Sister Caravaggio

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘You make it sound like he was getting measured for a shirt,’ Alice said.

  ‘God love him, he’s still warm,’ Maggie said, stepping in and placing her hand on the dead man’s forehead. It seemed like the Christian thing to do, to offer comfort, even though Mr Ashley Kelly-Lidrov was profoundly dead. If it really was suicide, then Mr Ashley Kelly-Lidrov, God rest him, was in trouble with God – big trouble. He was going to need all the help he could get, and he was going to need it from wherever he could get it.

  ‘Any sign of a mobile phone?’ asked Alice, searching for one.

  ‘I’ve already had a look,’ Ned said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ Alice said, and froze as a knock was heard on the outer door.

  She gestured urgently to Ned. Ned cleared his throat.

  ‘Yes?’ he called.

  ‘Room service,’ said a female voice.

  Dublin

  16 June, 4.30 PM

  Alice pulled the door behind her until she heard the click.

  ‘We walk straight out of here,’ she hissed. ‘We look neither left nor right; we speak to no one. Is that clear?’

  ‘Understood,’ Ned said.

  Maggie, clinging to Alice’s arm, gulped and nodded.

  ‘Our van is parked in Ely Place,’ Alice told Ned.

  ‘On a meter, I hope,’ Ned said.

  The corridor was suddenly impossibly long. Maggie felt a strong need to go to confession, even though, she reasoned, she had not actually committed a sin. She noticed how Alice had used a tissue to cover her hand when she had closed the door to the suite. The sight of Alice in action back there was something Maggie would never forget. The once-sweet novice had been transformed into a lethal weapon, but a strangely graceful one. Maggie felt a weird and probably sinful surge of excitement in the pit of her stomach as the gilded lift doors hummed open. Now the advertisements for massages and jewellery, in their golden frames, seemed suddenly menacing. She looked across at Alice. Doon Abbey’s one and only novice was standing, eyes narrowed and focused ahead, primed for action.

  In the inner lobby, Maggie felt as if a spotlight was on them. Her head sang unknown tunes as the three of them walked together through the main lobby and out to St Stephen’s Green. The fresh air was heavenly. They crossed the street to where the statue of Wolfe Tone stood.

  Alice felt the phone in her pocket vibrate. Bizarrely, it made her think of sex. She hadn’t thought about sex for twelve hours. There wasn’t time to pray. She cursed Ned and his proximity to her. Also bizarre was the fact that she was still attracted to an overweight, pasty-faced, red-haired man with one eye closed up; but now, with Ned so close to her, reconnecting her to the past – a past that she had been sure was lost – she wanted to reach out and touch him. They had once been a good fit. Yin and yang. But then she had shot Bruno Scanlon Junior, and Alice found that Ned wasn’t there for her – not in the way she needed. She wished she’d closed up both his eyes when she was at it. No time to pray, she reflected, and yet there was time to think of sex. The baseness of the human spirit never failed to amaze her.

  The vibrations came to an end. Moments later, the phone vibrated again, this time with a message. All her instincts told her that the person responsible for what they had just come upon in the hotel was still nearby. She scanned the immediate vicinity. People heading down Merrion Row for drinks in O’Donoghue’s or Doheny & Nesbitt’s; parents with kids in tow heading in to the Green to feed the ducks. It was Dublin on a summer’s afternoon: people going about their business and enjoying themselves, oblivious of the reality of murder and death within touching distance – a world that they were only too happy to ignore, a world they paid their taxes to avoid. She turned to Ned. Ned’s mouth was open. He had stepped back and was staring.

  ‘Jaysus!’ he said.

  A man was standing twenty metres away, across the street, at the entrance to the Shelbourne. He was very tall and broad, his blond hair was shoulder-length and his tanned face was pitted like a pineapple. As Alice took in every detail, the man’s eyes swivelled and landed on her. What she would remember later was how pale those eyes were, in contrast to his tanned, rutted face; how pale and cold.

  ‘It’s him!’ Ned said, although Alice had known that from the moment the man had appeared.

