Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  As a good country lass from a Catholic background, Bresnahan had spent her adolescence and early adult life in rural Kerry ignorant of sexual delight. But once exposed to it, she could not imagine ever being without a man like Ward, who played her body like a pianola, as was also said. Maybe her life was just one big cliché.

  In fact, on stakeouts such as this, Ward and she engaged in nearly constant and unremitting sex, each taking turns maintaining the watch while the other was beyond the plane of view. Phew—where was she getting these thoughts? She hadn’t fantasized like this since...well, since she was last on a stakeout that mattered, over two years earlier, before Ward and she were sacked because of Sweeney.

  Sweeney. With him now involved, it made what they were about all the sweeter. Because he was in the thick of it, she was certain. Sweeney was like a disease, a scourge, a pestilence. If he was present in any way, he was the problem. It was his MO.

  But the lights now began to go out in the CU building across the road. And there she was, Morrigan herself. Stepping out, checking inside her large handbag to make sure she had everything—most important, the ransom tape, Bresnahan hoped—and locking the door. She looked around before heading down the stairs.

  But the woman wasn’t halfway to the street when a car door opened and a young man in a half shirt with a roll of tanned, exposed abs approached her somewhat drunkenly.

  She shook her head and pushed by him. Looking rather like a beefy Brad Pitt, he reached for her hip, but she slapped his hand away.

  “Go, girl,” said Bresnahan in the darkness of the car.

  You’ve got an altogether different bun in your oven tonight. Sex can wait.

  Damn, she thought, I must concentrate.

  The lights were on in what McGarr guessed was Kara Kennedy’s apartment. With legal parking nonexistent, he pulled the car up on the footpath and lowered the Garda ID that was attached to the sun visor.

  The cold front that McGarr had felt earlier had arrived, with a sharp wind angling in from the northeast. Above the rooftops in a cloudless sky, the stars were layers deep, the achromatic light appearing purer because of the orange-colored cadmium vapor lamps that lined the street.

  The house was a large old brick Victorian of the sort that had been built by people who thought of themselves as “West Britons” and had re-created the middle-class uniformity of Hampstead or York, this one situated on a corner with a well-clipped lawn and hedges bordered by a spiked iron fence.

  Back around the turn of the last century, the houses—in fact, most of Rathmines—had been considered an anonymous tract, McGarr knew. Now, the old brick, slate roofs, and tall chimneys soothed the eye, when set against the urban sprawl of the city.

  Comfortable if chilly before central heating, the houses featured four bay windows, two up and two down. The gate squeaked on its hinges as he pushed it shut.

  Pressing one of two bells, McGarr waited only a few seconds before hearing a voice. “Yes?”

  “It’s Peter McGarr. May I come up? I’ve something to show you, and I need your opinion on a technical matter.”

  “Really? Fantastic. I’ve been thinking about you and couldn’t sleep.”

  The buzzer sounded, the hall light went on, and climbing the wide staircase with its carved banister and much dark wood he switched off his cell phone and put his beeper on mute. Too much had gone on, and his next stop was home.

  Kara Kennedy was waiting in an open, lighted door at the top of the stairs. “Sorry I had to leave the pub. I just...well, I just became anxious, I guess. And I was feeling desolate, there’s no other word for it. I had to get out of there. Come in, come in.”

  In a glance, McGarr took in her dressing gown, the pearl-gray silk patterned with deep red roses and a matching sash. On her feet, in contrast, was a pair of aquamarine fl?eece booties with pom-poms on the toes. Her long brown hair had been brushed back and was tied with a gray ribbon.

  “Do you fi?nd it too warm in here? I had a chill and—” Like a bright, handsome bird turning an ear to the crowd, she cocked her head slightly and swirled her eyes, as though testing the atmosphere of the fl?at.

  Scanning what appeared to be a sitting room for a television and video player, McGarr shook his head. Pulling off his hat, he swung his eyes to her. “I brought the video. I need your professional opinion about several matters.”

