The Death of an Irish Sinner (23 page)

McGarr then heard what amounted to a shriek behind the door, and the key rolled over in its lock. “You can’t!” Manahan yelled.

“Why not?” McGarr asked.

“Because it’s…it’s tantamount to signing my death warrant.”

McGarr managed a thin smile. “As you said, I have no real evidence, evidence that would stand up in a court of law. But you and I know you killed Mary-Jo Stanton, after Parmalee learned who killed your husband and wrote you an anonymous letter. You murdered Mary-Jo to get back—”

With her eyes widened and her wan face suddenly flushed with fear, Manahan reached for the phone, but McGarr batted her hands away.

“Gerry, it’s Delia!” she shouted. “Don’t believe him! He lies. He thinks I tampered with his wife’s shotgun and—Give me that fucking phone!” Manahan lunged again, but the second swipe of McGarr’s left arm caught her on the side of the neck with such force that her shoes flew off her feet as she fell hard onto the hall carpet.

Bending down so he was only inches from her face, McGarr proceeded to tell Breen how the two murders were accomplished: the G. Bass, Outfitters water bottle, the come-along secured by the fancy knot, the theft of the manuscript that was mailed to Parmalee so he could run it in
Ath Cliath,
the duplicity that matched Breen’s own in every way but duration.

As McGarr spoke, he watched Manahan’s light gray eyes work, darting here and there but never—not once—meeting his own.

“Are you there?” he had to ask when he had finished what he had to say. But Breen had rung off.

McGarr straightened up, closed the phone, and slipped it into his pocket. Turning, he made for the staircase.

“Where are you going? You can’t leave. Not now.”

Nearly stopping to go back and do what his hands were telling him he should, McGarr instead forced himself down the wide staircase, passing under the crystal chandelier toward the formal entrance of Barbastro.

“Arrest me! You have to arrest me!” Her voice echoed in the foyer.

Turning back to her, McGarr made sure their eyes met. “No sin goes unpunished. Ultimately.” With all the force he could muster, McGarr slammed the door shut.

Ward was waiting, parked in a rental car behind McGarr’s Rover.

Explaining the situation, McGarr added, “Don’t let her leave the country, here or in the North. But do nothing. Just follow her. After the fact…well”—his eyes met Ward’s—“Breen should be stopped.”

Ward nodded. “And you?”

“Hospital.”

FOR TWO DAYS
, Ward, Bresnahan, and McKeon followed Manahan, who first tried to fly out of Dublin Airport.

Denied that privilege because of the phone call Ward had earlier placed to Customs and Immigration, she then attempted to board the ferry to Wales from Dun Laoghaire. Failing that as well—and nearly getting arrested for trying to bribe a port officer—she abandoned her Mercedes at a car rental agency and in a new Audi drove north to Aldershot Airport outside Belfast.

There too, however, she was told that her traveling privileges had been revoked, and she panicked. Driving at a furious pace throughout the afternoon and early evening, she reached Killarney in distant Kerry around eight-thirty. Finding a room at the Great South
ern Hotel, she appeared in the bar of the old and ornate Victorian edifice as if transformed.

Gone was the severe look with the stark white hair pulled back in a ponytail and the plucked eyebrows. In fact, gone was the white hair, courtesy of a dark brown wig, and certainly Manahan was the mistress of makeup. Somehow she had given herself quite credible eyebrows, at least from the distance of about thirty feet, and her entire coloring made the forty-two-year-old woman look at least five years younger.

Wearing black spandex slacks and a sleeveless marled-silk turtleneck that made the most of her ivory shoulders and large breasts, she surveyed the bar before sitting next to a handsome man in his early fifties who appeared to be alone. When he proved to have a companion, Manahan carried her glass of white wine out into the lounge, pretended to glance at a promotional magazine, then returned to the bar and a seat next to another man.

In changing her own position, Bresnahan passed by the bar and heard her say, “Is that an American accent I’m hearing?” Leaning back against the bar, Manahan had propped her elbows on the edge to present a provocative view of her breasts.

In a nasal twang, the man replied, “Ain’t me with the accent, darlin’. But I sure as hell cotton to yours.” His eyes were riveted on the marled silk.

Out in the unmarked Garda car, Bresnahan slid into the backseat and closed the door. “She’s in mufti at the bar, about to pick up an American.”

“She’ll dump the Audi and go off with him tomorrow, like husband and wife,” said McKeon.

Ward shook his head. “I’ll bet an evening of pints she’s out of there with him by”—he glanced at his watch—“closing time.”

Which was two hours away.

Said Bresnahan, “She’s obviously got the cash, and she’ll leave the bar to freshen up, then feed him some line like—‘Just got a phone call, and I have to be in Galway City tomorrow early. Tell you what, cowpoke. I like the cut of your…er, jib. What say we take a little side trip. On me.’”

