Dead in Dublin

by Catie Murphy

  She could be halfway home by then, walking, and she always preferred to keep moving than to wait for a bus that, like Godot, might never come.

  She turned Jedward off, though, and pulled up Liz’s website instead, listening to all three of the vlogs again, hoping to isolate the music enough to recognize the recording of “Molly Malone.” Nothing sounded familiar as she stopped into the George’s Street Arcade, a Victorian construction purpose-built as a shopping centre a hundred and fifty years before, and got a frozen yogurt from a shop at its far end. The Arcade was probably her favourite shopping mall in Dublin, even though she couldn’t get much practical there, not unless she wanted to buy old books, wigs, hats, or retro-style clothes, which she loved but could never convince herself to wear casually.

  Someone joined in singing “Molly Malone” as she worked her way back through the Arcade’s narrow halls, toward George’s Street, and realized she’d been whistling the tune the whole time she’d been shopping. She waved at her accompanist, went back out into the sunshine, and got on the bus when it caught up with her halfway up Camden Street—literally halfway home, just as she’d expected.

  The bus was sweltering—air conditioning was not a thing in Irish vehicles—and she was grateful to disembark near her apartment, where she went upstairs and searched on “Elizabeth Liz Darr Molly Malone” while tickling puppy tummies. The babies were getting visibly stronger by the hour, although according to the internet, they wouldn’t even have opened their eyes by the time somebody from a rescue centre was able to pick them up. A tragic little pang shot through Megan’s belly at the thought and she shut it down fiercely.

  There were an absurd number of hits on the combination of Liz and Molly Malone. Most of them were magazine interviews, but the one from the RTÉ Lifestyle Show had a video. Megan lay on her tummy, put a puppy on each hand, and hit play on the computer’s touchscreen with a wet puppy nose.

  It didn’t work. She giggled and stretched her neck until she touched it with her own nose. It started to play and she backed up again, shaking her head to uncross her eyes.

  Liz Darr, dressed in a Peter Pan–collared blue dress with a retro cut, sat across the couch from a well-dressed blonde and a balding RTÉ presenter, both of whom Megan had seen before in various news clips and neither of whose name she knew. The first few minutes were the usual sort of inanities talk shows generally opened with: introducing and lauding their guest, a dumb joke that everyone laughed a little too hard at, and praise from the guest for the hosts and the area in general. Then they got down to the really incisive, hard-hitting questions, like, “What brought you to Ireland?” and “Have you a favourite town?” which Liz answered with grace and obvious pleasure. Megan whispered, “When are they gonna get to Molly?” to the puppies, who had fallen asleep on her hands and had no opinion on or interest in the matter.

  They got to Molly near the end of the ten-minute segment, with the blonde host saying, “Now, Liz, I understand you sing, and that you’ve a favourite song about Ireland?”

  For all that Megan knew the whole thing was planned, she still admired Liz’s laughing, “Oh, no. I mean, yes, I do, but no!” before, after a few seconds of persuasion, she put her shoulders back and sang the opening verse of “Molly Malone” quite beautifully.

  An actual chill raised hairs on Megan’s nape and sluiced cold ripples down her spine. Liz’s RTÉ performance was unquestionably the same rendition of the song used in the posthumous vlogs.

  Megan sat up carefully and very gently put the puppies back in their bed with Mama, then pulled the laptop onto her crossed legs and hunched over it, listening to Liz’s lovely voice sing what had become her dirge. She backed it up when the song ended, listening again, trying to figure out if there was anything in it—a changed word, a dropped verse—that might indicate why someone had laid the song, this version of the song, over a dead woman’s video blogs. No matter how many times she listened, she ended up shaking her head, unable to hear anything amiss.

  “Put a pin in it,” she said aloud, for once actually giving herself advice she wanted to listen to, rather than just filling the quiet air. She mimed doing that very thing, sticking a pin in the thought, and got up to stretch, walk around the flat, and think.

