Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  Her eyes widened in alarm. “What? You’re a policeman, a detective. It’s what you are, what you’ll always be. And what would you do with yourself otherwise?”

  McGarr shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe join Hugh and Ruthie. Or set up my own shop—special investigations, that class of thing.”

  Maddie shook her head and looked out the window at the Victorian row houses they were passing.

  After a while McGarr said, “All the changes, all the uncertainty in our lives must be hard on you.”

  “It’s not me I’m thinking of, Peter.” Now he could see tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.

  At home, she went straight to her room. Nuala made eye contact with McGarr before following her there.

  Failure. He was now living with it in virtually every aspect of his life: on the job; with Kara Kennedy, who he suspected had too much “history” for him, even the little he knew; and now here with the one person whom he loved more than anyone in the world and whom he could not let down.

  But he was doing just that, wasn’t he? Even now, before any offi?cial inquiry, his own personal history had become a burden for her.

  In his den, he slipped the second tape into the video player and leaned back against the edge of his desk. Again, music with a Celtic fl?air preceded the appearance of the cloaked fi?gure.

  McGarr paused the tape and studied the room with its lime-green chipped paint and probable human heads on the wall, while trying to remember the rooms he had searched in Pape’s house. None was green, but he had remained on the fi?rst fl?oor; McKeon and Swords had conducted the rest of the search, which had turned up the voice-scrambling device and the cloak.

  The fi?gure appeared to be a large man with wide shoulders and a heavy body. While tall with defi?nite shoulders, Pape was gaunt, although he might easily have worn a jacket beneath the capacious garment. He pressed the play button.

  As the music faded out, the fi?gure held up what appeared to be another illustrated page from the Kells book. “Tape two, page two. It will be burned if, by tomorrow, you haven’t assembled the fi?fty million in bearer bonds and delivered it to the drop that will be sent you through the usual source. Have a helicopter ready.

  “You’ll have two hours to deliver it. If you fail, the drill will continue, only we’ll begin burning a page an hour, as documented so.” Holding up the sleeve of a videocassette, he began his deep, rumbling, and fractured laugh, until it faded out along with his image.

  McGarr wondered if Pape’s voice, which, while deep, could be made to carry the Vaderesque timber of the voice on the tape. And where were the horrifi?c heads, to say nothing of the level of planning and coordination seen thus far?

  In McGarr’s experience, druggies and drunks did not possess or could not summon the clarity to carry off detailed crimes. But then, of course, there was the example of Sweeney, who was an epic toper.

  Sweeney. Why Sweeney? How had he become involved in all of this? Because of Ath Cliath, where the New Druids or whoever was behind the theft were sure to fi?nd a forum for their videotapes, regardless of what the government chose to do?

  McGarr rewound the tape, made three copies, and debated what to do—send a copy of the tape which, with all other information about the investigation, would sooner or later be sent to Sheard and O’Rourke?

  After all, in tomorrow’s paper Sweeney was sure to make public the existence of the second tape, and Mc-Garr did not want to appear any more dilatory than he already was.

  Picking up the phone, he rang up Swords and asked him to send somebody round to pick up a copy of the tape.

  “What about the fi?le of the investigation so far? Sheard called; he wants that too. ‘Eee-me-jit-ly.’ ”

  “Before you do, make copies of everything and store them in a secure place.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve got Hughie and Ruth helping me. And, sure, don’t we have a few leads?”

  “More than Hughie and Ruth,” Swords said. “You know that. We’re here for you.”

  McGarr did, but he would not allow himself to jeopardize any of their jobs. Feeling even more the failure, he rang off.

  It was dark by the time McGarr arrived at Kara Kennedy’s fl?at in Rathmines. But there were lights in her windows.

  Again not fi?nding a parking space, he drove his Mini-Cooper up on the footpath and lowered the visor with a police shield attached to the reverse side.

  Pulling himself out of the low car, he felt ancient, battered, and old, and fully not up to the task at hand, which would be to distance himself from perhaps the most profoundly moving personal experience since the death of his wife.

