Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (4 page)

Later, after he’d been admitted to the bar, the press called him “Commissioner Inevitable,” which so browned off the actual commissioner that he delayed Sheard’s inevitability by rusticating him to the desk that kept tabs on “unlawful organizations,” which was a euphemism for the IRA. It was a police dead end.

Because Garda commissioners were political a
p
pointees, all that changed with a new government, and for his patience Sheard was rewarded with the Fraud Squad, which also investigated major thefts. Most r
e
cently the press had dubbed him “The Cop for the Twenty-fi?rst Century,” noting his Trinity background— he had studied fi?nance and organization—his legal d
e
gree, and his work against terrorist organizations.

McGarr had only skimmed or lent half an ear to the pieces, since publicity for a cop—twenty-fi?rst century or otherwise—was something to be avoided. Unless, of course, the cop had another agenda entirely, which McGarr and some other senior Garda offi?cers su
s
pected Sheard had.

Fitting on his hat, McGarr opened the door and stepped out behind Sheard’s broad back. And with a hand raised to the brim, he set off down the stairs on a fl?ank of the crowd.

Sheard was saying, “ ...of inestimable value. It is the chief bibliographic treasure of the people of Ireland and all those others of Celtic heritage. The Garda
will spare nothing in pursuing those who assaulted one guard, murdered another, and made off with the volumes.”

Saying, “Police, please. Police, please,” which in his pancake Dublin tones sounded like an apologetic yet intentional plaint, McGarr weaved his way through the crowd.

He wondered if Raymond Sloane’s family had b
e
gun to worry about him, and how they would react to Sheard’s comments. And how they would react to Mc-Garr himself, when he arrived on their doorstep to a
n
nounce Sloane’s death. After Sheard’s public remarks.

Had Sheard himself ever been in the position of ha
v
ing to announce a death to a family? McGarr doubted it, the man’s specialty being more white-collar crime.

CHAPTER

2

SEVERAL OF THE REPORTERS HAD STARTED AFTER
Mc-Garr, but he stretched out his stride and was soon alone.

It had become a pleasant autumn day fi?lled with the golden light, peculiar to October, from a sun that was surrendering the heights of summer. Angling in from the east, its rays were warm, not hot, and glancing at the smooth chartreuse carpet of lawn that fi?lled the quadrangle, McGarr thought of his garden, which he had ignored for weeks.

Some time soon, he should pull up the stalks of the summer plants, fertilize the soil, and sow more “winter wheat”—a crop rich in nitrogen that he would turn into the ground come spring. But for the last two years his heart had not been in gardening either, which had once given him real pleasure.

He had reached the guardhouse from which the tall wooden gates that gave onto Pearse Street could be monitored. A uniformed guard, standing before the e
n
trance, touched his cap, as McGarr ducked under the yellow police tape and stepped into the building.

Pale blue chalk marked off where the injured Trinity
security guard had been found; green chalk surrounded the pool of his spilled blood; and yellow chalk detailed where somebody had stood and shifted his feet before taking a stride toward the door.

The two stationary prints were enlarged and blurred, as though the person had stood there for some time, shifting his feet now and then. The striding print lay beyond the pool and was fainter but more well defi?ned.

The victim had been seated in the chair, which lay on its side, when he had been sapped from behind. Bright orange chalk indicated the position in which he had been found.

“What d’yiz think, Chief? Inside job?” a voice asked, startling him.

McGarr swung round on a young woman. Late thi
r
ties, pixieish; her black curly hair was pulled back and woven into a long braid. She was wearing a navy blue fl?eece jacket and jeans. McGarr had seen her before, but he couldn’t place where.

“Orla Bannon,
Ath Cliath
.
” She held out her hand. He only stared down at it.

Ath Cliath
was a weekly tabloid that through the cunning use of innuendo, unnamed sources, and front-page hyperbole had grown from a mere weekend lis
t
ings rag to one of the most infl?uential and certainly the most profi?table newspapers in the country.

Only two days before the murder of its founder, Dery Parmalee, nearly two years earlier, ownership of the tabloid had fallen to one Charles “Chazz” Sweeney, who had ordered the hit, McGarr had believed but could not prove.

He also believed Sweeney had played some part in the deaths of Noreen and her father, Fitz. But he couldn’t prove that either.

