Death in Dublin Read online

  A message from Ward said, “Pape’s house on the Morehampton Road is mortgaged to the eaves. His credit is stretched with maxed-out cards and zero sums in bank accounts with formerly sizable balances.

  “Travels extensively—Turkey, Malta, Thailand, and Myanmar recently. Likes women, the younger the better. He was arrested in Malta in 1969 for hashish possession. Four years ago, something in Spain. Ten years earlier it was LSD at Heathrow. Some more drug possessions, then only traffic offenses.

  “Nothing unusual on the Kennedy woman that we could find. Yet. But it’s not as if she floated up the Liffey in a bubble.”

  Pulling into the security checkpoint at Leinster House, the imposing Georgian-inspired buildings that were the seat of the Irish government, McGarr wondered if the Trevor Pape whom he had attempted to interview on the night before could possibly be capable of the theft of the books and Sloane’s murder.

  Drugs, he knew, sometimes caused otherwise sane and intelligent people to attempt foolish things, but Pape had seemed too…scattered both at Trinity and later for the complexity of the theft. And even if tall, he was a slight man, surely not the hulking, black-hooded figure in the video.

  Nor could Kara be involved, McGarr was convinced. She was just too much the committed academic and too altogether…fragile for anything like that.

  Everything pointed all too obviously to the New Druids and Celtic United. Yet Sloane’s car might have been responsible for the death of Derek Greene, the Trinity security guard—whose corpse was now headless.

  Finally, there was Sweeney, who claimed to be merely the messenger of the videotape. But who said he had watched it. And Sweeney was another animal altogether, McGarr knew all too well.

  Why would the New Druids have chosen Chazz Sweeney, an avowed member of the archconservative Catholic sect Opus Dei, to be their messenger? If indeed they had made the video. To ride herd on the police and government? To make sure through Ath Cliath that a ransom was paid and the sacred books were secured?

  A uniformed valet was waiting to take the car. But before McGarr got out, he rang up Ward, who said, “I know what you’re going to say, and I agree. Sweeney. Maybe it’s just our experience with him, but anything he’s involved in…” Ward let his voice trail off.

  Manpower was the problem. Because of budget cuts, McGarr had only a handful of available staffers to put on the case. He could ask Sheard for help, but at the price of confidentiality. All his own people were rock solid.

  “How could we follow Sweeney and not be known to be following him?” McGarr asked.

  “I have an idea.”

  “Discreet, I hope.”

  “That, and electronic too.”

  They did not need any further publicity, especially involving Sweeney with the forum of Ath Cliath at his disposal.

  “Hear from Ruthie?”

  “She said the woman—” Ward responded before being cut off.

  “Morrigan.”

  “Spent the night at the second address near the North Wall.”

  “She going in?”

  “Last night the place was locked tight, and it has alarms everywhere. This morning, when the building opened to let in the employees on the first two floors, they posted a guard on the door.”

  “They?”

  “The New Druids. See the papers?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t.” Ward rang off.

  But all three newspapers were laid out on a table in the anteroom of the taoiseach’s office. Whoever had taken the picture of Kevin Carney, the driver of the wrecked and shot-up BMW, spilling from the car had sold the roll of film to Reuters, who had in turn shopped it to all three of the morning papers.

  Ath Cliath’s banner headline said COP-OUTING, below which was MCGARR AMOK. Two paragraphs of story said McGarr had begun a “spree of violence not witnessed from a senior Garda officer in decades with a temper tantrum at the home of the victim in the Trinity theft” and then continued on to Glasnevin, where “either his staff or two of his disgraced former Garda followers shot and killed the driver of the car, causing a near riot in the Celtic United stronghold.”

  Orla Bannon’s column, “Trinity and CU Deaths Linked,” was teased onto the centerfold jump and surrounded by more car photos. Mainly she repeated what McGarr had leaked to her regarding the ransom tape and its supposed New Druid connection with the addition of three CU officials confirming that Raymond “Ray-Boy” Sloane Jr. was a CU adherent.

