Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  Glancing at the corpse, which was now being littered from the room, she lowered her head and tears splatted on the stones by her feet. Her shoulders shook, and her body moved into McGarr.

  He raised a hand to her back. Close, like that, he breathed in the warmth of her body and the complex scent of whatever shampoos or perfumes or emollients she used. And he was disturbed by what he felt, not having been so close to a woman such as she, in more than two years.

  She moved her head, and her hair brushed against his face. “Why don’t we sit down for a moment? Out there would be better.”

  Taking her elbow, he drew her into the exhibition room, where at least the lighting was less funereal. They sat on a bench against the wall.

  “Did you hear what Dr. Pape just said? The bit about Trinity being a diploma factory and better off with the Book of Kells being gone?”

  She shook her head and blotted her eyes. “That’s just anger and frustration. Trevor’s an antiquarian who loathes change, and his world—like the rest of the world—is marked by change these days. It’s the one constant, isn’t it?”

  Sobbing now and then, she explained that there remained a few on the Trinity faculty who had never accepted the “democratization” of the college in the early seventies, when the Catholic Church lifted its ban on attendance and enrollment surged from twenty-fi?ve hundred to close to fourteen thousand students, mostly of Catholic background.

  “No longer was it a sleepy, insular place, its faculty riddled with dilettantes and academic eccentrics protected by tenure. Trinity stepped into the twentieth century, acquiring true scholars and exploiting the resources at its command.” Her hand moved toward the door of the Treasury.

  “It became what it should have been all along—the oldest and best university in the country. But there were—and, I’m afraid, still are—those who are averse to change.”

  With cupped shoulders, Kara Kennedy leaned forward, elbows on her thighs, and McGarr noticed for the fi?rst time that her hair had begun to gray. He also glanced at the smooth slope of a breast that could be seen between the plackets of her pearl-colored silk blouse.

  And a pang of longing seized him—for warmth and the perfumey aroma that he could still detect and for other comforts as well. Up until that moment, he had kept himself from remembering what being with a woman could be like, knowing how disconcerting the remembrance would be. And was.

  “Unfortunately, Trevor is one of those who fought and still fi?ghts the change, not—please don’t misunderstand me”—her fi?ngers touched his knee—“not because he is in any way incompetent. It’s just that not everything was awry in the old Trinity College, which was collegial in many of the best ways. I think he still harbors fond thoughts of those years.”

  Her hands were long, gracefully formed, and well tanned, as though she’d spent the summer outdoors. Also, McGarr was hearing the hint of a Scottish burr in her voice.

  “I’m certain he’ll think better of what he said. The Book of Kells is truly a treasure of ”—she had to pause again—“a treasure of inestimable value both intrinsically and to the Irish people, and I’ll never forgive myself that this... this debacle occurred on my watch.”

  McGarr frowned. “Are you in charge of security?”

  “What?” Her head swung up to him, and it was as though he plunged into the jade pools of her eyes.

  “Were you Raymond Sloane’s superior?”

  “No, of course not. I’m...an academic.” She looked back toward the Treasury.

  A handsome, if not a pretty, woman with a long, thinly bridged nose, a strong chin, and high cheekbones. Her dark hair, which was a chestnut color, formed a deep widow’s peak, and the skin on her neck had begun to take on the wrinkles of age.

  McGarr glanced at the backs of her hands, which she had clasped in front of her—forty-fi?ve, he guessed, from the sheen and wrinkle of her skin. He was seldom wrong.

  “But I should have made it my business.”

  Guilt—it ruled the culture. It ruled McGarr.

  “Apart from you, Dr. Pape, and Raymond Sloane, who else knew of the hand-recognition device beneath the cases?”

  She swung her head to him, and he noted how her hair grew deep on the sides of her forehead and rather complemented her widow’s peak. And as had been Noreen’s, her upper lip was noticeably protrusive.

  McGarr looked away; he was feeling uncomfortable.

  “Cleaning people, I should imagine, if they knew what they were seeing.”

