Dead Man's Sins

by Caimh McDonnell

  “We can’t have people going around breaking into houses,” said Margaret.

  “That’s exactly what I said,” agreed Cynthia. “So yes, we told a few people. You’re quite a popular man in the community, Bunny. People were very keen to help.”

  “Yes. Mrs Choi from over the back there came running around with her sword. Apparently, it’s part of her culture. Aren’t these things very interesting? We said she should bring it to the next coffee morning and tell us all about it.”

  “A family heirloom,” said Cynthia. “Imagine that?”

  Bunny took a closer look at the man sitting before him and looking up at him warily. He did a quick count of his visible limbs and features. “She didn’t actually use the sword, did she?”

  “No,” said Margaret. “We had him restrained by then. There was no need for it. I mean, we’re not savages. We only used as much violence as was absolutely necessary.”

  Their prisoner mumbled something half-heartedly around his gag.

  “That’s right,” agreed the other Batman of suburbia. “I think he had some of these injuries before we got to him.”

  Bunny gave a wry smile. “Oh, he did indeed. Sure, didn’t I give them to him myself? We had a scrap out in Clontarf on Monday morning.”

  “Did ye?” asked Cynthia. “God. Isn’t it a small world all the same?”

  The prisoner stared up at Bunny, his eyes groggy, possibly as a result of the overenthusiastic application of a frying pan. It was the guy who’d been wielding the clipboard outside Gringo’s house on Monday morning.

  Bunny glanced around the room. He already had a good idea of the answer, but he asked the question anyway. “By any chance, did he have something on him?”

  “He did,” said Cynthia. She moved a tea towel that was sitting on the counter. Beneath it lay a flick knife, a few tools that would come in handy if trying to break into a house, and a video tape.

  “I expected as much. Ladies, thank you again for your invaluable and enthusiastic assistance. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like a word alone with our friend here.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need back-up?” asked Margaret, hefting her frying pan pointedly.

  “No, thank you. I think you’ve beaten all of the fight out of him already.”

  “Come on, Margaret. I’ll show you that new throw I’ve just finished knitting in the front room.”

  “Oh, lovely.”

  Bunny watched the two women leave the room, closing the door behind them.

  “Well, if nothing else, your little visit has brought the two of them together. Never let it be said that violence doesn’t solve anything.” He turned back to the man. “I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth now. By all means scream. By the sounds of it, a couple of neighbours might drop over and see if I need any help torturing you.”

  The man made no movement. Bunny removed the tea towel that was serving as an improvised gag.

  “So,” Bunny said, “we were never properly introduced. Would you be Mr Dean or Mr McDaid?”

  “Dean,” he responded.

  “You’re having quite the bad week, aren’t you? I mean, I kick the crap out of you on Monday, the frying-pan defence league kick the shit out of you today, and in between, I’m told you lost your job. Although, I’m guessing you’ve been rehired by the new management of Coop Hannity’s organisation?”

  Dean remained silent, concentrating instead on running his tongue around his mouth, as if trying to get rid of the tea-towel taste.

  Bunny picked up the video tape. “I presume this was supposed to be the pièce de résistance in the frame job. My meeting with Coop Hannity from Monday night. Not only would it establish motive, but the fact that it would be in my house when the Gardaí inevitably search it would also make it a simple open and shut case. I assume it was also you that was sent around to grab a convenient murder weapon, am I right? Out of curiosity, was it on Tuesday, when I was out of the house, or earlier, when I was still there?”

  Dean looked up at him and then looked away again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Bunny. “After all, I made it embarrassingly easy for you. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even locked the back door. As you can see, I’ve upped my home security somewhat since then. Fool me once and all that.” He pulled up one of the kitchen chairs and sat down opposite Dean. “There’s one little bit I’m not sure about. You had to make sure I had no alibi on Tuesday night …”

  Bunny left the sentence hanging, but the other man offered no response.

  “Ah, sure, that’s pretty simple too when you think about it. Somebody followed me back from training and then gave you a ring, right? Told you I was home alone. Then you knew it was a go. You had your patsy. You’re even the same build as me. Handy for the camera that, wasn’t it? A balaclava really suits you, by the way. It must have been quite the rush, seeing your picture on the news and on the front pages of all the papers. Tell me, did Coop know it was you when you stuck the knife in?”

  Dean’s eyes shot up suddenly to meet Bunny’s. “I didn’t kill anybody. Don’t go trying to pin that bullshit on me.”

  “That’s a rather ironic choice of words given the circumstances, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, alright, I was there, but only after the fact. I took the tapes and the knife, but that’s all.”

  Bunny nodded. He hadn’t wanted to hear it, but it did make sense.

  Before he could ask any more questions, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He picked up the gag, shoved it into Dean’s mouth and hit the deck.

  Five seconds later came the sound of the Garda armed response unit smashing in the back door of Bunny’s house.

  Person of Interest

  DS Paschal Burke leaned against the wall outside Bunny McGarry’s house and lit a cigarette. He was supposed to be quitting but this wasn’t the week for it. He looked again at the smashed-in front door and shook his head. Detective Inspector Marshall, in his infinite wisdom, had tagged Bunny as a strong violence risk and had ordered an armed response to take him in.

