A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1)

by Caimh McDonnell

  A thought struck him and he moved towards the BMW. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and opened the passenger door. Then, he took his phone out and once again rang the phone of Nurse Brigit Conroy. Over the drum of thick raindrops on the roof, he heard a faint buzzing noise. He moved his head around and eventually determined it was coming from the back seat. He opened the back door and rang it again. A faint light at the bottom of one of the shopping bags revealed its location. It sat there beside what looked, to Stewart’s inexpert eye, like some rather expensive lingerie. Well, that was one mystery partially solved. The next question was how had it come to be there?

  Stewart jumped as his own phone, still held in his hand, began to vibrate. Unrecognised number. He considered letting it go to voicemail but then decided against it. “DI Stewart speaking.”

  “Hello, Inspector. This is Nora Stokes from Greevy and Co Solicitors. I need to speak to you urgently.”

  “This isn’t a great time, Miss Stokes.”

  Stewart carefully closed the rear car door and started walking towards Phillips, the head tech. They’d need that phone processed fast.

  “It is regarding my client Paul Mulchrone. He has asked me to act as a go-between for himself and the police.”

  Stewart stopped dead in his tracks. “When did you last speak to him?”

  “I just got off the phone with him.”

  “Is he OK? Is Brigit Conroy with him?”

  “Yes,” she said, “they are both alive and well.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m afraid he wouldn’t tell me that.”

  “Have you got a number for them?”

  “No. He rang me from a pay phone. He told me he has gotten rid of his mobile. To be honest with you, I think he’s become rather paranoid.”

  Stewart glanced over at the corpse of the now extremely dead motorcyclist. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Brigit looked up the sloping driveway that lead to a large detached house. Mansion was probably a more accurate word. She wasn’t sure what the line was between house and mansion; it’d never come up before.

  “Here? Really?” she asked.

  “Here. Really,” replied Paul.

  This was not what she had been expecting. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been this. A crack den maybe? Or a storage garage? A sleazy hotel? All Paul had said was that there was somewhere they’d be safe. He was right on that score. Nobody would believe they were here. Brigit was actually here and she didn’t believe it.

  She’d have guessed at least six bedrooms, possibly more. In a street full of big, expensive looking properties with the kind of security gates that gave the unspoken message ‘visitors not welcome’, this house was the biggest. It was a period property of such a size that the phrase ‘servants’ quarters’ would’ve probably appeared in its description, back in the day when people still referred to having servants. Of course, in this area of Dublin, they undoubtedly did still have servants, but she’d bet they didn’t call them that anymore. It was made of that old grey stone, the one that made the phrase ‘a man’s home is his castle’ seem less of a metaphor and more a statement of fact. If Brigit had spent less time reading about crime and more time reading a certain kind of romance novel, she’d have been better able to describe it. This was the kind of home the heroine would either give up to be with the man she loved, or where she’d live after she nabbed the rich bloke who she was definitely not interested in just for his money. In short, this was the kind of real estate that was a significant plot point.

  As they walked up the drive, Paul held his hand out, palm up.

  “Typical. Now it stops raining!”

  Brigit collapsed the golf umbrella and struggled with the tricky clasp to close it, all the time looking around her in awe. Once past the trees that blocked the view of the house from the road, she saw the fountain in the middle of the expansive lawn, a cherub shooting water out of its mouth. Stick a referee’s jersey on him, and he was perfectly located to officiate the game of five-a-side the lawn could comfortably hold. There was the sweet smell of wet cut grass in the air. As they reached the top of the drive, where the large glass sunporch stretched out before the house proper, a disturbing thought struck her. She put her hand on Paul’s arm to stop him and leaned in to whisper, while trying to look casual.

  “We’re not going to,” she pursed her lips and wobbled her head in a way she thought communicated a lot more than it did, “y’know.”

  Paul gave her a quizzical look. “No, I don’t know.”

  Brigit leaned further in, glancing around as she did so. “Break in?”