“Literally. And off they go. If she stays away from her credit cards, her disappearing act may well be complete,” McKeon put in. “But I’ll take you up on the timing, Hughie. She must be dead tired, and he’ll want a brief exploration of possibilities, so to speak, before getting off more regularly.”

McKeon lost the bet.

Around midnight, Manahan and her cowpoke left the hotel, bags in hand. Climbing into his rental car—with small American flags on the bumpers, placed there so tourists could be waved through checkpoints in the North—they drove off into the night.

“Tell you what,” McKeon said, wheeling after them.

“I’m sick of this driving about.”

“Wherever they put in next, I’m ringing up Father Fred Duggan and grassing on the bitch.”

“Making you what? An accessory.”

“Are you daft? After what she’s done? How many has she murdered—three and counting?”

There was a pause before Bresnahan said, “Maybe we should phone Peter. Find out how Noreen is.” Bresnahan was one of Noreen’s closest friends.

“No,” said McKeon. “The last thing he needs is chat from the likes of us who’ve got this necessary job of work to do. And if the news is bad, I swear to you, I’ll whack the bloody bitch myself, Breen or no Breen.”

Two hours later, when Manahan and her American companion pulled off the dual carriageway into the Clare Views Hotel near Ennis, Ward turned to McKeon. “Why not make that phone call to Duggan, Bernie. I’d hazard our Yank and his yank-ee will be sleeping and so forth for some time.”

“Her feeling safe, at least for the moment.”

Being careful not to be seen by Manahan, who might remember her from Killarney, Bresnahan got out of the car and stepped into the hotel.

The Clare Views was far different from the Victorian-style Great Western; it was a large, modern hotel alongside the dual carriageway leading to nearby Shannon Airport.

In the bar, Bresnahan waited until the pair had gone upstairs before identifying herself and asking for a room on the same floor as the couple who had just checked in. “Adjoining, if possible.”

Around daybreak, Ward and McKeon watched a Land Rover move slowly past the hotel before parking in the lot in back. The “man” who climbed down from behind the wheel was no man.

Wearing a cloth cap—over what looked like a shaved head—and a leather bomber jacket with wide shoulders, Geraldine Breen surely looked mannish, apart from the way she carried herself.

“It’s all in the hips,” said McKeon. “Notice how they roll. You can’t unlearn that.”

“What do you think she’s got in the bag?”

McKeon hunched his shoulders. “But I’m considering her armed and dangerous. And sure we know she’s a killer thrice over.” He pulled out his 9mm Glock and checked the clip.

Moving straight to the back door of the hotel, Breen unzipped the bag and pulled out a small device that she inserted, it seemed, into the electronic security lock.

“What’s that?” McKeon asked.

“A superkey, I think. It reads the security code for the day and spits it back into the lock. Presto, the door opens.”

McKeon shook his head. “And we call that progress. Give me a six-inch dead bolt any day.”

The moment the door closed, Ward stepped out of the car. After disabling the Land Rover, he would cover the front of the hotel. “What about the American?”

“What about him?”

“She can’t afford to leave a witness.”

McKeon smiled slightly. “You can sum it up in two tunes. The first is titled ‘Never Up, Never In.’ And the flip side is…?”

Opening the back door, Ward pulled out one of two Steyr-Mannlicher model Ms mounted with a nightscope. It was a target rifle preferred by many professional shooters and a sapper’s weapon with few equals.

“‘What Price Gorey?’”

“Give it up, Bernie—this is serious.”

McKeon swung his head to Ward, and their eyes met. “Don’t I know it.”

Ward closed the door. Through the orange glow of
the cadmium vapor lamps in the car park, he moved toward the Land Rover.

McKeon reached for his radio to warn Bresnahan, who had earlier advised them that she was up in a room next to the couple. “You should know that Breen seems to be equipped with what Hughie calls a superkey. It can—”

“I know.”

“What about the two in the room?”

“They seem to be sleeping now,” she reported in a whisper.

“No more oos and aaahs?”

“Bernie!”

“Which is my dilemma altogether. These days, it’s all thought and no—”

Switching off her set, Bresnahan opened the door just enough to see down the hall. At length a figure appeared and moved toward her quickly, like a fleeting shadow, but passed right by both doors. Less than a minute later, the lights in the hall went out.

In fact, the power in the hotel went out, as Ward could see from a position across the street.

Ditto, McKeon from the now darkened parking lot out back, where he got out of the car and retrieved the second rifle. In the darkness, the night-seeing capability would be essential.

In the hotel, Bresnahan closed her door. Given the superkey and all the electronics at Barbastro, Breen might also possess night-seeing eyeglasses of the type that Bresnahan herself had used on stakeouts.

What to do? Let her simply enter the room and dis
patch two human beings, one of them utterly unaware of the situation and the danger he was in? Granted swift, sure justice would be done in regard to Manahan, but Bresnahan now decided that she could not abandon the American. She could not live with herself were she to do nothing to save him.

