Dead in Dublin

by Catie Murphy

  “All right.” Fionnuala’s voice strengthened. “All right, look. I’ll get you his girlfriend’s number somehow, and a couple of the lads he’s known from way back. His funeral’s not until Wednesday, so you’ve a little time to talk to them. Meg, I’m not going to mention money laundering to the accountant, but if she brings it up . . .”

  Megan nodded. “If she brings it up, I’ll call Detective Bourke about it all. In the meantime, I’ll just see what the heck I can figure out.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  She’d just woken up the computers and started working on them when her phone rang again. Megan closed her eyes, speaking, she supposed, to the dogs. “Don’t people know this is the twenty-first century and we use texts to communicate instead of actually calling people?” Mama Dog sighed heavily and Megan, agreeing, turned over the phone to see an unknown number. “I hate answering calls when I don’t know who it is.” She answered it anyway, with, “Hi, this is Megan Malone.”

  A male voice said, “Good morning, Ms. Malone,” which made Megan look for a clock, although she already knew it had to be after noon. Morning of-tened continued until after lunchtime—one or even two o’clock in Ireland—but she hadn’t quite gotten used to that. “This is Gareth McGrath with Hearlihy and Co Solicitors. I’m a defense lawyer. Your cousin Rabbie asked me to call you.”

  “Oh! Oh, deadly, thank you so much. I’ve got a friend who’s in trouble, an American friend who’s been arrested for murder, and he needs legal representation.”

  “Who,” McGrath asked, “will be paying the solicitor fees?”

  As he was speaking, the doorbell rang. Megan rose to buzz the visitor in, and a few seconds later Brian Showers bounded up the stairs to her apartment. Megan wobbled the end of the phone at him, indicating she was having a conversation, and invited him in silently while she tried to remember what question McGrath had asked. “Oh. Uh. I’m pretty sure Simon can afford a lawyer.” Megan made an eegh face at Brian, who returned a what? face of his own. “It’s not pro bono anyway. And that exhausts my knowledge of legal terminology, just so you know.”

  “Is he guilty?”

  Megan said, “God!” explosively. “God, I hope not. I don’t know.”

  “Who is he accused of having murdered?”

  “His wife, also an American.”

  “Oh.” Interest came into McGrath’s voice. “Is this the food critic? Elizabeth Darr? I follow her blog. Followed, I suppose. They’ve arrested the husband, have they? That’ll cause a fuss. Where are they holding him?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. Detective Paul Bourke is the investigating detective, if that’s any help. I can call him and find out. Or I guess you could?”

  “Why don’t you,” McGrath said decisively. “Text me the location and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Me? Why me? I’m not a lawyer.”

  “But you are, I trust, Mr. Darr’s fri—”

  “Doctor.”

  “Doctor? Brilliant, you’re right, he should be able to afford the legal fees. I trust you’re Dr. Darr’s friend, and while it’s a rare fool who turns down counsel, particularly non-Legal-Aid counsel, when it arrives, it never hurts to have an explanatory presence alongside you. When was the arrest?”

  Megan, feeling like her head must be spinning, said, “Around eight this morning?”

  McGrath, sounding more like a gossipy aunt than a defense lawyer, said, “Five hours ago. Let’s hope he’s had the sense to keep his gob shut,” and hung up, leaving Megan with the phone to her ear and astonishment on her face.

  Then she hung up and turned to Brian’s inquisitive look. “Uncle Rabbie strikes again. He got Simon a lawyer, and I have to—” She waved the phone in the air, trying to encompass all the things she needed to say.

  “Go on then,” Brian said cheerfully. “Text me when you have something juicy.”

  “I will.” Megan kissed his cheek, then scurried for the front door, texting Paul Bourke as she went. It took a few minutes for him to respond that Simon Darr was being held at Pearse Street Garda Station. She forwarded that on to McGrath, ran home to walk Mama Dog, and hurried off to the garda station.

