Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  There he paused a moment, as if to gather himself, and in one motion, with an athleticism that Bresnahan could only admire, he both spun around and threw himself at the building, his hands managing to grab hold of the upper edge of the wall. Then, on sheer strength he pulled himself up far enough to hook a leg onto the roof.

  All those hours in the gym, thought Bresnahan enviously, while she was at home with their child. Well, she made a mental note to demand some exercise time for herself and a more equally divided child-care schedule. Also, it wasn’t fair, the way men were built for such things, while there was just too much of her to get in the way of climbing most anything, to say nothing of a sheer wall.

  Rolling himself onto the projection, Ward found just about what he had expected—a roof that was more a series of glass chevrons to capture light. Several were open; two rows were lighted.

  Standing, Ward heel-and-toed his way down the length of the outer wall until he was standing by the lighted skylights, the glass of which was so grimy and pitted that it was translucent at best. But he could hear music and voices, and, moving a bit farther toward the corner nearest the bay doors, he found an open window that revealed a cluttered desk, a chair, and a fi?ling cabinet below. Cigarette smoke and heat wafted up at him.

  Because of the music, he could hear only a word or two of the voices. But twice he heard the name Pape, and a young blond woman dressed in a black tank top and a short black skirt passed by the desk before sitting down and putting her feet up, which exposed yet more of her upper thighs.

  “Gillian, you right bitch—turn that fookin’ yoke down. I can’t think.”

  “You? Think? Now, there’s a laugh.” But she lowered her legs and reached out of Ward’s sight and lowered the volume.

  Ward then heard: “But how fookin’ secure is it?”

  There was a pause.

  “And a back way out?”

  Another pause; obviously the man was on the phone.

  “What’s he want for it? Ah, Jaysus—he’s holding us up. Don’t he know who we are? Then you should fookin’ make him aware, straightaway. Give me the address again. Twenty-four...what? You’re breakin’ up. Span...what? Spancel Court. Never heard of it. Ranelagh. I know every laneway of Ranelagh, and I never...”

  Then, “Oh. Oh, yeah. Right. Good. Good, lad. You too.”

  Then the woman—Gillian Reston, Ward assumed— reached into the shadows, and the music swelled.

  Ward caught only snatches of the conversation between the man who had been on the phone and another man, whose voice was nearly inaudible because of the music. Whole minutes went, and more than once Ward thought he heard the word ransom.

  Christ, he thought, have we stumbled upon the thieves?

  At the very least, the woman Morrigan thought the gang inside was responsible for the murder and decapitation of Mide, the New Druid founder.

  It was then that legs of a man appeared near the desk, and the woman, glancing up, now rose and stepped aside, so he could sit. All Ward could see of him were his head and shoulders. But when she settled herself on his lap in a way that turned six inches of buff cleavage nearly into his face, he looked up and smiled appreciatively.

  It was the “Stu” who had been with Sweeney on the railway platform in Dun Laoghaire when the second ransom tape was delivered from the hijacked train. The man whom Sweeney had warned by saying “Stu,” which caused him to fl?ee:

  Late thirties, early forties. Curly blondish hair that had just begun to gray. Handsome in a rugged sort of way, in spite of a rough complexion and a noticeable scar on one cheek.

  He said something to the woman, and she rose up a bit and slid her hand under her bottom and down on him.

  “Pssst!” Bresnahan whispered from below the window. “See anything? I’m freezin’ me fanny off down here.”

  Reaching up, the woman below—Gillian—pulled her top off one shoulder and the other just to the edges of her nipples, then leaned back to rest her head on the shoulder of the man beneath her. Stu.

  Who muttered something to her, before picking her up with both arms, turning and spreading her across the top of the desk, out of Ward’s direct line of sight through the open window. And when he positioned a knee on the desk and climbed up, all Ward could see of her and him were their shoes.

