Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  Like her daughter had been, Nuala was an excellent cook. And yet he who had eaten next to nothing the day long had little appetite for the food. He reached for a glass of wine, which was white, cold, and calming, he hoped.

  “Maddie tells me you were on the teley today.”

  McGarr nodded and glanced over at Maddie, who had brought a book to the table in spite of his having asked her not to do so some weeks earlier.

  But he could hardly blame her, dinner conversation usually taking the form of “How was your day?” “Grand.” “And yours?” A nod. “The same.” This, in spite of Nuala’s having once been accounted as one of the notable conversationalists in Dublin society.

  “The Kells affair, now—will you catch the blighters who killed that poor watchman?”

  Eating the dinner if only to respect the effort, Mc-Garr glanced up at Nuala. In all but coloring she resembled Noreen—dark where Noreen had been fair. But now in her early seventies, she was gray; her skin had grown slack and her hips wide.

  “Yes. Surely. We will. Eventually, I suppose.” There would be money involved, which always left a trail in some way or other.

  “But will you get the books back?”

  “Yah. It’s why they were stolen.”

  “For a ransom.”

  “Yah.”

  Maddie’s head came up from the book. “How much?”

  “We haven’t heard from them yet.” Unless, of course, Jack Sheard had, and McGarr and the Murder Squad were being kept out of the loop.

  He thought of the taoiseach’s press conference, the commissioner’s note, and he placed his fork on the plate. He knew why Sheard brought out all his insecurities and fears.

  Younger, taller, handsome, well-spoken, with the picture-perfect family and legal background, Sheard was the future of the Garda.

  As for McGarr ...well, he had no university degrees, no other training, and apart from Maddie and Nuala, his work was all he had in life. All he knew.

  “But how much do you think?”

  Pushing back his chair, he stood and moved toward the pantry where he kept the malt. “Millions, I’m certain. Why murder for less?”

  “How many?” Nuala paused. “What’s wrong— don’t you fancy your dinner?”

  “It’s grand. I’ll be right out.” Pouring himself a stiff drink and then adding to it, McGarr knocked it back, set down the glass, considered another but instead corked the bottle and returned to the table.

  “I’ve no idea how many millions,” he continued when he could, as though he had not left. Through his watering eyes, Maddie’s image was distorted. “But they’re obviously professional thieves.” And killers, he did not add. “So the sum could be high.”

  “Millions and millions?”

  He nodded and again reached for the wineglass that he drank from, rather like a chaser.

  Nuala’s jet eyes, now a bit rheumy with age, moved from the glass to his face, and then back down at the glass. “Have you heard from them?”

  “Not that I know.”

  Later, up in Maddie’s room, he said good night to her rather early, as she continued to read the book in bed.

  “The bit on the television—it bothered you?”

  Eyes in the book, she only shook her head.

  “Bernie was assaulted by the dead man’s son, who let the press in. Seven stitches in his pate. I had to do something. I was going after the son. The others just got in the way, letting him escape.”

  “Peter—don’t you think I know that?”

  It might be necessary for her friends to know that as well, however. “Well”—he bent and kissed her forehead—“I was just doing my job, such as it is. And I love you.”

  “Yah.” She raised her head and closed her eyes.

  Their lips met briefl?y.

  “I love you too, Peter.”

  And then, as McGarr descended the stairs, Maddie called out, “Love you.”

  “Love you,” McGarr answered her call again and again, until he reached the kitchen and picked his hat from the rack.

  Nuala was washing the dishes. “Going out?”

  “Yah.”

  “Back to work?”

  “Up the street. Above in Flood’s.”

  Glancing up into the window, which at night became a mirror, she took him in. “One of these nights you should get some rest. And tomorrow a haircut. You’re looking a bit tatty.”

  Flood’s was packed mainly with the immigrants who were now as local to the neighborhood as McGarr himself had been for nearly thirty years—people of all shades and hues speaking languages from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, not a word of which Mc-Garr understood.