Orla Bannon was a columnist, McGarr now reme
m
bered; a head shot, which made her look rather like an American Indian princess, ran with her articles. In it, she was gazing out at her readers sidelong and asses
s
ing, with that same slight smile on her face, her eyes so black they were jet.

“You shouldn’t be here. This is a police zone.”

“Didn’t I see the tape?” she replied coyly, cocking her head. “But not to worry—I’m here to help you.” The voice was Northern, working-class, and the pluck he recognized—the one that came from a lifetime of having nothing to lose.

“Inside job, right?” she continued. “There’s the hand-recognition device, and the other security guard who got bumped off a fortnight ago by a hit-and-run driver, so’s Sloane would have to walk the beat hi
m
self. And their knowing that if they clapped him into the case and withdrew the air, his corpse would look frightful. Did you get a look at it yourself?”

“Why would they want him to look frightful?”

Now knowing he wouldn’t make her leave, she pulled back her jacket and placed her hands on her hips. The press passes hanging from her neck made her breasts, which were contained in a white jumper, all the more obvious. “For the effect. The drama. So you’ll take their demand for ransom serious, when it comes.”

“How do you know where Sloane was found?”

“And would you look at this chair—where the other guard was sitting, right? He must have known whoever sapped him.” Hands still on hips, she stepped over the area stained by blood and lowered her head. “Footprints, eh? The craven inside yoke stood here in the poor bastard’s blood, while waiting to open the
gate for whoever murdered Sloane and stole the feckin’ books.”

McGarr wondered as much at her hardened tone as her seasoned observations. The voice in her column was urbane, even elegant. “Crime reporter once?”

She only moved her head to the side, as though to say, of course. As she bent to peer around the side of the desk, a shaft of sunlight struck the top of her head, and McGarr noted rows of stitched scarring where the dark wavy hair would no longer grow. “How do you know about the crime scene in the Old Library?”

“Like I said, we can help each other.” Turning her head, she caught his eye. “But it’ll have to be a two-way street. Not all give and no get.”

She raised herself up. “Lost a lot of blood, Tom Healey. Little wonder he’s fi?ghting for his life.”

McGarr glanced at the notes McKeon had given him. It was the name of the Trinity security guard who had been attacked there at the desk. “How do you know all this?”

“Didn’t I tell you I’m a shape-shifter straight out of Celtic myth? I can travel about in a lordly mist, I can. Whenever I please.”

Which was something McGarr had heard years b
e
fore in school.

There was a sparkle in her jet eyes. “I can tell you don’t believe me.”

“How will you help me?”

Turning to leave, she presented herself in profi?le, and his eyes devolved on the radical angle of her breasts. “I already have. Look into the death of Greene—you’ll see what I mean. But I think we’re both going to be needing some help. Down the road. D’yeh have me card?”

“Who’s Greene?”

“The Trinity security guard who bought the bumper of a BMW a fortnight ago.”

From the back pocket of her jeans, Bannon drew out a contact card. “It’s a bit wrinkled and hot, but you can reach me, if you’ve a need.” Again, her eyes fi?xed his. “And I’m thinking you’ll need.”

McGarr did not offer his hand to take the card.

“Take it.”

Still McGarr did not reach for the card.

She stepped in on him, so close her breasts grazed his chest and her breath was hot on his neck. She slid the card into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I’ve been following you for years. I know your story. You don’t know me yet. But you will. I have co
n
tacts that you would not believe. And, incidentally, what I know about you, I like.”

McGarr stepped back, having known more than a few journalists who for insider access would say or do just about anything.

He pulled the card from his pocket. “Thanking you all the same, Orla.”

She cocked her head again and looked up at him a
s
sessingly. “Know what I’d hazard? I’d hazard Sloane was on Ox, and that’s why he sold out Kells, Trinity, and Ireland.”

It sounded rather like a headline, and McGarr tried to remember what Ox was, exactly. Some drug he’d read about in a Garda report that concluded its addi
c
tive power was greater than that of any known drug, i
n
cluding heroin and cocaine.

“Of course, you’ll discover all that in the pos
t
mortem. Look at me.”

He raised his eyes from the card and gazed into her dark eyes.

“You and I are similar people. Apart from geogr
a
phy, we come from the same place. You were born and brought up in Inchicore; your father worked for Gui
n
ness and had nine kids. You went into police work, which is a more immediate form of journalism.

