Last Orders (The Dublin Trilogy Book 4)

by Caimh McDonnell

  All the way home, the feeling had been there, gnawing at him. The feeling that eyes were on him. He kept noticing people noticing him. And he was sure he was seeing motorbikes more often than usual. It didn’t help that Zayas kept trying to engage him in conversation. He tried to ignore him, push it away. It was all in his head. He just needed to calm himself down and everything would be fine.

  He walked a couple more steps towards the kitchen and stopped again. He looked at the shelves containing his videotape library. Every All-Ireland since 1982 and every Cork match from the Munster final onwards. He’d been at most of those games in person, but he’d always paid one of the lads from the team to come in and record it for him. He’d never trusted the timer on the video. Of course, these days, they didn’t want you to have a video any more. It was an outdated technology, a bit like himself. He’d had to haul it to three different places to get it fixed the last time it had died on him. He didn’t trust some digital box to store his matches. One day the thing could just forget everything on ye; he’d seen something in the paper.

  He looked at the tapes again. They were out of order. They were never out of order. The football and the hurling were mixed together – he never did that.

  He dropped the shopping bag and started pulling out tapes at random. They were all still there, but where was all the dust? Someone had touched his stuff.

  He turned and ran out into the hall and up the stairs, grabbing the hurley that’d been sitting beside the door. His heart was pounding. He looked at the clock on the wall as he climbed the stairs: 9:22. His watch said the same. The clock was always slow. He hadn’t fixed it, had he? It didn’t seem like… He wasn’t sure.

  Zayas sat at the stop of the stairs, smiling down at him. “Are you OK, Detective? You look a little pale.”

  “Shut the feck up, you!”

  He swung his hurley at the space where nobody was, walloping the side of the bannister and knocking a chunk off of it for his troubles. He slowed his breathing and walked into the bedroom. Everything looked as he had left it. A pair of his Y-fronts lay in the middle of the floor, looking in need of a wash – or better yet, burning. They’d seen better decades. The bed was unmade, as it should be. One of the wardrobe doors was open. Had he left it like that? He probably had. C’mon now, he told himself. Get it together.

  He looked over at the far side of the bed. That’s where she had slept.

  His heart caught in his throat.

  The picture was gone. It had been on the bedside cabinet.

  He moved around the bed, his grip tightening on the hurley.

  As he passed the corner of the bed, he saw it, lying face down on the floor. It could have just fallen over, he supposed. He leaned down and picked it up. A crack now ran down the front of the glass – snaking between himself and Simone. He sat down heavily on the bed and ran his finger up and down the broken glass. Then he looked at her, smiling back at him from the past.

  Bunny drew in a deep breath and let it out again, a hitch catching in his throat. “I think I’m fucking losing it, love.”

  In the background, he heard a dead man laugh.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Paul opened the passenger door of the Ford Fiesta and got in.

  “I got you a tea.”

  Phil Nellis looked confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “Maggie was missing you.”

  “What do you mean, Maggie was— Agh!”

  Phil jumped in shock as he glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed a German Shepherd smiling back at him from the back seat.

  “How did she get there?”

  Paul gave him a confused look. “What do you mean? I opened the back door like three seconds ago and she hopped in.”

  “Right. Yeah. Sorry. I was focused on my surveillance.” That was the freakish thing about Phil’s unnerving ability to focus – you could ask him to watch a door and that’s exactly what he would do, even if the building fell down around it.

  “Seriously though, you can’t be here. Brigit said you can’t be here. Why are you here?”

  “I told you. The dog missed you and I brought you a tea.” Paul held out a cardboard tray containing two takeaway cups of tea. “It’s still relatively hot. The bloke in front of me was having an argument about the correct temperature for coffee. The fella behind the counter said that it couldn’t be actually boiling for health and safety reasons and the dude said it was ‘political correctness gone mad’. Said it was the logical conclusion of the country having a gay Taoiseach. Then a woman threw a cup of tea over him. Lucky for him it wasn’t boiling. People get very angry in queues, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, well…” Phil stopped himself. “Ah no, you’re doing that thing where if you talk about something long enough, I forget the thing I was going to talk about. What are you doing here? And don’t go into another long story about tea.”

  Paul took his disposable cup out of the cardboard carrying tray and placed it carefully on the dashboard. Phil was very particular about his Auntie Lynn’s car remaining clean. “Alright, look – I came here to apologise.”

  “I knew it,” said Phil. “Cats and dogs can have babies.”

  “What? No. We had that discussion months ago. How are you still on about that?”

  Phil Nellis, as well as being possessed of his own Nellisian brand of logic, had a freakish memory. He seemed to remember everything, just not in a useful way.

  “I’m telling you, I saw a thing on the Internet.”

  Paul removed the lid to blow on his tea, effectively having an exasperated sigh without being rude. “No, it’s not about the cat and dog thing. Remember we googled that?”

  “Pah. Ye can’t go trusting the Internet.”

  “But that’s where you said you saw this thing about—”

  “A kippy. Cross between a kitten and a puppy. I came up with the name myself.”

