Dead in Dublin

by Catie Murphy

  “That’s what Nee is like when she’s really angry,” Meg said. “Absolutely calm and brutal and able to undercut every stupid thing anybody within a three-mile radius says. This—” she gestured at the phone “—is showboating.”

  “—setting me up like that, I can’t believe you, Meg,” Niamh was saying in still full-fledged outrage that disappeared with the next word. “Anyway, Adam says herself is only in her early twenties, young enough to be impressed by fame—”

  “Almost everybody is that young,” Megan pointed out.

  Niamh made a generally agreeable sound without otherwise stopping. “—and that she’s quite pretty, with gobs of browny-blonde curls and pale blue eyes. He didn’t have a clue what her name was, but he says he’d swear to it in court, that he’s seen them skulking around together.”

  “I’ll want to talk to him.” Bourke turned the phone off speaker and put it to his ear, meeting Megan’s eyes as he did so. “That’s very helpful, Miss O’Sullivan. Thank you for your efforts. As for next Monday . . . it might be better to wait until this case is wrapped up before we meet. Fewer complications that way, even if you’re only tangentially involved.”

  She said something, and Bourke shook his head. “It’s only being treated as suspicious right now, but yes, that’s the rule of thumb. The first forty-eight hours are critical. That doesn’t mean we all throw in the towel at the end of two days, though.” He smiled briefly, nodded, and said, “Don’t think I won’t,” before handing the phone back to Megan.

  Niamh, grimly, said, “Did he actually hear the Gilda comment? No, don’t answer that right now, I don’t want him to know I asked. He won’t ring.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. Look, I’ll ring you later, okay? Thanks for calling.” They hung up, and Meg met Bourke’s eyes. “Liz’s lover sounds like she looks an awful lot like Cíara O’Donnell.”

  “She does at that.” Bourke gave her a direct look. “And I’ll be the one looking into it, Ms. Malone, not your own self.”

  Megan raised her hands defensively. “I’d never dream of it.”

  Bourke hmphed, a sound of doubt and acceptance and, with a nod, left Meg on the dockside. She waited until he was a silhouette in the distance, slim black shape outlined by glittering blue water, then called Fionnuala. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’ve had more inspectors than I can shake a stick at come through,” Fionn said. “I had to explain about the damn dog—how are the puppies?—because I wasn’t allowed to clean up, because they had to inspect the place, but—you know the Reddit cow poem?”

  Megan pulled the phone away to stare at it, thinking that Niamh might be on to something with using video calls all the time. It certainly would be more satisfying to gape at Fionn rather than her own faint reflection in the glassy black background. “The cow poem?”

  A brief silence in which she could all but hear Fionn trying to decide if it was worth it came over the phone and ended with, “It’s a health inspector story involving cows. Never mind. The point is, I explained about the dog, and that obviously that kind of thing never happens, and the restaurant’s passed the health inspection. Now I’ve got to wait for the report on the food, but so far so good. How are the puppies?”

  “Boring. Apparently puppies sleep twenty hours a day for the first week or so of their lives. I thought they were supposed to be wiggly and adorable. Can you go over to my apartment and take Mama Dog out for a walk?”

  “I can’t,” Fionnuala said unhappily. “They’re sending more people to talk to me, even though they say the place is clean. This is going to haunt me forever. Martin came over this morning with the books. Honestly, Meg, I thought we were safer than the numbers say we are. Two more days of this and we might never open our doors again.”

  “We are not going to let that happen, Fionn. We’ll figure it out. I don’t know how, but we will, okay? How’s Martin doing?”

  “Worse than me. Sweating bullets. I think he’s sunk more into Canan’s than he’ll tell me, Meg. It’s not just Canan’s, of course. It’s Club Heaven upstairs, and the bar with it that makes so much money—”

  “But they’re not closed, are they? Oh, no, wait, you said they were, but not why?”

