Read The Death of an Irish Sinner Online
Authors: Bartholomew Gill
The rear door of the hotel did not open quickly but rather in jerks, as though the figure behind it were testing the strength of its closing spring.
But when McKeon saw the black leather cap peek out, followed by the wide shoulders of the jacket, he squeezed the trigger, and the figure reeled out from the open door, falling to one knee.
As she tried to rise up, a second shot to the chest slammed her back into a sitting position against the wall.
Having heard McKeon’s fire, Ward had raced around the building and was the first to reach her, followed almost immediately by McKeon, who said, “Shit—it’s not Breen, it’s Manahan. And what’s that around her neck?”
It was a
cilicio,
whose long sharpened spikes had been screwed into her neck.
Looking up, their eyes met. “Rut’ie,” Ward said, pulling his Beretta from its holster. “Cover the front.”
But it was too late. The door of the hotel had nearly closed, and McKeon only caught a glimpse of the person fleeing into the trees that bordered the dual carriageway. Beyond, he could see the lights of a waiting car.
Raising the rifle, he tried to sight her in. But the copse was dense, he could no longer see her, and he would not risk firing at the waiting car with others passing on the highway now as early morning came on.
Leaving the wood, Breen had slowed her pace, not wanting any of the drivers passing by to see her running to the escape car and perhaps taking note of it.
And there was no hurry. As she had set the hit up, she’d change cars thrice and drive over back roads through the Clare countryside to find herself in a safe house near Killaloe in an hour’s time.
She could see as she reached for the handle of the door that the car was going, the lights were on, and the driver was poised behind the wheel. Wrenching the door open, she slid in and turned her face to the driver and the barrel of a short, four-chamber handgun.
“Why did you spike my wife’s shotgun? What did that gain you?”
Breen said nothing since there was nothing to say. She had been acting under orders.
“Sweeney tell you to do it?”
Orders. Or, rather, order. Now that he knew, there was only one course of action. Breen’s hands reached for the gun, all four barrels of which exploded in her face.
Having heard the muffled blast, McKeon watched as the car started moving, turning onto the exit ramp toward the hotel.
McKeon again raised the rifle, but he soon saw it was McGarr at the wheel. Geraldine Breen was slumped in the passenger seat, her head resting against the window. Blood was flowing from a massive exit wound in her shaved head. It was the size of a small red fist.
“I thought you might need a hand. Pulling in, I saw him parked by the side of the road, using binoculars to scan the hotel.”
Sprawled in the backseat was a young man with his
hands cuffed behind him and a tight scarf gagging his mouth. A small silver cross studded with bright stones hung from one ear.
“It wasn’t much of a leap.” McGarr’s face was drawn, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he was in need of a shave.
“Where’re Hughie and Ruth?”
The car park was now swarming with uniformed Guards, two EMVs, a fire brigade, and hotel guests and management.
“And you are?” asked a sergeant who was standing by Manahan’s body near the rear door of the hotel.
“The bad fairy,” McKeon replied, brushing by him.
“And this is my magic wand.” He hefted the Steyr-Mannlicher. “Just look at the evil it’s done.”
In stepping over Manahan’s body at the back door of the hotel, McGarr scarcely looked down. Why give her even so much as a thought, he said to himself climbing the stairs. She’s already consumed far too much of your life.
Ward was crouched beside Bresnahan, whose forehead was swollen and red. Three EMT personnel were standing nearby. There were others in the bedroom, tending to the American, who was conscious.
“I think she might have a concussion,” said one of the medical team. “That’s a mickey of a bump. We should take her to hospital.”
“No. No concussion, no hospital. I can see, I can talk. All I have is a splitting headache. What about Breen?” Her eyes swung up to McKeon.
Who pointed to McGarr. “Deus ex machina, exactly.”
“And you? What are you doing here?”
McGarr only returned her gaze.
“How’s Noreen?”
“Coma. They’re doing some tests, trying to understand why.”
Bresnahan’s brow furrowed and tears flowed from her eyes. She sobbed.
“Now we really are taking you to hospital,” said the most senior of the medical technicians. “Policewoman or no policewoman.”
“Just because I’m crying? You don’t know
why
I’m crying.”
McGarr turned and walked into the room where the American lay in a bed covered with glass. “You’re a lucky man,” another technician was saying.
