Death in Dublin Read online

  Milling in front of the building was a clutch of mainly young men but a few women as well. Most of the men had long hair or beards, and in spite of the weather, which had turned chilly, many were wearing only half-vests that exposed swirls of tattoos and other body designs.

  “And would you look at those effin’ wankers—probably not a job among them in spite of their muscles, tattoos, and perms,” said Bresnahan, the rose pin on the lapel of her jacket actually being a speaker connected to the other two cars via radio.

  Although once radically chic herself, Bresnahan hailed from rural Kerry, where conservative values, such as the work ethic, were revered.

  But few in the throng could be blamed, McGarr imagined. Ireland’s educational system was disparate, to say the least, and more than thirty years of police work had shown him that poor districts tended to have poor schools, poor community values, and much poverty of the spirit at home. And not all of Ireland’s young had ridden the Celtic Tiger, as the recent economic boom had been called.

  “The dole, the drug trade, and whatever they can nick from the public being their stock-in-trade.”

  “Ruthie, go ahead now,” McGarr advised through his own headset, as he removed the Walther from under his belt and checked the clip. “And remember to leave the tape with her.”

  They watched as Bresnahan stepped out of the other car and waited for traffic to pass before crossing the street. Tall, angular, her red hair flowing behind her, she immediately attracted the attention of the young men in front of the CU building.

  She was wearing a black leather jacket and short skirt that made the most of her shapely legs. When one of the men kept stepping in front of her, she said, “Ah, look—you’ve a bit of shit on your shirt.”

  When he looked down, she raised an elbow, shoved past him, and stepped into the open door of the shop. “My mistake, ’twas only you.”

  Patches of color had appeared in her cheeks, Bresnahan could see as she caught sight of her image in the glass of the open door. Why? Because she was in high dudgeon, she now realized.

  Nothing browned her off more than hypocrisy of the sort that preyed upon people—the innocent, the trusting, or here, she suspected, the ignorant: young, poorly educated, inner-city kids with little hope of even duplicating the straitened lives of their parents. Somebody had to be to blame. Why not the church, Christianity, and by extension the society that had accepted and continued to endorse that religion?

  She herself and Ward—her colleague, paramour, now business partner, and common-law husband—had run afoul of Christian strictures. But they had well understood the risks they’d been taking and the possible fallout.

  Stepping up to a counter covered with stacks of brochures and flyers touting Celtic United, its aims and accomplishments, she palmed a bell several times, until a woman appeared in the door of what looked like an office. “Help you?”

  “If you’re Morrigan, I’ve got something for you to see.” She held up a videotape.

  “I hope it’s licentious. Or at least naughty. I’ll consider nothing less.” A full-length, wheat-colored tunic made the woman look like a classical goddess out of Greek or Roman, not Celtic, myth.

  There was even a garland of tiny flowers in her long and flowing gray hair. Unlike her body, which was formidable, her face was long, well structured, and thin in the way some middle-aged women lose rather than gain facial flesh as they grow older, Bresnahan noted. Late forties, early fifties.

  “And to whom do I owe thanks for this present?”

  “I’m Ruth Bresnahan.”

  “The detective?”

  “Former detective.”

  “Ah, that’s right—she who lives in harem sin, according to Ath Cliath. Albeit, a small harem and thoroughly liberating sin, I should imagine. How’s life? The three of you still together? Or is it five?”

  “Six, counting all of the children.” Bresnahan could feel the blush that now suffused the light skin of her face. Even now, more than two years later, she rankled at being branded wherever she went because of Chazz Sweeney’s “exposé” of her relationship with Ward and Leah Sigal and the thoroughly happy life they had made for themselves there in Dublin. Which Ath Cliath now billed as a “world capital.”

  There were communes, groups that functioned as families, openly shared wives and husbands all over Europe. But no such grouping was to be tolerated in Sweeney’s Ireland, where every other class of license and crime was allowed. Which was, of course, yet more hypocrisy. “Yes, we’re still very much together, which is something I would have thought you here would applaud, given your…Celtic perspective.”