  “Really?” The smile, breaking through her obvious concern, was dazzling—her jade eyes sparkling, the array of her brilliant teeth drawing McGarr’s eyes. Could they be real, he wondered, before noticing that her dentition wasn’t exactly perfect, apart from its whiteness. “I hope I can help. I’ve been feeling...

  powerless and thwarted. In here, please. I don’t often watch television, but tonight...”

  As she led McGarr down a hall past several darkened rooms, his eyes fell from her good shoulders to her narrow, sashed waist and thin ankles in the booties that looked like dust mops; he concluded—as he had earlier—that in many ways she had been “given the packet,” as had been said about well-formed people in his youth. And she walked with a rolling, big-shouldered gait.

  In a room that functioned as a den/library/home offi?ce, he imagined, she stopped and twirled round on him rather dramatically. “This is where I live. Or, at least, where I spend much of my time when not at my work.”

  There was a teacup on one arm of an overstuffed reading chair, a book splayed across the other. A second identical burgundy-colored chair was set on the other side of a tall and bright fl?oor lamp.

  She pointed to it. “Please. Sit. Is that the tape?” She held out her hand. “Let me take your coat. Will you take something—tea, coffee, a drink?”

  “The last.” Tomorrow was sure to be trying, and he would need his sleep.

  “Good. I’ll join you. Perhaps I’ll be able to sleep.”

  McGarr sat and looked around: At a table on the other side of the room were framed photographs of a number of people who he supposed were her family; other chairs and tables were furnished in a tasteful Continental style that McGarr had seen before but could not name.

  A gas fi?re was hissing in the grate, and in all, the room, with red drapes covering the tall windows and a thick shag carpet in some light shade, was warm and cozy on the fi?rst chilly night of the season.

  “I left out the ice, given how you took your drop in the pub,” she said, returning with a glass in either hand. “There are the wands. I’ll let you do the honor.” Bending to hand him the glass, she held on to it for a moment until he glanced up at her and their eyes met. She smiled. “I’m glad you came.”

  Straightening up, she brushed her hand through her hair. “Whew! It’s too hot in here. Let me turn it down.” As she passed beyond him, McGarr listened to the swish of silk, and did he imagine that, in fetching the drinks, she had also dabbed on a bit of perfume? He reached for the remote on a low table between the two chairs.

  “Now then.” Moving quickly, she deposited herself in the other chair and reached for her drink. “Roll ’em, maestro.” Her slight Scots burr was noticeable mostly when she pronounced an r.

  As the music and fi?lm came on, McGarr sipped from the glass and let the warmth of the whiskey seep down into his body. It was some dark Scots brand, doubtless a single malt, with aromatic subtleties and just the right amount of bite.

  Although usually a demonstrative person, McGarr judged, Kara Kennedy watched quietly, her chin raised and her head cocked slightly as she peered down her long, slightly aquiline nose at the screen.

  McGarr waited until the demand had been made and the screen went black before rewinding just beyond the point where the hooded fi?gure appeared. He then replayed a snatch of the narrator’s voice, set against the pastiche of sectarian mayhem and grieving families.

  “Question—what is the most divisive and destructive issue in this country today? What might Ireland have become, had she cleaved to her culture? Had Christianity not displaced the older Celtic verities of life and Druidism?” />
  “Know that voice?”

  “Aye.” She dipped her head once. “Name is Ian Mac Laud. Former host on Radio Scotland before throwing in with the Free Scotland crowd. Got sacked for a lack of impartiality is how it was explained in the press. But he was really just a crank who encouraged other cranks. They had to do something. Since then?” She hunched her shoulders. “Or, as here, he’s moved on to the larger issue.”

  McGarr waited.

  “Freeing the Greater Celtic World. Pity, there is none.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well”—reaching for her drink, she turned her wonderful smile on him again—“where do I start?”

  “I’m interested in your impressions.”

