Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (2 page)
“Which are the strongest muscles in the body,” said
I.V.
But not strong enough. His feet—maybe if he banged them against the glass
he could shatter it. But his sponge-rubber security-guard soles only thudded against the thick surface, which was slick now with his blood.
Only then did he remember the sap, the sock of coins that he had thumped the gate guard with.
“Too-da-loo,” said one of the voices, rapping on the glass.
“Ta,” said the other.
Sloane then heard the motor switch on, the one that
sucked out the air, and suddenly he became hysterical. “That won’t help,” I.V. remarked. “Not one bit.”
PETER MCGARR STEPPED OUT OF THE LANEWAY INTO
Dame Street, at the end of which stood the granite eminence of Trinity College about a quarter mile di
s
tant.
It was early morning—half 8:00—and the street was thronged with automobile commuters creeping to work. Cars rolled on a few paces, stopped, and their drivers looked away blankly, used to delay. Faces of passengers in double-deck buses, through wi
n
dows streaked with urban grime, were careworn and bored.
A solitary articulated lorry appeared lost amid the clamor, its wide headlamps searching for a street that might lead to a highway and freedom.
Like Trinity itself, where McGarr was headed, the early traffi?c on Dame Street was a given of his day, something he seldom noticed.
But since the murder of his wife, Noreen, more than two years earlier, McGarr had gone from being an acute observer of the city to being necessarily blind to its changes and nuances. Save those, of course, that concerned his family, who had been reduced to his
daughter, Maddie, and his mother-in-law, Nuala. She now cared for the child while he worked.
Trinity, which he was now approaching, was a case in point, he realized. Back when he’d been a student, the bastion of Protestantism and privilege had been d
e
clared off limits to Catholics by the bishop of Dublin. Of course, as the seventh of nine children of a Gui
n
ness brewery worker, it was no place he could have had hopes of attending, anyhow.
And yet in his own way, McGarr had coveted Tri
n
ity’s complex of mainly Georgian and Victorian buil
d
ings that walled off traffi?c and noise and provided a quiet haven of wide lawns, cobbled footpaths, and c
i
vility in the heart of the city. It was a gem of a place, a kind of urban diadem. But for the nearly twenty years of his marriage, he had associated the college with Noreen, who had studied there.
The arched entranceway was crowded with retur
n
ing students, and across a wide courtyard, he could see uniformed police cordoning off the Old Library. In front of the barrier stood press and television crews— details that he’d sooner forget, if he could.
But Peter McGarr was chief superintendent of the Serious Crimes Unit of the Garda Siochana, the Irish police, and since the tragedy, his work had become the sole sustaining element in his life, the one constant a
c
tivity that helped him forget.
Also, there was the chance—however slight—that he might discover who exactly had murdered his pe
o
ple. And why.
At the corner of the Old Library, McGarr paused for a few tugs on a cigarette before running the gauntlet in front of the police line, even though he’d promised his daughter he’d quit.
More guilt. How could he have failed to recognize the danger that his occupation posed to his family? How could he have allowed the tragedy to occur?
Feeling as he did most waking hours—that his life was effectively over in his fi?fty-fi?fth year—McGarr dropped the butt into a storm drain and stepped toward the reporters.
A somewhat short man with gray eyes and an aqu
i
line nose bent slightly to one side, he still presented a rather formidable appearance with wide, well-muscled shoulders and little paunch.
Courtesy of Nuala, who had taken charge of his a
p
pearance, he was well turned out in a heather-colored tweed overcoat, razor creases in his tan trousers and cordovan half-cut boots polished to a high gloss.
“You’ve got to get a grip on yourself and get on with life, Peter,” she had told him going out the door. “If only for Maddie. And forget the bastards what done it. They’re a sly and craven lot, not at all like your co
m
mon run of criminal, and more than a few, I’m thin
k
ing. And if they thought you were onto them...”