  Stories by other reporters sampled “Celtic United Outrage” from its Dail delegation to the party faithful to rank-and-file stalwarts, who were pictured shaking fists with tattooed and well-muscled arms exposed.

  The other papers, while more restrained in their criticism, still ran several photos of both events.

  “Proud of yourself?” a low voice asked through a chuckle quite close to McGarr’s ear. “You’re one of a kind, really. Little wonder you never called in—off beating the piss out of the press and shooting up a neighborhood. You should read the Times. Could it be they’re right and you didn’t remain long enough at the scene to find out if your victim was dead?”

  Sheard would not be speaking in an undertone unless somebody else had entered the room, and in turning he stiffened an elbow and brushed by him. “Ah, Jack—I didn’t know you were there.” McGarr moved toward the taoiseach, who was standing in back of the commissioner. “The other is me good ear.”

  “Peter.” The commissioner—a former politician by the name of Sean O’Rourke—only nodded, but Brendan Kehoe, the taoiseach, stepped around him to offer his hand.

  “Good to see you again, Chief Superintendent. I understand you’ve been busy since the event. Does all of that”—Kehoe swept his hand at the newspaper on the table—“mean you’re making progress?”

  “Perhaps.” Taking Kehoe’s hand, he made sure their eyes met. “You’re to judge. It could be we have a ransom demand.” From his jacket he took out a copy of the videotape.

  “What?” Chuckling, Sheard’s smile lit up his handsome face, apart from his eyes, which were icy and focused on McGarr. Otherwise tanned, the knob of flesh on his square jaw—formed by the smile—was nearly the color of his blond hair. “You’re unique, McGarr. Full of”—there was a pause—“surprises.”

  “Is there a tape player about?”

  “Did they send you a video?” Sheard asked. “Kind of them and right up to the moment. Curious, I didn’t get one.”

  “Perhaps they thought you too busy cutting your own footage.”

  “This way.” Kehoe led them out of the anteroom and down a hall to a wing of the building that was obviously used for communications. “Could you leave us, please?” he said to two young men who were huddled over a newspaper.

  Eyes moving from Sheard to McGarr and the tape in his hands, they complied. O’Rourke closed the door behind them.

  “Before this goes any further, I wonder if Peter could bring us up to speed on his investigation.” Sheard’s smile was still broad. “As I mentioned earlier, we seemed to be suffering from a communications glitch.”

  “I think we should watch this first, Jack. Then, if you have questions…” McGarr shoved the tape into the receptacle of the player and hit the play button, adding, “The intro is a bit much, but the message is clear.”

  Once the music came on, he leaned back against a desk and slipped his hands in his jacket pockets, reminding himself that Sheard had the ear of Kehoe and was certain to have filled it with every doubt before McGarr’s arrival. And then there were the newspapers.

  “Can you tell us how we know this is genuine?” Sheard asked before the film had ended. But Kehoe shot him a glance, and McGarr waited until the picture had faded out.

  The three men glanced up at him.

  “Credibility?” he asked Kehoe, who nodded. “Well, there’s the delivery the very day—or at least the night after the day—of the theft and murder in Trinity. I don’t know how long it would take to produce such a thing, but it has the
look of having been devised rather earlier.

  “Second, there’s the disguised voice of the figure who makes the demand. It’s similar to one of the two scrambled voices on the Trinity library security tape. Presently, the Tech Squad, which has the original, is making a comparison and also analyzing other aspects of the tape, such as the color of the flame from the burning page.”

  “What?” Sheard began laughing again. “You mean, this isn’t the original? Don’t you think you should have brought the taoiseach the original? You’re a rare brave man, Peter McGarr.” And stupid went without saying.

  But Kehoe remained impassive.

  “Last night I learned that a facsimile edition of the Book of Kells was produced in the early 1990s. In every way, including wormholes, it resembles the original, with the exception of having been printed on paper, not vellum, which is treated calfskin. Spectroscopic analysis might give us an idea of what’s being burned.