  “You’ve not figured out a name for your own baby yet, but you’ve come up with a name for a non-existent animal?”

  “Says you.”

  “Says Google.”

  “Ye can’t trust them. It’s all run by the Russian mafia now.”

  Paul was getting that feeling he knew all too well, like he was falling down a bottomless pit of sheer Philness. Time to redirect.

  “No, I’m not here to apologise about the cat and dog thing. You’re still wrong about that.”

  “Panda on the moon?”

  “Again, there’s no evidence.”

  “I’ve seen a picture.”

  Paul took a long drink of reasonably warm tea. Phil looked suspiciously at his and did the same.

  “Right, let’s try this again. I’m here to apologise about getting you involved in the thing with the Kelleher brothers, and also for shirking my responsibilities, and sending Bunny to take care of the Harrison job as well…”

  “Yeah, that screw-up looks like it’s going to destroy the company and put me out of a job, right before I’m about to become father to a baby that I’m pretty sure hates me.”

  “Right,” said Paul. “Although not the last bit. The baby doesn’t hate you. Babies don’t hate people, they’re babies.”

  “Every time she hears my voice, she kicks. I’m going to have to buy a helmet if she keeps doing that when she’s out of there.”

  “Phil, I’m telling ye, your baby does not hate you. You’re just nervous is all, because it’s your first one.”

  “Christ,” said Phil, looking up at the roof.

  “What?”

  “D’ye think she’ll want to have another one? Will we have to keep going until we get a good one?”

  “Phil, have you been sleeping much?”

  “Not really. I mean, the last three days, I’ve been following this Harrison fella eighteen hours a day, and then when we’re in bed, I spend a lot of time looking at Da Xin’s belly, trying to think of nice things to say to it so it won’t hate me.”

  Now that Paul took a good look at him, Phil did look m
ore than a little wired.

  “How are you staying awake?”

  Phil picked up a can from the compartment in the door. It was yellow and green. “I got a load of this East German energy drink from One-Eyed Barry. Very good for focus.”

  Paul looked at the can. The product appeared to be called Yackbac and all the other writing was in foreign. Paul hadn’t done much languages in school. “Ehm, Phil... East Germany isn’t a country any more.”

  “Ah yeah, where’d you find that out? Google?”

  “How many of these have you had?”

  “About a dozen.”

  “Right.”

  “Today.”

  “Today?! Holy shit, Phil.”

  “They’re fine. I mean, they make your wizz smell like petrol, but apart from that. You soon get used to the taste.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  Phil gave Paul a confused look. “Well, petrol, obviously.”

  “Right,” said Paul, “I’m going to split duty of following Harrison with you.”

  “Oh no, Brigit said you were under no circumstances to be involved in this.”

  “Look, I already apologised, didn’t I? And you do need the help.”

  Phil seemed to consider this. “Well, Da Xin does have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Auntie Lynn said she’d take her, but—”

  “Go,” said Paul. “I’ve got this. Now, what’s Harrison been up to?”

  “Nothing much, to be honest. He’s been staying in those apartments over there since the wife kicked him out.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I watched his old house. I figured he’d turn up and beg the wife to take him back. Sure enough, he did.”

  Paul nodded. “That was pretty clever.”

  “Not on his part. She turned the hose on him. Then I followed him back here. He’s also been sacked of course; her da owns the company he worked for.”

  “What an idiot.”

  “Hang on a sec,” said Phil. “Come to think of it, how did you find me?”

  Paul pointed into the back seat. “Maggie.”

  “Really?! Wow!”

  Paul sighed. “No, Phil, not really. We set up that Find My Friends app on our phones, remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Anyway, I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do us, following Harrison. I think he expects it. I’ve hung back but he’s looking around a lot.”

  Paul nodded. “Yeah. I’d imagine his lawyers and those Kelleher pricks have told him to be squeaky clean.”

  “Yep. Pretty hard to catch somebody being a dick if they know you’re trying to. Thing is, though, if we don’t get proof that this fella isn’t really afraid of water and heights and shagging and all of that, then it’ll be us who are totally screwed.”

  Paul looked out the window towards the apartment again. “Yeah. How the hell are we going to do that?”

  “I dunno,” said Phil, “but we’d better think of something pretty damn fast.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Donal Martyn threw back a couple of tablets, chased them with a gulp of water, then slammed his palm into his chest and belched loudly.

  “Forgive me. We had the work Christmas do last night, feeling a bit worse for wear. There were a lot of drinks. Some of them were on fire.”

  Detective Wilson nodded. Sitting beside him, Agent Dove just smiled and blinked slowly. Wilson didn’t see her do it, but he saw the slightly disconcerted look on Martyn’s face. He was fast realising that everyone found her alarming.

