Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (6 page)

4

AFTER TENDING TO MCKEON’S INJURIES, WHICH R
E
quired medical attention, McGarr drove out to his daughter’s school, where almost daily he picked her up. Nuala—his mother-in-law, who now cared for Maddie and was elderly—only drove in emergencies.

It was a ritual that at fi?rst he thought would be an i
m
pediment to his work. Instead, it had become a we
l
come relief from his duties, a two-hour hiatus and the only time, if truth were told, that he got to be with her alone, given her schedule and his.

Located in Sandeford, a village south of Dublin, the school was private and nonsectarian.

Among the Mercs, Audis, Volvos, and Jags of the other parents, McGarr’s unmarked Ford squad car stood out like a rolling eyesore. But, truth was, one day his own daughter would be wealthy if not rich.

Fitz—Noreen’s dad, who had died with her—had been a key member of the Dublin in-crowd that had thrived in good times and bad, no matter the viciss
i
tudes of politics. Nuala had been Fitz’s heir, and Mad-die was hers.

Which was a felicity that McGarr rather feared for
his daughter, knowing little of its demands. How should he prepare her for the responsibilities and burdens? Or direct her toward happiness, which was, really, all he had ever wanted for her? And what, he suspicioned, had been lost because of who he was? If he’d been a banker or a barrister, like the fathers of some of the other students who were fi?ling out of the handsome, half-timbered building in front of him, Noreen and Fitz would be alive.

Watching Maddie now, as she larked down the stairs with her classmates, she appeared happy enough, smi
l
ing and laughing with her friends, all of whom were wearing charcoal blazers with the school crest on the pockets.

But at home, where so much of Noreen lingered, she was often different. Somber. Given to sudden tears. And her need for his time, his attention, and the co
n
stant reassurance of his love was nothing short of pitiable. Which only jacked his guilt sky-high.

Pulling open the door, Maddie tossed her book bag on the fl?oor and slid in. “H’lo.”

“H’lo.”

She leaned over and brushed her lips against his face.

“How was school?” McGarr eased the car down the drive.

Her brow furrowed. “You know—you always ask that, Peter.”

In the last year, Maddie had gone from calling him Daddy to Father and now by his fi?rst name. “Can’t you think of something original to ask?”

“Well, I’m interested in how your day went. In school.”

“And you always say that.”

“Because you always say what you say.”

“And the next line is—how were your classes? Did you learn something interesting, something I don’t know, something that will keep me from being the o
b
vious dolt that I am?”

McGarr glanced at her, noting how much she had b
e
gun to resemble her mother. Like Noreen, she was fi?ne-boned with a thinly bridged nose and dimpled cheeks. While fair, her coloring was darker than that of either of her parents, and her skin still carried a golden hue from the summer she had spent on Nuala’s estate in Kildare.

Noreen’s eyes had been green. McGarr’s own were a very light gray. Maddie’s were starburst blue, like M
c
Garr’s own mother’s had been.

“Well, here’s something that might interest you. Pi
c
ture this: There we were in the buttery, taking lunch, and Eithne says, ‘Maddie, isn’t that your father thum
p
ing those cameramen?’ And everybody—I mean the entire blessed school—looks up, and there you are, my special da, on the teley.

“Your face in the camera, elbows out, and your eyes—well, your eyes are only your eyes, when you’re mad. And there you were shoving the entire bloody lot out into the street.

“The truly great thing, of course, was when you raised your foot and vaulted that last man from the house. Before slamming the door.

“What you couldn’t have seen, since you were on the other side of the door, is how he landed. On his face with the camera smashing to bits.

“Of course, we kept watching. I mean, how often do we see somebody’s father on television when, you know, they’re not running for a political offi?ce or a
n
nouncing a corporate merger?

“And, sure, they did show why you did what you did—Bernie all bloody and down on the fl?oor in the hallway of the house. But they kept running the shots of the cameraman fl?opping down on the footpath and his camera crashing into the street.

“It was then—” Maddie turned to him, and he watched her slight smile crumble. “It was then Brianna Cauley said—” She looked down at her hands, which she had placed palms up in her lap. “She said, ‘No wonder somebody murdered her mum. That man must have lots of enemies.’ ”

Tears burst from her eyes, and McGarr looked for a place to pull over, so he could comfort her.

Clinging to him as she now often did, Maddie sobbed into his chest, and he stroked her brow. When she had quieted, he asked, “Did you say anything back to Brianna?”—who was one of Maddie’s earliest friends and had probably overheard the assessment from her parents.

Maddie shook her head. “I didn’t have to. Cassie said, ‘Maddie’s dad does what he does to protect soc
i
ety from the likes of you, arsehole.’

“And Brianna shot back, ‘Really? Since when has he begun protecting us from television?’ That’s when somebody else told her to shut her bloody gob, and a teacher came over.”

McGarr let some time pass before offering his han
d
kerchief. Then: “Don’t think I haven’t thought of just what Brianna had to say.”

Maddie straightened up and blew her nose. “You mean, if you weren’t who you are, Mammy would still be alive?”

McGarr nodded. “And your grandfather.”

“If you were instead—”

“A banker or a solicitor or a businessman, say.”

“But you weren’t. And you’re not. You are who you are, and Mammy’s dead.”

Which was the painful—and, McGarr suspected, the ever-painful—reality of their lives.

“Got much homework?” He twisted the key and put the car in gear.

“Reams and reams of it.”

When they arrived at their house on Belgrave Square in Rathmines, he reached for her before she could get out. “I want you to forgive Brianna, and be gracious when she apologizes to you.”

“Peter! You think I won’t?”

“No, I knew you would. But I thought I’d mention it.”

