Dead Man's Sins

by Caimh McDonnell

  “He’s lucky to be alive.”

  “Bodyguard, guv. Not seen him yet but I hear he’s a big boy. First officers on the scene said the ambulance crew had a bugger of a time getting him in the wagon.”

  “Right.”

  “Initial reports are while he’s had a vicious wallop to the head, it’s not life threatening, and apparently he’s conscious and talking.”

  “Good. He’ll be doing that talking to you and me at the first available opportunity.”

  “Yes, boss. He told the guards on the scene that he didn’t see anything before he passed out, but hopefully he’ll be a little bit more forthcoming once he’s no longer bleeding.”

  Cassidy moved further up the lawn and stopped beside the raised wooden platform.

  “Jesus,” said O’Rourke. “I’d heard about the pigeon thing, but I didn’t realise there were this many.”

  “Yep. I asked Mrs Hannity if she knew how to take care of them. If there was anything we needed to do.” Cassidy noticed her superior officer’s facial expression. “Yeah, I know, guv, but remember that case over in Dalkey when the ISPCA went mental about the six cats not being—”

  “Alright,” said O’Rourke, holding up a hand. “I get it. I think I may even have signed the memo.”

  “The guard in charge of that thing still gets death threats.”

  “Don’t worry, Cassidy. We will ensure your bird-loving reputation remains intact.”

  O’Rourke saw the nervous smirk flash across her face as she tried to decipher whether he meant that as a joke or not. He kept his face deadpan. “And the body?”

  Cassidy nodded, all business. “Over there, beside the cages. Multiple stab wounds to the back with what the examiner unofficially says was a long serrated blade.”

  “Hmmm, not exactly the professional assassin’s weapon of choice.”

  “No, guv. Like I said on the phone, I’ve put in a request for manpower to search the area as we’ve not located it.”

  “I made the call. You’ll get them.” He turned and pointed at the overturned chair. “Can we go back here? Am I missing something? The big lad gets smashed in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher and Coop still gets stabbed in the back?”

  “Yes, sir.” Cassidy pointed at the poles located around the pigeon coops. “Speakers, sir. Apparently, Mr Hannity regularly played classical music while he was out here. According to the maid, he said it relaxed the birds. Probably meant he didn’t hear them coming.”

  “You’re kidding? He sat out here, blasting out Bach or some shit like that?”

  Cassidy nodded.

  “He must’ve been wildly popular with the neighbours.”

  “Given who he was, I doubt there were many complaints.”

  “Sure,” agreed O’Rourke. “Nobody did it twice, at least.”

  “Which brings me on to the weird bit, sir. The first weird bit …” Cassidy pointed at the speakers again. “… is that we don’t reckon they’re just speakers. They’re also mics.”

  O’Rourke raised an eyebrow. “I assume he wasn’t spying on his own pigeons?”

  “No, guv.” She turned and pointed up into the trees. “Also, up there, there and there are cameras concealed amidst the branches.”

  “Cassidy, are you about to tell me we have Coop Hannity’s last breath caught on film?”

  “I’m afraid not, boss. It’s very much one of those good news, bad news scenarios.”

  She indicated the far side of the garden before leading the way. Hidden behind bushes was the kind of door you’d associate with a bunker, or perhaps an air-raid shelter. Neither of which he’d ever seen in person. “How did we find this?”

  “It was open when we got here. One of the uniforms noticed it but had the presence of mind to leave it as is, except for a glance to make sure it was unoccupied.” She pointed at the door. “It’s thick, and there’s a serious-looking lock on it.”

  As Cassidy led O’Rourke down the six steps into the subterranean room, the first thing he noticed was the bank of monitors on a desk to the right, their monochromatic light barely reaching the bottom of the stairs. All three screens were showing a live feed of the forensic team outside, from different angles. A couple of VCRs were located beneath them, and a ratty-looking swivel chair sat in front of the desk, upon which lay a clipboard and a jar of pens.