  Most were young, their conversations loud and animated, their smiles bright. Smoke—from a turf fi?re and cigarettes—was everywhere, and the din was deafening.

  Without having to ask, he was slid a drink, which he carried into the lounge, if only to escape the noise. There he found a low stool, the last by the hearth that was glowing with the cracked red eye of a mound of real peat.

  Although the burning of anything but EU-approved solid fuel was now illegal in the city, the turf fi?re was a nice touch, McGarr decided—a bit of old Ireland amid what had become very much a motley international country peopled by a motley international crew.

  Tugging on his drink, McGarr turned away from the fi?re to fi?nd somebody standing before him. Pleated black slacks, black stockings, black pumps.

  He looked up. It was Kara Kennedy, the keeper of old manuscripts at Trinity.

  “Twice in one day. Could it be coincidence?”

  McGarr only cocked his head and regarded her—the chestnut hair, the jade-colored eyes.

  “D’you live around here?” She had a glass of wine in one hand, her purse in the other.

  “For ages. And you?”

  “Not far. I just couldn’t stick to my fl?at tonight—all the bother on television and my still feeling so much... really, so much the failure.” The hand with the purse came out. “Despite what you said about my not being responsible and all. I appreciated your concern, I really did. But I’m afraid when it comes to guilt, I’m quite a mess.” She looked around, as for a stool.

  McGarr stood. “Sit here.”

  “No, really—where will you sit?”

  “I’ll stand until another frees up. In fact—” He caught the eye of a barman and pointed to a stool.

  The barman nodded. Producing one from the storeroom in back of the bar, he passed it across to McGarr.

  “You have clout here, I see.”

  “And elsewhere, as it turned out today.”

  “So I’ve been watching.”

  He regarded her—the protrusive upper lip, the umber eyebrows that nearly met, with the arch repeated in a deep widow’s peak. Long neck, fair skin, square shoulders.

  She had changed since he’d last seen her into something like a black tank top covered by a cashmere cardigan just the color of her eyes.

  “I don’t know why this has affected me so completely.” As though embarrassed by what she was saying, she was looking down into her wineglass. Two bright patches had appeared in her cheeks. “But earlier tonight, back at my fl?at, I felt...well, nearly suicidal. It’s such”—she shook her head, then brushed her longish brown hair off her shoulder; it was slightly tinged with gray—“such a huge loss, such a crime, such an enormity. And, of course, there’s Raymond’s death.”

  When she turned to McGarr, her eyes were brimming with tears.

  She had said all that earlier in the day, McGarr thought, but suicidal was different.

  Also, beyond her good looks, there was something he found attractive about the woman, perhaps how vulnerable she seemed. Or how much she had taken on responsibility for the event.

  Noreen had been like that—always thinking there was something she could have done or said that would have prevented or ameliorated some unpleasantness.

  “It should have occurred to me that the security structure was not what it sho
uld be.”

  “Who set it up?”

  She raised her head, her nostrils fl?ared, and she looked away, as though suddenly having realized something. “Dr. Pape. Actually, it’s rather new. Under a year.”

  “Were you at all consulted?”

  Pursing her lips, she shook her head. “Well, I should have thought about it a bit, I suppose—if it was truly secure, what was the potential for theft.” Attempting to smile, she again glanced over at him, the glowing fi?re dancing in her eyes. “Something, anything. I feel so... foolish.”

  “What might happen to the books now? Apart from a ransom demand? Is there some other way they might be disposed of for a pile of money?”

  She sipped from the glass of wine. “Well, I suppose, some rich eccentric bibliophile, who wished only to possess and admire the books, might pay some portion of their worth. You know, to turn a page a day, as we do...did in the library, and admire the intricate weave of iconography and design, which rather mirrors the plot and other complexities of the gospels and of life.

