Death in Dublin

by Bartholomew Gill

  Kehoe rose to greet Pape. “This is Commissioner O’Rourke,” said Sheard, who had hold of Pape’s arm. “And I take it you’ve met Superintendent McGarr.”

  From the tweed suit to the earth-toned tie, Pape looked every part the gentleman scholar from out of Trinity’s privileged past.

  But his skin was pallid, his eyes were bloodshot, and his long graying hair lank. A muscle on the left side of his face was fluttering.

  “Perhaps you’d care to sit down,” Kehoe said, drawing another chair into the circle.

  “No, I won’t be staying long. Jack here asked me to stop by.” Having resumed his seat, McGarr noticed that Pape had only a few teeth remaining in front, and they were the color of tea. “What is it you wish to know?”

  “Why, as we discussed, Trevor—the Kells book, its value to Trinity, and if there might be a buyer.”

  As Pape parroted what Sheard had said, adding his own opinion of the book—“a gaudy bauble to be ogled by tour buses filled with bloody Americans”—McGarr wondered if Pape would have had the wherewithal, technical expertise, or follow-through to have produced the tape.

  Or would anybody throw in with him on such an undertaking? And allow him to live? In the parlance of street Dublin, Pape was flamin’ out, his body now obviously succumbing to years of abuse.

  “Trinity and the world could surely get by without the Book of Kells,” Pape concluded. “Durrow and Armagh are an entirely different matter, and I’m sick—absolutely sick—about their loss. But I suspect the celebrity of Kells will protect them, until the time Jack has the miscreants in hand.”

  Kehoe stood as Pape left and remained standing after the door had closed. “Any final thoughts, Peter?”

  Which had a ring so ominous that McGarr decided to say what he had been holding back. “Even within groups, it’s individuals who commit crimes. And the history of prosecuting groups in this country is sorry, to say the least.”

  Sheard began chuckling. “And you said objectives were not your business. Perhaps someday you’ll show us the white paper.”

  By the time McGarr got to his car, he was seething. He had as much as given his own investigation away. And could Kehoe, as a politician, resist the logic of Sheard’s argument? Probably not.

  His cell phone was ringing. “Peter?” It was Sheard. “I don’t know how to thank you. Know the saying ‘To be predictable is to be controllable’? Consider me your biggest fan. I might even accept your calls, after your retirement.”

  McGarr had only slipped the phone into his jacket when it rang again.

  “Peter, it’s Kara”—there was a pause—“Kennedy. I just want to tell you how happy you made me last night.”

  McGarr muttered something.

  “I hope to see you again.”

  McGarr did not know how to reply, or if he should on a cell phone.

  “Will I see you again?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “When? Tonight?”

  “I’ll have to see. Can I call you?”

  “If you promise you will. Will you promise?”

  McGarr muttered something else.

  “I’ll hold you to your word and haunt your favorite place. But, Peter…” She paused. “I’m serious. I’d very much like to see you again.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  “YOU AWAKE?” HUGH WARD ASKED INTO HIS CELL phone from the vantage of a tearoom and coffee bar across Greater Saint Georges Street in the center of the city where Ath Cliath had its newsroom and offices.

  “Yah. You?” Ruth Bresnahan was still in her battered Opel parked near the building on the North Wall where the woman, Morrigan, had entered, spent the night, and left early in the morning wearing different clothes. “Tired?”

  “Of course.” Ward was on his maybe sixth cup of strong coffee, although he’d actually stopped counting. “Call home?”

  “Everything’s fine, but you better too. Lee has everything in hand, but she was full of questions and was obviously worried.”

  Leah Sigal-Ward was Ward’s other common-law wife; the three of them lived together in a large flat above Lee’s antique shop with their three children in an arrangement that, while unusual, had many advantages, including day care.

  “What about Sweeney?” Bresnahan kept her eyes on the busy scene before her.

  “I’m not sure he ever comes out. I’m beginning to believe he’s a wraith, an apparition.”

