Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (7 page)

“Playin’ with himself, as ever,” put in one of the men at the bar. “Sloane was a feckin’ wanker, if there ever was one.”

“You too,” she warned through the laughter. “You can go as well.”

“Nervous, how?”

“Pacin’, looking at his wristwatch. Must have smoked a packet of fags.”

“Describe the gent.” McGarr reached for his drink. “What did he look like?”

“I only got a look at him when the door opened and closed, don’t you know. But I’d say he was a tall man. Early forties. Soap star looks. Cashmere top coat, silk scarf.

“When Raymond come out saying he needed a gin
martini and a glass of white wine, says I, ‘The feck would I be doing with vermouth?’ Says he, ‘Just fi?ll it up with gin. Fecker’s got the bag on, he won’t notice.’ Fortunately, I found the bottle of white wine I made the mistake of buying years ago. For the lady.”

“What did she look like?”

“Had her back to the door, but upmarket altogether. Tasteful coat, good shoes. Legs crossed to make a show of them. It’s all I saw of her.”

“Hear any names?”

“Only Raymond’s.”

“He speak with you later?”

“ ’Twas the last I seen of him. Ever, as it turns out.”

“Big BMW up the street,” said one of the men b
e
hind her. “Midnight blue. Gold wheel covers.”

Like Raymond Sloane’s new wheels, which, Mc-Garr supposed, the son, Ray-Boy, had driven off in.

“How long did they stay?”

“The drink, is all. Fifteen minutes, twenty. They had business with Raymond, if you know what I mean. A
f
ter it, he was out of here like a shot.”

“Big shit-eater on his puss” came from one of the men.

“He could see his future before him,” said another.

“Notoriety. Front-page headlines.”

“Stardom and a big glass box.” Laughter gurgled from the crew.

“Warped arseholes,” the old woman opined. “Ima
g
ine swearing any one of them in a court of law.”

More immediately, McGarr was interested in the possibility of one or another having got a good look at the man or woman who met Sloane in the lounge. “Would you mind if I sent an artist over here?”

“Depends on her act. If she gets the lads all riled
up, then leaves, no telling what might happen.” Behind the soiled lens of her eyeglasses, one rheumy eye winked.

McGarr tossed back his drink, put a ten on top of the singles, then slid the bank notes forward. “Buy the lads a drink and one for yourself.” Warped or not, later he might need them.

“Where’d you learn about the balaclavas and all the...crime scene details?” He slid off the stool.

She swung her jaw at the teley. “Some big fella— one of your own—was on twice. Once at Trinity, a se
c
ond time from Garda headquarters in Phoenix Park.”

Sheard. What possibly could he hope to gain in r
e
leasing those details? McGarr wondered. “Your name?” He held out his hand.

“Does it matter?”

He nodded. “You’ve been helpful.”

“Foyle. Annie Foyle, like the name of the place. But I don’t think I’d do you much good in court, either.”

McGarr now remembered—Foyle’s had been the name of the pub at least since he’d been a child.

He had actually known her father, who had been a friend of his own father. “Small world.”

“It’s occurred to me.”

Twenty minutes later, McGarr found himself climbing a battered staircase toward his headquarters on the third fl?oor of a building in the complex of structures called Dublin Castle in the heart of the city.

The brick structure, Edwardian in style, was a fo
r
mer British army barracks and still reeked of coarse t
o
bacco, dubbin, leather, sweat, gun oil, and fear. The British had been oppressors and in that role hated and sniped upon. Like the Garda itself, these days.

And paper, McGarr decided, bumping open the door into the offi?ce proper. The place now also stank of p
a
per, reams and reams of it, as Maddie had said of her homework. Along with a more recent smell—the acrid plastic stench of simmering circuitry.

“Chief,” said one staffer, as McGarr passed down the rows of desks.

“Chief,” said another.

“Chief,” some of the others then chorused.

It was the standard greeting.

“You got Rut’ie and her consort in your cubicle,” said John Swords, who since Bresnahan’s removal had acted as McGarr’s amanuensis. “Bernie’s in there too, nursing his stitched pate.”

“Which you’re calling a heads-up?” McGarr asked, if only to break his somber mood.

“Only the ‘nursing.’ You’ll see what I mean.”

With the next step, he did:

McKeon was ensconced in McGarr’s chair, feet up on the desk. In front of him was the bottle of whiskey that was usually kept in the lower left-hand drawer of the desk and could get McGarr sacked, given long-standing regulations prohibiting drink in Garda facil
i
ties. McGarr’s personal cup was in McKeon’s right hand, doubtless fi?lled with the potent fl?uid.

Bresnahan, on the other hand, was seated in M
c
Keon
’
s usual chair, with Hugh Ward occupying the edge of the planning table.

“Chief,” the three said together.

McGarr made a point of staring at the bottle and then at the cup.

“I’d offer you a touch but, as you can see, there’s only one drinking vessel,” said McKeon, his dark eyes bright from the drink. “I asked for OxyContin, but they
warned I couldn’t snort and gargle at the same time. Please don’t tell me I have to get up.”

McKeon’s thick white hair had been shaved around the wound, which was covered by a bandage plaster.

“Did anybody ever tell you you need a television in here?” McKeon continued.

“Acting lessons,” said Ward.

“And a blue pinstriped, double-breasted suit with a hankie in the pocket,” put in Bresnahan, who now crossed long shapely legs that were encased in buff-colored stockings.

The swish of one silky thigh gliding over the other caused McGarr to turn and look out the sooty window. He removed his hat and placed it on the fi?ling cabinet.