  * * *

  The Pearse Street Garda Station was an intimidating grey edifice that Megan had passed dozens of times without realizing its significance. It ran the length of the block, three stories tall with steeply sloping attics and tremendous old chimneys rising higher yet. One end of the building was curved into a tower, showing off nine white-framed windows. The whole thing looked alarmingly forbidding. Megan breathed, “Jeez” as she approached its main entrance, the centremost of three featured arches at the middle of the building. As she went through the heavy doors, two stone-sculpted police officer faces looked sternly down at her from a hundred years in the past.

  A guard who looked about thirteen lifted his gaze from behind the front desk as Megan entered. She gave him a perfunctory smile. “I’m here to see Simon Darr. He was arrested this morning.”

  “Ah,” said a big voice, “you’d be Megan Malone, then. Gareth McGrath.” McGrath was a generously proportioned man—big jowls, big shoulders, big belly—in his fifties. He had a deep voice, soft hands, an even softer handshake, and could have, Megan thought, taken the wall’s place and held up the ceiling with ease, if necessary. He gave the young garda a nod, and the kid, sighing like this kind of work was beneath him, escorted them through the station to the holding cells.

  Simon Darr sat alone in his holding cell, head lowered and shoulders slumped. He looked up at the sounds of their arrival, and his baffled gaze went from Megan to McGrath and back again.

  “You need a lawyer,” she said simply. Simon’s expression began to clear a little, as if she’d provided an unexpected life buoy and he couldn’t imagine why. “I told you I’d help if I could. This is Gareth McGrath, a friend of my uncle’s. But Simon, I have to ask—”

  “You don’t,” McGrath said, his deep voice sour. “You’ve nothing to ask my client, Ms. Malone, though I appreciate the introduction.” He gave her a hard look through his big eyebrows until she left, wondering if she could have said anything that would have allowed her to stay. Probably not, because she was pretty certain that even in Ireland, there was a such thing as attorney-client privilege, which could presumably be rendered null by a third party in the room. Not that she really knew if it worked that way in the States, but it sounded reasonable. She wouldn’t be protected by that privilege, so could presumably be induced to report whatever she’d overheard discussed between them. Shaking her head, she left the garda station and met Detective Bourke just in front of the building.

  His eyebrows lifted marginally in greeting. “Ms. Malone.” It sounded remarkably like what are you doing here, and she tilted her head and nodded toward the station’s interior. Because perfectly normal people did things like that, she thought with a sigh, and said, “I was visiting Simon” aloud. “He’s got a lawyer now. Uncle Rabbie says well done on growing up to be a guard, by the way.”

  Bourke’s quicksilver smile rode on the end of a laugh. “Does he, now. Tell him I’m sure it was the hard work that summer that set me on the path.”

  Megan, curious, said, “Was it?”

  “It certainly impressed upon me that I’d prefer not to lift fish totes for a living. It taught me I’m not one for the smell of the salt sea or the brisk wind off the Atlantic, and left in me a lifelong admiration for those who do that kind of hard physical labor year in and year out. I’ve friends in the guards who have never worked that hard in their lives and think themselves clever for it, but I think they’re wrong. I think there’s not many of us who wouldn’t be better for a summer or a year learning how much effort goes into getting the things we expect on our tables on our tables.”

  “Tote that barge,” Megan half-sang quietly and, more clearly, said, “How egalitarian of you, Detective.”

  Bourke inclined his head. “All thanks to Uncle Rabbie.”

  “He’d be pleased. Is Simon going to be o
kay in there? I don’t know anything about Irish jails,” Megan said apologetically.

  “He’ll be as well as any man accused of murder,” Bourke replied, not at all reassuringly. “I’m not eager to condemn the man, Ms. Malone, but all the early evidence points his way.”

  Megan sighed. “Yeah, I get that. How do you—” She broke off, feeling foolish, then continued at Bourke’s small motion of encouragement. “How do you figure out if he’s really guilty or innocent, though? I mean, you have to find Cíara, right? And see if Liz was actually having an affair. And you have to figure out if there’s any connection between Simon and Martin Rafferty, but how do you even do that?”

  Bourke chuckled. “We ask loads of questions loads of times, in as many ways as we can to see if the story stays the same. And we look into their pasts, to check if they ever crossed paths. We talk to friends, and to enemies if we can find them, to figure out if there’s anybody who would want a man—or a woman—dead. Sometimes,” he said with a sparkle in his blue eyes, “we ask Google, and it tells us all the craic. Not often, though. Mostly. it’s boring desk work, if you want to know the truth of it. Tracking financials and travel patterns and security cameras. Most criminals aren’t as clever as they think they are.”