  “Remember, you asked.” Over the lip of the glass, her eyes regarded him for a moment before she drank and set the glass back down. “The Celtic period in Ireland? What we know of it isn’t much, since theirs was an oral tradition with little preserved and that at a much later date. But it spanned from around 600 B.C. to 1169, when Dermot MacMurrough, the King of Leinster, invited the Normans to help restore him to his throne. But you know that.”

  McGarr nodded. It was the history taught in school.

  “But in no way were the Celts peaceful people, any—no, every—source relates. The entire fi?fteen hundred years was marked by continual intertribal warfare and strife. And only seldom were the Celts able to unite in the face of an external threat.

  “As for democracy?” Kara passed some air between her lips. “If and when observed, it was minimal, intraclan, most probably elitist, and sooner or later boiled down to a democracy of the sword.

  “Which is not to say that the Celts in Ireland and Scotland did not produce a culture that was in other ways admirable—the art, as seen in metalwork, gold and silver jewelry, La Tène pottery, stone carvings; brehon law; and the custom of diurnal civility among one’s clan.

  “But most of what we know about the Celts—from their legend and lore through their history—was preserved and has come down to us only because of the very same Christian monks whom this video castigates.

  “In fact, a better case could be made for Celtic civilization having achieved its highest form of expression when it assumed and melded with Christian infl?uences.

  “So, in my opinion, almost all of that”—she moved her glass toward the screen—“is self-serving drivel, merely an attempt to justify grand theft and the murder of Raymond Sloane. Has it appeared on national television?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “It will. Mark my words. Publicity is what they’re after. Exposure. To become the bad boy of Irish politics, rather like the IRA once was to its political party, Sinn Fein. Here, the New Druids to Celtic United. They’ll have every mixed-up, misinformed, romantic lad in the thirty-two counties beating down their door to join. They could now mail back Kells, Durrow, and Armagh, and they would have accomplished at least a major recruitment effort.”

  But why, then, make a point of murdering Raymond Sloane and so gruesomely? After having as much as autographed the deed with the videotape.

  McGarr fast-forwarded to the burning of the page, pausing where it curled up after catching fi?re.

  “Before I came here, I stopped at Trevor Pape’s.”

  “Oh?” Turning her head to him, she seemed disappointed.

  “Gillian Reston—know her?”

  Kara’s eyes fl?ashed down at her glass. “Yes.”

  “Who is she? In regard to Pape.”

  Closing her eyes and averting her head, almost as though from a blow, she pulled in a breath. Then, “His latest bauble.”

  “I don’t understand—Pape, how old can he be?”

  “He’s sixty-four. Just.”

  “And looks every day of it, in ways.”

  Her head tilted, but she did not reply.

  “Drinks, drugs.”

  She looked back down at the glass.

  “OxyContin. We’ll fi?nd that in Sloane’s body when the reports come in tomorrow, I’m told. Is it as good as they say?”

  Eyes still on the glass, her head shook slightly. “I don’t know why you’re asking it of me.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it as good as they say?”

  “Yes. It’s”—her head came up, and she looked off across the room—“euphoria. A euphoria that you could never know without it. In life.”

  “Did you take it tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Do you take it regularly?”

  Her eyes met his. “I’m disappointed you’re asking me these questions. I took it only once.”

  “With Pape?”

  She drew in a breath, sighed, then nodded.

  “Which is a problem with him?”

  “I don’t think he would see it so. But, yes—I think it’s a problem. It affects his personality, with it or without it.”

  “Where does he get it? Who’s his connection?”

  Yet again she shook her head. “As I said, I tried it only once. And I must say, I feel like I’m being interrogated about drugs, which alone is a criminal matter. Perhaps I should have a solicitor present. Didn’t you say you needed an opinion on something technical?”

  “At least two. Who were the Beaker people?”

  “A little over four thousand years ago, a group arrived here in Ireland who produced a kind of pottery that was much different from the stuff associated with earlier periods. It was delicate with fi?ne lines and much of it took the shape of—?” She cocked her head.

  “A beaker.”

