Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Well, I only assumed.”

  McGarr moved toward the tea, which she had set on a table away from the bar, and the others followed. “Tell me, have you ever seen either of these people before?” He placed photos of Kara Kennedy and her husband, Dan Stewart, before her.

  Sitting, the old woman pulled down her eyeglasses and fi?tted them over her nose. She turned them into the light from the doorway, then held them at various distances.

  Finally, “She’s only ever been in here once. She was with the infamous Chazz Sweeney, which was the only time he ever darkened our doorway as well. And that fella was with them too.” She pointed at the photo of Stewart.

  “With Sweeney drunk and saying to the other two, ‘Ah, sure—aren’t you two the best son and daughterin-law a father could have.’ He even sang feckin’ ‘Danny Boy’ with nobody but me daring tell him to shut his bloody big gob, the little good it did.”

  The others stepped closer to get a look at the photographs.

  “When was that?”

  “All of a year ago. No, I’m probably wrong about that—it’s two, I’d say. Or more. Time ramblin’ on as you get up in years, don’t you know.”

  McGarr nodded. He knew, and he wanted to know, that it had been at least two years ago. “They were here to meet Raymond Sloane, the Trinity guard?”

  She pursed her lips and glanced out into the street.

  “He could have nipped in, like, since the door is closed apart from me checking for drinks. But he wasn’t among them that I recall.”

  “What about the man and woman you told me about, the two who came in here two weeks ago and met with Sloane?”

  “Him it was, for sure. The one who was in here with Sweeney.” She pointed to the photo of Stewart. “The woman, like I said, I saw little of, since it was Raymond who ordered and carried the drinks in. But the artist you sent round? Two of the lads said they got a look at her, which I don’t doubt, gawkers and stalkers that they are. And what he came up with wasn’t too much unlike her.”

  Swords opened an envelope and slid the artist’s mock-ups of a man who looked not unlike Stewart. The rendering of the woman, on the other hand, bore only a vague similarity to Kara and could more easily have been Gillian Reston.

  “What did she drink?”

  “Wine. All the upmarket lassies drink wine these days. I’ll have to remind meself to get more in, now that we’ve been discovered.” She winked at Orla Bannon.

  McGarr’s eyes passed across the bottles in back of the bar. Far from tea, he could use something stronger, although what he needed, he well knew, was absolute clarity. He had the feeling he’d been in over his head from the start without knowing.

  “What about these?” Orla Bannon pulled two photos out of her purse and placed them before Foyle.

  “Them two are in here near weekly, the Duke and Duchess we call them. Gin for him, vodka for her. Bitter lemon, the both of them. And the Duke, he can get nasty. We hear him right through the door, lashing into her with his tongue. One time, I sent a lad in to check on her.”

  “Sloane join them?”

  “I never knew he did until once I opened the door without knocking fi?rst, and there he was, standing by them with an envelope in his hands. Like embarrassed. Or caught. Guilty.”

  A young woman in an apron appeared beside them holding a hot plate in a towel.

  “Before you tuck into your breakfast, Chief. May I have a word?” Bresnahan eased off the bar stool and moved toward the door. McGarr followed.

  “What about me?” Bannon asked. “Amn’t I invited for the rest of the ride? There’s gratitude for you.”

  Turning her back to the others, Bresnahan explained how, on the evening before, Ward had followed the man Sweeney had called Stu from the warehouse out of which Ray-Boy Sloane was running his drug operation to Dublin Airport. “He’d had a falling out with somebody inside. There was shooting, and he was injured enough to bloody his head and face.

  “Outside the terminal, Stewart just got out of the car and abandoned it in the street. Hughie checked the registration, which said Kells Corp. So I ran down the name.”

  McGarr nodded. Even private entities doing business in Ireland had to declare the name and address of a party who would be responsible for any malfeasance. Usually it was a solicitor. Bresnahan handed McGarr a slip of paper. “Number Twenty-three, Fitzwilliam Square. From what I can tell without actually going there, it’s a residence owned by”—her smoky gray eyes fi?xed his— “Ath Cliath.