  He was now walking briskly down Merrion Row, across the street from them, a small suitcase in his left hand. Alice followed at a distance, with Ned and Maggie a step behind her. The man stopped at the corner of Upper Merrion Street and looked up Ely Place. He didn’t seem to like what he saw. For a moment, it appeared that he was about to head down Upper Merrion Street past Government Buildings, but again he hesitated. Did he sense that he was being followed? Or was it merely the hesitation of someone new to the city, someone without bearings? Or the caution of a hired assassin who had just completed his assignment? As he turned once more and surveyed the street on both sides behind him, Alice, Maggie and Ned shrank into the entrance to O’Donoghue’s. She and Ned used to drink in here on Friday evenings. Alice could feel her blood quicken. She was sure the blond-haired man had seen her. Suddenly, he stuck out his hand, darted nimbly through the traffic to a taxi that had come along Upper Merrion Street and was stopped at the lights, and jumped in. The lights changed.

  ‘Got him!’ Alice cried. ‘Come on!’

  She ran flat out down the street and rounded the corner into Ely Place. The taxi crawled past in heavy traffic. Ned would have to fit in the back of the van, as best he could, for Alice was damned if she was going to lose sight of the taxi. So much detective work was about instinct. You got a hunch; you followed it. It was always a mistake not to follow your instinct. As she reached the van, Alice had the key at the ready. She stopped. A sign on the window of the Berlingo read: IT IS AN OFFENCE TO DRIVE THIS VEHICLE. She looked down. An ugly yellow clamp covered almost the entire small wheel, where it rested on thick, double yellow lines.

  ‘Fuck!’ Alice shouted, kicking the wheel of the van with all her force.

  ‘Oh, God forgive you!’ Maggie gasped as Ned burst out laughing.

  Dublin

  16 June, 4.45 PM

  Bruno Scanlon Senior didn’t get emotionally involved. He kept a professional distance at all times. This job was no different. He had fenced paintings before and knew what a Dutch master was, because he himself was an Irish master – albeit a master criminal. But in order to fence a painting, you had to be in possession of it. Even Bruno knew this. And he didn’t have the Caravaggio. In fact, the way he felt, he was hardly in possession of his senses. The painting he was meant to have taken delivery of had never shown up. And now Bruno was on his way to account for himself to the representative of a man whose name, in criminal circles, was synonymous with sudden death.

  Bruno’s mouth was dry as he drove along Parnell Street, past Dominick Street and the boxing club at the corner: an old haunt. Looking at himself now, well over twenty stone and bursting from even his most recently bought Louis Copeland suit, it was hard to think that he had once been the inner-city welterweight champion. Jab, jab, jab-jab. Magic footwork. Great right hook. Speed and precision had been the hallmarks of Bruno Scanlon’s boxing career. Now he couldn’t even get out of his own effin’ way.

  He turned left onto Parnell Square, up past the maternity hospital. If he had anybody in the car with him, he’d always say: ‘I was born in that hospital forty-two years ago. An only child. My mother got it right the first time.’

  But there was nobody in the car today with Bruno and, even if there had been, he was in no mood for jokes. He had seen a photograph in the papers of the stolen picture he had been meant to take delivery of, and something about it had drawn Bruno in. It was the look on Judas Iscariot’s face. Someone outside the frame had brought Judas terrible news, and it showed. Judas connected Bruno to the moment when he’d learned of his son’s death – to the pain that had started in his groin and worked its way up into his heart. He had felt as Judas felt. He had looked as Judas lo
oked: broken-hearted and alone.

  But that’s where the comparison ended. Judas was a loser: he’d gone out and topped himself, poor bastard. Bruno had other plans. Lose four stone, straighten out his affairs. Get even. The fact that Bruno Junior had been killed by a mot with a gun was what had nearly driven him insane. And then she’d disappeared. But fate had a strange way of working. Bruno opened the window and spat. Not any longer was she out of sight, thanks to Mr Effin’ Caravaggio.

  There was an unmerciful traffic jam at the top of Parnell Square, where a garda was redirecting traffic up the hill towards Dorset Street. There’d been a murder in the Café Monto the previous evening, Bruno had heard; maybe the two things were connected. The murder was already the talk of the criminal underworld: no one in Dublin that Bruno knew of used the methods that had been employed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that even the worst of Dublin’s low-life were shocked.

  The cars inched along. Bruno lowered his window.

  ‘What’s up, sergeant?’ he asked.