Unless, of course, they didn’t know he was before he struck. The niceties of the law being dispensed with. Revenge was what McGarr sought, not justice.
As he waded through the clutch of reporters, whose questions McGarr fended off with his eyes, all that hinted at his inner turmoil was a certain drawn look and his deep red hair that tufted out under the brim of his fedora. He’d been too distracted for barbers.
While waiting for the door to the gift shop to be u
n
locked, McGarr glanced up at a sky freighted with clouds moving in from the east. Although it was only early October, the wind carried an edge. The fair weather would not hold much longer, he could tell.
Bernie McKeon—McGarr’s chief of staff—had a
l
ready arrived, along with a pathologist and several members of the Tech Squad.
A man and a woman, who McGarr supposed were library offi?cials, were standing off from the others.
McKeon handed McGarr the notes he’d taken since arriving.
“You’ve heard of squab under glass. It’s served at the fi?nest restaurants, I’m told. And duck too. But blue-d uniform security cop is a new one on me,” McKeon said in an undertone.
McGarr glanced at his colleague, whose dark eyes were bright with the grisly irony that passed for humor in the Murder Squad.
The victim was encased, literally, under thick glass or high-quality Plexiglas. Not only was his security uniform a deep, midnight blue, but his face was some lighter shade of the color, rather like cornfl?ower blue, except for where it was covered in blood, which had also smeared the glass.
“To control the deterioration of the manuscripts, the cases are hermetically sealed and the atmosphere’s withdrawn. Or so says your man,” McKeon continued. “He’s the head librarian and she’s the keeper of old manuscripts.”
“Trevor Pape?” asked McGarr, glancing over at the two. Pape was a well-known fi?gure in academic and arts circles and had attended openings at the picture gallery that Noreen had owned.
“Aye. She gave her name as Kara Kennedy. She found the victim, after getting a call from Pape about another guard at the Pearse Street gate. He’s in the ho
s
pital with a fractured skull.”
McGarr pointed to the victim, who, although a
rather large man, had been stuffed down into a quasi-fetal position in the narrow space. Alive. He had stru
g
gled for any air he could fi?nd; his mouth was open and his eyes—blue, as well—were swollen and protrusive. “Raymond Sloane, head guard here for decades.”
“What’s that in his hand?”
“Hard to tell through the blood. There’s more over here.” With a penlight, McKeon fl?ashed the beam over the fl?ooring stones that were splashed with drying blood. “Looks like he put up a fi?ght, he did. One hell of a way to cap off a career.”
“Know him?”
“Not well. Started out with me in the army. I’d see him now and then. Around town.” Before joining the Garda decades ago, McKeon had been a drill instructor in the Irish army.
It was Dublin again. In spite of the population e
x
plosion and recent infl?ux of immigration, in many ways it remained a small town.
“What’s missing?”
“The books, of course—two of four Kells books, also Durrow and Armagh,” McKeon said.
There lay Raymond Sloane, devoid of life and spirit and now merely a subject for a pathologist’s scalpel.
“Let’s see what’s in his hand.”
McKeon waved the librarians over and explained what was needed. Reaching under the case, Pape threw a switch and the case hissed as air entered the chamber.
Suddenly the lid sprang open, with Sloane’s arm and shoulder rising up. The woman gasped and jumped back, sobbing.
A forensic photographer aimed his camera, and cold achromatic lightning raked the room. Closing his eyes,
McGarr watched the light burst red through his eyelids as the camera continued to fl?ash.
With surgical gloves, a tech sergeant removed the object from Sloane’s right hand—a thick black sock that was fi?lled with a stack of maybe thirty 50P coins.
“Because he didn’t carry a weapon?” McKeon asked.
McGarr shrugged. Nevertheless, it had proved us
e
less against the glass.
“Couldn’t swing it.”
Shattered capillaries in the man’s protrusive eyes swirled down, like tiny red worms, into his sclerae. McGarr thought of the small red wet hole in the back of Noreen’s ear. It was all the damage she had suffered, but enough to kill her.
