“Called on the carpet for that by the provost, he remained unrepentant. When the keeper’s post opened up and I applied, he did everything he could to get me rejected, and only the provost—God bless him—came to my defense. And I’ll admit this also: It could be that my winning the position was a kind of punishment of him, since he has tenure and while married was connected to the Guinnesses, who still support the college handsomely.”
McGarr folded his hands across his chest. Although unpleasant, the questions were necessary. Mainly, for him. “Tell me again about your husband—where did you meet him?”
“Here, in Dublin.”
“After Pape?”
She nodded. “Perhaps a year later.”
“How’d you meet him?”
She shook her head and gave him a disbelieving look. “I’ve already told you that—at an opening in your wife’s gallery. Perhaps you don’t believe me. You could go back and consult her visitors’ logs, if you still have
them. As I remember, she asked everybody to sign in.”
“Tell me again the company he worked for.”
“I won’t tell you again, I’ll tell you for the fi?rst time, since you never asked—Dublin Bay Petroleum, Limited.”
“And he was...?”
“A broker. An oil broker, and quite successful—fl?at on Merrion Square, a big Volvo, holidays in the Maldives, shooting on Skye, fi?shing in Norway. Art, he bought a lot of art.”
“There’s no record of your marriage, nor did you fi?le your taxes as a married couple.”
“We were married on Cayman Brac, where Dan was a resident and paid his taxes. But he was and—I hope—is real enough. I’ll tell you what”—she reached for the phone on the wall—“why don’t we ring up his parents in Scotland? I call them daily, since he was an only child and they have nobody but me. They’ll tell you.”
McGarr shook his head. “It’s not necessary.”
“No, I insist.” She began dialing a number.
When McGarr attempted to walk out of the room, she seized his wrist and pulled him into her, where he breathed in the mélange of aromas—her perfume, shampoos, soaps, and other emollients—that had so enticed him on the night before.
“Bridie? Could you do something for me—speak to the man standing by my side. He’s a detective who’s investigating the Kells theft, and he has some questions about Dan.”
“Who is this?” McGarr asked, taking the receiver.
“Fionna Stewart.”
For the next fi?ve minutes, McGarr spoke to the woman, whose heavy Scots burr made her nearly unintelligible. She hoped he could do something for Kara—“who’s the darlingest girl and has been so loyal to our poor Dan”—and perhaps launch a separate investigation into the disappearance of her son. “After all, he had a fl?at there in Ireland, and his fi?rm sold heaps of petrol and oil there.”
When McGarr hung up, Kara was gone. He found her sitting in the main room, arranged—it appeared— on the couch. The housecoat was now open to expose a nightgown different from the one she wore the night before; it had lace and was the color of lilacs with a lemony gauze behind.
Which blended rather well with her skin, lightly but defi?nitely tanned. The olive tone rather complemented her umber hair and jade eyes.
Christ, he thought, she might well be the most beautiful woman he had seen in...he had not actually been looking at beautiful women during the intervening years. But now her beauty actually stopped him. He came to a standstill and regarded her.
You can’t even remember when you last had food, he thought. You just had a stiff drink; she is the fi?rst woman you’ve been with since the loss of your wife. And she is a suspect in the most sensational and now important case in your career. The one that will defi?ne you in the mind of the public you’ve served for nearly thirty years.
On the other hand, you spent a night with this goddess, and she is surely magic both to look at and be with. How lucky are you that she has decided you are— what was the phrase that Orla Bannon had used?—“da’ man.”
“Sit.” Smiling up at him, she patted the cushion next to her. “Or are you still here in an offi?cial capacity?”
From his jacket McGarr pulled the second ransom tape. “Number two. I’d like you to see it and tell me if you think it could possibly be Pape.”
“Really?” Rising from the couch, she stopped in front of him. “Know what? I hate leaving things unsettled. I want you to kiss me, so I know you care.”
McGarr brushed his lips against hers.