  Paul leaned in and spoke in an exaggeratedly loud whisper of his own. “Only if the doorbell doesn’t work.”

  She leaned back, slightly embarrassed, as he shook his head in mock exasperation. “Honestly, what do you think of me?”

  Brigit blushed. “I was just, well…”

  Paul leaned forward and pressed the doorbell. Its sonorously deep tone felt appropriate for such a grandiose looking property. It was immediately met with a shouted response from somewhere in the depth of the house, in a haughty sounding female voice. “Oh mucking hell!”

  Brigit glanced across at Paul, who gave her a reassuring smile.

  “This is Dorothy’s house. She’s a lovely old dear who swears like a trooper, but sticks Ms in to be polite.”

  “OK.”

  And then he added as an afterthought, “Oh, she also thinks I’m her grandson.”

  “What?”

  Before she could say anything else, the inner door opened to reveal a small woman in her 80s. Her hair was white, neatly tied back into a bun and she sported a floral housecoat over a jumper and slacks. She wore thick horn-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck. Her frail appearance was belied by her piercing blue eyes. They had the kind of ferocious intensity that left anyone trapped in their gaze feeling like a small woodland creature who’d mistakenly wandered into open ground. She took one look at Paul and turned sharply around to shout back into the hallway behind her.

  “Pang Lee, put the mucking bins out girl.”

  “Hello, Dorothy,” said Paul, raising his voice to be heard through the glass door. “It’s not bin day tomorrow. Today is Friday.”

  She turned and looked at him, more annoyed than confused.

  “But you come on a Monday, Gregory.”

  “I do, normally.”

  “Hmmm, that does explain why she has left for the day already. Probably seeing that dreadful man. So why are you here?” asked Dorothy, not unkindly.

  “Can’t a grandson come around to visit his favourite grandmother?”

  “You want to spend Friday night with your Grandmother? I knew you were gay.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “Liberace always said that too.”

  “As did a lot of people who weren’t gay, Dorothy.”

  “I don’t mind it myself. Lots of people are doing it these days. Good luck to ’em. Just don’t be one of the dancing ones, they get to be annoying very quickly.” Dorothy looked Paul up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “Good God, boy, what’ve you done to yourself?”

  Paul gingerly lifted his right arm in its sling. “Nothing serious, Grandma, I just pulled a muscle at the gym.”

  “Actually, I meant the jumper, but yes that too.”

  “Anyway,” said Paul, “I wanted to introduce you to my friend…”

  Paul was interrupted by the glass door opening outwards and Dorothy pushing by him, in a sprightlier manner than Brigit would’ve expected from her frail appearance. The older woman stopped in front of her, more than a little too close for comfort. Dorothy put her glasses on and looked up at her, the lenses magnifying the old lady’s eyes to the size of accusatory saucepan lids. The stooped posture of old age took some of Dorothy’s height away, leaving her as a 5-foot question mark. The experience of being that close to those eyes remi
nded Brigit of the one time she’d tried to use a sunlamp.

  “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Ehm…” said Brigit, glancing at Paul, unsure of what to say.

  “Speak up, girl, don’t look at him. You know your own name, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Brigit. “I’m Brigit Conroy. Nice to make your acquaintance, Mrs ehm…” Brigit stalled, realising she was short on quite a lot of details.

  Paul attempted to interject: “Grandma, she…”

  Dorothy stopped him with a raised hand, her eyes never leaving Brigit.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Hoping to marry into money?”

  Brigit was on the back foot, but she was due a rally.

  “Absolutely not, I have my own job. I’m not property to be bought and sold.”

  Dorothy stared up at her, then back at Paul before returning to Brigit.

  “I like her,” she announced. “She’s got mollocks. Not enough of it about. So what’s going on here?” Dorothy waggled a finger back and forth between them.

  “We’re just friends, Grandma,” said Paul.

  “Pah,” dismissed Dorothy. “No such thing. Unless you really are gay?”