  But combined with the movement of their shapes through the grimy, vaguely translucent glass, it was enough to understand what they were about. Especially when her ankles crimped around his and she gave out a little cry of what sounded like pleasure.

  “Hughie! I swear, I’ll go back to the car, if you don’t come down.”

  Which was loud enough to stop them.

  “You hear that?” the man, Stu, asked.

  She mumbled or moaned again, and there was a pause before their four feet began moving again.

  Very slowly and cautiously, Ward moved to the edge of the wall. There he sat and eased himself over, allowing his body to stretch to the max before releasing his grip. Even so, he would have fallen in a heap, but for the fence that kept him upright.

  “So?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  “You mean—we’re not going in?”

  “We—you and me—can’t go in”—no longer being Gardai, he meant.

  “It hasn’t stopped us yet.”

  “Yes, but it’s not just you and me. It’s Peter, who’s in enough trouble as it is.”

  “Because of us, you mean? Because of me? I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “I didn’t say anything of the sort. And it’s you who’s only after saying it yourself.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How’s it different?” At the corner of the building, Ward surveyed the warehouse loading dock, before stealing across the laneway to the trees that separated it from the parking lot of the chocolate factory, with Bresnahan behind him.

  “It’s different because you’re supposed to love me and support me.”

  Ward twisted the key, and the doors of the old Opel popped. “Didn’t I say it was shite? What are you supposed to do—shoot the bastard with a gang of maybe

  fi?fty behind him? You did the right thing.”

  “You’re sure.”

  Exasperated, Ward only looked off through the trees toward the warehouse.

  After a while, Bresnahan settled herself back against the seat. “So, what are we going to do? Nothing? When here we sit at the location of a major—perhaps the ma-jor—drug distribution center in the city, to say nothing of being the safe house of suspected murderers who also decapitate their victims, and—”

  “There’s nothing that we can do. We can’t storm the building, not with at least three of them in there most likely well armed. The squad can’t help us, now that Peter’s been removed from the case, not without risking their own jobs and careers. And any call for offi?cial help will only bring Sheard.”

  Bresnahan sighed. “And we don’t want that.”

  Ward reached over and tried to place a hand on her thigh but she fended him off. “You’re tired.”

  “No, I’m not—I’m exhausted.”

  Ward then told her what he had seen through the open skylight window. “It’s this Stu who interests me.”

  Earlier in the day, when the large car had pulled up in front of the Ath Cliath news offi?ce, Ward had seen Sweeney’s companion leave the building with him.

  And whose car was it? Sweeney’s? As far as Ward knew, Sweeney, who had lost his driver’s license after multiple drunk-driving convictions, was now chauffeured around town in one of three Rolls that he owned.

  With tinted windows and the wheel of the car on the curb side, the driver was obscured.

  Finally, on the DART commuter train platform, there had been Sweeney’s warning to the man— “Stu!”—who had then fl?ed.

  Had this Stu been in the Ath Cliath building with Sweeney? Or was he, as it now seemed, an ally or part of Ray-Boy’s group? And where was Ray-Boy? Discretion could be the better
route. Why make Sheard look good?

  “Why don’t you go home, get some sleep? Later, you can spell me.”

  Bresnahan shook her head more in resignation than disagreement. “In the old days, we would have stormed the feckin’ place and extracted them and the truth, one way or another.”

  But the old days on the Squad were gone forever, mainly because of Sweeney.

  Ward reached for his cell phone to call Bresnahan a cab and ring up McGarr. In that order.

  CHAPTER

  12

  MCGARR LEFT KARA KENNEDY’S fl?AT EARLY, AROUND half six, taking note of how she slept with seeming abandon—one arm thrown back over her head, the other having been resting on McGarr’s chest when he awoke.

  In such a pose, she looked almost juvenile—her breasts raised and splayed to either side, her stomach concave, her thighs slender and spread with one knee cocked to the side. Like that, he judged her to be a handsome woman—not traditionally pretty, but just well made in a way that was at once classical and exotic. And sounded something deep in him.

