Dead Man's Sins

by Caimh McDonnell

  “Back at the marina. Let me finish up what I’m doing here—”

  “No. I need it now.”

  “But—” started Muldoon.

  “Give me your keys. I’ll take the file and leave them under your front tyre.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “I think you’re fatally underestimating how willing I am to take them off you by force.”

  Muldoon considered this for a few seconds before his shoulders sagged in defeat. “Alright. But you promise you’ll leave them under the front tyre?”

  “Would I lie to you, Andy?”

  Muldoon’s body language made it clear he thought that was a strong possibility, but he reached into the pocket of his anorak begrudgingly and handed Bunny the keys. “It’s a blue Beemer.”

  “I know. I’m glad to see the sleaze business is treating you so well. Now, next question – who did you sell me out to?”

  “What?”

  “Who did you tell that you saw me going to see Coop on Monday night?”

  Muldoon wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t tell anyone. Why would I tell anybody that?”

  “Because, Andy, somebody is trying to frame me for Coop’s murder.”

  “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

  Muldoon was an untrustworthy piece of crap, but Bunny got the distinct feeling that, on this occasion, he wasn’t lying.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Bunny got to his feet and, in one fluid movement, hopped back on to Margot’s boat.

  “The camera, Bunny. Fair is fair – give me back my camera.”

  Bunny looked down at his hands. “God, of course, Andy. Sorry. My memory is shocking.” He handed the camera over carefully and Muldoon snatched it gratefully. Bunny turned to Margot. “Time to weigh anchor, O Captain, My Captain.”

  “Fair enough,” said Margot, putting down her book and starting up the engine.

  Muldoon lined up his camera at the shore, keen to check he hadn’t missed what he’d been waiting for.

  As the engine roared into life, Bunny shouted over the din, “Oh, and Andy …”

  Muldoon turned his way just in time to see Bunny pick up a screwdriver from the deck of Margot’s boat and jab it into the side of the inflatable craft.

  “There’s a hole in your bucket.”

  Thirty minutes later, Bunny was sitting in the front seat of the rental car, going through Muldoon’s file. Margot had dropped him back and then, surprisingly, waved away the money when he tried to pay her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she’d said. “I’m about to head back out and offer to save a man who may be in some difficulty. I’m guessing I’ll be handsomely rewarded for that.”

  Bunny had thanked her for her time and left her to it.

  As he flicked through the papers in the file, he could say this for Muldoon: he might be pond scum, but he was thorough pond scum. There was a detailed log of all of Angelina’s movements stretching back a couple of months. There were time-stamped photographs of her on all the days in question – hundreds of them, in fact. And there was also a verified test from a gynaecologist confirming that she was indeed pregnant – about six weeks along, according to the dates.

  Bunny checked back through the log from six weeks ago. There were three possibilities: either Muldoon had screwed up somewhere and missed something, or else Angelina and Coop were getting on considerably better than Mags had led Bunny to believe. The third possibility was that Angelina was going to experience something akin to the virgin birth and she’d have to be chasing God himself for child support.

  Bunny went over the logs yet again, looking for something, anything. Assuming Angelina hadn’t got pregnant by her gynaecologist, which would be the very definition of taking your work home with you, Bunny was stumped. Regular trips to the gym until she stopped. Going to visit her father at least once, often twice a week – almost always in the evenings. More often than not, calling up to Mags’s apartment for a couple of minutes on the way back before heading over the road to a pub for a couple of drinks. Outside of that, rare shopping trips, which extensive surveillance showed were spent alone doing nothing but shopping, and a couple of medical appointments that were, again, covered in detail and looked utterly innocuous. Her life was mundane in the extreme.

  His mind flashed back to the memory of the first night he’d seen her in years. It had only been on Monday, but it felt like a long time ago now. She’d been standing there with a drink in her hand and had the air of a woman who’d had a few already. Bunny didn’t know an awful lot of mothers-to-be, but he knew they didn’t drink much. At least the good ones didn’t.

  He tossed the folder carelessly on to the passenger seat, causing several of the pictures to spill on to the floor. As he bent down to gather them up, it hit him.

  He picked up the picture that had caught his eye and stared at it for a full minute. Then he scrabbled through the other images, searching for the ones he needed.

  The good news was that Bunny thought he finally might have figured something out.

  The bad news was what it meant.

  The Finger

  Butch took a deep breath and knocked on the office door. The feeling of nausea that had washed over her at the dump hadn’t subsided in the hours since.

  “Come in.”

  She entered the room to see DI Marshall sitting behind the desk, filling out some paperwork.

  “You asked to see me, sir.”

  “Yes,” he said, putting down his pen. “I appreciate we didn’t get off to the best of starts, but I wanted to congratulate you on your work today. Finding the murder weapon is hopefully going to blow this case wide open.”

  “About that, sir. I have a theory.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”

  “On the footage from the night of the murder, the guy in the balaclava – he appears to pause behind the hedge, out of the view of the cameras, for nearly a minute?”

  “Yes.”