  “And finally”—McGarr spooled back to find the length of videotape that pictured the decorations on the wall behind the hooded figure—“notice the large platelike decorations on the wall behind your man with the book. Were this tape player equipped with an enlarging capability, you’d see that they’re actually human heads that have been nailed to the wall with spikes.”

  “This gets better and better,” Sheard said to O’Rourke. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  “In fact, one of the heads may well be that of Derek Greene, the Trinity security guard who was knocked down and killed by a car in Stephen’s Green more than a fortnight ago. His death gave Sloane, who was in league with the thieves before they murdered him, the excuse of walking Greene’s beat in Trinity without exposing himself to further scrutiny.

  “Yesterday, Greene’s family reported that his grave has been disturbed. His corpse has been decapitated, and the head is missing.

  “As for the car that killed him, witnesses described it as a large midnight-blue BMW with gold wheel covers.

  “We believe that the same car, a large midnight-blue BMW with gold wheel covers, was parked behind Sloane’s house yesterday and was driven away by his son, Raymond. It’s also the car with the driver who refused to stop and fired at us in front of CU headquarters on the Glasnevin Road.”

  “Where the lad was killed?” Sheard asked in an insouciant tone.

  “Aye—killed by a rifle bullet. Took off half his head. The slug is presently being examined by ballistics. Or are you ignorant of that as well?”

  Sheard’s smile fell, his jaw firmed.

  “Fired by whom?” Kehoe asked.

  McGarr shook his head. “But not any of my people. We fired handguns and a shotgun only.

  “The right front headlamp and grill of the car appear to have been damaged in an earlier accident, with remnants of clothing and blood found there as well.”

  “What about Sloane’s son?” It was still Sheard.

  “Nowhere to be found. He got away.”

  “Ah.”

  McGarr switched off the television and turned to the other men. “As for the possibility that the tape is a fraud, I’d say it exists. Chazz Sweeney hand-delivered it to me, saying it came to him by motorbike messenger.”

  “The Chazz Sweeney?” O’Rourke asked.

  McGarr tried to smile. “I hope there’s not another.”

  “And he delivered it to you and not Jack?”

  McGarr did not reply. The tape ejected automatically, and he tried to hand it to Sheard.

  “I’d prefer the original.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me—you have it in the Tech Squad lab.” Where it belongs, went unsaid. McGarr was being as petty as Sheard, but it felt good.

  “So, Sweeney had this first?” O’Rourke asked. “I’m surprised he didn’t run the image of the page from the book being burnt. I can’t imagine him finally stumbling over a bit of discretion.”

  “Don’t discount the man.” Kehoe reached for the tape. “Sweeney may be a world-class chancer in some matters, but there’s his special brand of Catholicism, of which the Book of Kells and the two others are icons.”

  That had been exhibited in a secular—and formerly Protestant—institution, it occurred to McGarr.

  Turning with video in hand, Kehoe moved out of the room and back into the corridor where, at the desk of his receptionist, he asked for a television and video player to be brought into his office immediately.

  There he closed the door behind them and asked the others to take seats. From behind his desk, Kehoe said, “Jack and Peter—I won’t take up more of your precious time beyond asking you this question. Then I’ll let you go on about your important business.

  “From a police perspective, what should happen now?”

  Sheard began, “Why don’t we begin with what should have happened beginning last night when—”

  But Kehoe was shaking his head. “I don’t think you heard me, Jack. That’s water over the weir. What comes next?” He turned to McGarr. “Peter?”

  McGarr would have preferred to speak last. “If the objective is to get the books back and also collar the murderers of Greene, Sloane, and the driver of the BMW, then we should tell them we will meet their terms. We should encourage them to come forward and name the place of the exchange.

  “Murderers and thieves always make mistakes of one sort or other, and all that money—if it comes to that—will only make them incautious. Sooner rather than later, they’ll supply us with some idea of who and where they are.”

  “But don’t we know who they are?” Sheard asked. “I think their identity is plain.”