  “They are, though, because there are stairs up and down that are only blocked off with the gates, like. Waitstaff go up and down them with key cards, and people might be able to get over them, or throw things through them, so to keep the whole scene clean—” Fionnuala’s voice broke and she took a breath so deep and shaky that Megan could hear its rattle over the phone. “The club will probably be able to reopen, maybe sooner than the restaurant. But right now, Martin’s just watching his investment money drain into the River Liffey.”

  Megan, mostly to herself, breathed, “I thought the Poddle ran under Temple Bar,” and Fionnuala’s baffled silence filled the phone line momentarily before she gave a sharp, hard laugh.

  “It doesn’t come this far east, I don’t think. I’m not being literal, you eejit—”

  “No, I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make stupid jokes when you’re so stressed. I just like the idea of underground rivers.”

  “Ah, you’re grand.” A little of the strain went out of Fionn’s voice. “You know that big, ugly grate you can see on the south side of the river when the tide is low, just past the Millennium Bridge? The one that looks like a hellmouth? That’s where the Poddle meets the Liffey.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s farther west than Canan’s. There, I learned something today.” Trying to keep her tone nonchalant and feeling like a total failure, Meg asked, “What about Cíara? How’s she?”

  Fionn didn’t seem to notice the awkward note in Meg’s voice and only sighed explosively, her tone much less stressed than it had been. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she finished the ice cream yesterday. I’d go check on her, but I can’t be in two places at once. Or five. I need a clone, Meg.”

  “Look,” Megan said, as false-brightly as before, “I can go check on Cíara for you, if you know where she lives?”

  “Um, it’s on her employment file, but I probably shouldn’t just tell you, you know? It’s probably illegal.”

  Meg wrinkled her nose at the soft sea horizon. “I guess it probably is. Maybe I could just go be in the neighbourhood, coincidental-like.” Like a stalker, she thought, and bit her tongue on the idea.

  “Right. Hang on.” A few minutes of silence ensued before Fionn came back and said, “If you were coincidentally in the area of—oh, you actually could be, she lives near you. I’m just saying, if you wanted to take in a movie at the Stella later today and happened to walk by the apartments behind it . . .”

  “Oh, brilliant. I’ll go see what’s playing after I get done with this job.”

  Fionn said, “Thank you,” sincerely enough to make Megan feel guilty. “I’m worried about the poor creature. She’s taking it all very hard.” A tired laugh followed. “Unlike me, of course.”

  “You both have reason to,” Megan said. “I’ll let you know if I catch her and how she’s doing.”

  “Thanks, Meg. You’re a star.” Fionnuala hung up, leaving Megan alone to stew in her own guilt about knowing things and not sharing them with friends. Not that mentioning the possible affair angle to Fionn would have helped anything at all. It would almost certainly have made things worse, because Fionn wouldn’t just let it lie, any more than Megan wanted to. And she hadn’t lied to Fionn. Checking up on Cíara, a distraught young woman of her recent acquaintance, was a perfectly legitimate thing to do. And she had distracted Fionn for a moment with the idiocy about the rivers, and that had to make up for something.

  She snorted and headed back for the car. She could jump through all the mental hoops she wanted to; it wouldn’t fool anybody, least of all herself. Clearly, she wasn’t cut out to be a criminal, since presumably actual bad guys didn’t go through mental turmoil trying to justify their behavior to their friends. Or maybe genuine bad guys didn’t have any friends, which
would solve the whole problem but seemed unlikely.

  Out loud, the better to silence her hamster wheel of thoughts, she said, “Oh my God, Meg,” and climbed into the car to await her clients.

  * * *

  Somewhat to Meg’s surprise, her clients finished the hike in good time and were content to return to their B&B rather than spend the day exploring Howth’s other touristy activities. She’d been rather looking forward to trailing along on a tour of the still-lived-in Howth Castle, which had stood overlooking the Irish Sea for eight centuries, or to climbing the lighthouse, which she’d actually never done, or any of the other half-dozen things her clients could have stuffed into the day. Instead, they arrived back at the car only minutes after she did, and by 10 a.m. she had the car back in the garage and had gone home to rub the puppies’ tummies. Mama Dog managed to convey that she deigned, rather than desired, to go for a walk, and Megan said, “I’ve got to bring you to a vet” as they headed out the door. “Maybe you’ve been chipped and somebody is looking for you.” She doubted it, though: Mama seemed like she’d been on the street a while, and Meg was afraid someone had abandoned her when she got pregnant.

