So Rebecca had been born – and accepted into Beautiful Unicorn about an hour later. Paul had then spent a couple of days receiving e-mails from men that, frankly, made him want to become a lesbian.
You could send out winks, but Rebecca had been very selective. She had sent out only one.
It was 1:12am and Cyrano deCaddyshack, the incognito profile that Paul knew belonged to Jacob Harrison, had messaged him back. Harrison must have not have been able to sleep. He had checked in on Beautiful Unicorn and, lo and behold, he seemed keen on the lovely Rebecca. No doubt flattered by her wink.
Now the fish was on the hook, Paul had to slowly reel him in – using all of his feminine wiles.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
DSI Susan Burns prised open a couple of the slats on the Venetian blinds in her office and looked out. “They say it might snow later on.”
“Yes, so I hear,” said Dr Denise Devane, who was sitting on the opposite side of her desk. “That will no doubt cause chaos on the roads.”
Burns turned away from the window and pulled out her own chair. “Have you got far to go this evening?”
“No. I’m staying in Dublin. I’m on call.”
Burns raised an eyebrow. “Really? I thought seniority would get you out of that.”
Devane shrugged. “All of the others have young families, so…”
“Right, yeah.” Burns felt suddenly awkward. Devane wasn’t known for being terribly forthcoming and it was starting to feel like they had strayed into uncomfortable territory. “I’m supposed to be heading out to Maynooth. My brother and his wife have this Christmas Eve party every year. For reasons beyond my understanding, I’ve had to go out and buy a deliberately awful Christmas jumper. The roads will no doubt be a nightmare, between snow and idiots trying to set the land-speed record to get home for last orders.”
“Yes. Do be careful, Superintendent.”
It was the kind of thing everyone said in conversation, but when the person saying it was the primary point of contact for road fatalities in the country, it did send a shiver down the spine. You could see how Dr Devane didn’t get invited to many children’s birthday parties.
“So,” said Burns, turning to the pad in front of her. “How are we set prior to the holiday shutdown?”
“Well, the autopsy has been completed on that Finglas shooting, as requested.”
“Yes, I saw that. Thank you.”
“The thing in Galway will be done for the twenty-ninth.”
Burns nodded. “That’s fine. I got an update from the local team this morning. They think that could be wrapped up today anyway. The alibi has holes you could drive Santa’s sleigh through.”
Devane nodded. “As for your bodies in the mountains, the records the FBI sent us seem to confirm it is indeed Agent Zayas. We’ve still had absolutely no luck identifying the other one, I’m afraid. We sent the shot to my associate at NABIS, the specialist ballistics lab in the UK, and they confirmed that it is consistent with a derringer, of an older design.”
“Right. I don’t suppose it is possible to narrow it down any more than that, is it?”
Devane shook her head. “From what they’ve said, it is essentially an antique. Most of what are known as derringers haven’t actually been made by a specific company. The name essentially denotes a type of gun that in the late nineteenth century any gunsmith with a bit of knowhow was making. They’re all individual pieces.”
“Great.”
“Well, on the upside, if you do acquire a potential murder weapon, they’d have a good chance of matching it up, despite all of the time that has passed, because the weapons are so individual. Of course, I’m sure the chance of you getting hold of a murder weapon so long after the fact would no doubt be slim.”
Burns twirled a biro in her fingers. “Oh, you’d be surprised. The victim’s wallet just appeared out of nowhere yesterday.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t buried in the plot. My team dug eight feet to either side in line with procedure.”
“No, nothing like that. I got it in the post. It came in an evidence bag, in pristine condition.”
Devane looked confused.
“Exactly,” said Burns. “In all your years, have you ever known evidence to fall from the sky like that?”
“It does seem a tad suspicious.”
“To say the least. I don’t like—”
The phone on Burns’s desk started to ring. She recognised the number. It was the Technical Bureau.
“Speak of the Devil. Let’s see what Doakes has come up with.” He was the best of the techs, so much so that his boss, DSI O’Brien, had brought up repeatedly how Burns should not request him in preference to other staff. She always agreed, but did it anyway.
She picked up the phone. “DSI Burns.”
Devane gestured towards the door to ask if she should leave, but Burns shook her head.
“Susan, it’s Mark O’Brien here.”
“Oh, hello, Mark.” Crap. Looked like she was in for another earful for playing favourites.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” He sounded really pissed.
“Sorry, I know I shouldn’t put things directly to Doakes but—”
“What? No, I mean that’s correct, you should not, but that isn’t why I’m ringing. Is this your idea of, I don’t know, some kind of a Christmas wind-up?”
“Mark, I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Because if it is, I think it is in very poor taste. Never mind the waste of resources, there’s also the—”
Burns cut him off. “Mark. Could you explain what you’re actually angry about? Believe me, if anyone from my team has been wasting your teams’ time, rest assured, I will deal with it severely.”
When he spoke again, O’Brien at least sounded mollified. “This wallet we received yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it does have prints. Between the plastic pane and a few of the cards, we have been able to recover one full and two partial sets of prints.”
