Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16
Book Jacket
Peter McGarr [16]
Mystery
SUMMARY:
The theft of the Book of Kells -- an exquisite ninth-century amalgam of Christian doctrine and Celtic legend -- from the Trinity College library is, in itself, a most shocking crime. But it is the brutal slaying of a night watchman that throws Peter McGarr of the Dublin Murder Squad into the mix. Forced to share investigative duties equally with a publicity-hungry co-Chief Superintendent, McGarr is soon entangled in a twisted web of murder, thievery, back-biting politics, and dark pagan rituals. And surely more blood will flow as secrets, deceptions, and well-guarded lies come to light -- forcing an intrepid detective to doubt the loyalties of even his closest compatriots -- in a chilling case that threatens to bring about nothing less than the destruction of contemporary Irish society.
BARTHOLOMEWGILL
A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE
For Maddie and the McGs entire.
And for the wood woman whose lover was changed into a blue-eyed hawk... because of something told under the famished horn of the hunter’s moon that hung between night and day.
Conten
t
s
v
i
i
MCGARR FOUND NIALL FLOOD IN THE
152
“YOU AWAKE?” HUGH WARD ASKED INTO HIS CELL phone from… 171
THE POLICE PRESENCE AT TREVOR PAPE’S HOUSE WAS already significant… 193
MCGARR LEFT KARA KENNEDY’S FLAT
EARLY, AROUND half six, taking… 232
Scholars believe that the Book of Kells was created both at Kells in County Meath, Ireland, and on the i
s
land of Iona near Scotland around
A.D.
800.
In 1185, the historian Giraldus Cambrensis was a
l
lowed to peruse the Book of Kells. Of it, he wrote:
“It contains the concordance of the four gospels a
c
cording to Saint Jerome, with almost as many dra
w
ings as pages, and all of them in marvelous colors.
“Here you can look upon the face of the divine majesty drawn in a miraculous way; here too upon the mystical representations of the Evangelists, now ha
v
ing six, now four, and now two, wings.
“Here you will see the eagle; there the calf. Here the face of a man; there that of a lion. And there are almost innumerable other drawings.
“If you look at them carelessly and casually and not too closely, you may judge them to be mere daubs rather than careful compositions. You will see nothing subtle where everything is subtle.
“But if you take the trouble to look very closely, and penetrate with your eyes to the secrets of the artistry, you will notice such intricacies so delicate and subtle,
so close together and well-knitted, so involved and bound together, and so fresh still in their colorings that you will not hesitate to declare that all these things must have been the result of the work, not of men, but of angels.”
More recently, Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist and medievalist, called the Book of Kells “the product of a cold-blooded hallucination,” perhaps because the illu
s
trations meld Christian images with zoomorphic and other iconography that harkens back through the Celtic period to the very beginnings of European civilization.
Many of the designs and details partake of such su
b
tlety that any reference to their meaning has been lost.
Yet few would deny that the enigma that is the Book of Kells is one of the premier creations of Western ci
v
ilization.
EVERYBODY HAS AN INNER VOICE, WHICH IS THE VOICE
of God, Ray Sloane had been told by his mother.
“It tells you right from wrong, good from bad, what you should think and do. And what you shouldn’t, e
s
pecially when somebody’s trying to lead you down the garden path. Don’t let anybody lead you down the ga
r
den path, Raymond. Not ever.”
Which was the problem of arguing from the general (everybody) to the particular (Raymond Francis Sloane himself), who was standing in the darkness of the guar
d
house at the Pearse Street entrance to Trinity College.
It was 2:37
A.M.
of a perfectly soft night in early O
c
tober. Fog off the Liffey had stolen up from the quays and now mostly obscured the gray stone Garda subst
a
tion directly across from the gates. Orange halos ringed the cadmium vapor streetlamps.
The security guard on duty, who worked for Sloane, was on the fl?oor by his feet, bleeding rather profusely from the back of his head where Sloane had sapped him from behind. He hoped the man wouldn’t die; it wasn’t in the cards for him to die.
True, Sloane continued to reason, everybody prob
a
bly had an inner voice, the one that said, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be doing this or that” or “Get your bloody arse out of this pickle pronto, mate.” Sloane had that too; usually at the last moment his inner voice knew when to skedaddle.
But increasingly in recent years the problem for Sloane had been that his inner voice didn’t distinguish between good and evil, right action and wrong, pos
i
tive and negative thinking. No.
For at least three years—ever since he’d got out of rehab and discovered Ox, which wasn’t tested for— Ray Sloane’s perverse inner voice had been leading him down paths with no garden in sight on any hor
i
zon. It then had wild fun watching him attempt to pluck his sorry arse out of the broth. For a completely accurate reason, Sloane called his inner voice I.V.
