Sister Caravaggio

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘I am going to telephone my solicitor,’ Ned began. ‘This is outrageous …’

  ‘What is outrageous,’ Sebastian said, ‘is the body count in the last twenty-four hours. Now, I need you to come down to the station with me, Alice.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Alice said tightly. ‘You can ask me whatever you want, right here.’

  ‘I can arrest you on suspicion of murder,’ said Sebastian with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Go ahead, arrest away,’ Alice said.

  ‘Don’t push me, Alice,’ Sebastian said tightly.

  ‘Maybe we can all go to the station together,’ Maggie said.

  Sebastian turned his eyes on Maggie, as if he’d only just seen her.

  ‘If I want you to speak, I’ll ask you a question, Sister Mary Magdalene,’ he said icily. He turned back to Alice. ‘This is no joke, Alice.

  Let’s go.’

  ‘I must protest …’ Ned began.

  ‘There’s a man lying in a bath in the Shelbourne Hotel but he ain’t getting clean,’ Heaslip butted in. ‘Mr Ashley Kelly-Lidrov. Came in on a flight from New York yesterday. Didn’t get to see the sights.’

  ‘God rest his soul,’ Maggie murmured.

  ‘I was the first one there,’ Ned blurted.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Heaslip, who had taken out a notebook. ‘Go on, Ned.’

  ‘Ned! Don’t incriminate yourself!’ Alice said. ‘I don’t care!’ Ned said. ‘I want to protect you!’

  ‘Let him talk,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘I got there before the ladies. They had nothing to do with his death. I can vouch for that. I’ll swear it in any court,’ Ned said.

  ‘And I don’t suppose you have any idea who might want Mr Ashley Kelly-Lidrov out of the way, do you, Alice?’ asked Sebastian.

  ‘I have no idea, Sebastian,’ Alice replied. ‘I never met Mr Kelly-Lidrov. I’ve no idea what he was doing in Dublin. I have no idea who he is.’

  ‘Never spoke to him?’ Sebastian inquired. ‘Ever?’

  ‘Never,’ Alice said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘That’s interesting, Alice, because …’ Billy Heaslip fished out a mobile phone from his pocket and held it up. ‘We found this under the bath in Suite Eleven.’

  Alice sank as Heaslip dialled a number and her mobile rang.

  ‘You were the last person he spoke to, Alice,’ said Sebastian, almost apologetically.

  ‘He got our number from Sister Mercy Superior,’ Alice said. ‘I’ve just checked, and she told me.’

  ‘Too late, Alice,’ Sebastian said, and stepped forward. ‘Alice Dunwoody, I hereby …’

  ‘Wait!’

  Maggie was in the centre of the room with both her hands in the air. ‘Lads, I would urge you to be cautious, if only for the sake of your own careers,’ she said. ‘Times are tough enough, as we all know.’

  ‘Are you … threatening us?’ Billy Heaslip snarled.

  ‘You want to have every tabloid in the English-speaking world on your doorstep?’ Maggie asked. ‘“Two Irish nuns held on suspicion of murdering art dealer in hotel bath”?’

  Sebastian shook his head in frustration. ‘You left the scene of a crime,’ he said irritably. ‘You found a dead man in a bath and you failed to report it.’

  ‘And what about Cyril O’Meara?’ Billy Heaslip asked, with a defiant thrust of his jaw towards Maggie. ‘The farmer in the bog?’

  ‘Give us a break, Billy,’ Alice sighed. ‘Cyril was a tragic accident, which I reported. And even if you don’t believe me, you know there were no witnesses.’

  ‘Which leaves the dead conman in Liffey Valley,’ Sebastian said, without much conviction.

  ‘Conman?’ Alice said. ‘What conman?’

  ‘Look, lads, instead of fighting, maybe we should all be trying to work this out together,’ said Maggie brightly.

  Dublin Northside

  16 June, 6 PM

  Despite the traffic diversion, Bruno reached Cassidy’s on time. He knew just two things about the man he was about to meet: one, that his name was Brice. No other name, title, age-bracket or description. And two, that in the whispering hinterland of the Dublin underworld that Bruno had been crawling through since he was out of nappies, Brice’s name had a chilling resonance. More entrepreneurial criminals than Bruno – men, and sometimes women, who had branch offices and networks in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv, Málaga and Berlin – spoke in respectful tones about a man without pity, of someone who was an extension of Metro’s vengeance. Stories abounded of entire families being found disembowelled, old-age pensioners hideously executed, just because they were related to someone whom Metro disliked. It was effin’ terrifying, so it was.