  She looked at Paul.

  “You caught me out, no flies on you,” Paul chuckled.

  “Don’t patronise me, Gregory. Although, the young lady could be a lesbian?”

  “She isn’t,” said Brigit.

  “Nothing wrong with it,” said Dorothy. “Jenny Clarke was one, mucking fine girl. Very practical people. In my experience, you cannot beat a lesbian in a crisis.”

  “Probably because they’re never tempted to do stupid stuff to impress men,” said Brigit.

  “Hmmmm,” said Dorothy, “not a bad theory that.”

  “Right then,” said Paul, “maybe we can…”

  Dorothy turned her head to the left at the sound of a car door slamming.

  “Brimson, that you?”

  Through a gap in the hedge, Brigit could see the next-door neighbour, all of 60 feet away, stopped dead on his driveway, like a rabbit in headlights. Dorothy must have only been going by sound but she clearly had the ears of a bat. The terrified expression on the man’s face indicated she’d guessed his identity correctly.

  “Yes, Mrs Graham. Hello.”

  “Don’t you hello me. If that cat of yours mhits on my mucking lawn again, I’m shooting the little munt!”

  Mr Brimson looked like he was about to form a diplomatically worded response, but was discouraged from it when Dorothy took the gun out of the pocket of her housecoat and started waving it about. “I’ll pop a cap in it, you see if I don’t,” said Dorothy, before leaning towards Brigit to add in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’ve been watching The Wire. Can’t understand a bloody word they’re saying but nevertheless marvellous!”

  It looked like quite an old handgun but Brigit still shared Mr Brimson’s alarm. After all, it being old didn’t mean it didn’t kill people. Not all the deaths in World War One had been from the cold. Brigit looked at Paul in alarm, but he raised his hands in a placating gesture. Brimson tried to get through his own front door so quickly that he bounced off it, his shaking hand unable to get the key in the lock first time.

  “So, Dorothy,” said Paul, “aren’t you going to invite us in?”

  “Yes, alright, come on then.” Dorothy turned and headed back inside.

  Paul stepped through into the sunporch. Brigit followed him in, just far enough to grab his arm and spin him physically around.

  “Easy!” said Paul.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Brigit. “Are you conning that sweet old lady?”

  “Sweet?” Paul asked with a smile. “You saw the gun, right?”

  “That doesn’t — she thinks you’re her grandson?”

  “Yes, I’ve been visiting her every Monday for nearly two years now.”

  Brigit gave him a horrified expression. “But…”

  “You do remember how we met?” said Paul.

  “Well yeah but that’s different, I mean… coming around to somebody’s house.”

  “I visited her when she was in hospital and we got on so...”

  “But —”

  “And FYI – I’m pretty sure they’ve had all of her guns disabled, so don’t worry. It’s just for show.”

  “All?”

  Dorothy’s head appeared around the door.

  “Are you two coming or not?” She glanced at them both and her eyes lit up. “Having a discussion about the state of the relationship, are we?”

  “No,” said everyone who wasn’t Dorothy.

  “Suit yourselves. Get inside, please. You’re letting the heat out. I’m not made of money you know.”

  She waved the gun at them in the least threatening manner it was possible to wave a gun. It was just the thing in her hand at the time.

  Paul entered quickly and Brigit followed, Dorothy slamming the door firmly behind them.

  On instinct, Brigit ducked when she entered the hall. It had high ceilings but ‘the wonderful sense of space’ that presenters on TV property shows would have referred to was slightly ruined by the screeching eagle descending from above. On second glance, Brigit realised it was permanently frozen at the point of attack and suspended from wires. She looked around: dozens of sets of dead eyes stared balefully back at her. It was like someone had shot and stuffed an entire forest’s worth of wildlife.

  Dorothy stopped and turned to look at her, before waving her gun about absent-mindedly over her shoulder.