  Kissing her gently on the smooth curve of her forehead, he said, “You sleep. I’ll call you later when I know what I’m about.”

  “Oh, no,” she said sleepily, reaching for him. “Aren’t you going to stay with me just a wee bit longer?”

  But he was too consumed with thoughts of Sweeney’s phone call. Somehow, it all seemed too good: Sweeney’s having the money, the possibility of getting the books back largely intact, and—when he had checked his phone messages in Kara’s kitchen on fi?rst getting up—a call from Ward saying that Bresnahan and he had located not only Ray-Boy but perhaps Gillian Reston and the man who had been present at the drop of the second videotape, the one who had arrived with Sweeney.

  Moving down the staircase from the fl?at to the front door, McGarr phoned Swords at Murder Squad headquarters. “What—no sleep?”

  “Who needs it?” Swords replied. “Sleep is boring. Not like the newspapers. One thing we can say about Sweeney—he’s an entertainer. I’d read you today’s installment of Ath Cliath, but it’s something you should savor on your own.”

  “May I add to your burden?” In a way, McGarr felt guilty about how he had passed the night, when compared with Swords and the other staffers who had worked through another night, sifting through documents. But being with Kara again made him understand how much of life he’d been missing.

  “Could we fi?nd out just what automobiles are owned by Chazz Sweeney and/or Ath Cliath?”

  “Sheard’s been by. Twice. Once for the fi?le, the cloak, and the voice scrambler from Pape’s. Second time, it was to tell me he’s taking over the squad. Had a letter signed by O’Rourke. He ordered us out, then switched off the lights and locked the door. We adjourned to Hogan’s and came back after closing.”

  “Good man.” McGarr rang off.

  A heavy pounding rain had begun overnight, and it had scarcely eased as McGarr hurried to his car, where he found Orla Bannon’s business card under the windscreen wiper with the advisory “Other women get horny too.”

  On the short ride home, he stopped at a newsagent and had to pull the three papers out of their bundles at the early hour, slipping the money through the mail slot. Neither Nuala nor Maddie had arisen, so he carried the papers into the kitchen, where he readied some coffee.

  Ath Cliath’s cover story was BANNON: RANSOM TAPE

  II. The story jumped to a two-page spread where she also covered the decapitation-murder of Mide, the New Druid founder.

  In premier tabloid form, she speculated that “perhaps the theft of the Book of Kells prefi?gured a power struggle between the New Druid founder—who possessed an actual, if suspect, ideology—and recent recruits attracted by the New Druids’ seeming monopoly of drugs, money, and street sex in the major cities of the country.”

  A third story without a byline was more interesting to McGarr. It dealt with Sheard’s announcement that Pape was cooperating with Garda investigators and there would soon be “a breakthrough in regard to the theft of the books and the murder of Raymond Sloane.”

  But as for the possible return of the books: “ ‘There’s been no movement on that front, nor is there likely to be,’ ” Sheard was quoted as saying. “ ‘As Taoiseach Kehoe has said—the government will not truck with thieves, murderers, and their ransom demands, no matter the consequence. It would only encourage further such criminal acts.’ ”

  And of the three papers, again it was only Ath Cliath that reported a possible reason for the hijacking of an inbound DART train at Killiney and its abandonment in Sandymount. “The hijackers, seen brandishing handguns and assault rifl?es, were dressed in the regalia of New Druids, according to an eyewitness, with a hijacker tossing out something onto the platform at Dun Laoghaire.”

  McGarr glanced up over his kitchen sink, where he was standing, and looked out at his garden, which because of high walls had only just come into clear view in the early morning light.

  Hadn’t Ward said to him it was a hat that had been scaled to him, and only after he picked it up did he discover that it contained a videotape? Only he and Sweeney had debated who would take possession of it.