“No, a real kiss.” Stepping in on him, she kissed him softly at fi?rst but then with evident pleasure, her eyes closing, her body folding into his.
“Yah,” she then said into his ear, refusing to part from him even though the grip of his one free hand was light on her back. “You’re the one. For me.
“Does that scare you?” She craned back her head to regard him; her pelvis was pressed tight against his, her eyes studying his face. “I can tell it does. But part of you doesn’t seem to mind.” She moved her hips slightly. “You’ll stay with me tonight.” It was not a question.
“Check the hands,” McGarr said when they had settled themselves on the couch. Kara moved closer to him and placed a hand on his thigh.
“But they’re gloved.”
“Perhaps if you magnify them, as you did...”
Reaching across him for the device that operated that function, she smiled down on him as her breasts brushed his chest and he was enveloped in that same mélange of aromas that he knew he would never forget.
And he couldn’t help himself. Taking her in his arms, he laid her body across his and kissed her in a way that made him dizzy and left them rather breathless.
“What about the tape and the hands?” she asked, as he slipped one of his own under her nightgown to play his palm around her nipple. Lightly. Teasingly.
He hefted her breast; she tugged at his belt.
“. . . assembled the fi?fty million in...” the curious voice was saying.
“Later,” McGarr whispered in her ear as, miraculously it seemed, she had him out and then in her—the epiphanic glide of skin against the softest, most lubricious of membranes. Intimacy at its most particular.
Later, in the darkness of the bedroom, they were roused by the ringing of Kara’s telephone.
“I can’t imagine who that could be,” she whispered, reaching for the receiver on a nightstand. After listening for a while, she held the phone out to McGarr. “It’s for you.”
Orla Bannon, McGarr thought; she was the only one who could possibly know where he was. He held the receiver to an ear.
“McGarr? Chazz Sweeney here. I’ve got the money.”
McGarr had to think—what money?
“The fi?fty million.”
McGarr lowered the phone and pushed himself up against the headboard.
“McGarr, you there?”
He grunted, trying to piece out if Sweeney could possibly mean what he said, and how and where he might have assembled that kind of money.
“Sure, didn’t I put together a group of right patriots with deep pockets. With the emphasis on right, don’t you know. Like a consortium, with one of them a banker who had no problem getting hold of Republic of Venezuela bearer bonds. Did I tell you they’re the preferred currency of drug dealers and gun runners? But you doubtless know that.
“Now then, we’ve got the money, and I’ve heard from them again. Them New Druid fooks what done the dastardly deed.”
The language and the abrupt way Sweeney was talking made McGarr wonder if the man was drunk. Or drunker than usual. “You have fi?fty million Euros.”
“That’s what I said. Fifty fookin’ mill in Venezuelan bearer bonds and not a farthing less.”
“Your own money?”
“No, Jaysus—I put in only two. Where would I get that kind of money to throw around? But you know that.”
McGarr did not. Nor did anybody else know of Sweeney’s assets. After the deaths
of Noreen and Fitz, McGarr had tried to learn everything he could about Sweeney. To no avail.
Through a web of shell companies and trading entities both in Ireland and abroad, Sweeney had concealed his wealth, such that a fi?nance expert hired by McGarr could determine only that Sweeney owned Ath Cliath, a small merchant bank with one other employee and limited taxable assets, and several pieces of city center property. But in no way did his holdings add up to 50 million Euros.
“And your fellow patriots are who?”
“Just a bunch of yokes I toss jars with and who wish to remain anonymous.”
More and more, it was sounding like drunken blather. “But you have the bonds in your possession?”
“Would I lie about a matter like this? We’ll get the books back, but we need your assistance, McGarr.
You... you know how these things are done and how to handle them New Druid cockbites and druggie chancers, all tattooed and pierced. Aren’t you, after proving it out there at their HQ in Glasnevin? I’d fookin’ pierce them meself so they’d know it. But, Janie, isn’t that another story?
