Inder still enjoyed mathematics. He also read about human psychology a great deal, now seeing humans as fascinating systems, worthy of study. He had been called to the building known as ‘the Ark’ due to what they'd found in the basement. Within twenty minutes, Inder had diagnosed what the four individuals in question had been attempting, and why it wouldn't have worked. Honestly, trying to tap directly into a bank’s fibreoptic cabling was so 2015. He'd then spent another twenty minutes explaining it to Mick, who explained it to everyone else. Inder didn't like basements and confined spaces, so he had come up to the fifth floor to get some space. He enjoyed height. He liked the clean perspective it gave to life.
Standing at the window, with his head pressed pleasingly against the cold glass, it afforded him a fine view of the crowd below. It was intoxicating, watching it grow and swell. He had quickly diagnosed what was going to happen, but the sequence of events was still fascinating. Seven-eighths of the building was surrounded by linked metal fencing, and behind that, Gardaí in high-vis jackets had been placed at six-foot intervals to prevent anyone from jumping over. The one-eighth of the octagon that was unfenced was covered by a line of Gardaí in riot gear. It had been left open to allow for police vehicles to enter and exit the cordon. Around that was where the majority of the protesters had gathered. This was also where the TV cameras were situated, hence drawing more people.
Individually, people can be infuriatingly unpredictable, but collectively they obeyed certain rules. Inder had studied this. As the crowds grew steadily in size, now six or seven deep in places around the barriers and more at the entrance, the Gardaí became understandably more nervous. It was basic economics. As the opportunity cost of rule-breaking decreased – inherent human logic dictating that they can't arrest everybody – the confidence of the crowd increased. Many of them would have been there to voice concerns at what they saw as an injustice; many more would have been there out of concern arising from the initial, unconfirmed reports of the death of a significant man; yet more would have been there just to say they were there – their prime motivation being voyeuristic. Then, there would always be the fourth group. Those that cared little for the cause, and who were enticed by the prospect of trouble. Those who longed for a chance to kick out at a world that they felt had wronged them.
It would be Inder's guess that the three men in their early twenties, who had approached from the south side, had probably been in the third group. Certainly, as they stood at the back surveying the crowd, they appeared to be in good spirits. They seemed to be looking for somebody. It was only a hypothesis, but perhaps a friend had texted/tweeted/WhatsApp-ed them, and they had left the pub to meet that individual. Certainly, they had initially appeared to be in a boisterous mood. Inder had noticed them wave to someone, and then proceed to try and push through the crowd.
This insertion of three robust individuals had resulted in the crowd becoming more tightly packed.
The pressure at the front had thus increased.
The line of Gardaí in riot gear had initially taken a step back, then, as per their training, they had pushed forward in an effort to re-establish their line.
The movement had caused a surge of interest, as many people moved forward to see what had happened. As well as this, the members of group four – those individuals there waiting for the something that was going to happen to actually happen – had also surged towards the potential flashpoint, moving it further towards being the flashpoint.
This secondary surge elicited a counter-surge from the Gardaí to again maintain their line.
During this, a seventeen-year-old girl who was in the second line of protesters lost her balance and went down.
A member of the Gardaí, reacting as a human as opposed to a riot control officer, broke from the line to push forward and check if she was all right.
The throng then surged from the left, and that guard lost his balance and disappeared under the feet of the crowd.
Some protesters tried to assist him, but at least two attempted to put the boot in.
The other Gardaí, having seen their colleague fall, surged forward in an effort to protect him.
And thus, Inder observed, what would later be referred to as ‘the Ark Riot’ had begun.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
"Christ, I need a drink."
Those had been the first words Brigit had spoken since they had made a hasty retreat from the confrontation with Duncan. There’d been some nervous moments when a Garda car with its siren screaming had zoomed by, but it had gone right on past the park towards the city centre.
"The nearest drink would be Meehan's," Paul said, pointing back up the road.
"Fair enough." Brigit nodded, and they'd headed off in that direction once Maggie had finished relieving herself against a lamp post.
Brigit looked down at her. "Is she… safe?"
"Define ‘safe’? Let me put it this way," said Paul. "She's not all there, but the most of her that is, appears to be mostly on our side."
"That's reassuring… and what kind of bitch cocks her leg when she pees?"
“Phil actually Googled that a couple of days ago. Apparently it is a behaviour exhibited in highly dominant bitches.”
"Really? I must give it a go. What's it got to do with Phil, anyway?"
Paul was glad of the distraction of two further Garda cars passing, sirens howling, slicing their way through the evening traffic. He'd not managed to find a way to bring up the whole Hartigan situation. He knew he needed to, but having just got out of Brigit's doghouse, he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. There was a sneaking suspicion he'd been a spectacular idiot to get himself involved, but he didn't want to get it confirmed just yet. He was definitely going to have to tell her, but it was a question of finding the right moment.