  Mama Dog sighed heartily at her antics and Megan waggled a finger at her. “Moving helps me think. You know who I need to talk to? Noel. I wonder if Fionn’s got his number.” She texted Fionn, who responded a couple of minutes later with the nightclub manager’s mobile number and a warning that he tended to sleep until four in the afternoon. Megan wrote it is 4 in the afternoon back to her and called him.

  His voice mail said, “This is Noel Duffy and I will never, ever check my voice mail. Please send a text” and ended. Megan muttered, “Fair enough,” and sent a text asking if she could meet up with him.

  He wrote back immediately with sure, im at the club and Megan promised to be there within half an hour. She took Mama for a quick walk, got her home again, and on the way out the door got a photo text from Cillian, showing him sitting on the edge of a hospital bed with his sister and her itty-bitty baby. The two adults were smiling like tired fools. The baby had been caught in midyawn, and her mouth was a great, gaping, black hole in her tiny red face. Megan turned back, took a picture of the puppies squirming around on their bellies, and sent it back with does the young lady need a friend to grow up with? She was still chortling over Cillian’s explosive NO!!! when she got to Canan’s and found Noel outside, sitting on the Molly statue’s platform and looking unhappily at the cordoned-off church building. “Noel?”

  He looked around, his gaze landing on her with a vague degree of recognition. They’d met a few times, mostly in the busy restaurant—enough so that Meg could pick his compact frame and fashionably faded brown hair out of a line-up, if she had to. She wasn’t sure he could do the same, though he stood and offered his hand with a polite, “Howza, Meg, what’s the story.”

  “Hey, Noel. They still won’t let you in, huh?”

  “No idea when they will, either.” Noel sat on the statue’s pedestal again, shoulders hunched with tension beneath a snugly fitted pink dress shirt. He wore extremely well-fitted dress slacks in dark grey, too—Megan wouldn’t have minded if he’d remained standing—and his shiny leather shoes looked like they cost a month’s take-home pay. “Turns out the guards can close off a crime scene for up to six days. Who feckin knew? They say it probably won’t be that long, but they’re keeping it closed until tomorrow, at least.”

  “Fionn’s in bits.” Megan sat beside Noel, looking up at the church, too. “She said all the numbers she’d seen were great, but now they’re not. Do you think Martin kept two sets of books?”

  Noel gave a sharp, ugly laugh. “If he didn’t, he’s the only honest club owner I’ve ever known. Yeh, of course he did. I’d make the deposits, yeh? Martin was in every night to count down the tills, and I’d make the deposits. And I can tell yis, I was putting more money into the bank than the club took in. I’ve worked in a club since I was eighteen, like. I can tell how much a nightly take ought to be, just from seeing how many people are in and out. The club here, it does good business, but not that good.” His glance slid toward her cautiously and away again. “’Course, I could be wrong.”

  “I’m not a guard,” Megan said. “It’s no business of mine what you knew or didn’t know. I just wonder how a guy like that—successful businessman, educated in Canada, all of that—gets involved in money laundering. There’ve been a lot of laudatory media articles about him, you know? None of them say he grew up in trouble, and all of Ireland is kind of a small town, in its way. If he’d run with the wrong crowd as a kid, there’d be rumours about his success now, wouldn’t there?”

  “‘Run with the wrong crowd.’ You’re sure a Yank, so you are.”

  Megan laughed. “God, I’m not, though. It’s like—” She laughed again. “To everybody outside of the States, yeah, we’re all Yanks. But to Americans, Yankees are Northerners. N
ortheasterners, from the New England colonies, the Unionists in the Civil War.” She laughed again, this time at Noel’s baffled expression. “I’m from Texas. Calling me a Yank, to my ears, is like calling a Dublin-born lad like yourself a Rebel,” which, in Irish parlance, meant from County Cork. Dismay, nearly offense, flew across Noel’s face, and Megan laughed a third time. “Now you get it. But yes,” she finally agreed. “Yeah, I’m a Yank, and I don’t even know what the Irish version of ‘ran with the wrong crowd’ would be.”