“Rut’ie—you okay?” Ward now asked from his position across the street from the front of the hotel.

With her Glock out and her ear to the door, Bresnahan heard what she thought was the rustle of somebody again passing by the door. But she couldn’t be certain, until she picked up the soft click of a latch sliding back as a door swung in, followed almost immediately by a much softer click.

Slipping in, thought Bresnahan. Perhaps enough sound to rouse them briefly, but not enough to put them on their guard and wake them completely.

Breen would now wait for a while, listening to their breathing, allowing the pair to fall back into deep sleep, scanning the layout of the room.

Given the darkness, which in Bresnahan’s room was near total, and given who the woman was—enforcer, assassin—Breen would surely have equipped herself with the ability to see in the dark.

Also, there was the matter of the bag she was carrying. What could be in that?

Time to act. With Ward covering the window and its narrow balcony, there was only one way out of the room for Breen. And one way in.

Slipping the Glock under the waistband of her slacks, Bresnahan used both hands to open her door, making sure her fingers caught the latch to minimize
any noise. She would have to be in position before she made her move.

Out in the hall, she removed her shoes, which would make her fleeter of foot on the deep carpet, and propped one shoe between the door and the jamb. The room would provide her with a refuge should she need it.

It was an American-style hotel with stairwells at either end of the floor. There Bresnahan could see bands of achromatic light leaking from under the doors, produced by the emergency lighting that was required by the building code. At least she would have two bearings in the darkness.

Which was when Bresnahan heard a deep woman’s voice shout, “Billy!” followed by a thud and another dull sound and a woman’s shriek.

Bresnahan rushed toward the door and fumbled for the handle, but it was locked.

Suddenly a light appeared under the door, and the same voice—obviously, Manahan’s—continued, “Now, Gerry—I know what that bastard, that godless cop, told you on the phone. I was there and tried to stop him. He’s wrong, dead wrong, and just trying to complete what Parmalee began. He’s trying to smirch—”

The sound of the blow was loud, even through the door, and was followed by a whimper. “Ah, God, no—don’t do that again. Not there.”

And louder still.

Glock in hand, Bresnahan could shoot at the door, which would surely stop what Breen was about. But it might also bring on an ugly hostage situation that would result in the death of the American, if he was still alive.

Instead, Bresnahan stepped away from the door as the blows and cries for mercy continued. Reaching for the radio, she said, “Hughie—Breen’s in the room, and the American doesn’t seem to be conscious. And she’s beating the piss out of Manahan or Foley or whoever the feck she is.

“Could you place a shot someplace high on the window? You know, like shatter the thing. Maybe that will flush her out here into the hall.”

“We don’t want hostages,” said McKeon. “We want her to continue.”

“Do you know where they are in the room?” Ward asked.

Bresnahan stepped back to the door, the better to hear. Maybe she could pick out where they were.

Yet another shriek, still louder. Then, “Ah, Christ, Gerry—not that. That wasn’t me. Why would I have used something like that? It was Dery, trying to rub our noses in Mary-Jo’s death.”

Bresnahan then heard another voice that she could barely make out, saying, “Did you kill her? And I want the truth.”

Evidently Manahan nodded.

A mumble.

“Why do you think? To get back at you and Duggan and the rest who murdered my husband, destroyed my family life, and then codded me into actually
joining
you and
working
for you and
dedicating
my stupid fucking life to your cause. You must have had many a sneering, ugly, forked-tongue laugh at my expense, you fucking bunch of hypo—”

The sound of the slap was audible, and something crashed at a different place in the room.

“Well?” Ward demanded. “You there, Ruthie? Where do I fire?”

“I don’t know, I’m trying to—”

“Just shoot me!
Shoot
me, you hypocritical bitch!”

More mumbling followed, then some rustling noises, and finally, “You promise?”

“Have you ever known me to break my promise?” said Breen. Obviously they were approaching the door, which Bresnahan now backed away from, Glock in one hand, radio in the other.

“Just shoot, someplace high on the window and over to the right,” if the room was anything like her own.

But before Ward could slip the radio into his jacket pocket and raise the nightscope to his eye, the light in the room went off, and Bresnahan heard somebody gag or choke. And then: “You promised!” in a strange, high voice that was followed by a strangled cry.

Suddenly the door burst open.

Down in the street Ward squeezed off a round that bucked through the double-glazed window, shattering both panes, which crashed in a cascade of glass onto the narrow balcony and spilled into the street.

Hearing the report, McKeon raised his weapon and sighted on the rear door of the hotel.

Backlit now by the ambient light from the street, a figure with wide shoulders and wearing a hat rushed from the room directly at Bresnahan, who dropped down into a shooter’s crouch and squeezed off four quick rounds, the muzzle blasts strobing the dark hall.

Yet the figure did not stop. She cut right, making for the door at the end of the hall.

Standing to pivot, Bresnahan had raised her arms to fire again when a blinding flash seared her vision and her body slammed into the wall.