  It was well known that Chazz Sweeney was a workaholic, if also a probable alcoholic, and that he had renovated the top floor of the Ath Cliath into a flat. During his trial for murder more than two years ago, “Sweeney-watchers” had reported that he did not leave the building for whole days.

  “What about Peter?”

  “I’m waiting for him to call me. Or Sweeney to appear. I’d hazard he’s busy enough without chat.”

  “Me too. Love you.”

  “Me, you.”

  “Call Lee.” Bresnahan rang off and checked the rearview mirror, before redirecting her attention to the front of the building.

  What had struck her most about the thug—who’d obviously been posted as sentry on the door in the building where Mide, she was convinced of it, lived—was the man’s inordinate interest in women.

  The age or appearance of the women who passed him didn’t seem to matter; the young man chatted them up nevertheless.

  Before sunup Bresnahan had attached a listening device to the locked door of the building.

  “Mornin’, mum,” she heard him say. “How’s the missus this A.M.?” Or, “Them new clappers on your pretty piggies? They’re grand, brilliant, like the rest of y’.”

  Also, “Ah, darlin’ girl—feelin’ your oats this mornin’, I see,” to a nubile young thing whose bosoms were cascading as she sprinted toward a bus. And after she had passed, “I’d feel them oats mornin’, noon, and night, I would. Take the fookin’ frisky right out of you.”

  Guys, thought Bresnahan. They never had enough, which gave her an idea when, around half nine, the man got tired of having to wield a key to unlock the door every time somebody entered the building. He simply propped it open.

  Still, he stopped everybody and either used his phone to call up to what looked like several offices on the second floor of the four-floor structure or glanced at the laminated ID cards that most seemed to possess.

  “You need a new pic’ on that card, luv. It doesn’t do your film-star good looks justice, no it don’t.” “When, my dear, are y’ going to end me suffering and step out for a jar or two?” “Any time your lucky husband isn’t lookin’ after y’, babe—give me a jingle. I’m free.” And he actually pulled a card from the back pocket of his ratty jeans. Worse, the woman took it—for a laugh in the office, Bresnahan hoped.

  Combing her hair and fixing her face in the rearview mirror, Bresnahan stepped out of the car and removed her full-length down jacket that had kept her warm the night long without having to run the engine.

  It was a few minutes after eleven in the morning, and a strong sun made it feel almost hot, a condition that would not last, she knew, once the inshore breeze off Dublin Bay kicked up.

  But for the moment, she could safely remove the Bolero-style jacket she was wearing without looking too much like a tart. The blood-red bull-baiting jumper, while fitting her rather ample form snugly, had sleeves, and her black slacks had been cut to allow movement.

  Also, Bresnahan did not even have to look to see if the sentry had taken notice of her. She could feel his eyes on her body as she walked toward him, jacket and purse over her right shoulder, leaving her left breast—the larger of the two—exposed to uninhibited ogling.

  Maybe thirty-eight or forty, tops, he’d slicked back his dark hair that curled in long ringlets down his back.

  Thin, around six feet but small-boned, he had nevertheless pumped up his pecs and biceps, which were exposed courtesy of a tank top. The requisite rings were in one ear alone, patterned in ever-decreasing sizes and diameters and fo
lded down like a chevron of silver flight feathers.

  “How do you, do you, do you do, me luv? Where have you been all of me loife?”

  “Fortunately for you, out of earshot. Do I know you? Your familiarity sounds rather…well, familiar.” She stopped in front of him, plucked a bit of her jumper between thumb and forefinger, and pulled it in and out. “Phew. Hot. I’m in need of a wet.”

  Raising her wrist, Bresnahan glanced at her watch. “So—it’s a bit early but, hey”—she flashed her eyes, which were the color of gray smoke—“why not get a jump on the future?”

  Taking a step away from him, as though to cross the street, she stopped and turned only her shoulders so he had a full view of the rest of her. “It’s open, I trust.”

  He had to wrench his eyes off her backside. “What’s open?”

  “The pub. For the wet.” Before he could answer, she tripped across the street and entered the pub, where a barman was washing glasses.

  She had just been served a glass of wine when the sentry entered the bar.

  “Van-Man,” said the bartender in greeting.

