Dead in Dublin

by Catie Murphy

  A thin, exhausted voice whimpered, “Hello?” and Megan ran into the freezer.

  Cíara O’Donnell sat in a ball, only her feet and bum on the frozen floor, with her arms wrapped around her legs and her long, bouncy hair loose so it fell over her shoulders as a shield against the cold. She could barely lift her head as Megan fell to her knees beside her, though she let out a cry of pained relief as Megan’s warm arms went around her. The girl wore shorts, sandals, and a thin, strappy cotton top, the worst outfit possible to be wearing in such cold. “Come on,” Megan whispered. “Come on, I know it’s impossible, but come on, honey. You have to get up. We have to get you out of here.”

  Cíara’s nod was barely a tremble against Megan’s shoulder, and it was Megan’s strength alone that got Cíara to her feet. Not upright: the girl couldn’t make herself unhunch, and Megan didn’t try to force it. She hunched with Cíara instead, helping her to the door, and kicked it shut behind them so it wouldn’t freeze the whole restaurant. Cíara was too cold to cry and made awful little mewling sounds instead, a mingle of pain and relief and fear and cold. Megan kept whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” as she guided Cíara into the restaurant, where there was carpet, at least, to sit on. Cíara’s legs gave out as soon as they left the kitchen.

  Megan went down with her, literally wrapping her legs around Cíara to offer some body warmth while she stripped off her own shirt to drape it over Cíara’s shoulders.

  “I’m going to call the hospital and the guards,” she said, getting out her phone. “Then I’ll lie down with you and hold you, to help you start warming up again. You know about hypothermia?” Cíara gave another shuddering nod, her whole body already starting to shiver, great, twitching shivers that came from her core out. Megan bit back tears. It was an amazingly good sign, because when people couldn’t shiver at all, they were truly dangerously cold.

  She dialed the emergency number, her voice sharp with relief as someone answered and she could say, “Hi, I’m at the old Sea and Sky restaurant in Bray with a young woman suffering from hypothermia. She’s been locked in a freezer for a while, I don’t know how long.”

  Her gaze went to Cíara, seeing if the girl could provide an answer, but Cíara’s head was down again and she’d fallen over sideways on the floor, curled into the tightest foetal position possible as she convulsed with shivers. Megan said, “The front door is steel-bolted. Please get an ambulance here as quickly as you can,” and hung up to call Paul Bourke.

  He’d just picked up with a brisk, “Ms. Malone?” when a steel bar smashed across Megan’s shoulders and threw her on top of Cíara’s half-frozen body.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Cíara grunted with pain, or maybe relief, at Megan’s warm body making a blanket on top of her. Megan didn’t think she herself had cried out, although all the air seemed to be gone from her lungs and it might have made a pained sound as it left. Red and black filled her vision, bursts of agony that left no room for trying to make sense of anything. She tried to inhale and found she could. It cleared her sight and her mind and, as if it took unusual insight to reach the conclusion, she realized if someone had hit her, it seemed very likely they would try to hit her again.

  In the movies, she would have done some kind of amazing flip that got her back on her feet and in fighting condition. Even in the moment, she could almost see the cinematic thrill of it all, its grace and power and confidence. It would have been great, but what Megan really did was roll over on poor Cíara like the girl was just a lumpy part of the floor.

  She was still on top of her, in fact, when she drew up her legs and snapped them out again at a half-seen opponent, catching a glancing blow on the thigh and disrupting the hammering blow with a—a crowbar, with Megan’s own crowbar—that was swinging down. The crowbar slammed into the floor a few inches from Cíara’s head. Cíara screamed, trying to scramble out from underneath Megan, away from their assailant. Megan rolled forward, toward their attacker, and saw, in the corner of her vision, the crowbar rise again. She snatched at it, catching it with only her fingertips, but like the kick, it was enough to throw off the assailant, and gave both Cíara and Megan a precious heartbeat of time.

  Megan didn’t know, honestly, what Cíara did with it. She jumped to her own feet, adrenaline burning away the worst of the pain across her shoulders, throwing the world around her into sharp enough focus that she could finally see what was going on.