  “Ah – sorry about all the death. Husband was a mucking lunatic, God rest him. Never met an animal he didn’t want to shoot. I thought it would only be appropriate to have him stuffed and put in the hall too, but apparently there’s rules. Tea?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Morning, sleepy head,” said DI Jimmy Stewart.

  Wilson looked gingerly around the private hospital room he was in, before focusing on Stewart’s face and squinting at him for a couple of seconds.

  “Who are you?” asked Wilson.

  “I’m, ehm… You took a knock to the noggin… I mean the head and, ehm…”

  Oh Christ! Stewart looked at the floor and tried to gather his thoughts. When he looked back up, Wilson was beaming at him.

  “Ahhh, you little prick!”

  Wilson laughed and then put his hand to the bandage at the back of his head.

  “Ouch,” he said, “only hurts when I laugh.”

  “Well, serves you right,” said Stewart. “I brought you some grapes.”

  “Ah lovely.”

  “Then I ate them because you were asleep, and I was bored.”

  “Right. Still, it’s the thought that counts.”

  “How are you feeling anyway?”

  “Yeah, alright – you know. I made a bit of a fool of myself.”

  “Bollocks you did. You saved the lives of two innocent people, not to mention probably me as well. Nobody cares about the other stuff.” That wasn’t entirely true. He’d had the assistant Medical Examiner at the scene giving out about guards spewing their guts up over her corpses. Like it was something the poor lad had done for a bit of craic on a night out.

  “Well…” said Wilson, turning a bit red around the jowls under the bandages wrapped around his head.

  “Don’t go getting modest,” said Stewart, “it really doesn’t suit you. By the way, have you ever had like special training in shooting? Because that was pretty bloody incredible.”

  “No. To be honest, I was average at best in the firearms class down in Templemore.”

  “Really?”

  Wilson nodded. Somehow, the idea that the shot had been some kind of fluke was both comforting and unnerving. On the one hand Wilson wasn’t Robocop, on the other Stewart was even luckier to be alive than he’d thought. Despite the St Michael medal, he’d not been to a mass in 20 years; he might have to put in an appearance. It wasn’t that
he didn’t like the idea of there being a God, he’d just never seen evidence, and he of all people needed that. The idea of there being a divine being was one thing, the concept of Wilson being his righteous angel of vengeance was quite something else.

  “Are Conroy and Mulchrone alright?” asked Wilson.

  “It wasn’t them in the car.”

  “Who was it then?”

  “A couple by the names of Duncan McLoughlin and Keeley Mills.”

  “Who the fuck are —”

  “Exactly. All I know is they had Conroy’s phone. They’re both down the hall now.”

  Wilson looked concerned. “Were they?”

  “Shot?” asked Stewart. “No, and all thanks to you on that score. She suffered shock and he…”

  Wilson clearly wasn’t listening. He was trying to put it all together. “Alright, hang on a sec. I know I took a wallop to the head, but how’d they have Conroy’s phone?”

  “I don’t know and I can’t ask them.” Stewart hesitated, before deciding that the lad deserved the truth. “I’ve been suspended.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t follow procedure when I got the phone’s location. Violation of civil rights, so DI Kearns called it.”

  “But they’d have been dead if you hadn’t.”

  “Yeah, I tried pointing that out too. First time I break the rules in 41 years and I get caught. At least now I know I’d never have made it as a dirty cop.”

  “Ah, this is crap. C’mon we’re going to find out why they had that bloody phone.”

  Wilson tried to struggle his way out of the bed that he was now discovering he’d been rather aggressively tucked into.

  Stewart stood up. “Whoa, whoa, Dirty Harry, easy there. You can’t go questioning them either.”

  “What? They suspended me too?!”

  “No, relax. You’re on mandatory paid leave because of the whole ‘shooting that assassin in the face’ thing, not to mention getting injured in the line of duty. You’ll be up for a medal by the way. I made it very clear you were only there following my orders. I acted entirely alone when I broke into the phone company’s whatcha-me-call-it...”