ON THURSDAY
, day two of Noreen’s coma, McGarr received a call while sitting at her bedside. He had to remove her hand from his to open the mobile phone. He heard:
“Peter, Chazz here. How’s the boy? Not well, I should imagine. Understandably, understandably.
“Listen—guess where I am? Ach, you couldn’t, not in your wildest dream, so I’ll tell you. I’m sitting in Dery Parmalee’s seat here in the newsroom of
Ath Cliath
, because—are you ready for this?—I’m the bloody, feckin’ publisher. No shit.
“I don’t think I told you about D. and me, but we were tight. Very tight, especially after closing.”
It was supposed to be a joke.
“Peter, are you there?”
McGarr still did not reply.
“The deal. I imagine you’re interested in that. So, the deal was consummated…at least a good week before D., God love him, ran that fallacious carry-on about Mary-Jo Stanton and Opus Dei. I think he thought he’d need some travelin’ money, don’t you know. Given how scurrilous, downright wrong, and un-Christian it was. It’s such a pity that he wasn’t fast enough in his removal.
“Are you still with me?”
McGarr knew Sweeney knew he was.
“Shall I cut right to the chase? I’m sitting here in me office with the editorial board surrounding me, so you can question them about just when and how the deal with Dery was done. That is, if you don’t believe me, and there’s no reason you should.
“Add to that, bucko, I’m staring down at a proof of the front page that will run tomorrow. It’s another special edition, don’t you know, since the last was such a circulation smash.
“Before we go to press, however, I’d like you to sign off on some of the facts, since they concern you and those near and dear to you. But don’t think this is a read-back by any means. No, we don’t do that around here anymore, do we, boys and girls?”
When there was no response, Sweeney roared, “Say something, you arseholes, so he knows you’re for real.”
“No read-backs,” McGarr heard a voice say.
“I’ll be waiting. And—one other thing—come alone, so we can deal in private.” Sweeney rang off.
Deal. There would be no deal; Sweeney had shot
Flatly. Ward and he had witnessed the crime. Also, Sweeney was in receipt of the files that had been stolen by Geraldine Breen after she had murdered F. X. Foley.
And it had been Sweeney—bagman, power broker, Opus Dei zealot—who had controlled whatever other mayhem Breen was responsible for, like the signature death of Dery Parmalee.
Sitting on a chair beside the hospital bed, McGarr leaned forward and kissed the narrow patch of pale skin on Noreen’s brow that was not swathed in bandage.
If only, somehow, he could perform a miracle and fix the damage that the small shard of shattered gun barrel had caused. Not for the first time, he thought: If only there really were a God actively at work in the world, He would acknowledge Noreen’s goodness, her exemplary life, and all the good works she had performed daily.
And make her whole and sound again, she who had been so charitable to all she dealt with. She who had a bereaved mother to comfort and a young distraught daughter to raise. She who had been in the fullness of her life. She whom McGarr had loved with his whole heart and soul.
Taking her hand again, he raised it to his lips and felt the cool—no, cold—skin.
It had been his prayer for the days that she had been unconscious. His ritual in leaving her.
Placing her hand back on the bed, McGarr stood and turned to Maddie and Nuala, who were sitting in more comfortable chairs behind him. With brow furrowed and eyes narrowed in concentration, Nuala was knitting furiously, as she had since Fitz’s death.
Maddie was using the light near the window to complete her homework. “Your mother would want you to keep up with your studies, no matter what,” he had told her. And perhaps they’ll keep your mind occupied, he had thought.
Mind, if by some…if by the grace of God Noreen pulled through, McGarr would not want her—and she would never have wanted—to be grossly disabled. No. Please, let her survive as she had been.
“I’ll be back.”
Maddie’s head came up. “Where’re you going?” Since the “accident,” as they were calling it, she had been utterly solicitous of his company. The one night they had slept at home, he had to doze in a chair by the side of her bed. She would awake every time he tried to leave the room.
“A wee matter.”
“When will you be back?”
“By and by.”
“You said that last time, and you were gone for a day.”
“This is right here in town.”
“What
time
will you be back?”
McGarr scanned the auburn tresses and turquoise-colored eyes that she had inherited from her mother and thought, as tears welled up in his own, Well, at the very least Noreen was leaving him this fine girl.