“OK,” said Burns, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“The full set matches the prints for Agent Daniel Zayas that the FBI sent us. The other two appear in our elimination file.”
Burns started to get a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I’m getting a weird sense of déjà vu here.”
“Yes,” said O’Brien, “As am I. If this is someone’s idea of a joke, can I remind you how long we spent giving evidence for the enquiry into—”
“Mark, just tell me what you found.”
The edge in her voice stopped him dead.
“Very well. One set of partials matched up to DS Tim Spain, who died in 1999.”
“Right.”
“And the other set belong to his then partner, retired Detective Sergeant Bernard ‘Bunny’ McGarry.”
“You are shitting me. Bunny McGarry?”
Burns looked across the table at the shocked face of Dr Denise Devane.
It wasn’t much more than a year ago that McGarry’s fingerprint had been found on a note in the pocket of a murder victim. He had briefly been public enemy number one, until, much to the Garda Síochána’s embarrassment, it had emerged that he was being set up and had in fact been kidnapped and kept captive for ten days.
Two minutes later, after a rather terse phone call wherein each side assured the other that this wasn’t some sick joke, Burns slammed the phone down.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her fingers into her temples. She could feel the mother of all migraines coming on.
“Merry fucking Christmas.”
Devane flinched as Burns let out a roar.
“Moira, get me Wilson, now!”
Chapter Forty
Bunny sat down heavily on the bench. A white and brown pigeon, uniquely coloured amongst its primarily black and blue brethren, strode purposefully towards him and gave an inquiring look.
“I’ve nothing for ye.”
<
br /> This earned Bunny a side-eyed glower.
He opened the carrier bag. “Well, unless you fancy half a stale baguette?”
The pigeons swarmed before he’d even ripped off the first chunk. While it was always nice to be popular, it helped to be the only game in town. St Stephen’s Green was always thronged in the summer, but on a Christmas Eve barely above freezing, anyone that was there was only using it as the shortest distance between two points. Well, apart from the mad old one who was dancing around to no music on the far side of the park. She was doing it for no audience but God, which was just as well, because passers-by were pointedly ignoring her and all the pigeons were entirely focused on Bunny. He tossed out the last few chunks of bread and showed them his empty hands, like a blackjack dealer leaving the table.
“What is it with pigeons and stale bread? They’re mad for it. Them and the French. Of all I’ve seen in this world, nothing confuses me more than the feckin’ crouton. It’s a square of stale bread. Feckin’ lunatics.”
He glanced to his left. Simone was sitting on the bench beside him, as he knew she would be. A great plus of feeding the pigeons was that talking to them was one of the few socially acceptable ways of talking to yourself.
He leaned back on the bench. “D’ye remember that day we walked through here, arm in arm under an umbrella while it bucketed down with rain? Everyone else rushing by, us the only two people strolling.”
She said nothing.
“You said how you wanted to see it in the sun. We never did get our sunny day, did we?”
He leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. “D’ye know what pisses me off? After all these years, I never hear your voice. Even now, with all this. Zayas never shuts up, Gringo yaps away, yet your voice isn’t up here.” He tapped his finger against his temple. “And I don’t know why. Eighteen years now. Eighteen years. I can’t forget your face but for some damn reason I can’t hear your voice. Where’s the justice in that?”
He watched as a woman with long brown hair walked her poodle over the bridge. He recognised her gait. It was the same woman who’d had the pram, who’d been pregnant, who’d been French. Part of his mind was sure of it. Other parts of his mind didn’t want to engage with how that sounded. How did they get the dogs? The different hair and stuff, he got that, but how did they always have so many different dogs to walk? She didn’t look directly at him; they never did. They were very good at this, whoever they were.
Bunny looked down again at the pigeons, now in three clusters around the main chunks of bread, with the odd small one trying to catch crumbs on the fringes. He watched as they ripped through it. “Have ye ever really looked at pigeons? I mean close up? Everyone thinks they’re these harmless things, but look at ’em go, ripping into that. All I’m saying is, if they were six feet tall instead of six inches, people would be running away screaming, in fear of their lives.”
The phone in Bunny’s pocket vibrated. He took it out and looked at the number, then pressed the button to send it to voicemail. “Brigit – again. Herself and Paulie are trying to get hold of me all the time. Keep leaving voicemails pretending they’re not worried about me. I need to keep this away from them, whatever happens.”
He put his hand into the inside pocket of his sheepskin coat and pulled out his wallet. At the back, in its own little pocket, was the note. Her note.
My dearest Bunny,
This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. I’m so sorry about Tim. I know you will have done everything in your power to try and save him, just as you did for me. Please don’t beat yourself up about it. You can’t save everybody, but I do so love that you try.
I have tried and tried to think of a way around it, but the reality is that my past is always going to keep coming after me. I’m sorry I dragged you into it, and I can’t in all good conscience continue to do that. With every fiber of my being, I’d love to stay with you here for the rest of my days, but it wouldn’t be fair. You’re a good man and you deserve better than this.
Please don’t try and find me. I hope you get what you truly deserve in this life. Thank you for giving me the happiest time in mine, at a time when I thought I could never be truly happy again.