  “And do, do. You’re one of my heroes. Welcome. It’s not often the police arrive bearing gifts. What do you have? Give us a look.”

  She held out a hand.

  “Former police.”

  “Ah, yes—former police, which we both know is a patent oxymoron, don’t we, dear? Come.” She took the tape. “If it’s really exciting, I’ll insist you sit on my knee. Did I tell you I like that skirt and those legs? My, my.”

  Out in the Audi, Ward commented, “And the report said she liked boys.”

  “No, no—it said she liked sex with young recruits,” replied McKeon, who was sitting with McGarr in the Rover. “Gender was not named.”

  “Can you give me some hint as to what I’m about to see?”

  “You’ll know soon enough why I brought it to you. For comment.”

  As the introductory music began playing, McGarr thought of time and how, really, the Celtic era, while over a millennium past, was only a blink in the history of mankind. Who were a blink themselves in the history of the earth.

  And how Celtic lore and legend still resonated in the country, perhaps because the images of the Celtic revival in the early nineteenth century had lingered in the old money that was in the process of being retired, in the government and other publications, in “traditional” music, clothes, jewelry, literature, the theater, and now as a cover for a drug gang who were probably also involved in murder and grand theft. The grandest.

  More minutes went by as the two women in the office watched and the three men in the two cars listened, until Morrigan said, “So, at last—the other shoe drops.”

  The deep scrambled voice was making its demand.

  “I hope you’re not pointing the finger at us. All you people make the assumption that, just because Celtic United and the New Druids tap into the same rich fodder of Ireland’s Celtic past, we’re one and the same organization. We’re not. We’re independent of each other and discrete.”

  Bresnahan had to struggle to keep her eyes from rolling.

  Behind the wheel, McKeon shifted in the seat and reached forward to wipe the windscreen.

  “Nor is Celtic United responsible for the citizens, mind you, who hang outside this office. By law, they have the right to assemble.”

  “Speaking of which, take a look at the tall one there,” McKeon said, “the one with the Kojak and—could that be?—a ring in his nose?”

  McGarr moved forward to peer above the condensation that had gathered on the glass.

  “We’re only allied in our core values. And these people—whoever made this tape—are not wrong in blaming Christianity for having usurped and supplanted the ancient culture of Ireland’s native people, which has led to the central religious division that obtains to this very day.”

  Either the woman, Morrigan, had a good memory, or she had viewed the tape before, McGarr thought, since her phrasing was nearly identical to the videotape.

  The man McKeon had spied was tall, bald, broad-shouldered, and was wearing the same woven jumper-like top that they had seen young Sloane in earlier. Opening the glove box, McGarr reached for the binoculars that Noreen, an avid birder as well as a shooter, had kept there. The Rover had been her car.

  “And that book—I hope it was in fact a real page that he burnt, because the entire literally bloody thing should be torched to a cinder if only to demonstrate that we�
��ve unshackled ourselves from our wretched Christian-Brit past and embraced the New Celtic order.”

  Raising the binoculars to his eyes, McGarr thought of the many times they’d stopped so she could follow the transit of waterfowl or scan a hedgerow for some rare and errant songbird that had been blown to Ireland during a storm.

  “And do you think for a moment that we’d be so stupid as to identify ourselves so baldly and risk sacrificing all of this?” Morrigan swept her hand to mean the building. “Two seats in the Dail and a burgeoning electoral base? Somebody is setting us up. Whoever stole the bloody book has a double agenda, and I know who it is.”

  “It’s him,” said McGarr. “Ray-Boy.”

  “You’re shittin’—what luck.”

  “Nose ring and all.”

  Bresnahan waited.

  “He’s twirling a set of keys.”

  “The car,” said Ward. “If we just could get that, it might provide evidence of how Derek Greene died.”

  “Chase him, he might run to it,” McKeon mused.

  Finally Bresnahan asked, “And who might that be?”