  He had been so vulnerable that he had found Kara Kennedy entrancing, and her attentions had felt to him like a revelation, ushering in a spate of complex emotions, including the possibility that he still might be able to have an emotional life beyond his duties as father to Maddie and devoted son-in-law to Nuala.

  But, of course, her attentions had been practiced, he told himself as he arrived at the gate and reached for the latch. And—could it be?—he was too shallow a human being to get beyond that. Or too immature in the ways of sex. He did not climb into a woman’s bed lightly, although, it appeared, she had accepted those who had. Like Pape.

  But he had only closed the gate and turned around when Orla Bannon stepped in front of him. “Where the fook have yeh been, McGarr? I’ve been waiting for ye now for a month of Sundays. Whatever happened between Pape’s and here? I hope you’re not drinking on duty.”

  She was dressed in a leather bomber jacket and designer sunglasses even now in the darkness—her long braided pigtail wrapped around her neck like a scarf, a cigarette poised by her lips.

  “You saw me leave Pape’s?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you saw Pape leave as well?”

  “I did. Sheard took him off. I fi?gured for the drugs he probably dug up there. My take on it all? Sheard will use Pape as a backup patsy in case New Druid factionalism and your continuing war on them doesn’t pan out. Rumor has it Mide was murdered, decapitated, and your woman Rut’ie was the one who discovered the body. Apart from Morrigan, of course.

  “Care to comment on that?” Flicking the cigarette into the yard, she pulled off her sunglasses and stepped in on him. “Where’d you spend last night?” She jerked her head to mean upstairs. “Good for you. But, you know, as I said—you could do better.”

  McGarr looked down into her upturned face with its pixieish features and jet eyes. “Where do you get all of this?”

  “Ah, thanks. You’ve just given me me column for tomorrow.”

  “Why would Sheard need a backup patsy?”

  “Because your mate and goombah Sheard isn’t really investigating the matter. He’s got his blokes poring through tax records and missing persons fi?les, and I don’t know why, which is killing me. Maybe he doesn’t know how to proceed.

  “On the other hand, perhaps he already knows who’s responsible. And it’s Pape, and he’s already got him. But where would Pape assemble the organization, and who would throw in with him? And the entire thing from the heist in Trinity to the fookin’ tapes reeks of a gang effort or, at least, more than one prick in the pot.

  “Finally, there’s your mystery woman upstairs. The same holds for her.

  “Did I tell you I think I know where Ray-Boy is holed up? A warehouse in back of the Cadbury chocolate factory in Coolock. Before this all came down, he was out on the street nights, making deliveries. From now on, he’ll be keeping himself inside on orders from above, according to my source.”

  “Does above have a name?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t I wish.”

  McGarr reached for Kara Kennedy’s bell, but Ban-non pulled down his hand and held on to it. “Wait now. Jaysus, haven’t I been freezin’ me shapely and available arse off the evening long, and you have nothing for me? Not even a measly quote saying what a bunch of right bastards Kehoe, Sheard, and their crowd are, hanging you out to
dry when they know—since the pathologist told them too—that a bullet fi?red from a rifl?e killed the driver of the BMW out on the Glasnevin Road, not a round from one of your guns.

  “A wee ‘They are’ will do.” When McGarr moved his hand up for the bell again, she cried out histrionically and tugged on it with both hands. “Christ almighty, forgive me, but I thought it was a fookin’ two-way street, so I did.”

  McGarr lowered his arm. “Two-way—when you’ve got something I don’t already know.”

  “How about the name of the fi?rm your woman’s missing husband worked for—Dublin Bay Petroleum. Private brokerage operation headquartered on Cayman Brac. Irish principals, I’m told. Now, you play.”

  McGarr reached into his jacket and pulled out a tape cassette. “Second tape. Be ready with the equivalent of fi?fty million Euros in unmarked bearer bonds drawn on the Republic of Venezuela and fl?own to a location they’ll notify us of later when we’re already in the air.”