She—Bresnahan—was a tall woman with an ang
u
lar—no, a spectacularly angular—build. In her mid-thirties now, she reminded McGarr of a larger, better-looking Rita Hayworth, if that were possible.

In his youth, McGarr had been entranced by Rita Hayworth. She had been his fi?rst love, he had more than once thought. Even Noreen, his wife, had looked like a diminutive, fi?ner version of Rita Hayworth, and here was Bresnahan—Rita gone large and in the shape of her face prettier.

Rita Hayworth, McGarr had decided when watching
Pal
J
oey
for the umpteenth time, was only pretty in the pose of command—head tilted back and slightly to the side, staring down her rather ordinary nose at some hapless sap as though to say, “Grovel, swine.”

Bresnahan, on the other hand, always looked mar
k
edly handsome from every angle, with a long, straight nose, high cheekbones, and a dimpled chin. Her eyes were the color of dark smoke; her hair was auburn.

But not only was she decades younger than McGarr,
she had also worked for him too long for anything other than friendship. Add to that, she was the common-law wife of Hugh Ward, McGarr’s erstwhile second in command and good friend.

Nevertheless, he wondered—not for the fi?rst time— how it would be to have Bresnahan in bed. The touch of her, the heft of her body.

Reaching for the bottle on the desk, he squeaked the cork into the top and slid it into the drawer. He turned to Ward. “Got something?”

Ward hunched his shoulders. “Maybe. But fi?rst you should see this.”

Dark, with matinee-idol good looks and an athletic build, Hugh Ward tapped a few keys and turned the screen of the large laptop so the others could see. Ward had been touted as McGarr’s successor before the d
e
bacle that led to Noreen’s and Fitz’s deaths and r
e
sulted, later, in Bresnahan and Ward being drummed out of the Garda.

The screen brightened, and a voice said, “Mr. Bre
n
dan Kehoe, taoiseach, will now make a statement about recent events at Trinity College.”

Kehoe was to McGarr’s mind the consummate down-country politician. A small, wiry man with an unruly tangle of blondish hair, he maintained a perpe
t
ual slight smile, as though to say, no matter the situ
a
tion—some reversal of progress toward a settlement in the North; the malfeasance of a minister in his gover
n
ment; or here the theft of perhaps the chief treasure of the country—all was right with the world. Or could be made right, if we just keep our aplomb. Or cool.

At fi?rst Kehoe’s smile had been the subject of derision in the press, with columnists lampooning it as
“daffy,” “imbecilic,” and “ga-ga.” Cartoonists had a fi?eld day, picturing him as a pukka or Lilliputian among a forest of Brobdingnagians. But as his leadership matured, all learned that the bemused smile was balanced by a political deftness and savvy that had been missing from Irish politics in recent years.

A barrister and legal scholar, Kehoe still spoke in the broad tones of his native West Cork, and along with the smile, he maintained an avuncular manner, like some poor country farmer you might meet in a pub or hear phoning in one of the chat shows that were a fe
a
ture of rural Irish radio—at once garrulously good-humored, folksy but sly.

Surrounded by taller men at the microphone, Kehoe studied his notes and shook his head before speaking. Then:

“ ’Tis a sad, sorrowful day for the Irish people and the world. Our greatest national treasure has been stolen, one brave man murdered egregiously and see
m
ingly to no purpose, and another is seriously ill in the hospital.

“The Book of Kells, along with the books of Durrow and Armagh, are collectively a trinity which represents the highest form of Celtic-Christian art that the world possesses, and are a testament to the cultural preem
i
nence of Celtic peoples during a period in Europe that was otherwise turbulent, benighted, and militaristic.

“The manuscripts are also holy objects, divine tali
s
mans of the Christian faith.

“That said, we who are gathered here represent all political parties but one. And we are united in our resolve to get the books back undamaged in any way. We will also see those cultural terrorists who perpetuated
these several crimes apprehended and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

“Every resource of the government and Garda will be brought to bear on this effort, which will be led by Chief Superintendent Jack Sheard.”

The camera swung to Sheard, the largest and ce
r
tainly the most striking-looking man there. His expre
s
sion was bathetically grave, McGarr judged—hands clasped at waist, eyes down, brow glowering. A knob of fl?esh on his wide jaw had blanched from co
m
pressed concern.

“The government has also established a reward of thirty thousand Euros for information leading to the a
r
rest of the perpetrators and the return of the treasures. Needless to say, the identities of all patriots willing to come forward to help the police in this matter will be kept strictly confi?dential. You need not fear reprisals.”

A graphic with a telephone number now appeared on the screen. It was the public information number of Sheard’s offi?ce.

“Which political party is absent?” McGarr asked.

“Celtic United,” said Bresnahan.

“The who?” Swords asked. He was standing in the opening of the cubicle, pad and Biro in hand to take McGarr’s orders.

“What rock have you been skulking under, boyo?” McKeon asked.

“It’s the political party of the New Druids,” Ward explained. “The gang from the North Side.”

Who were responsible for much of the organized crime and drug dealing in the working-class sections of the city, McGarr well knew.

The New Druids were a group of former IRA thugs
and anti–organized religion zealots who were suspected of torching churches, Catholic and Protestant alike, on both sides of the border—and of other crimes, such as bank holdups, protection schemes, car thefts, and drug dealing.

Particularly they preyed upon Ireland’s growing immigrant population and thus appealed to the young native Irish who were either unemployed or une
m
ployable, along with the marginally or downright poor who had watched their neighborhoods become Moroccan, Nigerian, or Slavic.