“I, well, chose less risk, even though I’m from the Short Strand and the tenth of eleven kids, I kid you not.” It was a small, often besieged Catholic enclave in a Protestant section of Belfast.

“Sure, me da worked at what he could, given the i
n
set. And he did as right for us as any man there. Ring me up, if you think I might help. Otherwise, I won’t bother you—unless I have something...critical.”

Slipping her hands in the front pockets of her jeans, she turned and walked out of the security offi?ce.

At the desk, McGarr scanned the logbook of cars admitted to the college. The fi?nal entry was at 11:07
P.
M
., when the automobile of a Professor Hurley left. McGarr fl?ipped the pages, noting that it was either po
l
icy not to admit cars after nine at night or none seemed to arrive after that hour.

An arm of the chair had broken, where the man had fallen heavily. He had not bothered even to get up when his assailant had entered. Or had sat back down, trusting him.

Outside, a crowd of students had gathered at the p
o
lice tape, where the uniformed Guard was keeping them back.

“How did that woman get by you?” McGarr asked.

“You mean the one who was just inside with you, Superintendent? She fl?ashed a Garda ID and said she was with you.”

“Did you check the ID?”

“Yes, I did, sir.”

“Her name?”

“Bresnahan, Ruth. Serious Crimes Unit.”

It was the name of a former detective.

“And the photo?” Ruth Bresnahan was a tall re
d
head.

“It matched. I took particular notice because I thought I’d seen the woman’s face before.”

Moving through the crowd, McGarr pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

The number answered on the second ring. “Bresn
a
han and Ward,” said a deep yet womanly voice. “Aren’t you busy? Or are you in need of expert help?”

Along with her common-law husband, Hugh Ward, another former Murder Squad staffer, Ruth Bresnahan now ran a successful security fi?rm.

“Orla Bannon—know her?”

“Who doesn’t? She’s the diva of
Ath Cliath.
Co
l
umn, front page whenever she wants it, features with miles of space.”

“She just got herself into the crime scene here. The ID had her head shot with your name.”

“Go ’way.”

“How would she have got hold of your ID?”

There was a pause.

With cell phone to ear, McGarr was weaving through a stream of students.

“Let’s see—I still have my last ID in the glove box of the car. But maybe four or fi?ve years ago, I lost another when my purse was nicked at a pub in Enniskillen where we were staking out Eva Morrisey. Remember?”

He did. Bresnahan had been undercover, trying to get a lead on an IRA squad leader who had murdered her lover in Donegal.

“Orla Bannon had covered the story from Mo
r
risey’s arrest and trial to her sentencing. It was all hearts-and-sorrows. She portrayed her as an unloved child, the victim of an abusive upbringing and a social and court system that failed to address her obvious psychological needs.

“And now that you’ve mentioned her name, I also remember her ringing me up around that time, wanting to know how the ‘Mata Hari of the Murder Squad’ had fared, north of the border, up Enniskillen way. She even sang it. At the time, I wondered how she knew.

“But it’s classic Orla Bannon, all right. It’s not how you get the story, but that you get it. Which doesn’t bother her boss one bit, I bet.”

Sweeney, who used
Ath Cliath
as his own literally bloody pulpit.

“Although I hear there’s bad blood between them, with Sweeney wanting to sack her but the editors telling him she’s too well known and too knowledg
e
able of him and the paper to let her go.”

“Would some other paper have her?”

“In a heartbeat. Nobody comes through with new takes and evidence on old dead stories like O.B.”

“She’s called that?”

“With the allusion to the all-knowing
Star Wars
character not disavowed by her.”

“She’s well scarred.”

“On the head from truncheons. She was a kid during the civil rights marches, and it’s said by those who would know that she’s got other scars that are not merely physical.

“Fetching, wouldn’t you say? Small, dark, fi?ne-boned but full-fi?gured. Yet she’s never married, never
been in a serious relationship that I’ve heard about. And any word of one would be all over town in a jiff, given who she is.

“If we can we help you with the Kells thing, Chief, you only have to say the word.” McGarr detected more than a little interest in her voice.

Since leaving the Murder Squad, Bresnahan and Ward—with their knowledge of computers and dat
a
bases—had provided McGarr with information he could not have obtained otherwise.