  “At least that’s why I would want to own it. But connecting with such a person would be diffi?cult. Unless, of course, whoever did this was commissioned by somebody like that.” Her smile was now more complete. “As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about this.

  “Otherwise”—she drew in a deep breath—“there’s simply no market for art objects of such notoriety and uniqueness. Unless they were stolen by cultural terrorists interested only in their destruction.”

  They both looked off, thinking of past events in the North and other parts of the world.

  McGarr took another sip and glanced into the fi?re.

  “Do you know that the Book of Kells has been stolen before?” Kara asked. “Back in the Middle Ages, when it was called the Great Gospel of Columcille. Thieves stole it from the sanctuary of the church in Kells where even then it had been kept for centuries.”

  “The Annals of Ulster?” responded McGarr.

  Kara nodded; it was one of the few early histories of Ireland.

  “Describing the book as ‘the most precious object in the Western world,’ it said that for ‘two months and twenty days’ the four Gospels went missing until found in Donegal, ‘covered by a sod.’ ”

  “Was it damaged?”

  “That’s not known. But over the years it’s suffered some damage. Yet for all its antiquity, the manuscript is in rather splendid shape.” Her brow glowered. “Or at least was.”

  She raised her glass and drank.

  If only to keep her talking, McGarr asked, “I thought the Book of Kells was a Bible with gospels and the like.”

  “It is, surely. But the Latin text, as copied from St. Jerome’s Vulgate translation, is rife with errors—misspellings, missing words, solecisms—as though the words are inessential.

  “But not the illustrations, on which great care and artistic attention was lavished. That’s because it was not meant to be read. Rather, it served an evangelical purpose.”

  McGarr took note of the way she gestured with her left hand, as though chopping off little wedges of information while speaking.

  “Many of the early evangelists carried with them beautiful, supposedly holy objects to wow the pagans. Bede reports in the Historia ecclesiastica that when Augustine arrived in England to preach the gospel in 597, he came bearing ‘a silver cross and an image of our Lord and Savior painted on a panel.’ He raised it on high for King Aethelberht to see.

  “Later, Pope Gregory advised the clergy that images were aids to understanding the sacred text, saying that pictorial representations provided a living reading of the Lord’s story for those who cannot read.”

  Again catching the barman’s eye, McGarr pointed to their glasses, requesting another round.

  “And the more richly embellished with gold and other colorful and precious materials the better. Books like Kells were meant to impress and be viewed and admired by communicants in processions during holy days and as part of the Mass. You know, almost like another form of altar furniture.”

  “But what about the—is it?—iconography of the thing?” McGarr asked. “The Christian images are plainly there, but many others look like particularly Irish designs. And the intricacy, the interweaving, the whole image-within-an-image-within-an-image bit is defi?nitely Irish. That’s there as well.”

  “Oh, defi?nitely. The free association of ideas seems to have been not only acceptable among the monks who produced Kells but rather encouraged. Which resulted in the sheer sumptuousness of its multilayered images that were in play among other artists of the time, as seen in the stone and metalworking designs that have survived.”

  “What about the animal shapes—lions, sheep, snakes, and so forth?”

  She took another touch of wine and set the glass down. “Most refer to Christ, even the snake, which is an image of renewal. You know, the circularity of the snake swallowing its own tail?”

  McGarr suspected he had heard something like that from Noreen.

  “Zoomorphic forms also harken back to antiquity and Celtic and Pictish carvings. But what makes Kells special and more than simply another, albeit outstanding, illustrated manuscript is the tension that obtains between the Christian purpose of the book and the underlying motifs drawn from so many other non-Christian sources.

  “It’s a curious mix, but one that was carried off with consummate panache. In spite of the eclecticism, there is not a moment of doubt or confusion. The entire work communicates surety and the power of belief. As Giraldus Cambrensis, the thirteenth-century chronicler, put it, ‘the work, not of men, but of angels.’ ”

  A cigarette, McGarr thought. What he needed most now was a cigarette. But he didn’t know if she smoked, and he didn’t want to ask if he could, although plenty of others around them were smoking. “Any idea of its value?”