  “He isn’t wearing gloves when he appears, but we didn’t pick up any fingerprints from the wall he climbed over. That’s because he was taking his gloves off. He wanted to be seen on camera not wearing gloves because it would give credence to whatever we found on the murder weapon.”

  Marshall leaned forward again. “That’s a hell of a reach, Cassidy. You of all people know the ridiculous lengths we had to go to to find the weapon.”

  “Yes, sir. But you of all people know it should have been a lot easier. That skip should have been checked on day one and the weapon found almost immediately. Somebody dumped it there for us to find, and then we screwed up.”

  Marshall sighed. “I appreciate the thought you’ve given this, Cassidy, and we will, of course, consider all possibilities, but a common mistake we make as police officers is believing the criminals are smarter than they are. Occam’s razor and all that.”

  “I’d imagine another common mistake is not questioning when simple solutions are dropped into our laps.”

  Marshall’s eyes narrowed. “Is there something you’d like to say, Detective? Or, indeed, is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Yes,” said Butch, surprised by the word as it came out of her mouth. This thought hadn’t been present in her head when she’d walked in the door, but it seemed obvious now. It was as if looking across the desk at Marshall had made stuff click into place. “I’d just like to say, for the record, how inspirational you are, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, sir. You’ve made me realise what policing really is. With that in mind, I wish to offer my immediate resignation from the force.”

  Marshall offered a strained smile. “Yes, alright. Thank you, Cassidy. Most amusing. Now, if you’re done—”

  “Oh, I’m done, you sanctimonious, small-minded prick. You’re such a good reader of people that you don’t even realise when somebody’s being deadly serious. Let me make myself crystal clear: you can shove your job up your arse.”
<
br />   Butch turned neatly on her heels, opened the door and walked out.

  “Cassidy,” Marshall shouted after her, “get back here this instant.”

  His raised voice attracted the attention of everybody in the incident room, so they all watched as Butch raised her hand and, without looking back, gave Marshall the finger.

  Marshall stood up in his office. “Cassidy! Cassidy!”

  DS Paschal Burke stood in the doorway.

  “Burke,” said Marshall, “I want you as a witness to Cassidy’s insubordination. I don’t know how this team runs normally, but I am not going to put up with displays like that. Are we clear?”

  Burke dealt with the question by ignoring it entirely. “The tech bureau has just been on to us. The blood on the weapon is confirmed as Hannity’s, and they found fingerprints.”

  “And?”

  Marshall noticed for the first time how pale DS Burke looked. “And …”

  Bad Ideas

  Bunny stood outside the door and listened. He could hear definite sounds of movement coming from inside the apartment. He rapped on the door and the noises stopped instantly.

  “Mags, it’s Bunny.”

  No response.

  “Mags, I know you’re in there. Open up. I need to talk to you.”

  After about thirty seconds he heard the locks being opened and the chain being pulled across. The door opened a crack and Mags peered out at him. “Now isn’t really a good time, Bunny.”

  “No kidding. Let me in.”

  She considered it for a second then stood back, opening the door wide for him to enter. He walked down the hall into the living area as she shut the door behind him. Bunny clocked the two suitcases lying open on the sofa, clothes messily piled in each.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” said Mags, trying to sound relaxed. “Friend of Bobby’s has a lovely holiday home up in Donegal. We’ve got a chance to use it for a few days.”

  “That’s nice. I mean, I don’t believe you for a second, but still, it’s a nice idea. How about you and I sit down for a second and have a proper chat – what do you say?”

  “Honestly, no offence, but this really isn’t a good time.”

  Bunny sat down beside the two cases and looked up at her. “I know what you did.”

  At his words, Mags’s shoulders sagged and she collapsed into the armchair opposite. “Oh God. Oh God. This is a nightmare.”

  He found her reaction confusing but decided to let it play out. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  Mags held her face in her hands for a couple of seconds, and when she looked up again there were tears in her eyes. “I’m not trying to save myself, but I swear to God, I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never let the damn fool do it. She rang Bobby directly, went behind my back. Offered him thirty grand. That’s enough for them to record their stupid bloody album.” She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one with shaking hands.

  “Mags, what the feck are you talking about?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Oh Jesus, I thought you … Never mind. Ignore me. I’m, I’m just having an awful day.”

  Bunny replayed her words in his mind. More pieces were falling into place. “Where did Bobby get the gun?”

  Mags threw back her head and pulled up her legs on to the armchair, hugging her knees to her chest like the little girl he could still remember.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding weary. “He likes to pretend he’s connected. He’s not. Bloody idiot. But this is Dublin – Jesus, even I know a couple of pubs you could walk into and ask.”

  “The thing is,” said Bunny, “speaking as a detective, when you buy a gun, you’re really not paying for the gun. You’re paying for the assurance that as soon as you walk out of the place, they’ll forget you ever existed. I’m guessing Bobby Boy didn’t understand that, and now people are looking for him?”

  Mags gave a tearful nod. “Yeah.”

  “I guess that’s the danger of missing the target – the target wanting to have a strong word with you about it afterwards.”