  “Jimmer.”

  “What’ll yeh have?”

  “Whatever the lady is garglin’, and put hers on the table too. D’yeh have a name?” he asked Bresnahan.

  “Now, that could be a problem.” She lifted the glass off the bar and moved toward the lounge, which, she could see, had no windows. “I never wanted a name, and for the moment would you mind if I remained anonymous?”

  “Where are you going? I just bought you your drink.”

  “In here where it’s dark and intimate. Drinking in the sunlight is counterproductive.”

  Noting the women’s loo and also the back door, as she feigned losing her way, Bresnahan was pleased to discover that the lounge was a long, dark room. She had only eased herself against the velveteen of a banquette when “Van-Man” appeared, glass in hand.

  He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Nameless, gorgeous, flame-haired woman—is your brilliant form anywheres about? Ah, ’dere you are in all of your splendor.” He stepped off the distance to her side. “Why can’t we sit out front? It’s me bloody job to look after the street.”

  “Because you must choose, Van-Man. Choose between your bloody job and me. Also, come closer while I tell you—I have something to show you.”

  Van-Man’s expression brightened.

  “Sit down.”

  He complied.

  “See these?” Reaching down for the waistband of her jumper, Bresnahan pulled it up and exposed her breasts, which were wrapped in a beige, slightly transparent brassiere. “They feel constrained by the device that you see. And I tell you this—today, right now, I’m going into the loo to remove it. Then, if you’re very good and have the courage, we’ll have another and a more complete showing. Are you game?”

  Van-Man could scarcely nod. “You’re…entrancing.”

  “And you’re da’ man, I’m thinking. Maybe you might have something to show me yourself when I return. Now, don’t move.” With bag and jacket in hand, she moved quickly out of the room, past the toilet and through the bar.

  “That was quick,” said the barman. “Usually quiff lasts a bit longer with Van.”

  “Quiff pro quo?” Bresnahan asked, as the door swung to. “I left the condoms in the car.”

  She had to wait for a clutch of cars to pass before crossing the street. But the door being open without the attendance of Van-Man, she was quickly in the building and up the stairs.

  The first floor was an importing firm, with the second split between a paper broker and a solicitor. The third and final floor offered only a single battered door. From her bag, Bresnahan drew out her 9mm Glock and moved up the stairs.

  Ear to the door, she listened for a long minute before knocking. There was no response. And again. Nothing. Reaching down, she turned the handle. The door swung open.

  The hall was long and dark, and she could hear music playing somewhere off in the shadows. But she had only moved a few cautious feet down the hall when she heard a heavy footfall on the stairs. “Red! You up there? Red!”

  Back behind the door, Bresnahan waited, as the door was nudged open.

  “Red?” There was a pause. “Mide? Morrigan?”

  Bingo. She had hit it. But she would have to do something fast, in case said Mide now appeared from one of the rooms.

  The door opened farther, and when the shadow of Van-Man’s hand appeared on the hall floor, Bresnahan chopped the barrel of the handgun down on his wrist.

  A bark of pain echoed down the hall and, as his body crumpled, Bresnahan grabbed up a fistful of curly mane and pulled him forward, her foot kicking out his legs from under him.

  Van-Man fell in a piece face-first on a strip of tattered carpet. With a knee to the small of his back, Bresnahan pulled up his right ankle and cuffed it to his uninjured wrist. “Does Mide live here, lad? Is the man himself about?” With Glock in hand, she moved down the hall.

  “Fookin’ cunt.”

  “Ah, now—there you have it at last.”

  The first room was a kitchen with two tall windows that looked out on Dublin Bay, where a tan Guinness tanker was moving down the length of the long granite breakwater. Seeing her, a song sparrow in a cage began a complicated trill. There was a mug on the table along with a barmbrack loaf and a plate of butter. A low blue flame was warming a kettle on the stove. Bresnahan twisted it off.

  The next room contained a threadbare couch, a television, and an old wooden stand-up radio from which a commentator was warbling in Irish. Bresnahan switched that off too. “Hello! Is anybody about?”