  “Some of them must be, though. Clever enough that even if you know they’re trouble, you can’t pin anything big on them.”

  “And the trouble with nabbing them on something small is, then they go to prison, learn how to be a better criminal, and return to the streets better prepared than they were before. But neither Simon Darr nor Martin Rafferty have a criminal record, so whatever they’ve got in common, it’s not that.”

  Megan said, “Well, there’s the money laundering,” without thinking, and Bourke’s attention focused on her like a sunbeam in the hot summer afternoon.

  “The what?”

  “I’m—oh, God, I shouldn’t have said anything. Look, let me ask you something. How would a person go about money laundering anyway?”

  Bourke stared down at her for several long seconds. “Why is it you’re asking?”

  “Liz’s parents think Simon might have been involved in it, and there’s a lot of money missing from Canan’s books, apparently. Seriously, though, how do you even do it? I have no clue.” Megan looked around, as if the garda station stairs might offer her somewhere to hide in mortification for even bringing up the topic. They didn’t, and she returned her squirming gaze to Bourke, whose pale eyes were incredulous.

  “That’s because it’s illegal, Ms. Malone, and law-abiding people don’t ask how to do illegal things.”

  “Sure, but do you know?”

  The detective sighed deeply. “Take your cash to a casino, or find a junket who will give you casino chips in exchange for your cash. At a fee, of course.”

  “Of course.” Megan squinted her eyes at him, trying to indicate he wasn’t actually being very helpful. “What’s a junket? I thought that was what film stars did to promote their movies, like a press junket.”

  “Ms. Malone,” Bourke said, sternly, “I’m not about to tell you everything you need to know to enter a life of crime. If you’re only asking so you can sort out what Dr. Darr has been up to, the general idea of it should be enough, and I’ll remind you this is my investigation, not yours.”

  “Well, yeah, but he’s my—” “Friend” overstated the relationship, but she’d stuck her neck out a long way for an acquaintance. “I just want to know what happened,” she muttered. “So ‘junket’ has to do with gambling? Because of the casino chips? Gambling is legal in Ireland, right?”

  Pieces were starting to fall into place, as satisfying as putting a puzzle together, or solving a crossword, except she couldn’t quite see the picture yet. Or the theme, if she wanted to keep with the crossword metaphor.

  “It is,” Bourke replied warily. “What are you up to, Megan?”

  “You know, you just called me ‘Ms. Malone’ twice in a row when you were reprimanding me, and now that you’re trying to figure out what I’m doing, you went with ‘Megan,’ probably because people respond well to hearing their names. Try a more subtle tact next time, maybe, huh? I don’t know what I’m up to, but if I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

  Bourke, dryly, said, “Lovely,” and looked beyond her at the station. “I’d best be getting back to it.”

  “Of course.” They both stepped to their rights, the smooth creation of distance reminding Megan of Regency dances in movies. It evidently reminded Detective Bourke of the same thing, because he offered a small, precise bow that Megan answered with a curtsy her jeans shorts and T-shirt didn’t do justice to. They went their separate ways, both smiling, and with Megan considering just who she could ask questions of, to find both Liz Darr and Martin Rafferty’s killers.

  Instead, a minute later, she got a phone call from an unknown number, which, when she answered it, proved to be Gareth McGrath. Megan tried to put him into her contacts while talking and ended up hanging up on him.

  Embarrassed, she added him and waited an extra few seconds to make sure he’d realized they’d lost connection before calling back. He didn’t give her time for an apology, only said what he’d been trying to say when she hung up, which was a weary, “Am I understanding correctly that last night you gave the police evidence of my client dealing drugs without first informing me?”

  “Um. I didn’t think of it that way, but . . . yes?” Megan turned back toward College Green and Dame Street, where she’d be able to catch a bus back home but found a building entrance to lean in so she’d be out of the way of passers-by while talking on the phone.

  “Megan,” McGrath said in tones both fatigued and thunderous, “whose side are you on here?”