  “There you are.”

  “It’s Celtic pottery?”

  “No. It’s not even pre-Celtic, although some later Celtic pottery seems to imitate its shape. The very fi?rst wave of Celtic immigration about which we have hard evidence came about sixteen hundred years later, around 600 B.C. Trevor Pape collects Beaker people pottery and is proud of it.”

  McGarr nodded. “Worth much?”

  “Tons, if he chose to sell and could get a buyer with tons. Problem is, the institutions interested in that stuff are rather poor—Trinity, the National Museum, and several in other countries. Those that aren’t, like the Metropolitan in New York, are poor when it comes to acquiring Beaker people pottery. Acquisition being a matter of priorities.”

  “But he could sell the collection, if he chose.”

  “That’s the catch. I think he’d rather die, which, I believe, Trinity is waiting for. Trevor may not think much of the Book of Kells, but he’s a committed antiquarian.”

  “Technical question number two—the word facsimile in regard to the Book of Kells. What does that mean to you?”

  She brightened, as though relieved that the subject had changed. “At last, a technical matter.”

  Finishing the drink, she set the empty glass on the arm of the chair and then arranged her feet with the dust-mop booties—which so clashed with her otherwise elegant appearance—on the hassock before her. Settling back into the seat, she moved her hand out and touched the back of his wrist. “Well, Mr. Detective— the story goes like this.

  “Back in the early nineties, an Irish-Canadian foundation decided to produce a facsimile edition of the Book of Kells so that the cultural glory of Ireland’s past could be disseminated to other libraries around the world. They had the good sense to hire a printer who produced nearly faultless photocopies with excellent color and so genuine that even the wormholes in the ancient vellum were included.

  “Every one of the facsimile copies was snapped up at a cost then of around eighteen thousand dollars, U.S.”

  “Vellum?” McGarr had heard the word before in regard to writing paper.

  “Yes, the Book of Kells—the original—was produced on vellum. The word comes from vitulis, Latin for calf. In most manuscripts of that vintage, the calfskins used were taken from very young calves and treated with lime and other substances.

  “The vital difference in the Kells book—and what has
aided in its preservation—is that the major pages of decoration were drawn on the skins of calves two or three months old. The vellum is thicker and more robust, as if the monks who created Kells planned for the work to last millennia.

  “The sheer amount of vellum necessary for its timely completion reveals much about the religious community that produced it.” Her left hand had come up again and was chopping off little blocks of thought. Having raised and tilted her head slightly to the side, she seemed to be speaking to a high point on the opposite wall. And there was a faraway look in her deep green eyes.

  “In order to produce that many young, a herd of at least twelve hundred animals would have had to be available on Iona, where most scholars believe the book was created. Which gives some idea of the prosperity of the community there. Little wonder they were a continual target of Viking raids.”

  “But the facsimile editions of the book were reproduced on paper?”

  She nodded. “High-quality paper.”

  “Then”—he touched the remote, and the video began rolling again—“does this look like burning vellum to you? Or paper?”

  Again they watched as the fl?ame of the gas torch was held to the page, which smoldered a bit, burst into an orangish fl?ame tinged with blue, then fi?nally curled.

  “Vellum, because of the way it rolled up.” Her hand moved to his wrist again and lingered. “Go back.”

  He did.

  “There.” Her fi?ngers squeezed his wrist. “See? And did you notice how long it smoldered under such intense fl?ame before igniting? Paper, even new paper, would have caught immediately.” Her head swung to him, and her eyes, fl?ecked with bits of brighter green, lingered in his. She smiled. “I’m going for a refi?ll. What about you?”

  McGarr held her gaze, her touch making him feel at once uncomfortable and—he tried to sort it out— surely alive to what might transpire between them. He tugged his eyes down to his glass, which was still quite full. “I’m very happy as I am.”

  “I have a question for you, then.” Still, her hand remained. “But it can wait. In the meantime, back the tape to the part when that ransom demand fi?rst comes on.”