  Kara Kennedy fl?icked a hand to clear the hair from her face, and McGarr again smelled—what was it?— chamomile, vanilla, and verbena?

  She had crossed her legs toward him, and he followed the gentle line of her calf to a narrow ankle, before looking off into the gift shop.

  “Also, there’s the security fi?rm who set the device up, perhaps some other library staff. No, surely some other library staff who have been present when we’ve turned the pages.

  “To answer your question, Chief Superintendent”— she waited until their eyes met—“I suppose our security measures were rather common knowledge to those of us who work here. But I hope you don’t suspect—”

  McGarr shook his head. “I don’t suspect anything yet. I’m just gathering information. What can you tell me about Raymond Sloane? Personally.”

  “Apart from here in Trinity...” She shook her head before pulling her eyes from his.

  Or did he imagine that? He stood. He was so emotionally at sea it rather frightened him. “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

  There were no rings on her fi?ngers.

  “No. Some madman. Madmen to get Raymond into...” Again she could not continue.

  “What about the possibility that whoever did this was in league with somebody here in Trinity, somebody who knew the security precautions, somebody who—out of disaffection with the college or the book itself—”

  “I hope you don’t mean Trevor Pape.” Leaning back against the wall, she placed her palms on the bench in a way that spread the plackets of her suit coat. “Trevor has spent his life—literally, spent it—working here for little or nothing, preserving and protecting books. Why would he throw all that away?”

  She smiled slightly, exposing a single dimple. “It’s refreshing that you didn’t mention greed. Disaffection was a nice touch.”

  Pulling a card from his pocket, he extended it toward her. “Scots, are you?”

  “Kennedy can be a Scottish name as well, I’ll have you know.”

  “And how do I reach you?” It was said without thinking, which was doubly distressing to McGarr, since he knew that with every waking moment he had not yet got over—and he sometimes thought he would never get over—the presence of Noreen in his thoughts. And her absence in his life.

  “Oh—I’ve got a card.” She fumbled in her purse and came up with a card and a smile, which quickly faded. “Who’s going to inform Raymond’s wife? I mean, how is it handled?”

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Oh, yes—I suppose you have to do this regularly.”

  And it was never easy. “Many thanks.” McGarr turned toward a kind of clamor outside of the gift shop.

  “Will you catch who did this?”

  “I suspect we’ll be hearing from them rather soon.”

  The noise was coming from what looked like an impromptu news conference that was being held on the gift shop steps.

  There stood Trinity grad Chief Superintendent Jack Sheard, answering questions from the press. About what, McGarr could not guess, since they knew only that the books were missing and Sloane was dead. But not even his name could be given out until the family was notifi?ed.

  But there Sheard stood, resplendent in a navy blue pinstriped suit that had been tailored to his at least six-foot-four frame. His tie was pearl colored, like the handkerchief sprouting from his breast pocket.

  In his early forties, Sheard was a handsome man with sandy hair and a rugger’s an
gular body. With shoulders squared and hands clasped at his waist, he looked like a Janus fi?gure—a bigger, better guard at the portals—but too late.

  Over his—how many?—fi?fteen or so years with the Garda, Sheard was periodically the darling of Sunday news features both on television and in print. Early on, he was billed as “the new face of the police” and pictured with his blond young wife and three towheaded children on the lawn in front of their rambling suburban home on the fl?anks of the Dublin Mountains.

  Later, after he’d been admitted to the bar, the press called him “Commissioner Inevitable,” which so browned off the actual commissioner that he delayed Sheard’s inevitability by rusticating him to the desk that kept tabs on “unlawful organizations,” which was a euphemism for the IRA. It was a police dead end.

  Because Garda commissioners were political appointees, all that changed with a new government, and for his patience Sheard was rewarded with the Fraud Squad, which also investigated major thefts. Most recently the press had dubbed him “The Cop for the Twenty-fi?rst Century,” noting his Trinity background— he had studied fi?nance and organization—his legal degree, and his work against terrorist organizations.