“You, I know,” he said to Pape, who with hands clasped behind his back only nodded. “And you are?”
Her hand came forward. “Kara Kennedy. I’m in charge of the stolen books. I mean, the books that were stolen. Or, at least, I was. In charge, that is.” Her eyes strayed to Pape, who only maintained his stony consi
d
eration of McGarr.
A woman in her early to mid-forties, she had brown hair, pleasant features, good shoulders. “Tell me ever
y
thing you can about this. Who the victim is. How the theft could have happened. Impressions.” McGarr swirled a hand.
“Well, I think—”
“When I am present, I speak to the public about l
i
brary matters,” said Pape.
“We’re the police,” McKeon objected, “not the pu
b
lic. And that man over there”—he jabbed a
fi?
nger at the display case—“is dead. Murdered.”
McGarr touched McKeon’s arm. “Perhaps I might speak to you alone, Doctor—it is Doctor, isn’t it?”
The man nodded.
“Dr. Pape. And, really, we should make some room.”
Tall lights on stanchions were being set up around the display case. With halogen torches, others were searching for evidence on the fl?oor, while another team lifted prints from the cases.
The pathologist, Dr. Henry—a blowsy woman M
c
Garr’s own age—was leaning over the case with a kind of loupe held to one eye.
Pointing the way, McGarr led Pape in one direction, while McKeon took the Kennedy woman in another.
“What were the security precautions?”
“I’ve already explained that as well. To the police.”
McGarr cocked his head; if so, McKeon would have fi?lled him in.
“To Jack Sheard, your superior.”
Younger than McGarr by an easy dozen years, Sheard held the same rank, chief superintendent, but had far less seniority. Money laundering, major thefts, and frauds were his area of responsibility.
“When?”
“Earlier.”
“Here?”
“No—over the phone. Jack’s a graduate, you know.”
And proud of it, McGarr remembered, Sheard one night having arrived at a Garda banquet wearing a tie emblazoned with the Trinity College crest. Few high-ranking Garda offi?cers had attended university, much less a college with such cachet.
“Well, Jack is otherwise occupied, and you may have left something out.”
After a sigh, Pape explained that at night the college
posted a guard at each of four gates, with a fi?fth guard patrolling the grounds and buildings. Sloane himself maintained a command post at security headquarters, monitoring a bank of surveillance cameras. “Here in the Treasury and gift shop, surveillance also included voice and movement sensors.
“Unfortunately, we’ve been one guard shy since the recent death of a member of the security detail, and Sloane was performing both functions.”
“Death, how?”
“Motorcar. He was knocked down in the street.”
“How recent a death?”
“A fortnight ago.”
If the gates could be locked and monitored, why had Sloane not taken a guard off a gate for foot patrol? Mc-Garr reasoned. “In other words, when Sloane was on p
a
trol, there was nobody back at security headquarters.”
“There you have it.” Pape’s smile was slight and s
u
perior.
At least sixty-fi?ve, he was nearly gaunt with a long face and light brown hair that was thin on top but swept back in a gray-streaked mane that hung to his shoulders. His nose was thin, hawkish, and lined with crimson veins; his eyes were blue but ruddy.
Without question donnish-looking, Pape was wea
r
ing a muted green-checked jacket over a beige shirt and dun tie.
“While on patrol, would Mr. Sloane have entered the building?”
Pape shook his head. “Not unless the sensors or cameras detected something.”
“What about an alarm system or a silent alarm co
n
nected to the Garda barracks in Pearse Street?” It was just across from an entrance to the college.
“It was disabled.”
McGarr waited.
Pape raised his head and looked down his nose at McGarr. “I’m afraid we’re the library that cried wolf, Inspector. Every time a student or visitor rattled the door after hours, wanting in, the alarms went off. With students now returning to campus, I imagine Sloane decided to take a hiatus from alarms.”