  Edna O’Donnell, flush-faced and furious, stood just out of arm’s reach with the crowbar held low, like a baseball bat or, Megan thought, a sword she knew how to use. The older woman snarled, “Interfering cow!” and ran forward, swinging the crowbar in an upward arc. Megan took one step back at the last possible second, stuck out her foot, and tripped the older woman, who lost her grip on the crowbar as her hands splayed to catch herself. She hit the floor hard, her teeth cracking together, and Megan sat on her butt, seized her hands, and twisted them into the small of her back.

  Edna, screaming with both pain and outrage, let loose a string of invective that Megan’s old Army squad would have appreciated for creativity and length, while Megan looked around for something to tie up the other woman with. A sinking feeling in her belly started to say it would have to be Megan’s own bra until a thought struck her and she twisted far enough around to look at Edna’s feet.

  She was still wearing the sturdy nurse’s shoes, with their thick, heavy laces. Megan changed her weight on Edna’s back until she could push off a shoe with one foot, then planted her knee between Edna’s shoulders while she unlaced it. The furious older woman tried with all her strength to push up beneath Megan, or reach back and scratch her, and largely ended up beating her fists on the floor like an enraged toddler. Megan leaned harder into her spine until she got the lace loose, and then hog-tied the other woman with a certain degree of satisfied ruthlessness.

  Cíara had crawled halfway behind the cashier’s counter and lay shivering against its cool wood. Megan, buzzing with energy, left Edna and went to put herself between Cíara and the counter, wrapping the girl in as much warmth as she could. Cíara, stuttering with cold, whispered, “I never saw anybody take down my mam like that.”

  Megan tightened her embrace around the younger woman. “Tell me what happened.”

  “She’s m-mea-mean,” Cíara whispered. “Grew up mean. She used to—she’d have been a fighter, a boxer, if they’d have let her, like. But they wouldn’t, back then. So she’d hit us when she got mad, ‘cause she didn’t have anywhere else to send the mad. And she got fiercer and fiercer when the restaurant started doing badly, and she’d tell Da he’d be worth more to her dead and don’t think she didn’t know how to do it.”

  “You shut up!” Edna shrieked. “You shut up, you little slut!”

  Cíara turned her face against Megan’s shoulder, shivering harder now. “She showed me the poison ages ago, to scare me into behaving right. Said she’d kill Da with it and there was nothing I could do. She told me how it’d take hours and she’d be nowhere near him when he died, so they’d never think it was herself, and then I’d have her alone to answer to. So when Liz died—when Liz died—” She began crying, tears hot against Megan’s skin and probably scalding against her own. Meg finally heard ambulance sirens, and a little relief dripped through her.

  “That cow ruined us!” Mrs. O’Donnell screeched. “She deserved to die and I’m only sorry I wasn’t there to see it! But you don’t know. You don’t know.” Her rage turned to broken sobs inside a breath, short, ugly sounds that Megan thought were real, and born of fear. “You don’t know what I did to keep that place afloat, how hard I worked.”

  “Liz w-was my friend. I w-went to t-t-talk to her after the restaurant closed, I hoped she would maybe change her review, like. I thought it might help us open again. She wanted to help. She didn’t mean for it to close. We went—” Ciara shivered from her bones out and fell into tired whimpers that punctuated her explanation. “We went around together a few times, whe
n she wasn’t busy, just to talk about what we could do to help Sea and Sky reopen, or get a new start. She didn’t want to tell her husband. She said they had troubles of their own and I didn’t need to come into it, and then she died and I didn’t know what to do. I knew it was Mam, because of what she’d showed me. I knew it, but I—” Cíara whispered. “I was too s-scared to tell the police. I’m sorry. I hoped if I left a clue someone would figure it out. And you did, you—but Mam figured it out, too. She threw me in there. She said a day in the cold would teach me not to snitch.”

  “I’m surprised it didn’t kill you,” Megan said, probably too honestly. The sirens had stopped, voices audible outside.

  Cíara gave a wet, hiccuping laugh. “She had to turn it on this morning to get it cold. If it had been all the way cold when I went in . . .” She gave up trying to talk and just shivered against Megan.

  “What did you do?” Megan lifted her voice a little, speaking to Edna again. “How much money did you clean for your investors? For Cora Kelly, or her uncle Micheál?”