  McGarr’s eyes met Kehoe’s before both looked away. Could Sheard be that gullible?

  “Hear me out. I know what you’re thinking, which was my first thought as well. It’s all too obvious. But look at it this way—who’s their audience, who are they playing to? Their electorate and the other unemployed native Irish who feel themselves challenged by technology or have had their neighborhoods changed by immigrants and other outsiders.”

  Sheard got to his feet and, slipping his hands in his pockets in a way that was characteristic of Kehoe himself, moved toward the window in the large corner office. “I wonder if it matters that they’re ever paid. Actually it’s probably better for them if the perpetrators of these crimes are caught and killed.

  “Like the early IRA, what they’re creating are martyrs to be continually revered and waked in ballad and verse. The theft of the Book of Kells is tantamount to the IRA blowing up Wellington’s bloody monument on O’Connell Street in 1966 or the hunger strikes of Bobby Sands in 1981. Their leader, this Mide—he was with Sands. This is his generation’s thing, and he’ll play it to the max, if we let him. His intent is to propel his band of hooligans into a potent cultural/political force in this country. That’s the purpose of the preamble to the demand.

  “Taoiseach Kehoe”—pivoting, Sheard swung his powerful body around and began moving back toward them, his eyes on the carpet and the high gloss of his black bluchers—“if you don’t show the nation this tape and any others this Mide sends us, he will, mark my words. And they’ll be shown to the cheers and approbation of every poor punk, thug, and body-pierced rocker in the country, to say nothing of the other young who’ll adopt their vestments and stance just to set themselves apart and piss off their parents.

  “It’s why the tape was given to Sweeney to pass on. This Mide is a sly one, so he is. He knew—he knows—that Charles Stewart Parnell Sweeney, archconservative Catholic and self-avowed patriot, will have copied it and, sooner or later, when this government does not do Mide’s bidding, Sweeney will release it to the media.

  “McGarr, tell us something.” Standing only inches away, Sheard glared down. “What other bloody objective could there possibly be than getting the stolen books back and trying the murderers?”

  McGarr glanced at Kehoe. “I’m in the police business, Jack, not the objective business. Could that be a failing?”

  “Of course it’s a fail
ing. It’s even a failing by the book, to mention books. Which has been evident for the past thirty hours.”

  McGarr struggled to keep himself in the chair. “Nor am I in the book business. I’m not in that either. But were I, which book would that be, Jack?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Sheard stepped away, a kind of joy in his voice. “Why”—he swirled his hands—“the book of standard police practice. The protocols and procedures that police have found essential all over the world. Do you have any idea what standard police practice dictates in this situation, McGarr?”

  Kehoe sighed and glanced at the clock on his desk. “Jack—the point.”

  “You never pay ransoms to kidnappers or terrorists. It only encourages others to do the same. And in this case, it’s not as if they’re holding human beings.

  “Also, we—the government—do not own the Book of Kells, and if we did, where would we get the bloody fortune to splash out on these bloody scuts? Where would it come from? We’d have to go to the Dail, and you would not want to stand for reelection as a politician who voted to splash out fifty million Euros on the New Druids. It’s not as though they’re the IRA.

  “Also, what did they steal? What are they ransoming? The books of Kells, Durrow, and Armagh, which are far too well known. The thieves simply don’t have another buyer. If they burn the book page by page, then they burn their only asset. It will diminish in value with every passing day, along with the public’s opinion of them.

  “Telling them up front that we cannot pay, we will not pay, then communicating with them—speaking, E-mailing, whatever—is the course we should take. Haven’t we got science and technology on our side? They? On theirs they’ve got a failed culture. Eventually under my plan, they’ll make a mistake and reveal themselves—who and where they are. And we’ll have them.

  “Finally, to get back to who owns the books—some might say it’s ultimately the Irish people, but in point of fact Trinity College does. I’ve taken the liberty of inviting Trevor Pape, Trinity’s head librarian, to weigh in on the issue this morning.” Opening a door to the anteroom, he called out, “Dr. Pape? Could you join us, please?”