"Phil's been helping me out with some stuff," said Paul. "So, what do you reckon about Duncan?"
Brigit sighed. "I don't know, but I can’t see that worm having had the bottle to go toe-to-toe with Bunny McGarry, can you?”
“Nah, he’d be too worried about his hair becoming permanently unplugged.”
"Yeah," said Brigit. "Christ, I have awful taste in men."
There was almost a thunking noise as those words dropped between them. She hadn't meant it as a dig at him, he knew that. Her face immediately reddening only emphasised the point. At a different time they'd have perhaps laughed it off, but now was not that time. They needed one hell of a clear the air chat, but it didn't seem right to focus on their own crap. Bunny, after all, was still missing. That was priority number one. Their personal baggage could be added to the list of things in need of a right moment.
Thankfully, the awkward silence didn't have too much space to fill, as they had reached the doors of Meehan's. It was a large pub, on the more soulless end of the spectrum. Twos and threes of after-work drinkers sat scattered around the tables, with a couple more at the bar. It would normally have been busier, but Paul guessed that the crowds had gone in search of anywhere with a beer garden. Those that were there, were all gawping at the plasma TVs that were conveniently positioned on every other wall.
The screens were showing footage of a line of riot police, shields raised as youths hurled glass bottles and bricks at them.
"Christ," said Paul, "is there football on again?"
The barmaid turned and pointed over her shoulder at the screen. "That is O'Connell Street. What you want?"
The camera angle changed, and they could see the Spire of Dublin monument outside the GPO, aka the needless needle, pointlessly pointing off into space behind the line of cops. It was O'Connell Street all right. In the foreground, a car was on fire and somebody was trying to throw a crowd control barrier through the window of one of those shops that only tourists go into.
"Why do that?" said the barmaid. Her accent was from somewhere Eastern European, but Paul had no ear for those things.
"Mindless violence," said Brigit.
"No," said the barmaid, "Is
a Sports Exchange store three doors away, much better stuff. Who wants shitty leprechaun T-shirt?" she pulled a face of disgust. "You want drink?"
"When did this start?" asked Paul.
"Earlier," said the barmaid turning back to the TV, having decided that Paul and Brigit were more lookers than drinkers. "Priest dead."
"What?" asked Brigit. Something in her tone made Paul turn to look at her. Her face was pale. "What priest?"
"Famous one," she shrugged. "Always on TV."
"Do you… do you mean Father Franks?"
"Yes, dead. Police shoot him."
"Actually…” they all turned to look at the source of the voice. It was a larger lady, sitting at a nearby table, "…the Gardaí have said he died of natural causes."
The woman's expression changed to one of shock as the barmaid blew a raspberry. "Yes, when men with machine guns kick door down, lots of ‘natural causes.’"
"I met him two days ago," said Brigit.
Both of the other women turned to look at her. The customer threw on a patronising smile that didn't do her face any favours. "I don't think so. He's been locked inside that Ark building for weeks."
Paul touched Brigit on the arm and pointed at the empty booth in the corner. "Usual?"
She nodded and walked towards it as Paul turned to the barmaid.
"A large white wine and a pint of Guinness please—"
A soft growl rose from beneath the bar.
"Two pints of Guinness please."
The barmaid leaned over and looked down at Maggie.
"She's a trainee guide dog."
The barmaid shrugged. "I don't care. Dog wants pork scratchings too?"
On the screen behind her, Paul could see a half-dozen mostly shirtless young fellas, their faces half-covered with improvised bandanas, pushing a flaming wheelie bin towards the line of Gardaí.
They sat in that corner booth for the next half an hour, listening to Maggie demolish three packets of pork scratchings, while watching the world unravel on the muted TV above the bar. Brigit brought Paul up to speed on her investigation into the whereabouts of Bunny McGarry. He'd known about the final bit – the revelation of exactly why Bunny had been visiting escorts – but she filled in all the gaps up until that point. Bunny's phone bill, meeting Johnny Canning, the trip to the Ark with Dr Sinha and the rest of it. If nothing else, it proved that Paul had been right about one thing. It would have taken him months to get as far as she had in under a week. She had a flair for this kind of thing.
"You've done really well," said Paul.
"Have I?" said Brigit, "doesn't feel like it. Bunny is still missing, and I've no idea what the hell happened to him. I've not got the foggiest who this Simone woman is, either. Last time Bunny was seen was in O'Hagan's a week ago last Friday, and…"
Brigit stopped, and started irritably flicking at the beer mat in front of her with her fingers.
"Should we go back to the Gardaí?" asked Paul.
"With what? We've no evidence of anything. And besides," said Brigit, pointing up at the screen, "I don't know if you've noticed, but they're a tad busy at the minute."
Paul exhaled loudly.
"And there's something else," said Brigit. "Franks swore blind that he'd not spoken to Bunny in years, but his phone bill showed calls and texts between the two of them."