  Cassidy stood to one side. “No tapes in any of the machines. Tecchies have already dusted it for prints.”

  “Is there something else I’m missing here?” asked O’Rourke.

  “Well, guv, there is this.” She flipped a switch on the wall and O’Rourke turned to watch the fluorescent lights click and flicker into life, illuminating the rest of the room.

  “Holy …”

  The space must have stretched nearly all the way back to the house, and the only thing it contained were shelves and shelves of video tapes.

  “Is this—”

  “Yep,” said Cassidy, failing to keep the glee out of her voice. “I mean, we’ve not checked, but judging by the labels on the tapes and what we’ve seen in that ledger, Mr Hannity has been keeping video recordings of his meetings going back at least ten years.”

  O’Rourke licked his lips. “Fuck me, Cassidy. This is an intelligence motherlode. I mean …” His mind was racing. He twirled around and clapped his hands together. “Right, nobody touches anything that isn’t immediately pertinent to the investigation. I need to talk to the Director of Public Prosecutions as lawyers will have a field day with this, but, as of now, this is all evidence. Everything in this room speaks to motive in the sainted Mr Hannity’s murder. I want a uniform – no, two uniforms. Actually, screw it – I’ll ask for two armed officers outside this door twenty-four-seven and I will personally sign off the overtime in my own blood if I have to.”

  He pointed back at the monitors. “We suspect the tapes from last night were taken by the individual or individuals responsible for a first-degree murder. This is officially all part of our crime scene. Clear?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  O’Rourke scanned the room again. “Do we know if anything else has been removed?”

  Cassidy indicated the clipboard on the desk. “From what I can see on the log, a tape from Monday night is possibly missing, but I’ve no idea what else might have been taken.”

  “OK, OK.” O’Rourke rubbed his hands together. “Christ, Pamela, this place is Aladdin’s fucking cave.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Butch?” The shout came from outside. “Where the fuck are you?”

  Cassidy grimaced. “Down here, Detective Carlson.”

  Carlson was sweating despite the morning chill. He was a man who could be on the brink of starvation and still have something about him that said fat lad. O’Rourke didn’t know for sure, but he’d put money on him being lumbered with something terribly clever like Tubs as his nickname.

  The detective spotted O’Rourke and looked as if he might lose his breakfast.

  “Calm down, John. I like my squads to project an air of control.”

  Carlson looked embarrassed. “Sorry, boss. I’ve just been looking through the camera footage.”

  O’Rourke gave Cassidy a confused look.

  “Sorry, sir, I was getting to that. There are other cameras that aren’t linked to these – ones that cover the perimeter. I asked Carlson to scan through the tapes from last night.”

  O’Rourke nodded. “I don’t suppose the murderer was kind enough to ring the doorbell?”

  “No, boss.”

  O’Rourke stopped smiling. The look on Carlson’s face was not a happy one. “Jesus, John, you look like you’ve shat your nappy. Just come out with it, whatever it is.”

  Carlson drew an intake of breath. “The tape – it shows no visitors last night, just the wife leaving and returning. But …” He glanced at Cassidy.

  O’Rourke could feel his good mood dispelling. “Last I checked, Carlson, Detective Cassidy doesn’t outrank me. You don’t need to che
ck with her. Come on, you’d better show me whatever the hell has got you so worked up.”

  In contrast to the bunker outside, the control room for the more mundane security system was pretty basic. To O’Rourke, it didn’t look like much more than a converted cloakroom. He, Carlson and Cassidy had managed to squeeze inside, but nobody would be able to bend down and pick up a pen without at least one other person leaving first. The system itself seemed to be run on a computer, which marked it out as considerably more modern than the videotape one used out back.

  Carlson took a seat at the controls and, on the bottom left of four screens, he rewound the recording to the night before. When the time stamp showed 9:14pm, a figure clad all in black, including a balaclava, appeared on screen.

  “Freeze it,” said O’Rourke. “Now, what am I looking at?”

