Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (14 page)
She hesitated, turning only her eyes to him, before stepping into the shadows at the top of the stairs.
Treading the expanse of heaved fl?ags on the wal
k
way of the front garden, McGarr used his cell phone to add Gillian Reston’s name to the list of principals in the investigation that Swords and the Murder Squad staff were working on.
“Anything besides the name and her association with Pape?” Swords asked. His voice sounded tired.
“I’d guess she’s British.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t much of a lead. “Jack Sheard get hold of you?”
McGarr waited.
“Been on the blower here . . . oh, a half dozen calls, if one.”
Only McGarr’s staff knew his cell phone number, and he had switched off his pager. “Say what he wants?”
“The business at CU headquarters. It’s on the wire in triplicate.”
Also blinking was the call monitor on the radio in his car, but he ignored that too.
APART FROM THE TINTED WINDOWS AND THE BATTERED
body, Ruth Bresnahan’s decades-old Opel GT was the perfect surveillance car because of its superior sound system and seats that reclined all the way back.
As long as she was careful not to fall asleep, the oversize rearview mirror, which, like the radio, Ward had installed, gave her an unobtrusive perspective on anything behind. And leaning back as she had been for—she checked her light-up Swatch—nearly two hours, it was impossible to tell if anybody was in the car.
Truth was, Bresnahan had thought never in a tho
u
sand years would she miss this kind of surveillance work, stuck in an alley across from Celtic United hea
d
quarters waiting for the woman, Morrigan, to come out. But it felt as comfortable as slipping on a pair of old shoes, as was said.
Even the grimy brick walls to either side, the orangish light, the smell of baking bread or buns or biscuits from the factory in back of her were welcoming. Paltry though it was, this had been and should still be her work. Like a corpse, she did not turn her head to
the vans that kept threading the narrow alley on their way to a loading dock.
Computers, manipulating databases, hacking into government, bank, and medical mainframes may be the name of the security game at present and was how Bresnahan Ward, Ltd., made its money. But it was not one that she cheerfully played. There was no h
u
manity, no inherent joy attached to crunching numbers to reveal that target X spent far more money than he ever earned or Y had once been arrested for indecent exposure.
This, however—sitting in the shadows of an aba
n
doned building and wondering how Morrigan (aka Sheila Law of Antrim Town) could have become i
n
volved with CU and the New Druids—was another cup of tea altogether. Morrigan was university ed
u
cated, pretty in a blowsy way, and possessed of an a
n
gular shape that she had kept trim right into her early forties.
Perhaps it was sex, as one of Ward’s touts had me
n
tioned. But Bresnahan would not allow herself to b
e
lieve that any woman would center her life around sex, although in a way she herself had.
When Ward had as much as thrown her over for Leah Sigal four years earlier, she had seduced him, got massively pregnant on purpose, and now the three of them—no, actually, the six of them when the children were counted—lived together most contentedly, she believed, in what Sweeney’s
Ath Cliath
had called “p
a
gan, orgiastic bliss.” For love, not sex. Although there was that too.
As a good country lass from a Catholic background, Bresnahan had spent her adolescence and early adult
life in rural Kerry ignorant of sexual delight. But once exposed to it, she could not imagine ever being without a man like Ward, who played her body like a pianola, as was also said. Maybe her life was just one big cliché.
In fact, on stakeouts such as this, Ward and she e
n
gaged in nearly constant and unremitting sex, each ta
k
ing turns maintaining the watch while the other was beyond the plane of view. Phew—where was she ge
t
ting these thoughts? She hadn’t fantasized like this since...well, since she was last on a stakeout that mattered, over two years earlier, before Ward and she were sacked because of Sweeney.
Sweeney. With him now involved, it made what they were about all the sweeter. Because he was in the thick of it, she was certain. Sweeney was like a disease, a scourge, a pestilence. If he was present in any way, he was the problem. It was his MO.
But the lights now began to go out in the CU buil
d
ing across the road. And there she was, Morrigan he
r
self. Stepping out, checking inside her large handbag to make sure she had everything—most important, the ransom tape, Bresnahan hoped—and locking the door. She looked around before heading down the stairs.