“In time for dinner. I’ll take us all for a good dinner.”
She only stared at him, her eyes vacant, her thoughts—he imagined—spooling back on what it had been like, only a few days earlier, to have her beautiful,
vivacious, intelligent mother, who had been interested and involved in every class of thing, in the kitchen, quickly, deftly preparing a meal that was usually better than could be had in any restaurant.
Which is something Maddie had said when she had been younger, adding, “I don’t want to go out to eat. Everything you get
out
is greasy or the taste isn’t quite right.”
Nuala raised her head. “I’ll cook, if you do the shopping, Peter. I don’t think I could face a market yet.”
McGarr scanned her time-worn face, looking for Noreen in it and feeling guilty that he was. Nuala, whose loss was doubly his own but who was carrying on. Nuala who had not once alluded to the fact that it had been McGarr’s occupation—the choices he, and nobody else, had made in life—that had caused the death of her husband and perhaps her only daughter.
“I’ll try to make it quick. Phone me.” If.
Before leaving the room, he scanned Noreen once again, as if trying to lift a permanent visual impression of her there, alive, in the bed.
The Dublin newsroom of
Ath Cliath
was housed above a row of shops off Thomas Street West in the Liberties, not far from Parmalee’s residence.
In fact, movers were carrying out desks and chairs, and McGarr had to wait on the stairs while a cordon of navvies trundled by carrying CPUs and stacks of keyboards.
“Is
Ath Cliath
moving?” he asked the man with the clipboard at the top of the stairs.
“Not far. Just up the alley and a street away.”
“Be finished soon?”
“After we lock up the paper, the whole shebang goes.”
“Over to Dery’s?”
The man glanced up at McGarr, his eyes hooded.
“You’d best speak to Mr. Sweeney about that.”
“And where is he, presently?”
“Corner office.” His chin pointed the way.
Seated behind the room’s only desk, Sweeney did not get up when McGarr appeared in the doorway. In fact, the immense man did not lower his feet, which were propped on the windowsill. With a phone to one ear, he was writing on a pad that was positioned on his considerable paunch.
Sweeney had rolled up his sleeves to expose forearms larger than the thighs of most other people; they were covered with a mat of graying hair. Under bushy brows, his eyes were so bloodshot and rheumy they looked like glowing coals.
Seated with him in the room was a younger man who was also in shirtsleeves. Maybe forty, he was thin and blond with punky twists in his hair and a gem-studded cross hanging from one ear. It was an exact duplicate of the one Geraldine Breen’s wheelman had been wearing out in Clare.
Sweeney lowered the phone slightly and rumbled, “The door—close it.”
Neither the other man nor McGarr moved.
“I said—the door! Close the fucking door!”
Reluctantly the other man rose from the chair and closed the door.
“Run him through the documents, while I finish up here.”
“You’re who I think you are?” the other man asked.
McGarr said nothing. And wouldn’t. It was all he could do to keep himself from pulling out his Walther, holding it to Sweeney’s head, and maybe even squeezing the trigger.
“I’m Chazz’s solicitor. And these are the terms and conditions of the sale of
Ath Cliath
to Chazz.” The document was a sheaf of legal-looking papers with a stamped seal on the final page, which the man turned to. “It’s duly notarized and witnessed. There’s my signature there. I was one of the witnesses.”
Neil Dougherty, Esq., was the signature.
“And here is the deed to Parmalee’s building where
Ath Cliath
is moving as we speak. All of this was accomplished two days ago, including the registration of the deed.”
“Where’s Parmalee’s signature?”
Dougherty pointed to it.
“And the amount paid?”
“Here.” Dougherty turned to an interior page and pointed to the amount, which was three million pounds. “A nice round figure.”
“What was the method of payment?”
“Cash. Parmalee insisted on it.”
“How did Sweeney finance it?”
“He didn’t. No need.
“He withdrew some funds and paid the man. Here’s the record.” From another manila file, Dougherty pulled a Bank of Ireland withdrawal slip that said
Sweeney had withdrawn the money in one-thousand-pound notes.
“It was a traveling case stuffed with money. Parmalee came alone.” He shook his head, as though still marveling at Parmalee’s courage or stupidity.