  “The man who is threatened most by Celtic United, whose party lost those very two seats to us in the last election and will lose more in the next, all the polls say.”

  “Brendan Kehoe, the taoiseach?”

  “None other.”

  “Bernie—pull up to the far corner, in case he goes that way,” said McGarr.

  “I was thinking you’d let me be the one to approach him.”

  “Patch on your head and all—he’d never see you coming,” Ward put in.

  “Haven’t I got me fookin’ hat? Let me at the fookin’ bastard.”

  Said Bresnahan, “I think if you think Brendan Kehoe would stoop to stealing the Book of Kells and murdering a security guard—”

  “Not Kehoe himself, but one of the cowboys around him. Think of Charlie Haughey and all the bagmen he surrounded himself with while taoiseach. And there was Watergate. Kehoe’s indirect involvement is not so far-fetched.”

  Thought McGarr: Another flap would not do. And with all the other young men milling about CU headquarters, any provocation might spark an unwanted incident. Tact or, rather, tactics were called for.

  “Top of the street, Bernie. Please. And Hughie”—McGarr fit the Walther under his belt—“pull the car down the laneway, so he can’t leave from there.”

  Opening the door, McGarr got out and crossed the road to approach the building from the other side of the street, so he’d appear to be just another old man wending his way back home from a pub.

  Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he depressed the switch on the receiver/transmitter that would allow him to send his voice to the others. “Ruthie, break off with your woman there and cover the door. Sloane’s son, the one who thumped Bernie, is out front. He might make a play for the building.”

  “He didn’t thump me.”

  “Just played knick-knack-paddy-whack on your snowy pate,” said Ward.

  “You messin’?”

  “Yah, I’m messin’. What’ll you do about it?”

  Seeing a gap in the traffic, McGarr stepped into the street and crossed directly in front of the building, making right for the crowd of maybe two dozen or more. Only when he was nearly upon them did a few take notice. But they did not move.

  Pulling the Walther from under his belt, McGarr flicked the barrel at the first one, who put out his hands and stepped back. “Hey, hey—look-ee here. A live one, incoming.”

  Breaking off their conversations, the front ranks hesitated, their eyes dropping to the gun before stepping back.

  Apart from Ray-Boy. One glance at McGarr and he pivoted, an arm sweeping out to shove one of his mates at McGarr, before he bolted toward the stairs into the building.

  Where Bresnahan was waiting, a 9mm Glock raised in both hands and pointing at his chest.

  Ray-Boy slowed. “You won’t shoot me.”

  “Ah, but I will.”

  “You won’t.” He picked up speed, charging right at her. “Bad fuckin’ PR. And you’re no fuckin’ cop.”

  He was right, she thought. What if she did put him down with a shot? How many additional years would it take her to climb out from under that dark cloud? And here she was with a happy child and a successful business. She shouldn’t even be here.

  She lowered the gun.

  Muttering “Silly cunt,” he rushed by her.

  Back out at the bottom of the stairs, when somebody stepped in front of McGarr, he did not hesitate. His knee came up, buckling the figure, whom he shoved at the others.

  Spinning around, McGarr aimed the gun at the forehead of the closest, while holding his Garda ID in the other hand. “Police! Stand back!”

  They stopped.

  “Back!”

  “Fuck that, fuck him. Ray-Boy needs us, lads. He’ll only get one of us,” said a voice from behind.

  “Let that be you,” said McGarr. “You with the mouth. You’re the one I want.”

  But nobody stepped forward.

  McGarr turned and moved to the door, where Bresnahan was waiting. “Sorry, Chief—I just couldn’t.”

  “Which way?”

  “Follow me.” They both rushed into the building, McGarr behind her.

  Out in the laneway, Ward had stopped his Audi at a chain-link gate that controlled access to the car park in back. Getting out, he had checked the lock and decided that a pry bar would open it easily. But when he returned from the boot of the car to check the lock, he saw headlamps flash on and sweep past McGarr and Bresnahan.