  They had spent most of the morning in the offices of Sláinte Ferries, chasing down the one lead they had. Wilson didn’t need Martyn to tell him it had been their office Christmas party the night before; the evidence was ample. The staff that had made it in had spent the morning moving around Wilson and Dove like zombies – albeit zombies who smelled like a wino’s arse and looked like they might break into tears at any point. Wilson couldn’t help but feel that it unfortunately confirmed every stereotype of the Irish that Agent Dove probably had. At one point, a woman called Sophie who had been helping them check back through records, had picked up a bin and thrown up into it, before finishing the sentence she had been in the middle of. The conversational vomit was a new one on Wilson, although he had to admit it certainly served to accentuate whatever point you were making.

  “So,” said Martyn, as he wiped a hanky around his rather large, sweaty face, “how can I help you?”

  Normally, the interviewee sweating was a sure sign of heightened nerves. In Martyn’s case, however, Wilson felt pretty sure he would be sweating regardless of them being here or not. He was a touch on the morbidly obese side; his massive gut strained against his shirt and the arms of his office chair. It also appeared now, as Wilson looked more closely at him, that he’d only shaved the left side of his face. Like he’d started and then forgotten to finish, or just couldn’t be arsed.

  “We’re looking into a case from 1999,” said Wilson. “We were told that you might be the one to talk to.”

  “Right, how so?”

  Wilson took out the photocopy of the sailing manifest that they’d found. “This is from the 1am boat on the tenth of December 1999 from Dublin to Liverpool. It lists a Daniel Zayas.” Wilson pointed at the line that had been highlighted. Martyn leaned forward to look at it, his office chair groaning in agony as he did so.

  “Right, yeah.”

  “The problem we have is, Mr Zayas was found buried in the Wicklow Mountains last week, so we’re rather confused as to how he ended up on that ferry?”

  Martyn leaned back. “I’ve no clue. It’s a long time ago now. To be honest, I’m having a hard time remembering me own name after last night.” He gave a half-hearted laugh that quickly died when he realised nobody was joining in.

  “At the time, you were working as the head purser on the Saint Joseph ferry,” continued Wilson, “before you moved into your current role in the office.”

  “Yeah, I mean, I swapped about. I couldn’t tell you exactly when.”

  Wilson gave him a thin smile. “If you look, you signed off on the manifest at the bottom there.”

  Martyn leaned forward again and the office chair once again groaned in protest. “Right, yeah. That’s me.” A drop of sweat from his brow plopped onto the paper.

  “We were just wondering, how do you think a dead man could end up on a manifest like that?”

  Martyn looked up and licked his lips. “I dunno. I mean, let’s be honest, the ferries aren’t exactly the most secure mode of transport in the world. With the free travel between here and Britain, it’s not like we have big passport checks and all, like at the airport. Although with the Brexit, who knows? That’s going to cause all kinds of hassle, let me tell ye. It’s going to be an absolute nightmare, the Brexit.”

  “It’s just Brexit.”

  “What?”

  Wilson shifted in his seat, aware he was doing it again. “It’s just ‘Brexit’, not ‘the Brexit’. Not that it matters.”

  “It does matter. It’s going to cause no end of hassle. Nightmare.”

  “Anyway,” said Wilson, trying to pull them out of this diversion of his own creation. “What worries us is that adding somebody onto a ferry’s manifest would be an excellent way of pretending that they had left the country when they hadn’t.”

  Martyn sat back. “I’m not sure I like what you’re implying, Detective.”

  “I’m not implying anything, Mr Martyn, I’m just asking. With your experience, help us understand how this could happen.”

  “Well, there’s lots of ways. Maybe somebody else travelled on this fella’s passport. Or maybe it was him, and then he came back? I mean, maybe the paperwork is missing on him coming back over on another ferry. Or he could’ve come into Belfast and come down. We’re not responsible for border security, y’know, although Lord knows, after the Brexit…”

  “Yes,” said Wilson, “but could it be possible, theoretically, for a member of staff to add someon
e to a manifest?”

  Martyn’s collection of chins wobbled as he emphatically shook his head. “Absolutely not, that’d be a firing offence.”

  “Actually, it would be fraud. But if somebody wanted people to think that Mr Zayas had left the country, that’s the kind of thing they might do, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose, but… if that man is listed on the manifest, then he was on the ferry, or at least someone with his ID was.”

  Wilson lowered his voice. “Look, Donal – sorry, can I call you Donal?”

  He nodded.

  “Donal. We’re not bothered about who might or might not have added a name, OK? What we want to know is who asked them to do it. That is the person we’d really like to talk to. Do you see what I’m saying here?”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve no idea how that name got there.”

  He leaned forward and pounded his chubby finger on the sheet of paper for emphasis. Wilson could have sworn that there was a cracking noise in the chair’s groan this time, like it couldn’t take it anymore.

  “OK,” said Wilson, “fair enough. I just want you to do me a favour, Donal, and take a long, hard think about this. You” – Wilson stopped himself and rephrased – “a person, at the time, wouldn’t have known what they were doing, or why, when they added that name to the manifest. We can look past that. But now it’s a murder investigation and this is serious stuff. The penalties for holding stuff back from a murder investigation…” Wilson sucked air in through his teeth and shook his head, in the ‘well, it’s the parts’ way that mechanics have before dropping a massive bill in someone’s lap.