  Bruno sat in a corner booth in Cassidy’s sipping a Diet Coke. Sweat was cascading down his face and had already made his size-twenty shirt as damp as a dishcloth. He didn’t know from what direction the man who had summoned him would arrive, and so he kept a watchful eye on both doors. Bruno wasn’t carrying, but he wished he was. He thought of Al Pacino and the scene in The Godfather where Al retrieves the gun from a toilet cistern. Bruno wished this was a movie.

  ‘D’you like Irish art, Bruno?’

  Bruno swivelled, spilling half his drink over his suit-front. A large man with his face in shadow and with shoulder-length hair had somehow slipped into the booth when Bruno’s eyes were on the door.

  ‘If the work you do on commission is remotely as sloppy as your standard surveillance operation, then I’m not surprised we have a problem,’ said Brice.

  The accent was harsh, hard to place.

  ‘I want to tell you the truth …’ Bruno began.

  ‘About art?’ The man moved slightly, and Bruno could see that his face resembled a hunk of flayed shish-kebab – a meal to which Bruno, normally, was partial. ‘Oh, yes, the gentleman I work for had quite an art list drawn up, but unfortunately, because of you, Bruno, we haven’t even got to the first item yet.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you about …’ Bruno stammered.

  ‘I’ll speak, you listen,’ Brice said, leaning forward. ‘The gentleman I work for has already invested over $500,000 in the Caravaggio project. Earlier today I met with Mr Kelly-Lidrov. Hotel in a nice part of town. His man was to get the painting to you, yes?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said Bruno, and tried to swallow.

  ‘I’m afraid I shouted at Mr Kelly-Lidrov,’ Brice said. ‘I think I frightened him. I frighten people when I shout. Have you heard me shout?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘You don’t want to hear me shout, Bruno, believe me.’

  Bruno was hyperventilating. Brice had placed one hand on his wrist and was holding it in place on the table. Bruno couldn’t move his arm. He was going to die, right here in Cassidy’s. It brought him back to his father, and getting a hiding from him when he was four years old. Oh, Jesus, he thought, just give me one last chance.

  ‘Please …’ he said.

  Brice placed his mouth close to Bruno’s right ear.

  ‘Where is the Caravaggio?’

  For a split-second Bruno thought he was being asked about an Italian eatery he frequented in Temple Bar. Then, in one agonising moment, Brice caught everything between Bruno’s legs in his free hand and squeezed as if he were strangling an old turkey in a sack.

  ‘Where is the Caravaggio?’

  Bruno gasped with pain. ‘I … I don’t …’

  His eyes swam. He couldn’t even cry out, he was so terrified. He thought he was going to puke.

  Abruptly the pressure disappeared but the pain remained. Bruno’s wrist was released. He closed his eyes, chest heaving, waiting for the bullet, or the cold, sharp caress of the steel blade. Yet when he looked up, Brice was standing there, waiting patiently.

  ‘I want to know where the Caravaggio is,’ Brice said.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’ll wait till tomorrow for your answer. Then I’ll be bored. I don’t like having nothing to do
. You’ll find out where the Caravaggio is by tomorrow, yes?’

  Bruno made a croaking sound. ‘No problem.’

  Brice walked out from the lounge into the bright, flashing daylight.

  Dublin Docklands

  16 June, 6.30 PM

  ‘Here are the CCTV images from the hotel the night Meadowfield was murdered,’ Sebastian Hayes said.

  They were grouped around the sixty-inch plasma HD TV in the sitting room of Ned’s apartment. Maggie had made ham sandwiches, the kind Alice remembered from her childhood: thickly cut slices of white loaf, almost obliterated with butter and loaded with succulent, mustard-smeared honey-baked ham. Alice sipped a mug of tea as Sebastian pressed the remote. She noticed that every time Maggie came into the room, or left it, Sebastian’s eyes were glued to her.

