Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (21 page)

Taking hold of his wrist, she moved it away.

From out of his pocket, Ward drew a Cadbury nut bar—dark Swiss chocolate with hazelnut-and-nougat centers.

“Where’d you get that?” She tried to snatch the bar out of his hand, but he was too fast for her. “You ba
s
tard, give it me.”

Pinching and gouging did not work either. A former international boxing champ, Ward easily parried her jabs. “Do we have a deal?”

Sighing, Bresnahan rested her back against the seat. At least he was still that interested in her after—how long had it been?—at least six years, counting the p
e
riod he had moved in with Lee, his other “wife.”

She lowered her eyes to his lips. “Chocolate, I’m told, can be used as a lubricant. That way one of us can keep watching.”

“What about the nuts?”

“You should be worried more about me teeth.”

The chocolate bar alighted in her lap.

“Well, you’re on television for a second day in a row,” Maddie announced getting into the car. “Only Ai
s
ling’s father can top that.”

He was the anchor of a popular television show.

“Granted, it was a still shot, but there you were, gun in hand, looking down at somebody hanging out of a car and obviously dead.

“And one other thing nobody else’s pa will ever
equal on TV—getting sacked on the teley. Does administrative leave mean we can go on a long holiday someplace far, far away?

“Not to worry, I won’t bawl today. I’m getting rather used to all of this.”

“It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Then it isn’t true.” The sarcastic tone was gone, and he could tell she wanted it not to be true.

“No, it’s probably true. But it doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Probably? They haven’t spoken to you directly?”

“They’ve tried, but I switched off my phone.”

“So you wouldn’t hear the bad news that you’ve, like, been put out to pasture. And that’s why it doesn’t mean a thing?”

McGarr could feel his anger mounting, not at Maddie or her tone, which ultimately was one of childish co
n
cern, but at those three political scuts who, by choosing the most politically expedient and, in Sheard’s case, a
d
vantageous tack, would condone a spate of murders and grand—no, the grandest—theft.

To say nothing of making McGarr himself, who was actually working on the case and not just the media, a very public scapegoat in a way that had already di
s
turbed his daughter and destroyed his reputation.

People wouldn’t remember any of the arrests he had made year after year; they would remember the photo of him gun in hand with the dead driver dangling out of the smashed car.

“It means that they might think they’re putting me on the shelf for a while, but they haven’t. And then—” McGarr had to brake for a traffi?c signal, and he glanced over at her: the retroussé nose and protrusive upper lip, her long ringlets of copper-colored curls. “Maybe it’s time for me to pack it in anyhow.”

Her eyes widened in alarm. “What? You’re a polic
e
man, 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 investig
a
tions, 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, b
e
fore 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 appea
r
ance 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 a
p
peared to be another illustrated page from the Kells book. “Tape two, page two. It will be burned if, by t
o
morrow, 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 fra
c
tured 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 coo
r
dination 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 i
n
volved 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 jeo
p
ardize 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 em
o
tions, including the possibility that he still might be able to have an emotional life beyond his duties as f
a
ther 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 h
u
man 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 b
e
tween Pape’s and here? I hope you’re not drinking on duty.”

She was dressed in a leather bomber jacket and d
e
signer 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 fa
c
tionalism and your continuing war on them doesn’t pan out. Rumor has it Mide was murdered, decap
i
tated, and your woman Rut’ie was the one who disco
v
ered 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 r
e
ally 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 choc
o
late 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 avai
l
able 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, fo
r
give 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.”