  “You’re fookin’ jokin’.”

  McGarr pushed the button.

  “Will you let me have it? Or a copy? No, I’ll copy it, I swear, and bring it right back.”

  He slipped it back into his jacket.

  “But I need art to run with the story.”

  “You and Sweeney have art. You splashed it all over the paper today. Keep splashing.”

  “But I need fresh art, you know, to do the journalist thing. People see the old art, they’ll think, nothing new, when in fact—thanks to you, darlin’ man—I’m scooping the entire fookin’ world.”

  “You should be happy with that.”

  “If I were a man, I’d thump you bloody and take it right away. But come closer while I tell you.” When McGarr turned to her, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. They staggered into the door.

  “Hello?” Kara Kennedy’s voice said through the intercom. “Hello? Is somebody there?”

  “You’re brilliant, you are, McGarr. The fookin’ Man himself altogether and without equal. When you tire of librarians and want a real woman, give me a jingle.”

  “Hello? Hello? Is somebody there?”

  Digging her cell phone from her jacket, Orla Ban-non stepped quickly toward the gate.

  McGarr leaned into the intercom. “Kara, it’s Peter McGarr.”

  “Oh, Peter, I’m so glad it’s you. Haven’t I been watching what Kehoe had to say about the books, and then Sheard about you. Both are outrageous. Don’t they realize that one Monet sold for over fi?fty million pounds some years ago? And not a very good Monet at that.

  “But don’t stand out there. Come up, come up.”

  The lock buzzed, and McGarr pushed open the door. As he climbed the heavy, carved staircase, he heard her saying from above, “I’m...I’m over the moon that you’ve come back to me tonight.”

  She then appeared at the top of the stairs, looking more beautiful than he had remembered. Again she was wearing the pearl-gray silk dressing gown patterned with deep red roses.

  Perhaps it was the sash, which she had cinched tight about her narrow waist and emphasized the fl?are of her hips; or her deep brown hair, which had been permed and fl?owed in waves onto her shoulders; or the heelless open-toed pumps that had replaced her moplike booties and added a few inches to her height.

  But she was resplendent with what McGarr thought of as a million-quid smile lighting up her features: her high forehead and high cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, and defi?nite chin. Her jade eyes were sparkling.

  Instead of moving when he got to the top of the stairs, she remained in front of him. “Sure, it couldn’t have been a worse day for either of us, I’m thinking— both humiliated, both sacked.

  “But your being here—well, you don’t know what it means. Come.” She reached for his elbows and, stepping back, drew him onto the landing with her and kissed him. “What’s wrong?”

  McGarr had not raised his arms to embrace her. “You say you were sacked?”

  She nodded.

  Stepping around her, he moved toward the open door of the fl?at. “Who sacked you?”

  “Trevor Pape.”

  “When was this?”

  “Today at work.”

  “Can he sack you? Does he have the authority?” McGarr sat on the couch.

  “Whether he does or not, he did it in a most unprofessional and, as I said, humiliating manner.” Closing the door, she reached for a glass that was sitting on a table. It was half fi?lled with what looked like wine. “I was in the Treasury where, fi?nally, the police—your Mr. Sheard—had allowed us to clean up. And there must have been a half-dozen others about, helping in the effort.

  “ ‘Kara,’ he says from the doorway. ‘Put down that broom and get out. You’re sacked.’ I didn’t think I’d heard him correctly. ‘You’re sacked, fi?red, terminated. How can I make it clearer? Pack up your personal belongings and get out immediately.’ ”

  Her jaw trembled as she raised the glass to her lips, took a sip, and set it down. “ ‘Why am I being sacked?’ I asked. ‘Because all of this is your fault. You’re supposed to be the keeper of old manuscripts, and during your watch we now have far less to keep.’

  “ ‘But it was you who instituted the new security procedures,’ I complained. ‘I wasn’t even consulted, and I have it on good authority that Raymond was in league with the thieves.’