  Somebody—an artist—had painted images and icons on the walls that Bresnahan, whose knowledge of art was admittedly slight, nonetheless recognized as Celtic.

  A bedroom came next, with a mussed bed and an equal number of women’s clothes in the closet as those for a short man. Farther on was a study with many books on wall shelves, a loud mechanical clock, and more Celtic art, including a glittering golden—could it be real?—torque. If so, it was worth something.

  And finally Bresnahan came to the door at the end of the hall, which opened on a long room with chairs, a dais at one end, and—she pushed the door farther open—Morrigan and the man she knew was Mide from photos she had seen of him. Morrigan was sitting in a chair staring at the wall, where Mide was in two parts.

  A long spear or pike had fixed his head to the wall above a table where his body rested. A saber with a bloodied double blade rested where the head had been.

  “I told him he’d created a monster, that he’d taken all his Druid bullshit too far. One of these days, some one or other of the young bucks would put into action all his blather about blood succession and war against the church. And it would come to this.”

  “You found him like this? When you arrived here last night?”

  “Yah.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  Only her bloodshot eyes rose to Bresnahan.

  “Who killed him?”

  She shrugged.

  “What about Raymond Sloane Junior—where’s he?”

  “Ray-Boy is only one of them. There could be any number or all of them who did this. Mide was terrified of returning to prison and was against anything that might land him there. He’d even washed his hands of the drug thing. Given it right up. ‘I’ve little time left,’ he’d say to me. ‘And I’m not spending any more of it in the drum.’”

  “Like talk of lifting the Book of Kells.”

  “If they had that talk, it wasn’t said in front of me. Or mentioned by him.”

  “But they’re behind it.”

  “I don’t know that either, and I’ll not have you saying I do. Why would they as much as indict themselves and give their movement a bad name?

  “Drugs. It’s fookin’ drugs. Everything that sucks about this city and culture is drugs. Booze and drugs,” Morrigan continued.

  “Where’s Ray-Boy? Somebody murdered the
driver of that car on the Glasnevin Road, shot him with a rifle. I think it was Sloane.”

  Morrigan’s eyes moved from Bresnahan to the saber and then to Mide’s head on the wall.

  “I’ll tell you where I think he could be, if you help me down with Mide’s old head. He didn’t deserve this, not at all, at all.” Tears had welled in her eyes.

  “Can’t. This is a crime scene.”

  “Then I can’t help you either.”

  “But you will.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because Ray-Boy is one of those who would tear your movement apart. Bad enough when that tape gets broadcast.” Bresnahan pointed at the videotape on the floor by the woman’s feet. “Right or wrong, people will brand you, if only because of the murder of a young lad at your headquarters and the assassination of your founder.”

  Morrigan stared down at her hands. Then with tears streaming down her face she reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad and pen. “I’m only doing this as retribution. The right bastards who did this thing wouldn’t be anything but scuts without him, and look how they paid him back.”

  She wrote a North Side Dublin address and handed it to Bresnahan. “But you should be warned: Unlike here with only one worthless guard, that place is a fortress. You should go in number.”

  Out in the hall, Bresnahan stopped beside Van-Man. “Ray-Boy Sloane—know him?”

  “How the fook do I know? I’m in fookin’ pain.”

  Reaching down, Bresnahan wrenched up the cuffs, which caused him to cry out.

  “Now, perhaps you don’t remember the question.”

  “Course I fookin’ know him. Wasn’t he supposed to be on watch last night? When I got here this morning, no Ray-Boy, no sign of him.”

  “Did you come up here?”

  “Not unless I’m called.”

  Bresnahan reached for her cell phone.

  McGarr’s staff was waiting for him in his cubicle when he arrived back at his headquarters in Dublin Castle. Sitting on the several document-littered tables or leaning against cabinets, they looked tired, with day-old beards and puffy eyes.

  Bernie McKeon—the patch now off his stitched scalp—vacated McGarr’s chair. “Sit, oh chief of amoking Injuns.” He tapped a copy of a tabloid newspaper that had to be Ath Cliath. “The smoke signals are not good. Worse, they appear to be genuine.”