  “As I mentioned this morning, inestimable.”

  “But a money amount. I’m trying to get a handle on the size of the demand. What the thieves might possibly ask, when they do.”

  She took another sip and turned to him, her jade eyes now a bit glassy. “It could be any fi?gure and every fi?gure. Millions, surely.”

  “Ten, twenty?”

  “Or more. It depends on what you’re willing to spend.”

  Which was the question: Who would be willing to pay for the return of the books? The government, in the guise of Taoiseach Kehoe, could not be seen as selling out to thieves and murderers using public money of great magnitude without, of course, recovering the funds and catching them with the books intact.

  Also, the government did not own the manuscripts. Trinity College did. And in spite of much governmental aid, the college was offi?cially a private entity which certainly could not afford a ransom in the amount that McGarr feared would be asked.

  At the same time, allowing the books to be lost would be tantamount to political suicide for Kehoe. He would be known forever as the taoiseach who botched the Book of Kells Affair.

  The only possible outcome that would keep Kehoe out of political trouble in offi?ce would be the safe return of the books and the capture of the thieves along with the ransom.

  Glancing up at the television screen at the end of the bar, where Jack Sheard was again pictured fi?elding questions during an earlier press conference, McGarr realized that in at least one way he’d been freed by not having been placed in charge of the investigation—he would not have to make himself available to the press. And he would not be held directly responsible if in some major way the investigation/recovery failed.

  But it still galled that Sheard had been granted the preferment. Also, Sheard, being ambitious, would sequester for his own use entirely whatever unsolicited information came in, yet he would expect McGarr to funnel any and all information to him without foot-dragging, McGarr suspected.

  “Does that bother you?” Kara Kennedy asked. “That he’s been named lead investigator?”

  McGarr drew in a breath and nodded slightly. “To be honest, i
t does. But obviously this theft takes precedence over the murder. And his brief is theft.”

  “But don’t you outrank him?”

  “No. But I am more senior.”

  “Could that be why you’re out here tonight?”

  Hunched over with his elbows on his knees, McGarr was still staring at the screen. Somehow, the whiskey he’d drunk had not done the trick, and he felt a bit bleak without knowing why. “Perhaps. But you could make a case for my being here most nights.”

  “Since when? Since your wife died?”

  Slowly, McGarr swung his eyes to her.

  “I don’t mean to be cruel, but you’re at least as well known as he.” She pointed to the screen. “And it was in all the papers. I’m sorry. It only just occurred to me.” Her hand came out and touched the back of his.

  The new drinks were ready, and McGarr rose to retrieve them. Now he himself was on the television, booting—literally—the fi?nal cameraman out into the street.

  “Gooo-ooooooh-aaaaaal!” crowed one of the barmen, like Andres Cantor, the Argentinean football announcer, and the men at the bar—many of whom knew McGarr personally—roared their approval.

  “To put it in Latin, Ars ejectica,” said one.

  “C’est bootiful,” said another.

  “Forget that—it’s a documented case of police bootality,” put in a third before singing the Sinatra lyric “All the way—all the way!”

  “The natives are restless,” said McGarr, picking up his change.

  “You have only yourself to blame. They need no encouragement.”

  Carrying the drinks back to the hearth with its fi?re, McGarr noted that voices hushed as he passed other tables.

  From deeper within the room he heard, “Book of Kells...murdered a security guard...browned off entirely, did you see his eyes?...millions and millions... spineless government fooks...they’ll feckin’ get away with it, you’ll see.”

  Handing Kara Kennedy the fresh glass of wine, Mc-Garr attempted a smile.

  “You’re a celebrity.”

  “And doubtless the subject of a future lawsuit.”

  “What would happen in that case? Would you have to provide your own defense, or would you be covered?”