  They were on the way home, actually at the lower apartment door, Megan fumbling with her keys, when from up the street came Orla’s deeply offended voice: “And what is that I see?”

  Megan flinched like she’d been caught breaking in, then looked down at Mama with a sigh. “I’m just keeping her for a few days for a friend, Orla.”

  “Is the lease not very clear?” Orla demanded. “Does it not say no pets and outline the costs of a deposit for so much as bringing one into the house?”

  “It’s a week, Orla,” Megan said wearily. “I’m not keeping th—her—forever.”

  “I’ll have three hundred euro from you straight-away or it’s out you go,” Orla snapped. Mama Dog’s ears flattened, though she had the good grace not to bare her teeth at Megan’s boss and landlord.

  “Strangely enough, Orla, I’m not carrying three hundred euro around with me right now, and if you throw me out, you’ll have a driver who smells of whatever gutter she slept in the night before. That’ll be grand, won’t it?”

  “Or I won’t have a driver at all,” Orla said with a threatening gleam in her eye.

  Megan’s eyebrows slowly rose. “You can take that tack if you want to, but I’m not the one always complaining of how hard it is to turn away clients because you haven’t enough drivers to begin with. And we both know I’m your best driver for early morning clients because I don’t stay up as late as the lads. It’s a week, Orla. Give it a rest, okay?”

  “I’ll want to inspect the place the moment that little bitch is gone,” Orla warned. That time, Mama did growl. Megan couldn’t blame her, though she did bend to pet the dog soothingly.

  “Fine. You can inspect it next week. Come on, pup.” Just inside the door, with a fuming Orla left outside, Megan muttered, “Her bark’s worse than her bite, Mama, but I admit she’s got an awful bark.” Upstairs in her apartment, she lay down on her stomach next to the puppies and gave them her fingers to nibble on. “You’re going to cost me three hundred euro plus all this stuff I bought to feed you guys for just a week. I am definitely not keeping you.”

  The boy wiggled toward her on his belly, more like a baby seal than a dog, and plopped his tiny head on her hand. A little pink tongue emerged to give her one small lick, and then, exhausted by his efforts, the puppy went straight to sleep.

  Megan, smiling, extracted her hand so she could find an early lunch—it was only half ten, but she’d been up a long time already—and had almost finished eating when the phone rang and Simon Darr’s broken voice said, “Megan? Megan, it happened again. Liz uploaded another video.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Megan ran for the Luas, the Dublin tram system that would get her nearest to the Shelbourne, and got to the hotel in under half an hour. She jogged upstairs and Simon’s room door opened before she even had a chance to knock. She came in quietly, bottom lip between her teeth as she saw Liz’s father, Peter, with his head huddled in his wife’s lap to muffle his sobs. Mrs. Dempsey, stroking her husband’s temple with a mechanical gesture, looked decades older than she had a day earlier.

  Simon Darr, slim to begin with, had lost weight since Megan had last seen him. His cheekbones were gaunt, his eyes hollowed, and his thin hands leaped with nervous energy one moment and fell listless the next. He gestured at his computer. Megan squeezed his shoulder, then, making sure to mute the speakers and turn the screen away from the devastated family, sat down to watch a few seconds of the video. There were hundreds of comments beneath it, many of them angry and even more of them confused. A few were agonizingly sympathetic, guessing that Liz had left more vlogs unexpectedly prepped.

  “She hadn’t, though,” Meg murmured, mostly to herself.

  Simon sat heavily beside her, shoulders slumped and face in his hands, as if his head simply weighed too much to hold up anymore. “I didn’t think so,” he said, muffled. “You checked. I didn’t remember how, but I knew you’d checked. Someone else posted it. How could someone else have posted it? It was on this computer, Megan. I found the folder with the rest of her prepped vlogs, but no one has been in here to use the computer except me. Us,” he said with a short, whole-body lean toward Liz’s parents.