  McGarr had only skimmed or lent half an ear to the pieces, since publicity for a cop—twenty-fi?rst century or otherwise—was something to be avoided. Unless, of course, the cop had another agenda entirely, which McGarr and some other senior Garda offi?cers suspected Sheard had.

  Fitting on his hat, McGarr opened the door and stepped out behind Sheard’s broad back. And with a hand raised to the brim, he set off down the stairs on a fl?ank of the crowd.

  Sheard was saying, “ ...of inestimable value. It is the chief bibliographic treasure of the people of Ireland and all those others of Celtic heritage. The Garda will spare nothing in pursuing those who assaulted one guard, murdered another, and made off with the volumes.”

  Saying, “Police, please. Police, please,” which in his pancake Dublin tones sounded like an apologetic yet intentional plaint, McGarr weaved his way through the crowd.

  He wondered if Raymond Sloane’s family had begun to worry about him, and how they would react to Sheard’s comments. And how they would react to Mc-Garr himself, when he arrived on their doorstep to announce Sloane’s death. After Sheard’s public remarks.

  Had Sheard himself ever been in the position of having to announce a death to a family? McGarr doubted it, the man’s specialty being more white-collar crime.

  CHAPTER

  2

  SEVERAL OF THE REPORTERS HAD STARTED AFTER Mc-Garr, but he stretched out his stride and was soon alone.

  It had become a pleasant autumn day fi?lled with the golden light, peculiar to October, from a sun that was surrendering the heights of summer. Angling in from the east, its rays were warm, not hot, and glancing at the smooth chartreuse carpet of lawn that fi?lled the quadrangle, McGarr thought of his garden, which he had ignored for weeks.

  Some time soon, he should pull up the stalks of the summer plants, fertilize the soil, and sow more “winter wheat”—a crop rich in nitrogen that he would turn into the ground come spring. But for the last two years his heart had not been in gardening either, which had once given him real pleasure.

  He had reached the guardhouse from which the tall wooden gates that gave onto Pearse Street could be monitored. A uniformed guard, standing before the entrance, touched his cap, as McGarr ducked under the yellow police tape and stepped into the building.

  Pale blue chalk marked off where the injured Trinity security guard had been found; green chalk surrounded the pool of his spilled blood; and yellow chalk detailed where somebody had stood and shifted his feet before taking a stride toward the door.

  The two stationary prints were enlarged and blurred, as though the person had stood there for some time, shifting his feet now and then. The striding print lay beyond the pool and was fainter but more well defi?ned.

  The victim had been seated in the chair, which lay on its side, when he had been sapped from behind. Bright orange chalk indicated the position in which he had been found.

  “What d’yiz think, Chief? Inside job?” a voice asked, startling him.

  McGarr swung round on a young woman. Late thirties, pixieish; her black curly hair was pulled back and woven into a long braid. She was wearing a navy blue fl?eece jacket and jeans. McGarr had seen her before, but he couldn’t place where.

  “Orla Bannon, Ath Cliath.” She held out her hand. He only stared down at it.

  Ath Cliath was a weekly tabloid that through the cunning use of innuendo, unnamed sources, and front-page hyperbole had grown from a mere weekend listings rag to one of the most infl?uential and certainly the most profi?table newspapers in the country.

  Only two days before the murder of its founder, Dery Parmalee, nearly two years earlier, ownership of the tabloid had fallen to one Charles “Chazz” Sweeney, who had ordered the hit, McGarr had believed but could not prove.

  He also believed Sweeney had played some part in the deaths of Noreen and her father, Fitz. But he couldn’t prove that either.

  Orla Bannon was a columnist, McGarr now remembered; a head shot, which made her look rather like an American Indian princess, ran with her articles. In it, she was gazing out at her readers sidelong and assessing, with that same slight smile on her face, her eyes so black they were jet.

  “You shouldn’t be here. This is a police zone.”