  Terror spiked through Edna’s tears and she shook her head violently. “I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you don’t.” Megan closed her eyes and lowered her head over Cíara’s. Someone outdoors had bolt cutters. She heard the harsh clang and snap of the steel door opening and finally relaxed. “Tell it to the guards.”

  An angry sneer came into Edna’s voice. “There’s nothing to tell, I’ll tell them—”

  “You’ve told us loads already,” said Paul Bourke from the door. All three of the women, even Cíara, looked toward his slim frame silhouetted by the evening sunlight, and he raised his phone, which had an open connection on it. Megan gave a startled, shuddering laugh and looked for her own phone, which lay faceup under a table. She’d forgotten about it, but it had evidently survived the fall when she’d been hit.

  Suddenly there were paramedics and police officers in the room, swooping in to take Cíara from Megan’s embrace, surrounding Edna, examining the broken window and spilling through the restaurant to see, Megan supposed, what damage she had done.

  Detective Bourke stopped in front of her, a hand extended to help her up. Megan took it, letting him pull her to her feet. He looked her up and down, eyebrows rising quizzically. Megan looked down at herself, saw she wore only a bra and jeans shorts, and discovered she was too tired to blush. “I gave Cíara my shirt.”

  “The very shirt off your back. We can ask little more of each other.” Bourke slid his own suit jacket off and offered it to Megan, who accepted it gratefully. As she shifted her shoulders, putting it on, Bourke hissed and didn’t quite touch her arm, but made a motion like he’d turn her.

  Megan turned, looking over her own shoulder as she did so. Even from the awkward vantage, she saw a swollen, purpling mark that had only just barely failed to break the skin running across her entire upper back. “Ah. Uh. I got hit with a crowbar.” She pulled the jacket on, sighing at its warmth and wincing as the lining brushed the huge bruise across her shoulders.

  “A crowbar.” Bourke’s gaze skipped away from her, found the crowbar and its proximity to the now-handcuffed, still-enraged Edna O’Donnell, and looked back at Megan. “You’ve had quite a day, Ms. Malone. I’m not absolutely sure if I should thank you or arrest you.”

  “Yeah, I know. I figured. I’ll, uh, I’ll pay for the damage I did here.” Megan felt as though her brain was thickening, slowing down as the adrenaline burned off. “It’d be nice to not get arrested. What are you doing here?”

  “Your somewhat scattered message regarding Cora Kelly offered enough detail for a detective to deduce that he might be needed in Bray,” Bourke said a little dryly. “Ms. Malone, did it occur to you to contact the Bray gardaí?”

  Megan frowned up at him, feeling increasingly dim. “No. No, I didn’t have any proof, and I thought if Cíara was in here, if she’d been poisoned, someone needed to get to her right away. I didn’t know about the freezer.” She shuddered suddenly, cold rushing over her. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not half as cold as Cíara, but I was trying to keep her warm and the excitement is wearing off. I’m . . . you heard Edna confess? On the phone?”

  Bourke sighed explosively, watching a couple of other guards escort Mrs. O’Donnell off the premises. “I did,” he said when she was gone. “I don’t think you intended for that to happen, but I thank you for it anyway. And I shouldn’t tell you this, but the money-laundering tip played out very nicely. I arrested Martin Rafferty’s killer while you were leaving that peculiar message. He was one of the nightclub’s bouncers, a man with known low-level gang connections.”

  Megan said, “Oh my God” faintly. “The big bald guy? Bodybuilder?” At Bourke’s askance look, she said, “I talked to him. He seemed nice.” She shivered again and Bourke frowned.

  “Will you come this way with me, Ms. Malone?” Again, he didn’t quite touch her but, with a gesture, encouraged her into motion. After her first wobbly steps, he offered his arm, and Megan took it gratefully. Her entire body felt thick, nothing responding as well as it should. “I have the feeling that right now you might know more about the connections between Liz and Martin’s deaths than I do,” Bourke said as they crossed the threshold into the evening sunshine. Its warmth melted right into Megan and she sighed, eyes closed, as Bourke guided her. “Or might suspect more, at least. I don’t want you to get your hopes up, though, Ms. Malone. You’re not going to have single-handedly broken down a money-laundering ring. Martin Rafferty was definitely involved in one, but even if Mrs. O’Donnell was, neither she nor our bodybuilding friend are going to give us any additional information. They’re far more afraid of the gangs than the guards.”