  “That camera,” explained Carlson, “covers the wall on the right as you look down the garden, sir. It’s actually mostly on the far side of the wall. Hannity’s neighbour’s garden.”

  “And are we sure the time stamps are correct?”

  “We have to double check them, sir,” said Carlson, pointing at the top-right screen, “but the one on the front door, covering the drive, does show Mrs Hannity leaving and returning at the exact times she told us.”

  “OK. Roll it.”

  As the tape played on, the trio watched in silence as the balaclava-clad figure disappeared from view behind the tall hedge, and then, about a minute later, a head and shoulders could be made out as the figure vaulted over the wall. Then it disappeared out of sight.

  “Pause it.” O’Rourke turned to Cassidy. “Did you see that?”

  She nodded. “The guy isn’t wearing gloves. I’ll make sure tech bureau are all over the wall.”

  O’Rourke turned back. “Keep going.”

  “Seven minutes later,” said Carlson, “according to the time stamp …”

  He moved the recording on, stopping just before they could see the head and shoulders of the balaclava-clad figure hopping back over the wall. After another minute he reappeared from behind the hedge and calmly walked off screen the same way he had initially entered.

  “There’s a laneway on the far side of the neighbour’s garden,” said Cassidy. “Odds on, that was his escape route.”

  “OK,” said O’Rourke, taking a deep breath. “Initial assessment – male, bulky physique, over six foot. Anything else?”

  Carlson and Cassidy shook their heads in turn.

  “Good. Let’s get a copy of that tape and the tech boys can rip through it to make sure there’s nothing we’ve missed. I’m going to …”

  O’Rourke trailed off as he noticed Carlson glance nervously at Cassidy again.

  “Carlson, don’t piss about. What is it you’re not telling me? Or, presumably, showing me?”

  “There’s some more footage from Monday night. The night before … The night before last night.”

  O’Rourke resisted the urge to make a sarcastic remark. “Right.”

  “It’s probably nothing, or a coincidence, or …”

  “For fuck’s sake, Carlson, get on with it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carlson pointed to the top-right screen – the one that showed the driveway. He hit a couple of buttons and pressed ‘play’.

  All three of them watched as the recording rolled on. A large man stepped out of the front door and began walking down the drive. He stopped, as if a thought had occurred to him, and looked back at the house.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Cassidy.

  “I wish it was Jesus,” said O’Rourke. “That’d be easier to explain away.”

  Even if he hadn’t seen Bunny McGarry a couple of days ago, it would still have obviously been him. They watched as he nipped across the lawn and liberated a garden gnome before going on his way.

  O’Rourke held his head in his hands. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Nobody said anything. O’Rourke glanced between the images on the bottom-left and top-right screens. Thankfully, it was a long way from a smoking gun, but he couldn’t help but notice that the two men he’d seen were of a similar build.

  We Need a Bastard

  DI Fintan O’Rourke strode out of the gates of Garda HQ and looked around. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. He had hot-tailed it here from the Coop Hannity crime scene, as he’d needed to speak to the Commissioner immediately. Upon arriving for his meeting, he was informed by his boss’s PA that Commissioner Ferguson had “gone for a walk with Kevin.” Where? “Out.”

  O’Rourke didn’t know a Kevin – at least, not one who was a senior guard. More importantly, given the revelations of the day, he didn’t have time for a game of hide-and-seek. With that in mind, he’d asked if the Commissioner had left any more detailed information about his location other than “out”.

  The Commissioner’s PA – a matronly woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been welded in place in the 1970s – had laughed at the question. “Yes, the Commissioner said you might ask that.”

  “And?”

  “And,” she’d said, reading from a Post-it note attached to her monitor, “he told me to remind you that you are one of the most highly decorated detectives in the country, and if you can’t find him, then God help us all.” She had smiled up at O’Rourke. “He does so enjoy his little jokes, doesn’t he?”

  So here he was, wondering where the hell he was supposed to be.