  “Also, Hughie believes he has a line on Ray-Boy Sloane.” She then related what Ward had discovered when he returned to the warehouse—the police, the blown-out door, the headless corpse most probably of Gillian Reston, Ray-Boy’s lair where the ransom tapes had been fi?lmed with the heads on the wall.

  “Earlier, when we were there together, he overheard somebody taking down another address that sounded like a fallback position. That’s there too.” She pointed to the second address.

  Which eliminated Ray-Boy as the second man with Dan Stewart on Iona. Dan, who had murdered his wife, who might herself have been a party to his many crimes, although McGarr could still not credit that.

  Not that he had ever thought Ray-Boy and his New Druid louts could have been capable of coordinating the theft at Trinity, and even in the making of the fi?lm, with its historical and other references to Celtic culture, they’d probably had help. Ray-Boy Sloane was no intellectual.

  “Where’s Hughie now?”

  “There.” She pointed to the 24 Spancel Court, Ranelagh, address. “But he’s fading. I’m going out to spell him now.”

  “Best case?” McGarr slipped the paper into his pocket and wondered if he actually knew the best case anymore. “Follow him. He can’t be behind this thing, not totally, and for whatever reason—his cut, revenge—he’ll lead us to them.”

  Said Bresnahan, “And then there’s the falling-out with this Dan who, I assume, was the husband of Trinity’s keeper of old manuscripts.”

  In averting his eyes from hers, McGarr gazed at the television screen, where, he noted, a camera was panning in on the Garda helicopter that McKeon and he had fl?own to Iona. There was a large hole where shrapnel from the blast had struck the rear of the fuselage. The audio report had been muted.

  “So you don’t hear it secondhand...” McGarr then told her what had happened on Iona.

  Bresnahan was stunned. Her hands moved out to the one he had placed on the bar. “Oh, Peter—how ever will we get you out of this? And Bernie.”

  McGarr shook his head; it was something he’d have to do himself. It was tragic enough that he’d sent Kara to her death and brought McKeon down; he could not involve anybody else. He had to fi?nd out who was behind the theft, the murders, the disaster on Iona with proof and quickly, before Sheard, O’Rourke, and Kehoe made him yet more of a scapegoat than he was already. Made him and his name infamous, which, of course, was Maddie’s name as well.

  Again he glanced at the television screen, which was showing McKeon being led into a Garda patrol car. “Stay on Ray-Boy is all I ask. And keep me informed.”

  Sliding off the stool, he looked down the bar where the three others were sitting with the plate of food on the table. “Come et your breakie and have a sup.” Foyle pointed to the place setting.

  Debating with himself how to proceed, he decided that if the worst happened, he would want his side told in all its particularity, mainly for Maddie. He raised his hand. “Orla.” With a snap of his fi?ngers, he called her to him.

  “Ah, Janie, no—you can’t be thinking of telling her,” Bresnahan whispered. “Going public without all your pins in place is... suicidal.”

  Taking the diminutive younger woman by the arm, he led her out onto the sunny, windswept footpath.

  “Is this ‘your place or mine’ time?” she quipped. “Couldn’t we wait at least until the sun is over the yardarm?”

  At her car, he opened the door for her.

  “Jaysus, it is. Well
”—she cocked her head and smiled up at him—“I’m a woman of my word.”

  McGarr closed the door, walked around, and got behind the wheel. “You’re acquainted with the phrase ‘not for attribution’?”

  “Ah, shit. How did I know you’d turn out to be a big, bloody, two-hearted wanker? First, you break me heart, now you’re breakin’ me back. Attribution is what I do. Without attribution I’m just a sourceless gobshite.”

  McGarr’s eyes fl?ickered over the display of the clock; it was nearly noon. Now that he had an address for Dan Stewart, he would go there. “Listen, fi?rst, and you’ll know why. This is important to me but more so to my daughter. And eventually you’ll have more of a story than you’ll need.”

  She let out a little cry of pique. “I can’t believe he’s using his power over me to corrupt me principles.” Her dark eyes met his; they were smiling. She studied his face, then said, “You tell me what you must, and it’ll be safe with me until you say otherwise. You’re a good man, McGarr, and I believe in you.”