  “ ‘Whose authority?’ he asked, and I’m afraid I mentioned your name. I hope you don’t mind. And he said, ‘Him? He’s an incompetent scut and a liar, who is to be sacked himself. You make a likely pair.’

  “With that I’m afraid I began to cry, and I said something to the effect of ‘How will I ever get another position? First the books are stolen and then I’m sacked. Who will have me? It’ll look like I’m responsible.’

  “ ‘Which is not an inaccurate perception,’ he said, turning on his heel and leaving.

  “After I composed myself, I told the others that I had no intention of leaving, that it would take guards and a letter from the provost to make me leave. And do you know what? I still can’t believe it.”

  McGarr waited.

  “Nobody spoke up. Nobody came over and put an arm around me, not even my assistant with whom I thought I was on the best of terms. In utter silence they just continued the cleanup.”

  “Fearful of losing their own positions,” McGarr said, standing and moving past her into the kitchen where she kept the liquor. “May I ask you something?” Opening the cabinet above the sink, he pulled out the bottle of malt he had been served from on the night before. “Why ever did you have anything to do with Pape?” McGarr splashed the amber fl?uid into a glass.

  There was a pause before she said, “So that’s it. Your digging has unearthed my lurid past.”

  Glass in hand, McGarr turned in time to see her jaw tremble and tears burst from her eyes. She lowered her head and other tears splatted on the tiles by her feet.

  The three toenails on each foot visible through the open shoes looked recently painted with a lacquer that matched the deep red shade of the roses on her housecoat. McGarr drank from the glass.

  As much as it troubled him to bring her pain, as much as his urge was to reach out and comfort her, he also wanted an answer.

  She raised her head and then the glass, regarding him sidelong through tear-blurred eyes as she drank. Then, “I don’t know—maybe I’m just a woman who can’t do without a man. If anything, the past year or so has taught me that. And Trevor came on to me when I fi?rst came here to Dublin and had broken off a relationship I’d had in Edinburgh, knowing that the distance between there and here was simply too challenging to continue.

  “Trevor was here, he was my mentor, and at the time he could actually be charming and warm when he was himself, which wasn’t always. And he was married, which made him safe for me, a poor research student who didn’t have the luxury of actually falling in love. You know”—she glanced up at him again, as though appealing to him—“he was somebody to hold.”


  McGarr wondered if that’s all he himself had been to her as well. “And how many somebodys have there been?”

  “After Dan, you and you alone. And I don’t think of you as a somebody. I hope you understand.”

  Stonily, McGarr regarded her. “And before your husband?”

  She swung her head away and reached for the wine bottle on the sideboard. “I admit that between my undergraduate years and returning to university, I went through a period of what I think of as ‘wandering,’ and there were several somebodys. But always, always, I engaged in affairs, not...”

  One-night stands, McGarr thought she meant.

  “And may I say”—she poured herself another glass—“that, while I understand your need to know everything you can about me, that it’s really unfair to us—who we could be as a couple. And I hope it already hasn’t spoiled any chance we might have had to fi?nd that out.” With the back of a hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hate crying. Why do I have to cry?”

  Finishing the drink, McGarr placed the glass in the sink. “What happened with Pape?”

  “Well, I think you know. We were all the gossip. Everybody in Trinity and, you know, the arts community in Dublin heard about it, I’m sure.

  “After his wife confronted him at a cocktail party, he told me he would leave her, and we would marry. Which I squelched immediately. I had no intention of marrying a much older man with a defi?nite and diffi?cult problem.”

  “His addictions.” She nodded.

  “Also, I had come to know Trevor, and marriage to me—to anybody—would never suit him. Whether it’s the drugs or something in his personality, Trevor is promiscuous by nature. And in spite of what I’ve just divulged about myself, I didn’t want any part of that. I don’t—I’ve never—considered myself promiscuous.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Just what he did to me this afternoon—made my life diffi?cult in the extreme. After I requested a change in tutors away from him, he tried to poison my new adviser against me, even wrote to the outside readers of my thesis in Britain, telling them he had washed his hands of me because my scholarship was suspect.