  O’Rourke examined the evidence. He wouldn’t say Commissioner Gareth Ferguson was a fat man – mainly because nobody in their right mind would make that statement out loud for fear of it getting back to him. The Commissioner could be a sensitive soul and, more importantly, he had a legendary ability when it came to holding a grudge. Besides, the man wasn’t fat – the word didn’t even begin to do him justice. It was like describing the Grand Canyon as a hole. Ferguson was six foot four and immense. It was as if someone had taken an avalanche, stuffed it in a finely tailored suit and then made it the most high-ranking police officer in Ireland. You wanted Ferguson on your side, because the only other choice was to be crushed by him one way or the other.

  For all of that, he was indeed fat, and had a well-established aversion to physical exercise. In practical terms, this meant that wherever he was at this moment in time could not be that far away.

  Second, the Commissioner, while a dedicated servant of the public, was not their biggest fan. O’Rourke hypothesised that wherever his boss had gone for a walk, he wouldn’t wish to be in their company. That ruled out turning left from HQ, which led to the park gates and a particularly busy stretch of the North Circular. It also ruled out straight ahead, as that led down to Dublin Zoo where, even from this distance, O’Rourke could hear the roar of dozens of school trips collectively losing their damn minds.

  O’Rourke turned right and started walking up North Road. After just two minutes he found Ferguson and his entourage. The Commissioner was leaning against an oak tree, panting heavily. The duo of Garda protection officers strategically stationed around him were ever present but there was also a new addition, which took O’Rourke by surprise.

  “Commissioner, I didn’t know you were a dog lover.”

  Ferguson shot him a dirty look. “That very much depends on what you consider a dog to be. When someone mentions a dog, I, for example, think of a German Shepherd, possibly a Labrador or, at the risk at coming over all pant-wettingly patriotic, an Irish wolfhound. My beloved wife, however, thinks of something very different. This is Kevin.”

  O’Rourke looked down at the hound beaming up at him cheerfully. He had closely cropped, brown curly hair and a lolling tongue.

  “The missus,” Ferguson continued, “devious wench that she is, was, in hindsight, far too keen to compromise. I expressed the firm opinion that I wanted a Labrador, for her part she wanted a poodle, and what we ended up with was Kevin. He is a Labradoodle, which I belatedly realised was what my wife wanted all along.”

  “Well,” said O’Rourke, “he s
eems nice.”

  “Nice. Yes, well, nice – that is exactly the problem. What I wanted was a manly hound, man’s best friend. What I got was something that looks as if it should be playing keyboard in an 80s pop band. I feel frankly ridiculous walking him about. And he doesn’t play fetch! What kind of a dog doesn’t play fetch, I ask you? I throw the ball and he looks up at me, like, ‘Oh, did you not want that?’ I can’t decide if he’s incredibly stupid or incredibly smart. Either way, I don’t like him. You might be wondering why I’ve brought him to work with me, then?”

  In fact, O’Rourke had not been wondering that, but he had more than enough experience of Commissioner Gareth Ferguson to know that the path of least resistance was to let him get whatever he wanted to off his chest.

  “Kevin is spending the week with me as he has developed behavioural issues, which my wife – in conjunction with the animal behaviourist, who we are paying more than you would believe for his services – has decided are the result of Kevin getting the impression that I do not like him. He can pick up that, but a ball, apparently, is beyond him.”

  Ferguson started to walk, and tugged on the lead in his hand to drag the excitable Kevin along with him. The dog veered left and right, as if everything he could see was the most exciting thing ever. O’Rourke followed in their wake.

  “To be fair,” Ferguson continued, “my problem is not with Kevin per se.” The dog yapped repeatedly at some leaves, earning him a disparaging look from his owner. “Well, not just with Kevin. It is rather what he represents. Did you know Dr Jacobs?”

  “No.”

  “Nice old duffer. Used to do the annual check-ups for myself and the other senior gardaí. You’d drop in, he’d run a few tests, whack your knee with a hammer, give you a light scolding about cutting out this, that or the other, and then you’d both enjoy a nice cigar. It was all very civilised.”