Jimmy Stewart looked at Conroy and Mulchrone. “And you two are willing to go along with this?”
Mulchrone shrugged. “It’s what Bunny wants. You know him – has he ever backed away from what he thought was the right thing to do?”
Stewart looked down at the floor for quite some time before nodding to himself. “OK.”
The others looked at each other in confusion.
“OK what?” asked Burns.
“OK, I won’t say anything. OK, I’ll leave this room and forget all about this.”
Conroy looked shocked. “Really?”
Stewart shrugged. “Mr Mulchrone here said it himself, it’s what Bunny wants. He’s a lunatic and I wouldn’t get into a car with him behind the wheel, but I know him well enough to know that if he sets his mind on something, that’s it, and generally, he means to do good, even if it all ends up disastrously.”
“So you won’t say anything?”
Stewart shook his head. “None of my business.”
A couple of minutes later, they were all heading down the stairs again.
“So…” said Paul. “Ehm, sorry I don’t know what to call you now. Mr Stewart? Retired DI…”
“Jimmy is fine.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks. I don’t.”
“What? Ever?”
Stewart didn’t respond beyond a look.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Paul looked suitably embarrassed. “I’d better get back in there. Put in an appearance.”
They shook hands and Paul re-entered the lounge bar. Someone was on the second verse of “The Fields of Athenry”.
Burns and Wilson made their excuses and left. Stewart was about to do the same when Brigit took him by the arm. “Jimmy, can I have a word?”
“Sure.”
She opened the fire door at the bottom of the stairs and they stepped out into a dank Dublin day. The rain hadn’t stopped, but the wind was at least blowing it in a new direction.
They stood there, awkwardly huddled together.
“So here’s an idea,” said Conroy.
“What?”
“You clearly have too much time on your hands, and we’ve got a detective agency…”
Stewart barked a laugh. “I don’t know if chasing adulterers around Dublin would suit me.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “We could make sure there is.”
“I’ll think about it.” He nodded, pulled his coat around him and headed off into the kind of sideways rain that was always blowing in the wrong direction.
Epilogue 1
“Mickey Marsh, what are you doing, fella? We gave you a stick for a good reason – use that to hit the ball!”
The manager of St Jude’s under 12s was red in the face and sweating. Johnny Canning did his best to hide a smile.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Is anyone listening to me out there at all?”
They were. Since Paul Mulchrone had taken over as manager, they were on a streak of four wins. Beating the previous record for the last decade by three.
“We’re six points up, Paulie.”
“I know, but it should be about twelve by now.”
It wasn’t just Paul, of course: Johnny Canning was now only a quarter of the new management team that was in place. Phil Nellis, possibly the only man to attempt to coach defence with a baby strapped to his chest, stood three feet behind Paul. In truth, he spent most of the game looking at the baby, who in turn stared up adoringly at him. He held his hands over the baby’s ears during the swearier parts of the half-time team talk.
Paul hopped up and down the sideline some more. “Come on, lads, keep the shape. Remember what we talked about. Theo Murphy, so help me God, if you are texting, I will boot you so far off this team you’ll be texting from space.”
The third new member of the management team sighed dramatically from his deckchair beside Johnny. He was a self-styled tactical guru of the game. He had played on the team with Paul and Phil back when they were youngsters, and he’d agreed to come along when they had a ring around their former teammates.
“D’ye know what his problem is, boss? He has no appreciation of the fundamentals of the game.”
“You’re not wrong, Deccie, you’re not wrong.”
Epilogue 2
Several weeks later
He stood on the bow and let the sea breeze freshen his face. After all those weeks indoors, it felt good to be out in the fresh air again, even if most of what he could see was fog. The hulking bulk of a bridge passed overhead.
The ship had the finest buffet he had ever seen, and he’d managed to pile back on the weight he’d lost from hospital food. He had walked the decks to improve his mobility. Between that and his morning dips in the pool, he was almost back to his old self, at least as far as anyone else knew. He had also been surprised to discover how much he enjoyed bingo.
He had been keen to get going, but Agent Dove had explained that he couldn’t go anywhere until he had managed to heal up. So he had spent several weeks in a private room in an unidentified hospital overlooking the Mediterranean, where the staff were under strict instructions not to speak to him. Still, he had noticed the lack of bacon on the menu.
He was a dead man now. Instead of giving him a passport, they had agreed to provide him with some cash and passage to wherever he wanted to go. When they docked, he was to stay in his cabin and someone would come and get him to assist him with his circumnavigation of border control. Dove’s bosses clearly didn’t want it to be too easy for him to disappear. They were about to be disappointed on that front.
A familiar voice spoke beside him. “Christ, amigo, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
“You’re not wrong, Gringo. I’ve not seen you for a while.”
“Yeah. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were relatively sane these days.”
“Ha, everything is relative.”
Bunny drummed his hand along the guard rail. On the deck below, he could just make out a couple walking hand in hand. They saw him and waved up. He waved back. They were on their honeymoon. The hubby was terrified of flying, so here they were.
“Are you ready for this?”
Bunny breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the sea air.
Looming out of the fog above them was what he had come out to see. A sight that thousands, if not millions, had seen before him. First he saw her head, then the hand reaching up, holding the torch aloft.
“Ah sure, feck it, I’ll give it a lash.”
Free Stuff
Hi there reader-person,
I hope you enjoyed Last Orders. If you did, you’ll be pleased to hear that Bunny McGarry will return in early 2019(probably) in the provisionally titled Dead Man’s Drop.
if you don’t want to miss it, then sign up for my monthly newsletter to receive updates and you’ll also receive the e-books of my short stories collection It’s About Damn Time - which has two new stories in it. Just tap here – to get your free copy.
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Cheers muchly,
Caimh
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to Wonder Wife, without whom not only would this book not exist but there’s a very good chance I’d have accidentally killed myself with a soup maker by now.
More large thanks to my editors Scott Pack and Julie Ferguson for their invaluable guidance.
And big props to the eagle-eyes of Penny Bryant, Frank Carr, Rhonda Seegers, Jakky Foster, Nick Kaayk, Lynn Birmingham, Paul Savage, Ian McLaren and Anamika.
Also by Caimh McDonnell
The Dublin Trilogy (featuring Bunny McGarry)
A Man With One of Those Faces (Book 1)
The Day That Never Comes (Book 2)
Angels in the Moonlight (A prequel to the trilogy that should
be read before Book 3)
Last Orders (Book 3)
Last Orders (The Dublin Trilogy Book 4) Page 31