Angels in the Moonlight_A prequel to The Dublin Trilogy

by Caimh McDonnell

  Roberts laughed. “Oh, Jimmy, who the fuck do you think set this little date up? We don’t know what skanks you’re banging.”

  “Look at his face,” said the nephew, “he’s only just getting it. Beautiful.”

  “Why don’t you go and f—”

  In a couple of hours, neighbours would describe the thump of the body hitting the floor and how they dismissed it as somebody just moving furniture.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  DI Fintan O’Rourke walked down the driveway, gravel crunching beneath his feet. He nodded at the Garda protection detail sitting outside in their car and then rang the doorbell. He had been summoned. In fact, “summoned” was putting it mildly. He had received a voicemail full of screamed invectives that added up to a very detailed description of the unusual and entirely unpleasant acts that Ireland’s highest-ranking Garda officer was going to perform upon him, his ancestors and at least one family pet.

  O’Rourke braced himself as the door opened. He was prepared for everything up to – and including – actual physical assault. What he was not prepared for was a petite blonde lady with a kindly smile and a glass of ice.

  “Hello. You must be DI O’Rourke. Have I got that right?”

  “Yes, hello. I take it you are Mrs Ferguson?”

  She nodded. “Well, somebody has to be. He’s down at the end of the back garden. I sent him down there to that god-awful hot tub he insisted on putting in last year. I do it when the swearing and gesticulating get too much. I’m not having him breaking another vase.”

  “I see.”

  “This way, he can smoke his awful cigars and I can pretend not to know. I will warn you, Gubby is in quite the mood.”

  Gubby? The commissioner was known by many names, none of them complimentary, but that was a new one to O’Rourke.

  Mrs Ferguson pushed the glass of ice towards him. “Here, take this. He’ll need it for the bottle of whiskey I also don’t know about. You can go around the side of the house. The gate is open.”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, and announce yourself as you do. He’s been drinking and he does have that frightful gun thing of his with him.”

  She smiled and closed the door. O’Rourke remained looking at it for a moment, then down at the glass of ice in his hand. It hadn’t been a great day and it seemed unlikely it would be getting better any time soon.

  He walked around the house, which was large and well appointed, situated in Seapoint. With the security light on, he could see that it had finely manicured lawns, with several playful gnomes sprinkled around the place. He was guessing that was more Mrs Ferguson’s touch than the commissioner’s, although who knew what “Gubby” got up to at the weekend.

  O’Rourke walked down the side passage, which opened up onto a large rear lawn, surrounded by deciduous trees that sloped down to a gazebo containing a hot tub.

  “Ahem . . . hello Commissioner. It’s DI O’Rourke, sir.”

  “Who? I know an O’Rourke but I’m pretty sure I demoted him back to uniform about an hour ago.”

  “Yes, sir. May I come down?”

  “Yes, yes, get on with it.”

  As O’Rourke started to walk down, another security light flared into life above his head, illuminating the entirety of the back garden. More gnomes stood stock-still, as if interrupted in the midst of nefarious doings.

  As he approached the hot tub, O’Rourke could confirm that in its bubbling waters sat the Garda commissioner, a cigar in one hand, a glass of whiskey in the other and a look on his face that wouldn’t so much kill as wipe out an entire village. He also noted what appeared to be an air rifle leaning against the hot tub. He felt rather thankful that his boss was a keen drinker and smoker who only had two hands.

  “Ah, Fintan, how good of you to join me. Thank you oh so very much for taking time out of your busy schedule.”

  O’Rourke decided that saying nothing was the best course of action, to allow, as much as possible, Hurricane Ferguson to blow itself out.

  “I’m sure you’ve been very busy,” Ferguson continued. “I know I have. I’ve had the Minister for Justice on three times, the Taoiseach himself, not to mention every bloody journalist in Ireland. They’ve all somehow got hold of my private mobile number.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d probably still be getting calls, only . . .”