  Now, to be fair, Bunny McGarry was no stranger to violence, but Paschal couldn’t see him trying to fight his way out of being arrested. For that matter, he couldn’t see him murdering somebody either. Not that his opinion counted for anything. Marshall had gone hell for leather as soon as the fingerprints had come back, and there was no reasoning with the man. The road behind Burke was packed with police vehicles, all trying to manoeuvre around each other and find parking spaces that weren’t there.

  He took a long drag and blew it out slowly. This day had gone to shit.

  Burke leaped up when he heard a scream coming from McGarry’s house. Ten seconds later, DI Marshall stormed out, a bloody scratch running down the left side of his face.

  “DS Burke, I want you to contact the ISPCA. There is a rabid cat in there and I want it caught and put down immediately.”

  Burke considered this. “No, sir.”

  Marshall stopped dabbing at his face with a handkerchief and glared at Burke. “Excuse me?”

  “An armed response unit went charging into an animal’s home so it panicked and tried to defend itself. I’m not having Bunny’s cat put down just because it wounded your pride.”

  “I will not stand for this insubordination.”

  Burke took another drag on his cigarette. “I’ll be honest with you, sir, I really couldn’t give a shit. By all means put me on report, but I’d imagine even you wouldn’t want to increase the rate at which serving officers with previously exemplary records are disappearing from under your command, sir.”

  Marshall rushed towards him and stopped less than a foot from his face. “One of your colleagues is now the prime suspect in a murder. How dare you stand there and try to interfere with my investigation.”

  Burke tossed his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out under his shoe. “And for the record, Detective Inspector – how exactly is me having a cat killed going to assist with your investiga
tion?”

  For a second Burke wondered if Marshall was going to swing for him, but the spell was broken by a woman’s voice.

  “Excuse me, what the hell is going on here?”

  They both turned to see McGarry’s next-door neighbour standing on her doorstep.

  Marshall stepped away from Burke and ran a hand down his tie. “This is an ongoing Garda situation, madam. Please stay inside your house.”

  “I will do no such thing. You can’t go smashing in people’s doors like that.”

  “Actually,” said Marshall, “we can.”

  “He’s not even in there,” she said.

  “Tell him something he doesn’t know,” said Burke, not exactly under his breath.

  “Yeah,” she continued. “The taxi picked him up about half an hour ago.”

  Marshall was about to reprimand Burke further, but then his eyes grew wide and he turned to face the neighbour. “Excuse me? There was a taxi? Did you see what company it was from?”

  “I did, of course.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “I also got the licence plate, the driver’s full name, and a stool sample in case you might need it.”

  Burke couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Marshall’s head whipped back towards him, his lips twisted into a snarl.

  “I’m not nosy,” said the neighbour. “The only reason I know there was a taxi at all is because the idiot rang my doorbell first. Taxi to the airport? Chance would be a fine thing. I’ve not had a holiday since my Albert, God rest him, took me to Corfu for our anniversary.”

  Marshall turned back around again so fast that he almost fell over. “The airport?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Big building, lots of space around it.” She pointed up at the sky. “Where the big metal birds come in to land.”

  Bunny peeked out between the curtains of Cynthia Doyle’s upstairs bedroom. The smell of lavender was almost overwhelming.

  On the street outside, the unnecessarily large police contingent that had descended upon his house to arrest him was trying to manoeuvre its vehicles around one another, all hurrying to chase a wild goose to Dublin Airport. Three drivers were having an argument about which one of them needed to move out of the other’s way. It wasn’t the Garda Síochána’s finest hour.

  Still, a tiny part of Bunny felt flattered. You could judge a man by how many officers they’d sent to take him down. He’d apparently warranted the full armed response SAS malarkey. The reason they hadn’t nabbed him was that he was about six feet away in Mrs Doyle’s kitchen, interrogating the man who’d been sent to complete the frame job on him.

  He heard the door opening quietly behind him.

  “So they went for it, then?”

  “They did,” confirmed Mrs Doyle.

  “Thank you,” said Bunny, turning around.

  Mrs Doyle stood there looking nervous. “I do have a concern …”

  “Don’t worry,” said Bunny, holding up a hand, “you won’t get into trouble for lying to the guards. I promise.”

  She waved away his assurances dismissively. “I’m not bothered about that. Nobody is locking me up. However …” She looked around anxiously before continuing, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let people know that you’d been in my bedroom. I am a respectable woman. I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

  Bunny almost smiled, then he saw the seriousness on her face and stopped himself. “Right! Of course not. You have my word.” The things people decided to care about.

  She looked relieved. “Excellent. Well, then … By the way, there are still some officers next door.”

  “Yeah. They’ll be searching the place.”

  “How rude!”

  “I know,” agreed Bunny.

  Just then, his phone pinged. He fished it out of his pocket and read the text message. It was the one he’d been half expecting and half hoping he wouldn’t get.