But the woman wasn’t halfway to the street when a car door opened and a young man in a half shirt with a roll of tanned, exposed abs approached her somewhat drunkenly.
She shook her head and pushed by him. Looking rather like a beefy Brad Pitt, he reached for her hip, but she slapped his hand away.
“Go, girl,” said Bresnahan in the darkness of the car.
You’ve got an altogether different bun in your oven tonight. Sex can wait.
Damn, she thought, I must concentrate.
The lights were on in what McGarr guessed was Kara Kennedy’s apartment. With legal parking nonexistent, he pulled the car up on the footpath and lowered the Garda ID that was attached to the sun visor.
The cold front that McGarr had felt earlier had a
r
rived, with a sharp wind angling in from the northeast. Above the rooftops in a cloudless sky, the stars were layers deep, the achromatic light appearing purer b
e
cause of the orange-colored cadmium vapor lamps that lined the street.
The house was a large old brick Victorian of the sort that had been built by people who thought of the
m
selves as “West Britons” and had re-created the middle-class uniformity of Hampstead or York, this one situated on a corner with a well-clipped lawn and hedges bordered by a spiked iron fence.
Back around the turn of the last century, the houses—in fact, most of Rathmines—had been co
n
sidered an anonymous tract, McGarr knew. Now, the old brick, slate roofs, and tall chimneys soothed the eye, when set against the urban sprawl of the city.
Comfortable if chilly before central heating, the houses featured four bay windows, two up and two down. The gate squeaked on its hinges as he pushed it shut.
Pressing one of two bells, McGarr waited only a few seconds before hearing a voice. “Yes?”
“It’s Peter McGarr. May I come up? I’ve something to show you, and I need your opinion on a technical matter.”
“Really? Fantastic. I’ve been thinking about you and couldn’t sleep.”
The buzzer sounded, the hall light went on, and climbing the wide staircase with its carved banister and much dark wood he switched off his cell phone and put his beeper on mute. Too much had gone on, and his next stop was home.
Kara Kennedy was waiting in an open, lighted door at the top of the stairs. “Sorry I had to leave the pub. I just...well, I just became anxious, I guess. And I was feeling desolate, there’s no other word for it. I had to get out of there. Come in, come in.”
In a glance, McGarr took in her dressing gown, the pearl-gray silk patterned with deep red roses and a matching sash. On her feet, in contrast, was a pair of aquamarine fl?eece booties with pom-poms on the toes. Her long brown hair had been brushed back and was tied with a gray ribbon.
“Do you fi?nd it too warm in here? I had a chill and—” Like a bright, handsome bird turning an ear to the crowd, she cocked her head slightly and swirled her eyes, as though testing the atmosphere of the fl?at.
Scanning what appeared to be a sitting room for a television and video player, McGarr shook his head. Pulling off his hat, he swung his eyes to her. “I brought the video. I need your professional opinion about se
v
eral matters.”
“Really?” The smile, breaking through her obvious concern, was dazzling—her jade eyes sparkling, the array of her brilliant teeth drawing McGarr’s eyes. Could they be real, he wondered, before noticing that her dentition wasn’t exactly perfect, apart from its whiteness. “I hope I can help. I’ve been feeling...
powerless and thwarted. In here, please. I don’t often watch television, but tonight...”
As she led McGarr down a hall past several dar
k
ened rooms, his eyes fell from her good shoulders to her narrow, sashed waist and thin ankles in the booties that looked like dust mops; he concluded—as he had earlier—that in many ways she had been “given the packet,” as had been said about well-formed people in his youth. And she walked with a rolling, big-shouldered gait.
In a room that functioned as a den/library/home o
f
fi?
ce, he imagined, she stopped and twirled round on him rather dramatically. “This is where I live. Or, at least, where I spend much of my time when not at my work.”
There was a teacup on one arm of an overstuffed reading chair, a book splayed across the other. A se
c
ond identical burgundy-colored chair was set on the other side of a tall and bright fl?oor lamp.