  The young garda smiled. Flattery never failed, Bruno thought.

  ‘It’s Bloomsday, Bruno,’ the garda said. ‘Some crowd are doing readings outside the Irish Writers’ Centre. Is that where you’re going?’ Bruno saw the mocking look in the youngster’s eyes.

  ‘What’s effin’ Bloomsday?’ Bruno growled.

  Before the garda could reply, Bruno floored the pedal. Up their own arses, these youngsters nowadays. Why could they not do what they were paid to do, and keep the traffic moving? He drove down Parnell Street and then began to cut diagonally north, towards Summerhill.

  Cassidy’s was a place where he often did business. Now he was going there to explain himself. He had to relax. After all, what more could he tell them than the truth? The bare, unadorned truth. For the first time that morning, Bruno allowed himself a slow smile. The truth? He’d spent so long avoiding it, now that it had turned up on his side, Bruno almost didn’t recognise it.

  Dublin Docklands

  16 June, 5 PM

  ‘I can’t believe you two used this place last night,’ Ned said. ‘I mean, anyone could have been here.’

  Maggie’s eyes were glued to the floor. Alice leaned forward so that she was looking directly into Ned’s face.

  ‘Anyone?’ she enquired sweetly. ‘Such as?’

  They were in the big sitting room of his flat, looking out on the sparkling Liffey. Ned appeared flustered.

  ‘It’s my flat,’ he said defensively. ‘I don’t need your permission to entertain.’

  ‘Even Bruno Scanlon Senior?’ Alice said, and her eyes were glinting.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Ned demanded, colour now lighting up his already bruised cheeks. ‘You think that, just because you took off to a convent, I now consort with criminals?’

  ‘His mobile number is over there, beside the fridge,’ Alice said quietly. ‘I know it’s him because I rang the number last night, and he answered.’

  Ned stared at her for a long moment. She looked as if she might be going to explode. He sat down heavily.

  ‘Okay, okay, it is his number,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t forgotten the reason you went into the convent, or that Bruno is by any standard one of the most vicious hoodlums in Dublin. So I wanted to keep tabs on him, okay? I know people at the telephone company. You can track someone by their mobile signal. I wanted to know if he ever went near Doon Abbey. Got it now?’

  Alice was staring at Ned.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Ned’s lip quivered.

  ‘Because I cared!’ he cried. ‘Because I was terrified any harm would come to you.’

  Silence gripped the little group. Ned’s words had made Alice dizzy. He had begged her not to enter the convent, to stay with him and try to work things out. She had spurned him, and yet he still cared about her.

  ‘Anyone for food?’ Maggie asked brightly.

  Ned and Alice shook their heads.

  Maggie suddenly liked Ned a lot. Not only had he paid the fine to have the van unclamped but it was obvious that Alice still meant a lot to him. Why else would he be so upset?

  ‘You think Bruno is involved with the theft?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ned said. ‘Bruno is a low-life thug. If he is involved, it’s purely as a mule, as a means to transport the goods. No way did he plan something this big.’

  ‘I agree,’ Alice said, ‘but you have other suspicions, am I right?’

  ‘I spoke this morning to the two old sisters who live in the gate lodge to your convent,’ Ned said. ‘On the night of the theft, they saw a very large female loading something into the back of a car. They wouldn’t tell me who the woman was, but they hinted strongly that she was associated with someone called Davy Rainbow.’

  ‘Davy Rainbow!’ Maggie exclaimed. ‘He’s the one who made our Caravaggio famous.’

  ‘And he comes to morning Mass every day too,’ Alice said tersely.

  ‘Exactly: no one knows the painting better,’ Ned said. ‘Which is why I wanted to interview him. But he wasn’t there.’

  ‘You think Davy stole the Caravaggio?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘He drinks too much, right?’ Ned was pacing. ‘Maybe he has a gambling habit. Drink and the gee-gees often go together.’

  ‘They say his father wanted him to be a jockey,’ Maggie said.

  ‘But who’s his lady friend?’ Alice asked as a telephone rang.

  Alice pulled her mobile from her pocket; Ned fumbled with his before realising it was the landline.

  ‘Sive,’ he said, answering it, and turning his back. A pause. ‘No, I have company.’ A pause, more awkward and longer than the first one. ‘Can I call you back right away on the mobile? Sive? Sive?’