  “Looks like I’ve somewhere else I need to be. Could I ask you one last favour, please, Cynthia?”

  DS Burke watched as the last of DI Marshall’s ludicrous armada turned on their sirens and set off to make a mess of the rush-hour traffic. Marshall hadn’t got around to actually saying it before he had hauled arse out of there, but Burke was taking it as read that he had been suspended from duty. He knew he should be worried about that but somehow he wasn’t.

  He liked Bunny. He liked Cassidy. Hell, despite him being a tad annoying, he quite liked Carlson. If Marshall was the new boss, then Burke was happy to get sent somewhere else. He was only a couple years off his pension, and telling a detective inspector to go blow it out his arse wasn’t going to get him booted off the force. Up until this point he’d always toed the line, and it felt kind of good to finally tell somebody to shove it.

  He had a quick word with the uniforms guarding the front door, and made sure they understood whose house it was and that the search should be carried out with as much respect as possible, then he sauntered off down the road. As it happened, his bus home had a stop just around the corner and he had a particularly good jigsaw on the go.

  If Burke had turned around at any point during his walk to the end of the road, he might have caught sight of Bunny’s next-door neighbour and two other elderly ladies leaving her house and walking in the opposite direction. One of them, rollers in her hair and a scarf over her head, was really rather tall and large.

  Boxed In

  Bunny parked the car opposite the North Paw Boxing Club and turned off the engine. It had been a few years since he’d been here, and time hadn’t been kind to the place. It was a functionally built hall with rudimentary dressing rooms stuck on to the left-hand side of the building. The kind of thing you’d find up and down the country. Not much in itself, but an awful lot to an area that didn’t have much else.

  It was always the way with places like this – you spend ages raising funds to get them built, and then, as soon as they’re finished, the thing starts slowly falling down. The club was encased in scaffolding, which at least meant they’d been able to raise enough money to hold it together for a few more years. To one side of it lay a football field, empty in the darkness, and to the other side, a playground that had seen better days. He could hear a lonesome swing creaking in the breeze.

  Despite the signs making clear that the place was closed, a light was on inside. Bunny noticed the expensive-looking jeep parked up by the side. He got out, leaving Mags’s car unlocked. He’d had the best of intentions when he’d given her his rental car, but in hindsight, that might have backfired now the Gardaí were looking for him. Still, on the upside, police custody was by no means the worst place Mags could be right now.

  Bunny walked across the car park, crystal shards of broken glass mixed in with the gravel, and pushed his way through the double doors. Scaffolding clambered up three of the internal walls too. In the centre of the room stood the ropeless base of the boxing ring, covered in tarpaulin. On top of it sat Angelina Hannity née Quirke.

  “Howerya, Angelina. I got your text.”

  She smiled at him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Maybe I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

  Bunny chuckled. “I get that a lot. How’s the head?”

  She raised her fingers and touched the small dressing on her forehead. “It’s OK, thank you. Just a scratch.”

  Bunny nodded as he walked in and looked around the hall. “I see they’re giving the old place a facelift?”

  “Needs a whole new roof, in fact. It’s been leaking for years, but they had it inspected back in November. Rotten, apparently. One of the old builders did a dodgy job.”

  He tutted. “Damn near impossible to find an honest builder these days. Nothing is ever their fault.” He looked up at the ceiling. “It’s going to cost a pretty penny.”

  “It is,” said Angelina. “I’m paying for it.”

  “Fair play to you.”

  “Might as well use the money for some
good.” She looked around again. “Do you know what I can’t get over? How small the place is. When I was a kid, this hall seemed huge. I never saw the damp and the flaking paint. It was a palace of dreams to me.” Her voice sounded wistful. “Dancing here, up and down on these boards … D’ye know, I think that might have been the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  She pointed to the small office to the left of the main door. “And it was in there that you sat me down and gave me the worst news of my life.” She tilted her head. “Thinking back on it, that must’ve been a horrible thing for you to have to do. Telling a little girl that her mummy had died.”

  “To be honest with you, the woman from social services was supposed to do it, but she bottled it. You were getting upset because you knew something was wrong. It seemed cruel to drag it out any more than necessary.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m glad it was you, for what it’s worth. Rather than some woman I’d never met. I think that would have felt very cold.”

  A silence descended between them. Bunny continued to walk around, remembering the layout of the place. Here was where they had the warm-up mats, over there was the heavy bag.

  “Do you remember Anto McCarthy?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at Angelina.

  “Should I?”

  “Nah, not particularly. He would’ve been a few years older than you. His dad sent him down here to join the boxing club – thought it would make a man of him, all that nonsense. Nice lad. He hated the boxing. Hated it. But you know how boxers skip as part of their training? Supposed to help with fitness and footwork. The lad could skip like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, the speed of the thing. The rope was a blur, he was able to turn this way and that. Do all kind of tricks. It was mesmerising. No other word for it. Mesmerising.”

  “Sounds it. Wish I’d seen it.”

  “The last I heard, years ago now, Anto had moved to Australia. Became a big deal in real estate, I think. I wonder if he still skips?” He turned to look at Angelina. “Do you still dance?”