She pointed to it. “Please. Sit. Is that the tape?” She held out her hand. “Let me take your coat. Will you take something—tea, coffee, a drink?”
“The last.” Tomorrow was sure to be trying, and he would need his sleep.
“Good. I’ll join you. Perhaps I’ll be able to sleep.”
McGarr sat and looked around: At a table on the other side of the room were framed photographs of a number of people who he supposed were her family; other chairs and tables were furnished in a tasteful Continental style that McGarr had seen before but could not name.
A gas fi?re was hissing in the grate, and in all, the room, with red drapes covering the tall windows and a
thick shag carpet in some light shade, was warm and cozy on the fi?rst chilly night of the season.
“I left out the ice, given how you took your drop in the pub,” she said, returning with a glass in either hand. “There are the wands. I’ll let you do the honor.” Ben
d
ing to hand him the glass, she held on to it for a m
o
ment until he glanced up at her and their eyes met. She smiled. “I’m glad you came.”
Straightening up, she brushed her hand through her hair. “Whew! It’s too hot in here. Let me turn it down.” As she passed beyond him, McGarr listened to the swish of silk, and did he imagine that, in fetching the drinks, she had also dabbed on a bit of perfume? He reached for the remote on a low table between the two chairs.
“Now then.” Moving quickly, she deposited herself in the other chair and reached for her drink. “Roll ’em, maestro.” Her slight Scots burr was noticeable mostly when she pronounced an
r
.
As the music and fi?lm came on, McGarr sipped from the glass and let the warmth of the whiskey seep down into his body. It was some dark Scots brand, doubtless a single malt, with aromatic subtleties and just the right amount of bite.
Although usually a demonstrative person, McGarr judged, Kara Kennedy watched quietly, her chin raised and her head cocked slightly as she peered down her long, slightly aquiline nose at the screen.
McGarr waited until the demand had been made and the screen went black before rewinding just beyond the point where the hooded fi?gure appeared. He then r
e
played a snatch of the narrator’s voice, set against the pastiche of sectarian mayhem and grieving families.
“Question—what is the most divisive and destru
c
tive issue in this country today? What might Ireland have become, had she cleaved to her culture? Had Christianity not displaced the older Celtic verities of life and Druidism?”
“Know that voice?”
“Aye.” She dipped her head once. “Name is Ian Mac Laud. Former host on Radio Scotland before throwing in with the Free Scotland crowd. Got sacked for a lack of impartiality is how it was explained in the press. But he was really just a crank who encouraged other cranks. They had to do something. Since then?” She hunched her shoulders. “Or, as here, he’s moved on to the larger issue.”
McGarr waited.
“Freeing the Greater Celtic World. Pity, there is none.”
“Anything else?”
“Well”—reaching for her drink, she turned her wo
n
derful smile on him again—“where do I start?”
“I’m interested in your impressions.”
“Remember, you asked.” Over the lip of the glass, her eyes regarded him for a moment before she drank and set the glass back down. “The Celtic period in Ir
e
land? What we know of it isn’t much, since theirs was an oral tradition with little preserved and that at a much later date. But it spanned from around 600
B.
C
. to 1169, when Dermot MacMurrough, the King of Lei
n
ster, invited the Normans to help restore him to his throne. But you know that.”
McGarr nodded. It was the history taught in school.
“But in no way were the Celts peaceful people, any—no, every—source relates. The entire fi?fteen hu
n
dred years was marked by continual intertribal warfare and strife. And only seldom were the Celts able to unite in the face of an external threat.
“As for democracy?” Kara passed some air between her lips. “If and when observed, it was minimal, intr
a
clan, most probably elitist, and sooner or later boiled down to a democracy of the sword.
“Which is not to say that the Celts in Ireland and Scotland did not produce a culture that was in other ways admirable—the art, as seen in metalwork, gold and silver jewelry, La Tène pottery, stone carvings; brehon law; and the custom of diurnal civility among one’s clan.