  Her hand reached out and gave his a squeeze.

  He told her everything—about Kara and him, the ransom process, the helicopter, what they found on Iona, how Kara bravely began examining the cartons on the pallets while he made a rush for the man who had retrieved the money, how that man might well have been her husband, how perhaps she had been in with him all along. “Why? For what?” he asked.

  Orla canted her head and looked out through the windscreen at the twin rows of attached and timeworn workers’ houses that marked the area. There was not a green leaf or growing thing in sight. Everything looked gray and gritty, in spite of the strong sun.

  “The money, of course. Fifty million quid is quite some sum, is it not? But from what you tell me, I’m not sure she was involved—why kill her? Perhaps the husband, this Dan person, got the notion of stealing the books because of what she said, how she enthused about them. He might have been tired of her. He’s plainly a bad man.” She shook her head.

  Orla then turned to McGarr. “The greater question for you and, may I presume to say, for me is—why you? Did circumstances mark you? You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or—”

  Now both were staring out at a rather young woman with two toddlers, a pram, and a dog on a leash, who was struggling to negotiate the narrow footpath between grimy row houses and the busy street.

  Suddenly Orla turned to McGarr and raised one arm, looping it over his shoulders in the small car. “Come ’ere. Give me a hug.”

  He hesitated.

  “No, come here. Do as I say. Put your head right here.” She touched her upper chest.

  McGarr removed his hat and leaned toward her, and she pulled him in. She was warm and soft, and she ruffl?ed the curls at the back of his head.

  “Credit the possibility that I in my profession—like you in yours—have seen some people in my time. Observed them, questioned them, had to come to terms with their lives in, I hope, honest words. Few get to do that. And don’t think I haven’t been tracking you.

  “Years ago, at your wife’s gallery during an opening when I was a wee thing writing obits at the Times, I saw you two together and I thought, Now there’s the perfect couple. She, this little red doll, and you, at once the hardest and gentlest man in the universe.” There was a pause in which she took his hand and made him cup her left breast. “You’re a rare, brave man, McGarr, and my greatest hope? That you can get through this.

  “Me? I’ll put this story on hold. Nor will I run it at Ath Cliath. I’m done working for that man.”

  Closing his eyes and wishing he could sleep there, McGarr listened to her breathing and her heart, and only after a while did the import of what she had said occur to him. “You know something I don’t?”

  Her breast juddered as she shook her head. “If I did, I’d tell you. And you should know that.”

  And it occurred to him that life was indeed short and could, as it had for Kara, be snuffed out at any moment. “I should go.”

  “I know. Shall I come with you? I could help you.”

  McGarr had to think, because it was plain that something had just passed between them. And it was also clear that whatever it was, it was good.

  But he had already been down that road twice before. Fatally.

  CHAPTER

  15

  THE ADDRESS WAS FANCY INDEED—FITZWILLIAM Square, one of the priciest streets in the city.

  Nuala still owned property there, the large house in which Noreen grew up.

  Finding a space virtually in front of the building, McGarr eased the Cooper into the curb and decided against lowering the visor with the Garda shield attached.

  Instead he pulled out his cell phone and dialed his home number, which was answered on the fi?rst ring. “Peter, where are you? Tell me you weren’t a part of this thing they’re reporting on the teley. Haven’t they collared Bernie McKeon, who, they say, might be charged with murder, to say nothing of stealing a helicopter.”

  “I’m hoping it will all work out right,” McGarr said, scanning the facade of the building where, supposedly, Kells Corp Limited or Dan Stewart or both were located.

  “Hoping?” There was a pause. “It’s not like you to hope.”

  “Where’s Maddie?”

  “In school.”

  “And yesterday?”

  “Ditto. You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “Number Twenty-three Fitzwilliam Square—ever been in there?”

  “Countless times. Didn’t the Burleighs live there, and Hubert, a partner of Fitz’s in one thing or another?”

  “Was it fl?ats then?”