“And, and, and—come closer while I tell yeh— wouldn’t it be a bloody fookin’ coup, you coming back with the goods, given how shabbily that godless culchie cunt Kehoe and his gobshite sidekick Sheard have done you? There you are with your arse swinging in the breeze, man. Think of that. How does it feel?
“We get the books back, you get vindicated and the chance to see who the thieves are up close and personal. It’s what you want, I know you well enough for that. One sniff, and you’ll have the miserable mithers.
“And I, what do I get? I fookin’ get to make sure that none of those posturing, Protestant, bluenose pricks in that sieve of a place called Trinity College never ever again get to look after those sacred books.
“They will be lodged in the care and the safekeeping of the Holy Roman Catholic Church where they belong, if I and me fi?fty fookin’ million in negotiable securities have anything to say about it.”
There it was, McGarr concluded. Sweeney à la Opus Dei. The books of Kells, Durrow, and Armagh were out there, and Sweeney, who was nothing if not an opportunist, had drawn upon that signifi?cant power base to assemble the ransom price.
“Why me? Why not Sheard?”
McGarr now heard liquid being poured into a glass.
“I told you what I think of Sheard—an arse-lickin’ yes-man if ever there were one—and in a matter such as this he could only play the fool. No clue in this class of thing, none whatsoever.
“And there’s another wee problem—we’ll need a helicopter and a pilot, like the choppers the Garda possesses and your man McKeon. They want us up in the air before they’ll tell us where the drop is.”
McKeon had been a helicopter pilot with the Irish army during the peacekeeping operation in Lebanon and still maintained a license.
“I couldn’t get access to a helicopter, not now. And Bernie, he—”
“Ach, don’t give me that, man. You’re still a senior Garda offi?cer in good standing and without question the most respected man on the force, no matter what Kehoe, O’Rourke, and Sheard have tried to do to you. This is an emergency with a tight time frame. One bloody short window of opportunity. And, as far as I know, McKeon wasn’t placed on administrative leave. He’s fully qualifi?ed to fl?y, if only to maintain his hours.”
“How do you know the demand was genuine?”
“It was the voice, the fookin’ voice, man.”
“And what did it say?”
“We should ready a helicopter. When we get everything together today sometime, they’ll tell us what bearings to take after we’re in the air and traveling north northwest out of Swords.” It was the location of Dublin Airport.
“We’re to contact nobody else. If they detect anybody else in the air around us, the deal’s off and they’ll destroy the books.”
Kara, who had been listening while recumbent, now sat up beside McGarr, the warmth of her arm and shoulder settling against him.
“You only have to say the word. And, sure, we’ll be up, up, and away, only to return in a trice as brilliant heroes with the bloody books for all the world to see.”
Which was also classic Sweeney. For all his secretiveness about his personal fi?nances, the man was a publicity monger of the fi?rst rank, and here was the possibility of garnering what would surely be great glory using mainly the money of other people. With the publicity certainly worth the two million he said he was putting up. To him.
Gone would be his reputation as a probable murderer, convicted thief, and cynical manipulator of the worst sort. The fi?rst thing—the great and brilliant thing—that would spring to mind when his name was mentioned would be “the man who splashed out millions to save the Book of Kells.” Philanthropist, patriot, and churchman.
Perceptions. Didn’t it forever come down to that? McGarr mused, considering his own present situation, in which he could well now become known as the man who let the possibility of retrieving the Book of Kells slip through his fi?ngers. Because of his own pride.
“I’d have to speak with them directly.”
“Them who?”
“The”—McGarr had to pause for a term—“ransomers.”
“Ah, shite—how the fuck d’you think I’m going to do that?”
“How did you notify them that you’d assembled the money?”
“I didn’t. They contacted me.”
“Well, I imagine we’ll just have to wait. I must speak with them directly.”
“Christ fookin’ almighty, you’re going to blow this thing, McGarr. I can just feel it.”
“And your principals—I need a list of who put up the money. I’ll speak with them as well.”
“All fookin’ fi?fty fookin’ yokes? It’ll take fookin’ years.”