  It was good to have Ned there, Alice reflected. He had given them the results of his own investigation regarding the convent security on the night of the theft. The double-lock failsafe system, which meant that the CCTV and alarm reverted to the standby generator, had failed to activate when the power failed, since the lines between the fuel tank and the generator engine were air-locked. When you got over the fact that Ned often came across as a feckless eejit who couldn’t last even twelve weeks without a woman, he was actually quite impressive, Alice thought.

  ‘This is where she first appears,’ Sebastian Hayes said, and froze the frame.

  The image entering the hotel in Liffey Valley was of a large woman carrying a suitcase and wearing a hat that obscured her face. Alice leaned forward and watched the footage as the woman checked in at reception. She then walked on high heels to the lift. The next sequence, from behind, saw her in a corridor upstairs, removing her hat and running her hand down through her long dark hair. She tossed her head and, for a brief second, her silhouette was visible.

  ‘Go back to that,’ Alice said.

  Sebastian scrolled back, then forward, and froze the frame. It was fuzzy, but the clean outline of a jaw and nose was visible.

  ‘She’s really quite attractive,’ Ned observed, and then instantly regretted his observation as Alice strafed him with a look.

  ‘Is she one of the regular hookers?’ she asked Sebastian and Billy.

  ‘We’ve run the image past every pimp in Dublin,’ Sebastian replied conscientiously. ‘No one has a clue who she is.’

  ‘She’s from out of town,’ Billy said. ‘Has to be. Flew in here on a fixed contract, flew out again.’ ‘I’m not so sure,’ Alice said.

  Everyone turned to her.

  ‘What I mean is, we’re pretty sure that Mr Kelly-Lidrov met his end at the hands of that big blond thug in the Shelbourne. That was a contract, I’d bet my non-existent pension on it.’ ‘So?’ Sebastian said.

  ‘Why would someone go to the trouble of hiring two assassins?’

  ‘You mean, you think this woman in Liffey Valley is acting independently of the art thieves?’ Ned asked.

  ‘I think it’s a possibility,’ Alice said.

  Sebastian ran the tape. The image of Meadowfield’s boyish, almost beguiling face filled the screen. They watched him checking in and then walking past the camera position. The final image of him was in the corridor, entering a room.

  ‘That’s the last shot we have of him alive. Two days later he came out of the hotel in a B-O-X,’ Heaslip said.

  ‘Poor Mr Meadowfield,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Except he’s not Mr Meadowfield,’ Sebastian said, and explained the information that Interpol had come up with.

  ‘Sister Winifred even gave him his instruction in the faith, before she went away,’ Maggie said.

  ‘I’m afraid he wasn’t even a Protestant,’ Sebastian said with a hint of apology.

  ‘What?’ Maggie cried.

  ‘Jason Trammel – his real name – was Catholic. His mother was a Ryan from Tipperary. Emigrated to London in the seventies. The instruction was a sham. Like everything else in his life.’

  ‘How could he do that to poor Sister Winifred?’ Maggie cried.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’

  They all turned to Ned.

  ‘I’ve got a list of all the nuns in Doon Abbey,’ he said. ‘Who’s this Sister Winifred? She’s not on my list.’ Alice and Maggie exchanged tight glances.

  ‘Over to you, Maggie,’ said Alice quietly.

  Maggie, suddenly the centre of everyone’s attention, tugged her skirt towards her knees.

  ‘Sister Winifred was our Sister Superior up to five months ago,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘One morning she was no longer in Doon Abbey.’

  ‘You mean she, like, disappeared?’ Billy Heaslip said. ‘Like she was assumed into heaven or something?’

  ‘We were told nothing,’ said Maggie, ignoring him. ‘Then two days ago, when I asked, Sister Mercy Superior told us that Sister Winifred had gone away and would never return.’

  ‘And she’s not dead,’ Alice said. ‘Sebastian has checked.’

  ‘Sebastian?’ exclaimed Billy Heaslip.

  Sebastian sighed. ‘Yesterday Alice asked me to look up the deaths register for the past six months, both in Ireland and the UK. There’s no Florence Sparrow on the list … That’s Sister Winifred’s pre-convent name.’