"Do you think they were up to something?"
"I don't know. The only lead we've really got is that Bunny had some kind of tracker, and…"
Brigit rubbed her knuckles lightly along the front of her teeth and looked down at the table. The memory of this little tic that showed she was deep in thought filled Paul with a wave of emotion. "I'll get some more drinks."
"Diet Coke for me," she said, without looking up. "Driving."
"Right."
Paul looped the top of the snoring Maggie's lead under his chair leg, and went to the bar.
By the time he returned, Brigit was excitedly tapping away on her iPhone.
"They only have Diet Pepsi, so…"
"Whatever," said Brigit, her face now bright with excitement. "Remember what Duncan said? That Bunny’s ‘doo-dah’ had a little green man on the side?"
“Yeah.”
"Well, I started looking at one of them spy shops for trackers. Figuring, y'know, Bunny must have got it from somewhere. Maybe there was a shop in Dublin we could go to—"
"Good idea."
"I've had a way better one."
Brigit held up her phone to show him a picture of a black box the size of a cigarette packet, with a cartoon picture of a little green man on the side of it. "The Sniffer 408 GPS tracker – easy to use, magnetically fixes to any vehicle. I'd bet you this is what Bunny had…"
"OK," said Paul, "what does that tell us?"
"Nothing," said Brigit, excitedly clicking through screens on her phone, "but it might be something."
"Right, so…"
Brigit was talking, but not really to him. He just happened to be there while she talked to herself. "It uses a SIM card… so, a mobile phone number and… NO! It can't be that…"
"What?"
Brigit didn't answer, instead she scrolled down the page she was on. "Features… attaching it to… battery life…"
He watched her eyes widen with excitement as she read. It took all of Paul's self-control not to snatch the phone away from her to see for himself.
"Are you—”
"Shut up," snapped Brigit, then she glanced up quickly. "I mean, just give me a sec…"
She read for about a minute longer and then picked the phone up and started doing something else.
"Have you—”
Brigit held up one finger for silence as she tapped something into her phone. With a final flourish she stabbed at the phone with her thumb, and then placed it carefully on the table in front of her. Then she looked up at Paul with a smile.
"What? For Christ’s sake, woman!"
"All right, don't get your hopes up, but…" she left a pause.
"You really need to stop playing for drama here, or I swear to God—"
"Simone," said Brigit, "isn't a woman, or at least not just a… I mean—"
"What?!"
"’Simone’ is a password. How you activate the tracker is: you text the password you set up to the mobile phone number of the SIM card—"
"Wait, d'you mean?"
"We've been trying to ring Simone. What we should have done is texted the word 'Simone' to that number. Fingers crossed, it takes it a while to sync the first time apparently, but then ‘Simone’, aka the tracker – if that’s what it actually is – will text us back a link to its exact location."
"You're kidding!"
"Like I said, don't get your hopes up." Even as she said it, her face beamed hope back at him. "If only we'd known sooner. Hopefully the thing still has charge and… shit!" Brigit snatched her phone back up, "I need to download the app. It said it normally takes 30 minutes or so to get an initial response, and—"
"What'll we do if we get a location?" asked Paul.
Brigit didn't look up. "I dunno. We could try and get the guards interested, although they frankly don't seem to have given two shits where he is so far."
"Ah here, I was watching that!" Paul looked up to see the plaintive cry had come from a man in a crumpled suit who was propping up the bar.
The picture on the TV screens had changed. It was a place Paul recognised.
"I didn't change channel," responded the barmaid, "is news people."
"What's more important than the riot?" asked Crumpled, in a drunken slur of outrage.
Paul stood up and moved over to the bar. "Turn it up, please."
"We don't put sound on," said the barmaid. "Boss says is bad for ambience."
"Please!" said Paul.
With a shrug, she pointed a remote at the screen.
The volume came up just in time to capture the clamour of camera flashes and shouted questions as Jerome Hartigan and Paschal Maloney, the surviving me
mbers of the Skylark Three, emerged from Hartigan's front door. They were holding a news conference. The lawyer that Paul had seen Hartigan with previously followed them out.
"Ah, not these two pricks," said Crumpled.
The lawyer stepped forward and raised his hands for silence. "Please." Eventually the noise settled to a low hum. "Thank you. My clients would now like to make a brief statement."
With that, he stepped aside and Jerome Hartigan stepped forward, giving his best “politician's sombre nod” towards the camera.
"Thank you all for coming. As you know, we suffered the tragic loss of our friend and colleague Craig Blake last week, in the most brutal of circumstances. This was followed by the equally senseless death of Councillor John Baylor, a public servant who has worked tirelessly in the service of the everyday people of Dublin. Through all of this, we received assurances from the Gardaí that the so-called Púca, whoever they are, would be swiftly brought to justice. Despite those assurances, no progress appears to have been made."
The Day That Never comes (The Dublin Trilogy Book 2) Page 24