  Bunny looked around the room and his eyes fell on the door to the bedroom he’d noticed on his first visit. He pointed at it.

  “When I was first here, I should have clocked something. The rest of the place, no offence, looks rather lived in. Yet somehow, you’ve got a bedroom in pristine condition, just waiting to be used. Shall we call it what it is – Angelina’s room?”

  Mags took a drag on her cigarette and gave an almost imperceptible nod. “How did you figure it out?”

  “Far too slowly, unfortunately. If I’d got there quicker, you might not be in the shit you’re in now. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s not your fault. I guess it really is like my mam always said – I’ve always been too easily led.”

  “In answer to your question,” Bunny began, as he opened Muldoon’s folder that he’d brought with him and took out a photograph, “if it’s any consolation, your hair and make-up work really was flawless.” He held up the picture. “This is Angelina walking in to Cedarwood to see her dad on Tuesday night.”

  The image showed her striding across the road from the parking garage, sunglasses on, a paperback book under her arm.

  “I met her the night before, and I saw her yesterday in the hospital. Both times, she had strapping on her left wrist where she’d strained it lifting weights at home.” He tapped the picture with his finger. “This woman isn’t wearing the strapping, because she’s not Angelina. She didn’t think to mention it to you, did she?”

  “No.”

  Bunny paused for a moment. “Stop me if I’m wrong, but she obviously knew that Coop was having her followed. She figured out that they couldn’t follow her down into the parking basement because it would be too obvious. It was a very clever idea, to be fair to her.”

  Mags dabbed at her eyes with a piece of tissue. “But then, she was never short of brains, was she?”

  “Clever all the same,” said Bunny. “So, you got there ahead of her, and she took your car while you went in and pretended to be her. That can’t have been fun, visiting her father in her place.”

  “No. To be fair, it wasn’t me every time. She did go and visit him properly too. On one visit a couple of weeks ago, he started rambling about how I wasn’t her. I thought we were done for then.” Mags looked down balefully at the carpet. “All they did was take him away and sedate him, poor bastard.”

  “And while you were busy pretending to be her, she was here, meeting a friend.”

  Mags nodded again. “And you know who?”

  “Yes. I do. There are some bits I’m still a little unsure of, but I’ve got that piece. Did you know about —”

  Bunny was interrupted by his phone ringing. He looked at the number and got to his feet.

  “I need to take this. Finish packing, and I’ll make sure you get out of here safely. Find somewhere to lie low for a few days. Fingers crossed this will all be over by then.”

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks, Bunny. I’m sorry for lying to you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. There’s a lot of it going about.”

  He answered the call.

  “We got him,” said the voice on the other end, before Bunny could say anything.

  “What do you mean ‘got him’?”

  Mrs Byrne tutted. “What you think I mean? He’s tied up in front of me now.”

  “Jesus! I told you just to keep an eye out. Are you safe?”

  “We’re fine,” she said, sounding slightly defensive. “Him, on the other hand …”

  “Just … I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t— Don’t do anything …”

  “Do anything what?”

  “Anything else surprising,” finished Bunny.

  He hung up and turned to Mags. “Right, come on, then. I’ll swap cars with you – in case anybody’s looking for yours. I need to get home fast. Sounds like my neighbourhood watch scheme has started taking pr
isoners.”

  Batman and Other Batman

  Cynthia Doyle opened the door and ushered Bunny inside.

  “Right this way, sir. Your guest is in the kitchen area.”

  It did not escape Bunny’s attention that his next-door neighbour was holding a frying pan in her hand.

  “Bloody hell, Cynthia. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but I did say just to keep an eye out for anybody acting peculiar.”

  She held up her head proudly. “We cannot have gurriers running around the neighbourhood, breaking into places willy-nilly. It sets a dangerous precedent.”

  He looked down at the frying pan. “True, but I’m a little bit worried about the precedent this approach has set. Vigilante behaviour like this, I’m pretty sure that’s how Batman got started.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” said Cynthia Doyle. “I don’t read the papers.”

  He followed her through to the kitchen. As eye-catching conversation starters went, the man sitting in the centre of the floor, gagged and bound to a kitchen chair, would take some beating.

  And if anything else needed beating, Mrs Margaret Byrne was standing guard behind him, also wielding a frying pan. “Hello, Bunny,” she said cheerfully.

  “Margaret. So you’re also part of the Justice League?”

  She beamed at him. “It was me that first walloped him on the back of the head while Cynthia distracted him.”

  Bunny looked back and forth between the two women. “Right.”

  “I tell you,” continued Margaret, “it’s not like in the cartoons. You wallop somebody on the back of the head with a frying pan, they don’t go down immediately.”

  “No,” agreed Cynthia. “It took us both swinging a few times to put him down. We nabbed him as he was trying to force his way through your back door.”

  The two women shared a gleeful smile, clearly enjoying the new hobby they’d discovered.

  “Yes. It was Mrs Ranganesh who spotted him, as soon as he entered the laneway out the back there.”

  “Mrs Ranganesh?” asked Bunny. “How many of you were involved in this? I only told the two of you to keep an eye out.”