Probably because he himself wished he could fo
r
give whoever had worked the two deaths, but he knew he never would. It just wasn’t in him.

And because he did not want the poison that had spilled into his life with the murder to spread to his child.

The bar up the street from Raymond Sloane’s house was a relic from the Liberties of old—a low, dim kip clouded with smoke from the clutch of old men at the bar and a sooty fi?re that was smoldering in the hearth.

McGarr pulled back a stool, the red leatherette seat of which was split and curled like the skin of an apple. He sat, noting that all conversation had ceased.

The others were staring at him, one man even having rose from his seat to get a better look.

Climbing down from her own stool positioned at the farther end of the bar, a slatternly old woman with a pronounced limp and a cigarette at the corner of her
mouth approached, muttering something he couldn’t quite make out.

He thought he heard, “Fookin’ cop shite...never see them...grass on the locals.”

She stopped in front of him and raised her head to look through a pair of grimy glasses on the end of a long nose. Her wrinkled face was the shade of putty; her brown eyes were milky with age.

“Yeh drink on duty, it’s said.”

“By whom?”

“It’s why you did what you did on the teley.” She fl?apped a hand at a screen that was showing a rugby match. “Drunken snit. It’s on all the channels. With young Sloane—who’s known as J.C. hereabouts—sa
y
ing yous two broke in the back of his house, roughed him up, then grilled his mammy and sisters. Before he busted out.

“Then there’s yourself, beatin’ the piss out of the press. Finally. At last. Feckin’ bunch of fakes, frauds, and fairies. What are ye havin’ besides the time of day?”

“Malt.”

She shuffl?ed around to reach for a bottle. “If you want ice, you can go to feckin’ Iceland and hell in that order. We serve no feckin’ ice here.”

Some of the others began laughing.

She poured the drink and placed it before McGarr.

He slid some Euros toward her, but she slid them back. “You gave me a laugh, which is hard to come by these days.”

McGarr nodded thanks. “Why J.C.?”

“Jesus Christ. It’s how he once looked, with a dust mop beard and feckin’ sandals in winter. And because
‘J.C.’ browned him off. But all that’s gone. Now he’s Kojak with a ring in his nose.”

“Like a feckin’ bossy cow,” said one of the men at the bar.

The old woman pulled the stub of cigarette from her mouth and fl?icked it at the man. “Another word from you, and you’re out of here. The man’s speaking to me.”

“The father, Sloane, he came in here.” It was not a question.

“Not to drink. No toper, Raymond Sloane.”

“Why drink? How high is up?”

“That’s it. You’re gone.”

The man turned his head and smiled to the others. He did not move.

“Feckin’ ee-jit.”

“Drugs?”

“Raymond?” She nodded. “Years ago. Him with a steady job but the family and no money, the missus told me. Any other place but Trinity—bein’ a college and all—would have booted his arse into Liffey, where it belonged. But he did the rehab, and then he was back acting...different.

“At fi?rst we put it down to the ‘pink cloud’ thing— you know, clean. Off the shit. I get ’em in here all the time. Turning over a new leaf, clean—yous is all drunken mots and bowsies, they say. Then, sooner or later, they show up, worse than before. Locked— morning, noon, and night.”

Turning her back to her customers, she lowered her voice. “But Raymond was different. He was better at fi?rst, then better than better, if you catch me drift. More . . . alive, smiling, happy”—her sad old eyes scanned McGarr’s face—“too feckin’ happy.

“Chattin’ everybody up a mile a minute. Then he was, like, gone. Not there with you. You could say, ‘Raymond, you just won the Sweeps.’ He’d give you his contented cow look and say, ‘That’s gas, Lizzie. Gas.’

“Pink feckin’ substantial cloud, says I to meself. Without a penny in it for me, more’s the pity.” Again she paused, as though to assess McGarr’s reaction.

“Tell me now—why would anybody want to kill Raymond Sloane? So you nick the Book of Kells and them other two yokes. So you’re all dressed up in black and balaclavas, and you’ve disguised your feckin’ voices and all. Why off a feckin’ security guard like Raymond, who’d probably messed his britches the m
o
ment he sussed out what was happening?

“Because”—she glanced down at McGarr’s drink, which was untouched—“because Raymond must have been in on it.

“Because the moment they got the goods in their hands, it was nightie-night, Raymond. No probable touts allowed, no druggie informers. They clapped him in the box and sucked out the air.”

Although bemused by her detailed knowledge of the crime, McGarr waited. She had more to tell him.

A cigarette came out of the pocket of her cardigan jumper, then a lighter. Her wrinkled lips jetted smoke at the teley. Then, with the palm of her hand, she vi
g
orously worked the crook of gray fl?esh that was her nose.

“Itchy. Bad air in here. The worst. But”—she drew on the cigarette—“I suppose it’s a condition of life, as I’ve known it.

“Take them chancers behind me.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Years ago, a good half of
them were beggin’ me to throw a leg over their lousy hides, don’t you know. Eyein’ me, buyin’ me little thises and thats, reachin’ for me hip when I passed.

“Says I to meself, says I, Whatever would I want with anybody who comes in here? All they see in me is this bar, sorry as it is. The till. And me, an only child with an aged father. I’d only get the best of a bad lot.

“No, I wanted a gent who would take me out of this motley shite. Somebody like the bloody tall man who came into the lounge over there with a lady maybe a fortnight ago to speak to Raymond.” She jabbed the cigarette at a low battered door, which was closed.

“It’s hardly used. There’s a separate entrance. A buzzer goes off when the other door gets opened from the street, is how I knew they was in there.”

“You get a look at them?” McGarr touched the drink to his lips.

“Only when the door opened and closed. Raymond had been in here at least an hour before, nervous like.”