  “‘Fell in with the wrong lot,’” Noel offered. “And you’re right, Martin didn’t. He might not have gotten into this fix if he had. There’s loads of good in finding local investors, all the community-building like, but the reason people use banks is, they’re regulated thugs. Martin . . . look, I’d say he didn’t know who he was getting in bed with until it was too late.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s worth my life to answer that.”

  Surprise shot through Megan, making her hands cold despite the afternoon’s warmth. She wet her lips, trying to figure out how to respond, then, cautiously, said, “So I’m guessing you didn’t, and won’t, tell the guards any of this.” Noel’s gaze shifted away and didn’t return to Megan’s face. She was quiet a moment before dropping her voice to make a guess. “The guards will be looking in to money laundering. They’ve reason to. But I know that if a few quid of those oversized deposits didn’t make it into the club’s bank account, that’s not any business of mine.”

  Noel’s shoulders relaxed incrementally.

  Megan turned a thoughtful gaze on the old church building, with its handsome, vaulted entry at the side and the more usual, broad wooden doors at the front. A second building of the same stone and style sat beyond it, presumably the rectory, and a parking lot too small for the size of the place abutted the restaurant next door. “I never thought about the risks of borrowing from individuals or local investors instead of banks, at least, not beyond, like, risking pissing your folks off for not paying them back on a car loan or something. That’s, um, enlightening. Thanks for the insight, which I totally came up with on my own.”

  A breath of humor escaped Noel’s lips and he produced half a smile, aimed at the church. “Sure you did so. Somebody needed to know,” he said very quietly. “But I couldn’t be telling the guards. Not just because a few quid might have gone missing. There are other things.”

  Megan nodded. “Like I said, it’s no business of mine. But if you ever want to talk to somebody who’s a total outsider and knows nothing of the details, you’ve got my number, and . . . yeah. No business of mine.” She stood, then hesitated. “I’ve got what’s probably one more stupid question.” Noel flickered an eyebrow, invitation to continue, and she said, “Did—do—drugs get sold in the club? Street drugs, or illegal prescription drugs?”

  “We’ve got security cameras everywhere to make sure that doesn’t happen.” The line sounded sharp, rehearsed. Noel slid another glance at her, then turned his attention elsewhere, as if, by not looking at her, what he said next actually came from someone else. “There might be a few blind spots, if you know where to stand.”

  “Did you ever see Simon Darr in any of those blind spots?”

  Noel looked straight at her. “You’ll never find a bit of footage with Simon Darr at the club.”

  Megan whispered, “Right,” and then, almost as quietly, “Thanks, Noel,” as she left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  She ended up back at the Library Bar, only a five-minute walk away, whirling unconnected bits of information around in her mind like a tornado looking for somewhere to touch down. The bemused bartender there gave her the fizzy drink she ordered, and a pen and several napkins to write on, asking, “Don’t you have a phone to take notes on?” as she did so.

  “Ah, yeah, but I’m old and writing things down is faster than thumb-typing them out.” Megan gave the woman an absent smile and took her drink and her napkins to a table, where she ignored the drink in favor of scribbling down what she knew.

  Simon’s gambling problems had led—she suspected—to selling drugs to cover his debts. He’d given it up for a while, but had begun again when he’d come to Ireland, for reasons she still didn’t know. Detective Bourke probably did by now, but Megan could just imagine his face—or tone of voice—if she called up and asked. And Noel had implied that Simon had sold drugs in the St. Andrew’s nightclub, but that no one would ever prove it.

  On top of that, he’d needed somewhere to launder his drug money . . . and Martin Rafferty, it appeared, had been eyeball-deep in money laundering through Fionnuala’s restaurant. They might have crossed paths, but when or where Megan had no idea. And how Liz, instead of Simon, had ended up dead because of it—Megan shook her head, took a sip of her soda, and blinked away tears as intense carbonation went up her nose. She had to be missing something. Something to do with Molly Malone, as unlikely as that seemed.

  After another nose-burning sip of soda, Megan put her headphones back on and listened to Liz’s RTÉ interview again, all the while moving around napkins that said Liz and Simon and Martin or had drug and money laundering notes on them. Liz’s tuneful “Molly Malone” ended and the woman host pressed her about what, particularly, appealed to her about that song.