  “No, but it’s fl?ats now. Or businesses with one fl?at in the eaves, I’m thinking. What about this Orla Bannon? She seems too nice to be a reporter, and she’s mad about you.”

  “Three fl?ats?”

  “Four, counting the attic, which Adelaide, after Hubert died, converted into a ‘pad’ for her son, David. You remember him—we had him down in the country often. A great shot, as I recall, but a crashing bore otherwise.”

  “Would that be 23D, then?”

  “If the ground fl?oor is A.”

  “How do I get up there without going in the front door?”

  “Can you get in the back from the laneway?”

  “I’ll see. Hang on.” McGarr moved down an alley that led to the laneway that gave onto the back gardens of the houses on that side of Fitzwilliam Square.

  Every now and then a patch of cloud, driven on a strong northeasterly wind, would pass across the face of the sun, making it chill and wintry. There was a door into the back garden of 23 that looked pickable. “I can get in—then what?”

  “Get in fi?rst.”

  “I’ll have to slip the phone in my pocket.”

  “I hope you’re not doing anything illegal that will embarrass us.”

  It was a simple barrel lock, and McGarr was quickly inside. “Now what?”

  “If you’re facing the back of the building, look to the right. See those steps down? When Noreen, rest her soul, was a child, her friend Josephine had a playroom down there large enough to kick around balls and ride bikes. Right outside the interior door, there used to be gates to a lift that they’d spend hours riding up and down.”

  Catching sight of a head in the window of the second fl?oor, McGarr moved quickly toward the house and down the stairs to the basement door. “Thank you, Nuala.”

  “When are you coming home again?”

  “I’ll phone.”

  “For dinner?”

  “I’ll phone.”

  The lock on the basement door proved no more complicated, but McGarr had to shoulder the jamb to open it enough to slip in. He listened for an alarm before closing it.

  The room had obviously not been used for any purpose by the new owner and still contained a variety of dusty and dated toys—a rocking horse, a box brimming with batons, balls, even a hula hoop—and the thought that Noreen, as a child, before she me
t him, had played and laughed and had fun in the room stopped him cold.

  It was as though he could feel her presence there. “Noreen,” he said to the darkness, “I miss you so, so much.”

  He waited, hoping that there would be some sign, anything, by which her spirit would acknowledge his attempt to make contact with her. But he heard only the squeak of the fl?oor above him, as somebody walked across the room.

  The lift was an ancient affair with an open-mesh accordion safety door. Peering up, McGarr could just catch sight of the car, which was, he guessed, on the fourth and fi?nal fl?oor. Nearby there was a fl?ight of stairs with—he aimed the beam of his penlight up into the darkness—a lock.

  And then, he imagined, each fl?oor, containing a separate business or fl?at, would be locked away from the others.

  He unbuttoned his jacket and loosened the handgun that he carried under his belt before reaching for the call button. With a crack, the old elevator’s solenoid engaged, and the counterweights raced up as the lift descended, rattling and juddering until with a kind of sigh it arrived in front of him. Sliding back the accordion grate, he stepped in and began his ascent.

  At the fourth fl?oor, he could see into the fl?at, which was mainly one long room. There was a large bed positioned under a dormer window looking out into the square with the kitchen area by other windows facing the back garden.

  He could hear the steady ticking of a clock, and some other sound, like breathing. He tilted his head. No, more like snickering. But from where?

  “Your mother-in-law couldn’t have told you about this, now could she?”

  Startled, McGarr swung round and looked up into the barrel of a gun and the smiling face of Dan Stewart, who was squatting above an open hatch in the ceiling of the elevator. “More’s the pity.”

  McGarr lurched toward a corner of the elevator, and the shot, which was stellar in the small conveyance, grazed the side of his shoe. A second blast ricocheted around the cabin. And a third and a fourth.

  McGarr had just drawn his Garda-issue Glock to fi?re at the ceiling of the lift when he heard a fl?urry of shots from inside the fl?at—some large-caliber handgun. There was a pause, a thud, and then Stewart’s arm, shoulder, and the side of his face lolled from the open hatch.