“Here they are,” I.V. now said as a big Merc with blackened windows pulled up to the gate, its head-lamps fl?ashing thrice as agreed. “No going back now, arsehole. No fecking way.”
Sloane didn’t know why, but even though he had come from a good family and was now chief of sec
u
rity at Trinity, his I.V. spoke like a navvy from the docks. Or like his connection.
With a gloved hand, he picked up the receiver, then dialed the four-digit extension of his own phone in sec
u
rity headquarters on the other side of the campus, which he had programmed to pick up on the second ring.
That way, it would look as if he’d been sitting at his desk when the call came through. Later, he’d return to his offi?ce and erase the tape on the answering machine, while the main security computer would contain a record of the time of the call and could be made to r
e
play a tape of the conversation.
“Hello, Tom—what can I do for you?” he heard his prerecorded voice ask.
Holding a glove over his mouth, Sloane said, “Jesus, Ray—get here fast. I don’t know who these yokes are, but—” He then dropped the receiver near the unco
n
scious man at his feet before punching the button that opened the gate.
The car pulled through; Sloane closed the gate.
“And what’s this now?” I.V. continued, as Sloane nipped out of the guardhouse and into the back of the dark car. “Pointed hoods over balaclavas, no less. Be
t
ter fi?nd out who your bloody wonderful mates are, bucko. And why they need to hide their faces.”
“Who am I with?”
Neither answered, as the driver wheeled the car down the narrow lane toward the library.
“I’d like to know who I’m with.”
Raising an arm, the passenger swung round with something in his hand. It was a handgun made larger by a silencer fi?tted to the barrel. Worse still, the man was wearing what looked like darkened welder’s glasses, and not even his mouth was visible. In its place was a round black disk with holes, like som
e
thing in the drain of a sink.
“Oh, Jaysus,” said I.V. “Better shut your bloody gob, Raymond, and go through with the drill as planned. The less you know, the better off you’ll be.”
Should Sloane be subjected to a lie detector test, which, of course, he would. It was a clause in the co
n
tract of employment when theft was involved.
At the library, the passenger got out. Gun still in hand, he waited only a moment for Sloane to swing his legs out of the car, snatching up a handful of hair and wrenching him to his feet.
“Jesus Haitch Christ!” Sloane bawled. “Feck off, you bastard! I know the choreography.”
“What if you don’t?” I.V. asked.
The latex-gloved hand came away.
“Scares you, don’t it? Feckers look like surgeons. Or undertakers. And what’s with the
X-Files
costume, the bloody drains in their bloody gobs, and whatever it is that’s strapped to their foreheads?”
Under the hoods and protruding from the forehead area of their balaclavas were miner’s or caver’s head-lamps that were glowing red.
“Professionals?” I.V. asked. “Could it be? Maybe they’re not the people you’ve been dealing with, Ra
y
mond. Maybe they have a different agenda.”
At the door to the gift shop, which was also an e
n
trance to the Old Library where Kells and the other old manuscripts were displayed, Sloane stopped, removed an electronic key from his pocket, and turned to them. “Once we’re in, I’m going to start speaking. For the record, as we agreed. Right?”
Only the shorter man reacted, again fl?icking the ba
r
rel of the gun.
Having to stoop to fi?nd the slot of the electronic key, Sloane fumbled with the card and also with the key that turned the secondary lock.
“Jitters, eh?” I.V. asked. “Me—I’d turn and split, were I you. First chance you get. They don’t know this place like you do. And they dare not switch on the lights or spend much time looking for you.”
Which was what the goggles and miner’s lights were all about, it now occurred to Sloane. Infrared. Unlike him, they could see in the dark.
“Strikes me, you’re in over your head, Raymond.”
And perhaps very much without it. Soon. How’d he get into such a mess?
“You mean meth. What we wouldn’t give for a touch of that right now. Eh, lad?”
Stepping into the gift shop, Sloane tried to hold the door for the other two but was shoved forward. And— once the door was shut—he was spun around, both keys were pulled from his grasp, and something like a foot was placed against the small of his back.
In one wrenching thrust, he was launched clean off his feet into the darkness, where he fell heavily and br
u
tally, the skin of his face grating over the fl?agged fl?oor.
I get it, Sloane said to himself. They’re playing the script to the letter. It’s here I should begin objecting.
“Script. Choreography? What does it matter?” I.V. put in. “Fact is, you’ve no control here. You’re a fec
k
ing sheep being led to the slaughter. Get out now, man. Run, while you still can.”
But where?