  Could Sweeney now be writing for his own paper? Why not? But he had always claimed an Olympian distance from all but the editorial page, Bannon’s independence being proof of his objective stance.

  “An earlier ransom demand for the ancient manuscripts stolen from Trinity College Library took the form of a videotape. The second tape was picked up by a bystander who Garda offi?cials hope will come forward with the packet.”

  Carrying his coffee out into the garden, as fi?rst light was melding into dawn, McGarr moved slowly around the fl?agged walkway, which was still damp from the rain during the night, and tried to understand just where he stood in all that had happened.

  Could he beat the charges about the car and the shooting death at New Druid headquarters? Ultimately, if all the evidence were brought to light. But it would take time, especially if Sheard chose to drag out the process, and he would be branded—even more so than he already was—by the event, to the detriment of his family, any career that he might still have left, and his reputation.

  Why had Sheard gone for him?

  Why not? There was Sheard’s obvious ambition, and, once McGarr had provided Kehoe a way out of the blame that inevitably would have been visited on him, it would not have been diffi?cult for Sheard to convince him of the politic course.

  Now they could blame the New Druids or some larger conspiracy involving Pape and claim Sheard had lost the opportunity to collar them because of the Glasnevin Road incident. And even if and when, later, the postmortem report were issued, the political fallout would be far less. After all, it would be the public’s perceptions—formed by Ath Cliath and the other me-dia—that would count.

  Suddenly, McGarr felt the presence of somebody near him and looked up to fi?nd Nuala.

  “How be ye?”

  He nodded.

  “That Sheard is a bastard. You haven’t heard the last of him yet.”

  McGarr nodded again.

  “Raising himself up with his boot on your neck.”

  McGarr looked out on the soil of his unplanted garden.

  “What will you do?”

  He shrugged.

  “You have to do something. Like this, he’s burying you, and all the good things you’ve done over the years won’t matter a jot.”

  Some time went by. A pied wagtail kited down onto one of his barren raised beds, turned an ear to the ground, and plucked up a fat worm.

  “There’s the form for you,” said Nuala. “Bravo, me budgie.”

  After another little while, during which they heard a neighbor departing for work, “Not to add to your prob

  lems, but Maddie?”

  McGarr turned his head to her.

  “She says she doesn’t want to go to school this morning.”

  “Ill, is she?”

  “No. She’s not ill. She ju
st says she doesn’t want to go for a while.”

  “Because of me?” McGarr stood.

  “I would suspect.”

  McGarr had to knock on Maddie’s closed door.

  She did not respond.

  “May I come in?”

  Still nothing.

  McGarr turned the handle and opened the door. She was in bed with a pillow over her head. “What gives? Nuala tells me you don’t want to go to school. But you’re not ill.”

  She did not move; the pillow remained over her head. He reached down to take it away, but she held on to it fast.

  “I think you can hear me, and I should imagine this has something to do with my situation. Am I right?”

  McGarr sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’d like you to go to school, but I’ll leave that decision up to you. For today.

  “Things... can be made to seem worse than they are. That fella who spilled out of the car? He had shot at us. But the bullet that killed him? It was fi?red from a rifl?e and maybe by one of his own, for reasons we don’t quite know.

  “Television, the press, reports, even being there— people can come up with distorted views of what happened. But the important thing is to do everything you can to discover the truth, not just as you want to see it, but as it is.”

  There was still no response from her. And no movement.

  “Second thing? Even if what’s being said about me were true, you’re not responsible for that in any way. All you have to know is that I try to do my job as well and as fairly and legally as I can.

  “And think of this—what would your absence from school suggest to your classmates? That you’re ashamed because I did wrong? I think so. When, in fact, you should only be ashamed of whatever you do wrong. And then, I actually did nothing wrong.

  “I’ll leave you now, but you should know I love you.”

  Standing, McGarr found Nuala in the doorway. “They say Sheard’s about to give another press conference. Perhaps you should see it.”