Nowhere at the murder scene in Parmalee’s residence—in fact, nowhere in his building—had any money been found. Not a pound note nor any other valuables, like jewelry or a wristwatch. Flatly or Breen, McGarr assumed, having removed everything after Parmalee’s death.
“I made you a copy of all of this.” Dougherty reached for another folder. “You’ll find it all legal and aboveboard. No judge in the land would find otherwise.”
Apart from the money. Sweeney could simply have withdrawn the money with no actual payment made to Parmalee, dead men telling no tales. As well, Parmalee’s signatures, if genuine, could well have been penned under duress.
Still standing by the door, McGarr slipped the folder under his arm as Sweeney droned on. “Go over there and stand beside Sweeney,” he said to Dougherty.
“Sorry?”
“I said, walk around the desk and stand beside Sweeney.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“I want you where I can see you.”
“But—”
“Just do it.” And as Dougherty moved around the desk, McGarr barked, “Hang up the phone.” Sweeney’s ruined eyes swung to him. “Hang up the phone!”
When Sweeney’s eyes returned to the notepad, McGarr took two quick strides toward the desk, picked up the telephone console, and ripped the wire out of the wall.
Sweeney’s legs and feet came next. Rearing back, McGarr kicked them from their perch on the windowsill. “Stand up and place your hands behind your back.”
Sweeney only regarded him. “Aren’t you the bothersome, pissant little cunt. Touch me again, and I’ll have you taken care of, if I don’t do it meself.”
In one motion, the Walther came out of McGarr’s jacket and was stubbed into Sweeney’s meaty forehead, right between his eyes. The blow knocked back his head. “Stand up. If you so much as move your hands, I’ll blow your brains out.”
His heavy features drawn with anger, Sweeney still did not stir. “You should know you’ve been warned. And maybe you should look at this before you make yourself more of an arsehole than you already are.” Now on the desk, the fingers of his right hand found what looked like a tear sheet or page proof.
The latter. It was the front page of
Ath Cliath,
or at least a prospective front page, since there was no date on the folio line.
“
BIGAMIST COP SPAWNS HAREM IN LIBERTIES LOVE NEST
.” The photo showed Ward walking between Lee Sigal, who was pushing a baby in a pram, and Ruth Bresnahan when she had obviously been in her last month of pregnancy. Having turned to the side, she appeared hugely swollen, with her large breasts splayed to either side.
“Neil, here, preferred ‘
COP ON COP SHOPPING: HOW FRATERNIZING, ADULTERY, AND BIGAMY CAN LEAD TO ADVANCEMENT IN THE GARDA SIOCHANA
.’ I told him it was too long.” A hand came up and pushed the gun barrel away. “Now, step away from me so we can talk.”
Lowering the handgun, McGarr moved to the other side of the desk and scanned the body of the story, which had been written by Parmalee, or so the byline said.
It detailed Ward’s life:
His childhood in Waterford, his long, successful career in the ring and as a Guard who had “mustanged” his way from walking a beat to becoming “the anointed successor to Murder Squad top cop, Peter McGarr, who is due for retirement.”
Then came his “reputation as a ‘swordsman,’” his “rather public” involvement with Bresnahan beginning around five years earlier, and more recently the revelation that he had sired a son with “former university professor and wealthy Jewish heiress, Leah Sigal,” fourteen years earlier. “Days after that,” Ward had been “near-fatally wounded in a shootout with a drug dealer,” and it was “Leah who nursed him back to health after he left hospital.” And who had become pregnant by him. “Again! Proof that ‘love’ doesn’t die. Or at least lust.
“But the fact that Ward had a ready-made family and tried to break off with Bresnahan meant nothing to the vivacious copette—said to be the hottest number in the Garda Siochana—and while on assignment with Ward early last year, she managed to get herself pregnant, she says, by him.
“Now the three of them—correction, the six of them—live in bigamous splendor in Sigal’s newly remodeled digs, rumored to contain at least fourteen rooms, in the now-fashionable Liberties. When Ruth goes to work, ‘Lee’—as she is known—has no problem taking care of both babies, sources say. But no Mormons they!
“The theater? The symphony? Nightclubbing? The finest restaurants in Dublin? They go often. Why not? Lee pays the other bills, and the eighty grand Hughie and Ruth are paid to uphold public morality is mere walking-around money.