Hauled to his feet, Sloane was shoved forward t
o
ward the Treasury room, which was off the gift shop on the ground level of the Old Library. Even in the pitch dark he knew the way.
“Haven’t you spent most of your adult life here?”
I.V
.
asked. “You know the aisles, the display cases, where the doors are. Think of them as escape hatches.”
But suddenly a great sadness fell over Raymond Sloane: that in the fi?fty-second year of his life when, in fact, he had been an exemplary citizen in every regard but one, here he was involved in perhaps—not per-haps—the most culturally heinous crime possible in Ireland. Far worse than any mere bombing that killed only people.
He had to make sure that, if the worst were to ha
p
pen, he’d be viewed as a hero. A martyr. And certainly not a coconspirator, in spite of the money he’d already taken from them.
“Agreed. If we’re going to go out, boyo. Let’s go out with glory. You should start now.”
From his uniform jacket, Sloane now removed a
n
other electronic key, saying in a loud voice, “You don’t know what you’re doing. If you take away what’s in this room, the police will hound you into your graves.”
The card was ripped out of his hand, and he heard the door click open.
Again he was shoved forward until he was standing before the glass case that contained the Book of Kells.
“Use your hand. Kill the alarms and open it up,” said a voice that sounded like Darth Vader’s.
“Could he be speaking through a voice scrambler?”
I.V.
asked. “These yokes have thought of everything,
which scares me.”
“Do it!” the husky, disembodied voice roared.
Suddenly it felt like his stomach collapsed or that a fi?st had found his backbone through his solar plexus. Sloane doubled up and again fell roughly, his head and knees slamming into the stone fl?oor.
Then somebody had him by the back of his belt and began dragging him toward the control panel, which was located under the display case.
“Now, your hand.”
Grabbing his right wrist and tearing off his glove, they slapped his hand on the scanning screen. He heard the lock snap open.
“And the other two.” Said a different, higher, but similarly disguised voice. Whichever one of them had him by the belt was
strong and brutal, whipping Sloane up against another
display case.
“Get on your feet and run, lad. Run.”
How could he run, when he could hardly breathe?
When his hand was placed on a second scanner, he realized what was happening. Not satisfi?ed with two of the four volumes of the Book of Kells, they were also going to steal the even more ancient Book of Durrow and Book of Armagh, another ancient illuminated ma
n
uscript. All three, of course, were priceless irreplac
e
able treasures that would fetch a handsome ransom.
“I thought you said you were only going to take—”
With one heave, the man swung Sloane up against a third case. “Open your fi?st!” the deep voice roared. “Open your bloody fi?st or I’ll stomp it to bits.”
Sloane complied; his hand was placed on the sca
n
ner of the case with the Armagh book; the lock clicked; his belt was released.
Now, he would run, if he could. But as he tried to raise himself up to do as I.V. had suggested, something came down on his outstretched hand, and a blinding fl?ash of pain seared his vision as he fell back onto the fl?ags.
“You said you—” he began, tucking the damaged hand under his arm.
“I never said a thing,” the higher voice said.
“And me—I lied,” said the other, and they both rasped a horrible laughter, as Sloane, fi?ghting through the pain, again tried to gain his feet.
But the moment he did, the tall one—silhouetted against the dim light from the open door to the library shop—took two quick strides and kicked him in the groin.
Sloane had never felt such total pain. Again he
couldn’t breathe or see or think. The hand no longer mattered, compared with the galling ache that now spread through his body.
And the fear; he knew what was about to happen.
“Why did you ever think they’d let you live? Som
e
how you’ve just got to get yourself gone from here, me boy.”
In his need, Sloane had never once allowed himself to consider the possibility. And here it was.
“Give me a hand with him,” said the deep voice.
Sloane felt himself being seized under the arms; the other one had him by the ankles. “Right enough—up he goes.”
Opening his eyes, he could see enough to know what they were doing—stuffi?ng him into the large Kells di
s
play case, which could be hermetically sealed by switching on a motor that sucked out the oxygen.
“No!” Sloane roared, pushing himself up.
But a fi?st slammed into his nose, again and again and again. “Blood enough for you?” he thought he heard, as the top of the case was closing.
“Enough to be taken seriously,” said the higher voice. “Pity is—there’s not enough. A man like that deserves all this and more.”
And then the top was forced down, squeezing his shoulder, arm, hip, and head into the small space. It clumped shut, and the lock snapped.
“Serious,” said I.V. “That’s just the word. This is very serious.”
Panicked, terrifi?ed, Sloane tried to force his legs, shoulder, and hip up against the glass top and sides of the display case. And then, twisting around, his back and buttocks.