered—Foyle’s had been the name of the pub at least since he’d been a child.

  He had actually known her father, who had been a friend of his own father. “Small world.”

  “It’s occurred to me.”

  Twenty minutes later, McGarr found himself climbing a battered staircase toward his headquarters on the third floor of a building in the complex of structures called Dublin Castle in the heart of the city.

 
The brick structure, Edwardian in style, was a former British army barracks and still reeked of coarse tobacco, dubbin, leather, sweat, gun oil, and fear. The British had been oppressors and in that role hated and sniped upon. Like the Garda itself, these days.

  And paper, McGarr decided, bumping open the door into the office proper. The place now also stank of paper, reams and reams of it, as Maddie had said of her homework. Along with a more recent smell—the acrid plastic stench of simmering circuitry.

  “Chief,” said one staffer, as McGarr passed down the rows of desks.

  “Chief,” said another.

  “Chief,” some of the others then chorused.

  It was the standard greeting.

  “You got Rut’ie and her consort in your cubicle,” said John Swords, who since Bresnahan’s removal had acted as McGarr’s amanuensis. “Bernie’s in there too, nursing his stitched pate.”

  “Which you’re calling a heads-up?” McGarr asked, if only to break his somber mood.

  “Only the ‘nursing.’ You’ll see what I mean.”

  With the next step, he did:

  McKeon was ensconced in McGarr’s chair, feet up on the desk. In front of him was the bottle of whiskey that was usually kept in the lower left-hand drawer of the desk and could get McGarr sacked, given long-standing regulations prohibiting drink in Garda facilities. McGarr’s personal cup was in McKeon’s right hand, doubtless filled with the potent fluid.

  Bresnahan, on the other hand, was seated in McKeon’s usual chair, with Hugh Ward occupying the edge of the planning table.

  “Chief,” the three said together.

  McGarr made a point of staring at the bottle and then at the cup.

  “I’d offer you a touch but, as you can see, there’s only one drinking vessel,” said McKeon, his dark eyes bright from the drink. “I asked for OxyContin, but they warned I couldn’t snort and gargle at the same time. Please don’t tell me I have to get up.”

  McKeon’s thick white hair had been shaved around the wound, which was covered by a bandage plaster.

  “Did anybody ever tell you you need a television in here?” McKeon continued.

  “Acting lessons,” said Ward.

  “And a blue pinstriped, double-breasted suit with a hankie in the pocket,” put in Bresnahan, who now crossed long shapely legs that were encased in buff-colored stockings.