  “There are so many layers to it,” Liz Darr explained. “To begin with, it’s simply about a working woman, someone who’s up at dawn every day to do her job, and I think we can all relate to that. But there’s more to it than that, to me. Poor Molly dies of a fever—”

  “ ‘And no one could save her,’ ” sang the host, as well as Liz herself had done, and Liz’s laughter bubbled in Megan’s ears for a moment.

  “Right. And, you know, to me, there’s a terrible reflection of the world we’re still living in, when I hear that. Healthcare, especially healthcare for women, is so precarious, so underserved, in so much of the world, and to hear a centuries-old song speaking to that same problem—I mean, I know how far we’ve come in that time, don’t get me wrong, but it still resonates for me. And then you add into it the question of Molly’s . . . other job, shall we say? The oldest profession, one that women today are still driven to in order to make ends meet, or to escape abusive relationships . . . I don’t know. To me, Molly’s story is a story of the female condition, and what we do to get by in the world. And wow, that really kind of brought the whole thing down, didn’t it? Invite me on to talk about the Irish tour and a new book and you get a quick dissertation on domestic abuse. . . .”

  “Well, in fact, it makes the transition to our next segment very nice, as next up I have Janet Ní Shuilleabháin from Women’s Aid, and we’ll be talking about how women—and men—do escape those scenarios. But first, Liz Darr, internationally renowned food critic and author, thank you for your time!”

  Liz’s “My pleasure” was drowned beneath audience applause, but Megan almost didn’t hear it anyway. She’d written down an astonished DV? Domestic violence beside Simon’s name and turned off her headset to stare in silence at the pieces of paper she had before her.

  Paul Bourke would never tell her if she called up to ask whether Elizabeth Darr’s autopsy report had shown any signs of domestic violence. Liz’s parents might, but Megan couldn’t imagine calling to ask such a question. She couldn’t really imagine asking it at all, but the link felt real somehow. Maybe that was the notorious gut instinct police officers in film and TV were always counting on, although Megan noticed someone usually told them they needed facts to back up their guts with.

  She folded her napkins into a pocket, finished her soda—its carbonation had faded some and didn’t render her teary-eyed with bubbles—and left the bar to walk over to the Shelbourne Hotel.

  The Dempseys were still in their room. Megan was grateful that they invited her up when she called from the front desk. Even so, she hung back, not coming farther than the end of the hall beside the bathroom, when she entered. Mrs. Dempsey, jaw set tightly, said, “What is it?”


  “I have an awful question to ask,” Megan said quietly. “I’m trying to understand—to find out—what happened to Liz—”

  “We know what you’re trying to do.” The words, although sharp, didn’t feel cruel; they only felt like a grieving parent struggling to push through the worst days of her life as functionally as possible. “Just ask.”

  “Did Liz’s autopsy report show any signs of domestic abuse? New or old?”

  Mr. Dempsey said, “Jesus” in a grief-torn voice. His wife sat down hard on the bed, fists clenched in the covers, as if trying to keep herself from falling off the face of the world. It took several seconds before she could answer—Peter didn’t even try to—and when she did, it was just with the shake of her head. Megan nodded, but Mrs. Dempsey gathered herself to speak and finally managed, “No. No, they asked about two accidents, and now that you’re asking, I understand why. She fell off a horse a few years ago and broke her upper arm, but Simon was actually filming her at the time, so he clearly wasn’t at fault. And she tripped on the hem of a long dress, going upstairs, a while ago, and broke her . . .” She touched her upper lip, just below the nose.

  “The maxilla,” her husband said roughly. “It’s called the maxilla. That was at a friend’s wedding. She ended up being a bridesmaid in a borrowed dress and an ice pack, but she refused to go to the hospital until they were married. There are pictures of her with her entire face swollen up.” He laughed, though it fell apart into tears. “Those are the only two bones she’s broken as an adult. She fell out of a tree when she was seven and broke her arm then, too, but . . .” He shook his head. “Why?”