  Shots rang out: two, two more, and then three. And the car yawed wildly and caromed off the grills of several others, before straightening out and heading for the gate.

  Very much caught in the glare of the oncoming headlamps, Ward glanced back at his car that he had only just bought, before throwing himself toward the corner where the gate met the laneway wall.

  Bucking and rocking, the large now-damaged car burst through the gate, which flew over the hood, kissed the side of Ward’s Audi, and veered over into the laneway wall that it followed—sheet metal shrieking, sparks flying—before jouncing out into the street.

  Horns blared, traffic stopped, and people—Sloane’s own mates—dived for cover as the engine whined and the one still-inflated rear tire squealed on the pavement before the car shot forward again.

  But there was a figure standing in the middle of the road a hundred yards away with something in his hands.

  As the car neared, McKeon raised a 12-gauge Benelli shotgun and pumped six slugs into the grill of the oncoming car. The seventh and final shell he fired through the passenger side of the windscreen, which blew into the backseat, crazing the glass in front of the driver.

  Like a torero about to finish off a troublesome bull, he then stepped to the curb and waited for the now hissing and steaming car to lurch alongside him. Whereupon McKeon drew his handgun from under his jacket and squeezed off three additional rounds at the right front tire, which burst with a pop.

  As the car pitched forward, the driver tried to compensate and jerked the wheel, causing the back end to rise up. When the front bumper caught on the pavement, the car vaulted into the air, turned end over end, and seemed to hesitate, as though deciding whether to complete the flip. Instead, it slammed down on its top, tumbled sideways and then rolled over twice before coming to rest on its wheels.

  McKeon, McGarr, and Ward surrounded the back of the car, with Bresnahan facing the stopped traffic and a gathering crowd.

  At length, McGarr nodded, and McKeon and Ward both reached for a rear door handle. Only one—Ward’s—would open, and with Beretta raised he slipped in. After a moment or two, he got out and nodded, and McGarr opened the driver’s door.

  An upper body lolled out, eyes opened, and fell. First a shoulder and then the curly blond head struck and bounced off the tar. The very top of the skull seemed to have been removed and was a red wet crater.

  There was a ha
ndgun on the seat.

  A shout of outrage went up from the crowd.

  “Who’s that?” McKeon asked.

  McGarr shrugged.

  “Call the pathologist, Tech Squad, ambulance.”

  From somewhere in the crowd, a strobe flashed several times. “Yiz is fookin’ killers!” a voice shouted. “Fookin’ cop fookin’ killers.”

  “And put him back behind the wheel with the door closed.”

  Slipping the Walther back into his jacket, McGarr turned and walked toward his car, as though mindless of the crowd, whom any acknowledgment would incite, he knew.

  “I should have put one in his leg,” Bresnahan called after him. “I’ll make this up to you, I promise.”

  “Just continue on with what we discussed, if you would, Rut’ie.” McGarr’s beeper was sounding, but he switched it off. It was too late an hour, and he had too much to do. For explanations.

  The people lining the footpath were regarding them with averted heads and glassy eyes; it was the stare reserved for curious creatures, oddities, killers who could take a life with seeming indifference.

  Ward was waiting for him beside the Rover. “Why would they steal the Book of Kells, murder a security guard, then send a ransom tape loaded with all their Druid bullshit, if they did it? Where’s the advantage, where’s the premium?”

  Glancing back at the smoldering car, McGarr thought he saw it. Behind the wheel was a potential martyr, a way of using a death at the hands of the brutal police to attract more followers, to broaden their political base. But could they have planned it like that?

  McGarr’s eyes swept the crowd, who were still stunned by the sight of the ruined car. All that would change the moment they left.

  “No they couldn’t have,” said Ward, having read his thoughts. “It’s Sweeney. It’s got to be. When was the last time he was involved in something so vital, and he wasn’t into it up to his hips? I don’t buy his messenger bullshit. Why him? Why not send it directly to somebody, anybody, connected with Trinity or the government? You or Sheard or Kehoe.”