  As he hurried out of the room, Maggie looked at Alice.

  ‘Who’s Sive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you going to ask him?’

  ‘It’s none of my business, Maggie.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘I’m absolutely, definitely not going to ask him, and that’s final,’ Alice said.

  The two nuns sat in silence – an environment with which they were both very familiar. Outside, the screech of bus brakes drifted upwards.

  Alice took out her phone again. The text that had come in earlier was from Sebastian and it said: ‘WHERE R U?????’ She tried to focus on the missing Caravaggio, but instead she saw herself at the firing range, standing legs apart, the Glock held double-handed, as she fired an entire clip into the head of a target called S-I-V-E.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Ned said as he came back in. ‘Now we were talking about Davy …’

  ‘Who’s Sive?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Ned.

  ‘Who. Is. Sive?’

  ‘Oh, Sive! Sive! Sive is a friend.’

  ‘Your girlfriend?’ Maggie asked, her eyes huge in her pretty face.

  Ned’s face twitched. The two women sat, not daring to breathe. Then his shoulders slumped.

  ‘Actually, if you must know, Sive is my fiancée,’ he said.

  Alice sprang to her feet. For a moment it looked as if she was going to close up Ned’s other eye, but then, with a loud shriek, hands to her face, she ran from the room.

  ‘Alice …’ Ned stammered.

  The door to the bathroom slammed.

  ‘What did she expect me to do?’ Ned asked Maggie. ‘I begged her to stay with me. I’m a man, damn it!’

  Maggie jumped with fright. Now she hated Ned – hated him for doing this to Alice. He could have waited: four months wasn’t much of a gap, even if he was a man. Maggie wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but it wasn’t really her business to do so. A jumble of thoughts was swirling around Maggie’s head when the hall-door buzzer rang.

  Dublin Docklands

  16 June, 5.30 PM

  Alice sat on the loo with the seat down, smoking. To hell with Ned and his rules. Four months after she’d left and he was … engaged? It
defied belief! Such a clear rejection of her. Now the gift voucher for Brown Thomas that had puzzled her was quite clear. Alice felt nauseous. No wonder he didn’t want her staying in the apartment! No sooner had she moved out than he had moved someone else in. If not, why were there two toothbrushes by the sink? And a strand of blonde hair in the shower? And he’d given her a diamond ring, by the sound of things.

  Alice took a deep drag that threatened the side casings of the cigarette. She had gone into the convent by choice, granted, and it was none of her business whom Ned saw or was seeing, or what the state of his relationship was with bloody Sive whoever she was. This was all Ned’s business. But … engaged? A voice in Alice’s head told her that Ned was within his rights, but the pain in her heart was another matter entirely.

  When the buzzer rang, she knew immediately who it was. The decisive ring was not the ring of a stranger. Alice did not want to meet Sive, and yet she was damned if she was going to stay hiding in the toilet, behaving like a lovelorn teenager. Shit! She blew smoke all over Ned’s silver-backed matching hairbrushes, over his toothbrush, his silk kimono and his towels. Then she lobbed the ciggie into the loo, where, she hoped, it would bob around and annoy Ned for days. She splashed her face at the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself, girl,’ she said to the image looking back at her.

  In the hall she pasted a smile on her face, then froze. She heard a man’s voice and it wasn’t Ned’s.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, she’s not here, detective,’ Ned was saying.

  ‘Why don’t you do us both a favour and cop on to yourself, Ned,’ said Sebastian Hayes. ‘You think I can’t get a warrant to search this fancy gaff?’

  ‘You don’t need one, Sebastian,’ said Alice, stepping forward.

  Dublin Docklands

  16 June, 5.45 PM

  Sebastian was standing there, his face grim. Detective Billy Heaslip was beside him, gut impending. No one spoke for a moment. Alice knew what Sebastian was thinking: he was going back in his mind, as she was, over the countless nights when they had been partners, swinging by Christ Church, siren blaring (although they were off duty), down to Burdock’s in Werburgh Street for a fish supper with lots of salt and vinegar, eaten straight from the brown bag, ending with a sumptuous finger-lick. And now here they were, on opposite sides. You never knew what life was going to throw at you.