McGarr let the silence carry his resolve.
Finally, Sweeney sighed. “Well, the bastard did give me a beeper number.”
“Which is?”
“Ah, none of your shenanigans, McGarr. I won’t have you pullin’ the cop thing on me.”
Again, he heard Sweeney’s throat work.
“And one other thing, you prick you. You should think of bringing your bed partner along to verify the books are what he claims. Wouldn’t we be the fools if the entire exercise was nothing but a bloody big fi?ftymillion-Euro scam.” With that, Sweeney began a drunken laugh that devolved into a hacking, wet cough.
McGarr waited until he had quieted. “How did you know I was here?”
Sweeney passed some air between his lips. “You should know by now I’m omniscient. But, sure, I’ve never been one to hold the odd session against any man, even when the woman is another man’s wife.
“Later.” He rang off.
Orla Bannon, McGarr thought. In spite of her reported contempt for Sweeney, the man signed her paycheck, and like him she was a manipulator of some skill. He wondered what she had got from him in return.
After he explained to Kara what Sweeney had proposed, she used both hands to brush her hair back behind her ears, so that the profi?le she presented with its nearly equal angles—forehead, nose, and chin—was regal and commanding.
“I don’t like it, Peter. I don’t like him nor the sound of what he intends for the books, if he manages to recover them for that outrageous sum. And the way it will be gone about is fraught with danger. What’s to prevent the thieves from taking the money and blowing you out of the sky? Just for the”—she swirled her hands—“New Druidism of it, and to foil any police presence?
“That said”—she turned to him and took his hand—“if you decide it’s something you should do, I’ll go along with you, as Sweeney suggested. As your expert.”
In the darkness, McGarr pulled her to him, and they sank down in the pillows.
At nearly midnight on the night before, one after another of the seven bay doors of the old warehouse had opened and a different type of vehicle had driven out. First came a Ford van with a “Castrol Oil” l
ogo on the side; next a Mooney’s bread van. Bays three through six issued large cars of various makes, and the last a stretch limo.
“Notice anything similar about those vehicles?” Ward asked Bresnahan.
“Apart from their size? No.”
“Tinted windows, each and every one of them. And what do you fancy is in them?”
“Drugs.”
“And who do you fancy that is, based on mug shots we saw at headquarters?” Ward jerked his chin at the sixth bay door, where the limo was pulling out and a tall, square, but thin young man was waiting in the doorway, his hand on a switch to lower the door.
“Ray-Boy?”
“Could be.” Ward reached for the binoculars that lay on the backseat, but by the time he raised them to his eyes, the door was descending and the fi?gure obscured. “My theory about there being skylights in that building?”
She nodded. “Now would be the time to test it out— with the darkness and the others gone.”
Ward opened his jacket, pulled out the Beretta handgun he kept there in a sling, and checked the clip.
“But remember, it’s reconnaissance alone. We have no authority, and isn’t Peter in enough trouble as it is?”
It was nearly midnight, yet there were two beads of bright headlamps along Coolock Road, which the laneway of the warehouse joined. Weaving between cars parked in the chocolate factory lot, Ward noted the line of dense wintry-looking clouds that were about to obscure the moon and had the look of a storm front.
Waiting for a moment in the patch of shadow that divided the two properties, Ward and Bresnahan again scanned the environs before moving to the end of the building farther from the road.
What they found there was a narrow, litter-fi?lled gap between the sooty brick wall and a chain-link fence topped by razor wire.
“Ah, Jaysus—just our luck.”
“Nonsense. It will make it all the easier. Hands.”
“Remember—I don’t care what you fi?nd, I’m not coming up.” Bresnahan twined her fi?ngers and lowered her hands.
Ward raised his foot toward them. “Now, on a three count, launch me as high as you can.” Bouncing on the count and thrusting down on her foot on “Three!” he shot his arms as high as he could, grabbed the fencing, and climbed to within inches of the razor wire.
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