  “I don’t think . . .” Megan sat where Bourke directed her to, no longer really able to focus on anything except trying to talk to him. “This restaurant never did very well, according to the reviews and papers, but it stayed afloat until Liz’s review. I think Mrs. O’Donnell killed her partly because she’s a hateful person but also because she’d been laundering money for somebody for a long time. Maybe Cora Kelly.”

  “Who,” Bourke said, mystified, “is Cora Kelly?”

  “I think she’s Micheál Hayes’s niece. Uncle Rabbie told me,” Megan said to Bourke’s astonished expression. “I don’t know if you can even prove it, or if they’re working together in any way, because she left Ireland as a toddler and I didn’t have enough time to do real research, to try to link them. . . but that would be your job anyway, wouldn’t it?”

  Her back hurt so much now she could hardly breathe, and for a moment she just focused on Bourke’s shirt buttons. Silvery-white, on a light pink shirt. She’d always heard redheads weren’t supposed to wear pink, but also thought people should wear whatever they wanted. She raised her eyes to study the contrast of his shirt and his hair in the evening sunlight and thought, overall, it was a rather nice combination. And the pink looked good with his pale skin. His expression grew increasingly quizzical as she stared blankly at him, and finally, she remembered she was spelling out her theories for him.

  “Right. Anyway. I found old articles mentioning Micheál Hayes had invested in Canan’s, or at least in Club Heaven, and that Cora Kelly was an investor in Sky and Sea. It’s the only link I’ve got between them besides Rabbie’s gossip, but Rabbie’s gossip . . .” She made an explanatory gesture, and Bourke chuckled.

  “Robert Lynch’s gossip is more reliable than most people’s sworn testimony. It’s mad that you’re his cousin.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the truck driver sometime.” Bourke twitched his eyebrows in a silent promise that he would as Megan took a breath that sent searing pain across her shoulders. Dizzy, she planted her hands firmly on either side of her hips and focused on her deductions. “So his gossip about Micheál’s niece Cora fit the right age for Cora Kelly, and they’re both investors in companies that look like they’ve been money laundering. I don’t even know—I think Simon’s drug running is
incidental. I don’t think he was washing money through Canan’s or anything. He just got caught, because Edna O’Donnell was furious at losing her business and killed Liz for it.”

  “And Martin Rafferty?”

  Megan sighed, then wished she hadn’t. Her back felt hot everywhere and a deep breath sent chills through her so violently that she shuddered. “There was too much money going through Canan’s, and through Club Heaven. I don’t know how Martin got mixed up laundering, except maybe by taking investment money from the wrong people.” She looked up at Bourke, who swam a little in her pain-edged vision. “That’s how it happens, isn’t it? You owe somebody, or you’re grateful, so you do a little favor, and then another one, and then you’re in so deep you can’t get out. I think Martin got in too deep, and when Canan’s and the club closed down because of Liz’s death, their laundering scheme dried up and he couldn’t pay, so they killed him.”

  “Killing people,” Bourke said thoughtfully, “is a bad way to get the money they owe you.”

  “Not if you can get insurance paid out. And not if what you really want to do is scare other people into not falling behind on their payments, or . . . whatever.” Megan swayed, and Bourke nodded at someone behind her. They crouched and said, “Ms. Malone? I think we should take you to the hospital.”

  Only then did she realize she’d sat on an ambulance’s back bumper. She gave Bourke a vaguely accusatory look that he answered with a brief shrug. “You don’t look so well, Ms. Malone.”

  “Honestly, I don’t feel so great either. But I can’t stay overnight. I have puppies. Can I . . . Where’s my phone?” To Megan’s surprise, Bourke produced it. She took it like it was a talisman and gave him the sternest look she had at her disposal, which wasn’t, she feared, very intimidating. “I’ll go get checked out and make sure nothing’s broken, but I’m calling somebody to come pick me up and take me home after that.”