  “Elizabeth’s!” Megan surprised herself with the force of her cry. “I mean, Jesus, Gareth, I don’t want Simon to be a drug dealer or a murderer, but I want justice for his wife! I want to know why a man with everything would deal drugs, and I want to know why someone would murder a food critic and an entrepreneur, and I want to know how they’re connected! I want to know where Cíara O’Donnell is, and why Liz Darr is posting vlogs from beyond the grave, and what I’m supposed to do with the three stray dogs living in my apartment!”

  “Em, what dogs?”

  Megan sagged against the building’s glass door and sighed. “Nothing. Never mind about the dogs. So Simon was dealing drugs? That’s what I thought the paperwork meant, but I’m not exactly a forensic detective, or whoever it is who figures out that kind of thing.”

  “Your police detective came in with proof of it and he confessed, having been caught red-handed,” Gareth said. “He swears to God he didn’t kill his wife, though.”

  “Who was he dealing to? Did you believe him?”

  “That kind of man? Desperate housewives and stupid students. He’s not the type to get himself in deeper with gangs or major drug runners. He deals prescription drugs, not the hard shite.”

  “Prescription drugs are hard enough. Aren’t something like over half of all drug deaths from prescription drugs, not—” Megan’s vernacular failed her. “Not street drugs? Like, illegal ones. You know what I mean. What’s his source here? He wasn’t employed in Ireland, right? Even if he was, I don’t think the drug companies here go around handing out bucket-loads of samples like they do in the States, do they? And what about that quiet period in the paperwork, where Liz thought whatever he was in to had ended? Why did he start up again?”

  Gareth’s chuckle broke up over the phone connection. “Rabbie says you drive rich people around in fancy cars. I think you missed your calling. You’ve got a detective’s instinct for asking the right questions.”

  “Well, what are the answers? He can’t just be shipping stuff in from the States, can he?” Megan thought guiltily of the large bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin she had brought back from America the last time she’d visited, after discovering the latter, especially, couldn’t be bought in packs of more than twenty-four in Ireland. But aspiri
n didn’t fall under the same drug class as opioids or stimulants, and she’d still expected some hypervigilant TSA agent to confiscate it all. “He’s got to have a local source. What hospitals did he say he’s been interviewing at. . . ?”

  “Whose side are you on?” McGrath asked again. “These are questions for the gardaí to ask, Megan, not you.”

  “I know that, and I’m sure they will. It’s just that they won’t tell me, and I want to know.”

  “It’ll all get written up in the Independent,” McGrath said. “When it’s all done and over with. You’ll get your answers then.”

  “Have you no God-given curiosity, man?”

  “It’s my job to only be as curious as absolutely necessary and no more. And you’ve made me more curious than I like, so you and Rabbie will owe me for this.”

  “You’re getting paid,” Megan retorted. “We won’t owe you anything.”

  “Just keep your nose out of Dr. Darr’s business,” Gareth replied sourly. “I’ve got enough of a job already, thanks to you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Niamh would be onstage by now and hadn’t called to enlighten Megan on the topic of where theatrical types got illicit drugs. “Actors,” Megan said aloud to the building, in a tone that indicated their lack of reliability, then laughed. Mama Dog wasn’t even there and she was still talking to herself. Maybe she needed a dog after all. Or maybe she didn’t, she told herself firmly. Maybe she needed a real, live human person around to talk to, although with the amount of time she’d spent on the phone the past few days, Megan didn’t really think she suffered badly from a lack of people to talk to.

  She pulled earphones out of her pocket—she had long since decided she would never buy anything that didn’t have large enough pockets to carry her credit cards, phone, keys, and earbuds—and marched up to Dame Street to the beat of an Irish pop duo called Jedward. They were twins and she’d been seated next to one of them—she had no idea which—on a short-hop flight, during which he’d scrolled through a truly astonishing number of selfies on his phone and sung along to music he had on his headset. He’d had far too much cologne but a rather nice voice, and Megan had looked up their stuff afterward. They weren’t bad, and most pop music was good to walk to anyway, so she bopped along happily enough until she got to a bus stop, where the timetable sign informed her the bus wouldn’t arrive for another twelve minutes.