  “Did anyone else have access to her files? Through cloud sharing, maybe? Did she lose her phone?” Megan checked the location the latest vlog had been uploaded from, macabrely wondering if it would claim to have been posted from the morgue. An IP address came up, the same as the last post, and she picked up the phone to call the front desk. “Yes, hello, I’m wondering if you can tell me what the hotel’s IP address is? No, not just the Wi-Fi network name, but the—yes, thank you.” She waited while they transferred her to the business centre, where a young-sounding man read off a four-part number that identified the hotel’s permanent internet location. It matched the last several posts on Liz’s blog, including the two vlogs and the posts both Simon and Megan herself had made. She thanked the youth and fell back in her chair as she hung up, frowning at the screen.

  Simon remained silent while she did all that, only answering her questions once she’d hung up. “She never lost her phone, and as far as I know, no one had cloud access—could she have been hacked?” His voice broke, but Megan thought he sounded relieved rather than distressed. “That would explain—”

  “It would, but these were all posted from here. A hacker could have come here to post them, or spoofed it, but why? It—”

  “I don’t even know what you’re saying,” Mrs. Dempsey broke in shrilly. Her husband sat up, pulling her into his arms now, but she continued in the too-sharp voice. “Why would someone hack Dana’s blog? What’s spoofing? Why do you know this? I thought you drove cars, not—” Her imagination failed her and she fell silent.

  “I got online before it was cool, much less normal.” Megan thought, but didn’t say, how very hipster of me. “Long enough ago that learning some of the backbone information about how the internet works was just kind of something you did in order to use it. I’m hopelessly out of date now, but I still know just enough to look where not everybody would think to. Spoofing is making the internet think you’re posting from one place when you’re really somewhere else. Kind of like in the movies, where you see somebody trying to trace a phone call that’s been routed all around the world to hide the caller’s location.”

  Mrs. Dempsey nodded tightly and turned her face against her husband’s shoulder, clearly understanding well enough and not caring for any more in-depth explanation. Just as well; Megan didn’t think she could have provided one.

  “So probably someone hacked her and spoofed this?” Simon asked. “But why? I didn’t think Liz had any enemies.”

  “How many restaurants closed down because of her reviews?” Megan asked.

  Mrs. Dempsey cried, “That’s not fair!” as Simon flinched.

  “Some. I didn’t ke
ep track. Nobody closes on the weight of one bad review, though, Megan. There has to be something more already wrong. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  “That’s not what the owner of Canan’s says,” Megan told him with a sigh. “The point is, Mrs. Darr probably did have some enemies. But I don’t know what value an enemy would get in posting vlogs after her death. It’s not a restaurant review. It’s not even a market review, like the last one. She’s just hiking.”

  “We were hunting for stone circles,” Simon whispered. “Down on the Ring of Kerry. She just wanted to share it with everyone. That’s what her vlogs were, personal stuff, things she was excited about, not reviews. She left that to text. Easier to compile into a book.” He tried for a thin smile and almost succeeded. Megan returned it sadly, then took a deep breath.

  “You’re sure no one else had access to the computer?”

  “I was the only one in my room at ten thirty.” Simon gave a short, hard laugh. “Of course, I don’t have an alibi because my wife, who would have provided one, is dead.”

  Mrs. Dempsey gave a terrible choking sound that turned into harsh sobs. Simon paled, his anger evaporating as he spun toward his in-laws. Mr. Dempsey’s unforgiving gaze met Simon’s and held for a long moment until a sudden weariness swept him and he bent his head over his wife’s. Simon sagged, drained.

  Megan’s skin prickled from the raw breaking of emotion around her. She moved her hands stiffly, wishing she knew what to do with them—or herself—then made herself hold still. After what felt like forever, Simon, much more dully, said to her, “And you were with me when the first one went live. You’re my alibi.”