  Ferguson transferred his glass of whiskey to the hand that already held his cigar, and then reached into the water and pulled out a mobile phone. “Surprisingly robust little blighter. Harder to drown than you’d think.”

  Ferguson threw the phone off into the darkness. The security light behind O’Rourke shut off, leaving the underwater lighting of the hot tub as the only illumination.

  “I see you’ve brought your own drink.”

  O’Rourke looked down at the forgotten glass of ice in his hand. “Sorry, sir,” he said, holding it out. “Your wife sent this ice down, for your whiskey.”

  Ferguson shook his head. “Bloody woman, knows everything. It’s not natural.” He leaned forward, grabbed two of the ice cubes and dropped them into his glass. Then he picked up the bottle of Jameson from the edge of the hot tub and poured a large measure into both his glass and the one in Fintan’s hand.

  “Cheers,” said O’Rourke, on instinct.

  “What the—? Bloody cheek.” Ferguson snatched the glass out of his hands. “Christ, you misread that situation. No drinkies for you.”

  O’Rourke could feel himself blush as Ferguson downed the first of the whiskeys. He drew a long puff on his cigar and O’Rourke waited as he blew a smoke ring into the cold night sky.

  “So,” Ferguson said eventually, “how exactly does an individual under blanket surveillance – unprecedented surveillance, surveillance that in all probability breaches the Geneva Convention on human rights – how, in the name of thundering Christ, does that individual get shot dead?”

  “Well—”

  “And not by some eagle-eyed sniper, mind you. No, at close range by someone standing as near as I, the soon-to-be-ex-commissioner of the Garda Síochána, am to you, the soon-to-be most overly-qualified traffic warden in history. How on earth is that allowed to happen?”

  “Obviously, there were serious errors on our side.”

  “Ye think?”

  “We have recovered his phone. It appears that the attackers had taken the woman hostage earlier in the day and then lured Moran there with a series of text messages from her phone that promised him intercourse, in rather graphic terms.”

  “Really? Was an orgy mentioned, because that’s what happened isn’t it? He got fucked, we got fucked and, I assure you, your beloved career is looking well and truly on the monumentally fucked side of life.”

  Ferguson took a sip of his second drink. “An hour ago, the Minister for Justice ordered me to pull you off the case and then, once the headlines have moved on, accept your resignation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I told the minister to shove it up his well-upholstered arse. It seems my career and yours are now inextricably linked.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t. The wife wants me to take early retirement and go on a trip around the godforsaken Mediterranean on a bloody boat. This may be my masochistic way of giving her what she wants.” He stopped to take another sip. “I get seasick.”

  O’Rourke had no idea what to say to that.

  “Do we have any idea who did this?”

  “Not as such, sir, no, but it is very early days. There was some chatter about Carter having fallen out with the IRA. Then there is his long-standing unpopularity with the drug-dealing gangs over his family’s control of the Clanavale Estate.”

  “Do we think anyone knows the thing we haven’t said? About Carter’s imminent move from being gamekeeper to poacher in that regard?”

  “If they do know, they’re not saying much.”

  “By the way, in order to save your sorry arse, I did have to promise the Taoi
seach that we were weeks away from the biggest drugs bust in Irish history, not to mention making the bastard Yanks very happy. So that’d better happen. That is the only thing we’ve got going for us. If your intel on Carter’s next move is wrong—”

  “It isn’t, sir.”

  “You’d better be right. The chance of having his belly tickled by the Yanks for striking a blow in their ludicrous drugs war is the only thing stopping the T from firing us both. Personally, I think kowtowing to the damn Yankees is degrading, but nobody wants my opinion – only my job.”

  O’Rourke turned around as the security light behind him came on again.

  Ferguson’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Speak of the devil! Out of the way, Fintan.”

  O’Rourke sat down on a plastic lawn chair as Ferguson knocked back his whiskey and then reached for his air rifle. He scanned the area and saw a grey squirrel looking around nervously as it haltingly scurried across the lawn.