  “Didn’t I see the tape?” she replied coyly, cocking her head. “But not to worry—I’m here to help you.” The voice was Northern, working-class, and the pluck he recognized—the one that came from a lifetime of having nothing to lose.

  “Inside job, right?” she continued. “There’s the hand-recognition device, and the other security guard who got bumped off a fortnight ago by a hit-and-run driver, so’s Sloane would have to walk the beat himself. And their knowing that if they clapped him into the case and withdrew the air, his corpse would look frightful. Did you get a look at it yourself?”

  “Why would they want him to look frightful?”

  Now knowing he wouldn’t make her leave, she pulled back her jacket and placed her hands on her hips. The press passes hanging from her neck made her breasts, which were contained in a white jumper, all the more obvious. “For the effect. The drama. So you’ll take their demand for ransom serious, when it comes.”

  “How do you know where Sloane was found?”

  “And would you look at this chair—where the other guard was sitting, right? He must have known whoever sapped him.” Hands still on hips, she stepped over the area stained by blood and lowered her head. “Footprints, eh? The craven inside yoke stood here in the poor bastard’s blood, while waiting to open the gate for whoever murdered Sloane and stole the feckin’ books.”

  McGarr wondered as much at her hardened tone as her seasoned observations. The voice in her column was urbane, even elegant. “Crime reporter once?”

  She only moved her head to the side, as though to say, of course. As she bent to peer around the side of the desk, a shaft of sunlight struck the top of her head, and McGarr noted rows of stitched scarring where the dark wavy hair would no longer grow. “How do you know about the crime scene in the Old Library?”

  “Like I said, we can help each other.” Turning her head, she caught his eye. “But it’ll have to be a two-way street. Not all give and no get.”

  She raised herself up. “Lost a lot of blood, Tom Healey. Little wonder he’s fi?ghting for his life.”

  McGarr glanced at the notes McKeon had given him. It was the name of the Trinity security guard who had been attacked there at the desk. “How do you know all this?”

  “Didn’t I tell you I’m a shape-shifter straight out of Celtic myth? I can travel about in a lordly mist, I can. Whenever I please.”

  Which was something McGarr had heard years before in school.

  There was a sparkle in her jet eyes. “I can tell you don’t believe me.”

  “How will you help
me?”

  Turning to leave, she presented herself in profi?le, and his eyes devolved on the radical angle of her breasts. “I already have. Look into the death of Greene—you’ll see what I mean. But I think we’re both going to be needing some help. Down the road. D’yeh have me card?”

  “Who’s Greene?”

  “The Trinity security guard who bought the bumper of a BMW a fortnight ago.”

  From the back pocket of her jeans, Bannon drew out a contact card. “It’s a bit wrinkled and hot, but you can reach me, if you’ve a need.” Again, her eyes fi?xed his. “And I’m thinking you’ll need.”

  McGarr did not offer his hand to take the card.

  “Take it.”

  Still McGarr did not reach for the card.

  She stepped in on him, so close her breasts grazed his chest and her breath was hot on his neck. She slid the card into the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “I’ve been following you for years. I know your story. You don’t know me yet. But you will. I have contacts that you would not believe. And, incidentally, what I know about you, I like.”

  McGarr stepped back, having known more than a few journalists who for insider access would say or do just about anything.

  He pulled the card from his pocket. “Thanking you all the same, Orla.”

  She cocked her head again and looked up at him assessingly. “Know what I’d hazard? I’d hazard Sloane was on Ox, and that’s why he sold out Kells, Trinity, and Ireland.”

  It sounded rather like a headline, and McGarr tried to remember what Ox was, exactly. Some drug he’d read about in a Garda report that concluded its addictive power was greater than that of any known drug, including heroin and cocaine.

  “Of course, you’ll discover all that in the postmortem. Look at me.”

  He raised his eyes from the card and gazed into her dark eyes.

  “You and I are similar people. Apart from geography, we come from the same place. You were born and brought up in Inchicore; your father worked for Guinness and had nine kids. You went into police work, which is a more immediate form of journalism.