  ‘Christ Almighty, you put five nuns and a painting in a bloody convent and you end up with Crime Central,’ Heaslip said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Sebastian. ‘Maggie, what can you tell us about Sister Winifred?’

  ‘Kind, pious,’ Maggie began. ‘Very beautiful, in a serene way. She floated along. Animals loved her …’

  ‘Did she ever leave the convent?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘Occasionally, to go on retreat.’

  ‘So, other than Meadowfield, she had no contacts with the outside world?’

  ‘Just with Davy,’ Maggie said.

  No one spoke.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ Maggie asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘You mean Davy Rainbow?’ Alice asked gently.

  The cops were staring.

  ‘Yes. He’s a troubled soul. He used to come up to the abbey, sometimes every day, and he and Sister Winifred would go for long walks.’

  ‘I, ah, have another piece of information I should have given you, Detective Sergeant, but overlooked,’ Ned said, and recounted what the Misses Hogan had told him that morning about Davy Rainbow.

  ‘I think it’s about time we had another word with Mr Davy Rainbow,’ said Sebastian tightly. ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Doonlish,’ Alice said succinctly. ‘We never should have left it in the first place.’

  ‘Which brings me to the final point of this meeting,’ Sebastian said, and straightened himself. ‘Alice and Sister Mary Magdalene, as of this moment, you are off this case. Is that clear? You are both to return immediately to your convent.’

  ‘Who says?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘I say,’ Sebastian said. ‘And that’s final.’

  Alice wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think that you are in any position to give us orders,’ she said stiffly. ‘If we wish to pursue our stolen painting, then that is our decision.’

  ‘I thought you might say that,’ said Sebastian, ‘which is why I took the precaution of telephoning your boss, Sister Mercy Superior. It is she who has issued the order which I have just transmitted.’

  ‘What did you say to her, Sebastian?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No comment,’ said Sebastian smugly. ‘But she did say that if you two aren’t back for midday prayers tomorrow, I’m to arrest you for stealing one white Berlingo van.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Maggie cried. ‘We’d better go home, Alice.’

  Alice was about to reply when Sebastian’s phone rang. He had his hand over his mouth as he spoke into it. He looked up at Alice in despair.

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said.

  Dublin Northside

  16 June, 7.30 PM

  Taxi driver Miley Doyle was in his sixties, wore a thick blue cardigan, despite the weather, and still spoke with traces of a
Wexford accent. The two ranks he most preferred were Adam and Eve’s church on Merchant’s Quay and Heuston Station, according to the lady in the Taxi Registration Authority to whom Alice had given the licence-plate number. She would have called earlier, but she had mislaid Alice’s number, which is why she had called Sebastian.

  ‘He was no bleedin’ oil painting, miss, I’ll tell you that,’ Miley said as he drove up O’Connell Street, then swung around Parnell Square and headed for Summerhill. ‘Very bad complexion, greasy hair. I wasn’t surprised he wanted to go to Cassidy’s, and that’s being honest. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know what I mean?’

  ‘What a nice old man,’ Maggie said as Alice paid off the taxi and the two nuns made their way into Cassidy’s.

  ‘Just stay close to me in here,’ Alice said. ‘No dancing.’

  Cassidy’s lounge was unusually full; Alice normally associated it with dark corners where low-lifes and scumbags conducted business, but this evening it was thronged with young and not-so-young women wearing low-cut Edwardian blouses that in many cases threatened to spill their contents over the tables. As Alice and Maggie wedged in nearer the bar, the noise became deafening.

  ‘Why are they all calling each other Molly?’ Maggie shouted.

  Alice ordered two glasses of port. The place was crawling with the criminal fraternity of the north inner city, as well Bloomsday revellers. Alice had already spotted two of Bruno Scanlon’s closest associates hovering. One of them, Ska Higgins, was a hitman. Alice slid on to a bench and ducked her head into a menu. Out of the corner of her eye, beyond a gaggle of Molly Blooms, she’d just seen Natalie Scanlon, Bruno’s wife, sitting at a table. Natalie was reputed to own a string of apartments in Torremolinos. Alice quickly and surreptitiously scanned the faces. Neither Bruno nor the big blond man from the Shelbourne was in the pub.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said to Maggie, just as she felt her arm pulled.