I love you,
Your Simone
He looked over at Simone and saw those eyes that made his heart ache. He looked away again, rubbing a finger into his own eye as the cold wind tugged at his coat. “D’ye know what? D’ye know what hurts the most? If you’d asked, I’d have gone with you. Y’know? I’d have gone anywhere with you. You could’ve just… But instead, I got a note.” He folded it carefully and put it back in his wallet. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. Water under the bridge.”
He watched in silence for a minute as the pigeons squabbled over the last of the bread. Once it had gone, they slowly began to disperse, still keeping a wary eye on him in case he was holding out on them.
“I keep going over it in my head. I could run, but I’m too old to start over. I could try and get ahead of it, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.” He raised his voice into a mocking lilt. “Oh yeah, them bodies, Your Honour, I killed them alright, but I’d good reasons. No, can’t really say more than that, you’ll just have to take my word on it. Scout’s honour, dib, dib, dib.”
He kicked his left foot out at a stone lying in front of the bench, sending it skittering across the path and earning him an admonishing look from one of the pigeons.
He looked around him again. The woman with the poodle was walking back the other way now.
“Besides, it’s not just the law, is it? Either I’m losing my mind or there’s something else going on here.” He nodded his head towards the woman with the dog. “They’re not after me. They’re after you.”
Bunny was distracted from the dog walker by a large black crow landing on the opposite side of the path. It tilted its head and gave him an appraising look.
Bunny was suddenly possessed of the urge to try and hold Simone, the woman who wasn’t really sitting beside him. He knew it was stupid. He was aware it would be crossing another line, allowing his mind to fracture that incremental inch further. He had to hold on to what was real for as long as he could.
“I want you to know, whatever happens, I don’t blame you. What happened in New York wasn’t your fault. You got forced into doing something you didn’t want to in order to save somebody else. You didn’t know that sleazy ex of yours would make a tape, and you did what you had to. You had to defend yourself from those monsters when they came for you. I don’t blame you for running, I… I just wish you’d have let me come with you.”
He watched the dog walker striding purposefully away, dog by her side, bag of shite held at arm’s length, swaying back and forth. “I keep thinking of this old Peter O’Toole film I saw years ago, The Lion in Winter, I think it’s called. He’s the King of England in it – one of the Henrys, I forget which one. There’s loads of them bastards. Anyway, speaking of bastards, he’s got all these sons because he’s been sowing the royal oats. Proper randy bollocks. He needs to get shot of them so he can marry this French bird and have new sons and heirs. So, the existing sons, they’re all locked in prison and Henry is coming to kill them. They know he’s coming. One of them says, ‘Don’t let him see you cry. Stiff upper lip and that.’ Then the other says, ‘You fool! How does it matter how a man falls?’ And the other fella says, ‘When all that’s left is the fall, the fall is everything.’” Bunny looked up at the heavy clouds hanging ominously overhead. “When all that’s left is the fall, the fall is everything.”
Bunny felt his phone vibrate in his pocket again. He took it out, about to send it to voicemail, when he stopped and looked at the number. It was a local Dublin number he didn’t know. He’d received a lot of calls in the last week, but it’d either been Brigit, Paulie or that lawyer woman, Nora, who was leaving increasingly annoyed-sounding messages. This wasn’t any of them. He answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hello.
Hi, Bernard, ehm… Bunny. It’s, ehm, Denise, Denise Devane here.”
“Howerya, Doc, is everything OK? You sound a bit stressed out.”
“Yes, sorry. I’m… I’d sort of assumed in my head I’d get your voicemail. I’d not really thought through what I was going to say.”
“Are you alright? Do you need a hand with something?”
“No, I… Not this time. Thank you again for…”
He could feel her struggling for words. Most people who had worked with Dr Denise Devane would be surprised to hear her like this. She was always so assured.
“Look, Doc, don’t be worrying about that. Long time ago now. You’ve nothing to be thanking me for. Happy to help. Merry Christmas.”
“Right. Yes. Well… I want to help you, Bernard because… Sorry, this is hard for me. I’m making rather a mess of it. I had to walk all the way to Capel Street to find a phone box. You wouldn’t believe how hard they are to find these days.”
“I can imagine.”
“You need to watch out. You are in trouble. They… I mean, when the bodies came in, when it was determined that a derringer…”
“Ah right. You’ve seen mine, of course. Right.”
“I didn’t… say anything. It could have been anyone’s. Lots of them about. Well, enough to be…”
“Sure.”
“There’s something else.”
“Don’t, Doc. Don’t say anything. I know what the job means to you. You’re about to cross a line and I don’t want to put that on you.”
“But Bernard – Bunny – you need to know.”
“I’ll tell you what, how about you tell me nothing? How about I guess, and if I’m right, you just hang up the phone? OK?”
Silence for a couple of seconds. “Alright.”
Bunny took a deep breath. “A wallet has turned up…”
Silence.
He scratched at his beard. “And my fingerprints are on it.”
He listened to a couple of breaths, as if she wanted to say something – then the line went dead.
Last Orders (The Dublin Trilogy Book 4) Page 22