  “Little grey Yankee bastards. Coming over here, wiping out the ginger natives, then scoffing the nuts out of my bird feeder.” O’Rourke heard the soft slosh of water behind him as the commissioner drew himself carefully up onto his feet in the hot tub.

  “You know there’s a thing you can get—” O’Rourke had made the mistake of turning around and he turned quickly back again.

  His boss was drawing a bead on the grey squirrel as it surreptitiously glanced around at the base of the bird-feeding table. However, that wasn’t what had caused O’Rourke’s consternation. It appeared his boss enjoyed hot-tubbing naked. He had just made unfortunate eye-to-eye contact with the most senior penis in Irish law enforcement.

  O’Rourke focused all of his attention on the bird table. The squirrel had made his way to the top of it.

  “The trick is . . .” said Ferguson in a whisper around his still-clenched cigar, “to get the little bastard when he least expects . . . it.”

  On “it”, several things happened: Mrs Ferguson opened the patio doors, which spooked the squirrel into running, which forced Commissioner Ferguson to hastily try to reacquire his target, which led to an overcompensation and the commissioner, who, in his defence, was really very drunk by this point, shooting one of the columns of his own gazebo, resulting in a ricochet, a surprisingly girlish squeal and a very undignified fall from the hot tub.

  There then followed a small amount of blood and a large amount of swearing.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Simone wrung the mop out and then slapped it down onto the floor with considerably more force than necessary. It had been a long day, following a sleepless night that she’d spent staying absolutely still, sensing Bunny beside her in the bed, awake too and wanting to talk. She’d kept her eyes closed and her breathing low. As far as she was concerned, she had done more talking the night before than she had ever wanted to.

  Her every instinct told her to run. It was what she had always known she would have to do. Dublin was only ever supposed to be the first stop. As she’d sat in that shipping container for two weeks, reading the same three books until the torch’s batteries failed, she’d thought of little else. She’d learn French. A non-English speaking country was always going to be safer. The French loved their jazz too; it was where Lady Day had had some of her best times. She could find a little bar in the middle of nowhere and . . .

  Do what she was doing now. She looked around Charlie’s Private Members’ Club. Damn, she really did love it here. Even the name. Noel had explained that he’d picked it because nobody would go to a jazz bar called Noel’s. It was small, smelly, had three areas of persistent mould and a Ladies toilet that didn’t work properly for more than a week at a time. She had never been supposed to sing, she was just employed to tend the bar. Then, as Noel had played one afternoon, she had been humming along softly to Cry Me A River. At least, she thought she’d been humming. Noel had finished the song and looked at her with those eyes, full of that look of childlike excitement that she’d come to know so well. “You didn’t tell me you could sing?”

  And she had; she had broken that rule. She had let herself believe that it was OK now. It had been almost a year. They probably thought she was dead.

  It wasn’t the only one of her rules she had broken. The last thing she had wanted was a relationship. Bunny – that had been the biggest mistake. He had . . . what? Crept up on her? Hardly. He’d clearly announced his intentions. She’d been so damn confident, thought he’d just been a charming distraction. Then he had gotten under her skin.

  If she could go back in time and talk to her younger self – and Lord, how many times had she imagined she could do just that – there was so much she would say. If she had the chance to say one thing though, it would be “Don’t mistake fireworks for fire.” That was what James had been. Bright colourful lights and explosions that generated no heat. Love at first sight wasn’t love at all; it was just biology. Fire was a different thing. It warmed you against the cold and illuminated your way on the darkest of nights. That was Bunny, the brightest part of her day. Her warmth. She liked being with him. She liked who she was when she was with him. That was why she couldn’t leave. She wanted to. Needed to. Every fibre of her being was screaming for her to do just that, but she couldn’t. Damn it all to hell. She lov—

  Her train of thought was interrupted by a bang on the door.

  It was 2 pm; the only person wanting to get into Charlie’s this early would be its owner.

  “You promised you were definitely going to see the accountant this after—”

  Simone opened the door and froze.

  The eyes from her nightmares looked back at her.

  He shouldered through the door, sending her sprawling back onto the floor.

  “Hola, Simone. Nice to see you again. Please do not scream, you know how I do so hate problems.”

  Chapter Forty

  Despite the church being empty, save for one old dear up near the altar working her fingers around a set of rosary beads, DS Jessica Cunningham sat on one of the angled pews on the side. This allowed her an unfettered view of the back and side doors. She had been here for over two hours – long enough that she had already had to politely bat off a couple of enquiries from the nice old priest to check if everything was okay, one approach to see if she’d like a nice cup of tea and another of an offer of confession.

  The confession had briefly tempted her but she had politely declined. While watching the doors, though, she had offered up half-remembered prayers for the soul of Dara O’Shea. They had never been friends, at least not in the conventional sense, but they’d worked together for several years. Long enough that they’d insisted she take a few days off after the trauma of his death. She had been able to kick up the pretence of a struggle, despite the time off being exactly what she needed. Not to grieve, although she was sad for Dara and his family, but because they had needed time to think and rework the plan. Everything had gone to hell but it was salvageable. She’d have help.

  Franko Doyle came through the back doors, nearly knocking over a stand full of pamphlets in his efforts to remain unseen. He clocked her, blessed himself the wrong way and then moved up the central aisle towards her. She had picked the location carefully. Franko stood out like a sore thumb, precisely because nobody would expect him to be in a church at 11 am on a Tuesday morning. That meant there was no chance of anyone seeing them together – which was precisely the point.

  Franko dipped his knee towards the altar in a half-arsed genuflection and then slipped into the seat beside her.

  “Christ almighty,” said Franko. “This is fucking ridiculous, do you know that?”

  “Keep your voice down and mind your language. Remember where you are.”

  “Remember where I am?!”

  The old woman at the front of the church looked around with a frown. Franko looked down sheepishly and repeated himself in a softer voice. “Remember where I am? Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get here?”

  She glanced at him briefly.
“How did you get here?”

  “How did I . . . I went to the GP and then nipped out of the window in the toilets, cut myself an’ all,” he said, lifting his right arm to show a blood-red stain seeping through the dark blue of his Dublin GAA tracksuit top. “I’m going to need one of them Tetris shots now. I wouldn’t have made it out at all, only a couple of smackheads kicked off in the reception.”

  “That was lucky.”

  “Not really. I’d had a word. Your half-dozen piggies in uniform that were following me ain’t exactly the brightest.”

  Cunningham turned and gave him a sharp look. “Mind your manners.”

  “Mind me . . . Are you kidding? After your screw-up?” Franko shook his head in disbelief. “You were supposed to hold us up and nick the diamonds, not start a bleeding shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

  Cunningham thought it unlikely that anyone’s god would waste a miracle on someone like Franko Doyle, but she kept that to herself. “Things didn’t go to plan.”

  “If that isn’t the mother of all understatements. You’ve messed this up totally.” Franko shook his head. “Totally.”

  “Calm down, Franko. Our agreement is exactly as it was.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You just need to tell us when and where the deal is going down—”

  “No way!” The old woman glanced around again but this time Franko didn’t lower his tone. “You’re off your rocker.”

  “Tell us when, we’ll intercept Carter and the diamonds and we all get taken care of.”

  “Bollocks.”

  Franko was prevented from any further speech by the elbow that dug into his ribs, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  Cunningham gave a polite wave to the old lady even as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Calm down and stop acting like a damn baby. Remember why you’re doing this.”

  Franko held his hand to his left side, in a way that Cunningham considered rather OTT. When he spoke, it was at the requested lower volume. ”I don’t want drugs on the street. Me and Tommy’s da—”