The Death of an Irish Tinker (18 page)

Bresnahan snatched up the weapon. “Now, get in the fookin’ car and show me the way.” When the girl hesitated, Ruth grabbed the green mane and pulled her to her feet. “In!” She shoved her into the passenger seat, and slammed shut the door.

“The rest of you, help him!” She pointed at the courageous wounded boy.

Reaching the Traveler camp, Baileys knew what he had to do and where. He had scouted the place earlier, paid fifty quid to a Traveler drunk in the nearest pub for the information. Unlike the Monck—whose plan Sean McDonagh and the dance had been—it was how Baileys worked: efficient and informed.

And he hardly slowed down, since he had long ago learned there was only one way to approach these people. Hard set and dead on. They respected nothing and nobody—not bureaucrats, not the police, not even priests anymore. Only superior force, which he had in the boot of the car.

He didn’t even much care if he was seen; at least then he’d have to be identified, captured, charged, and tried. But if he came back empty-handed, he’d be dead, summarily, the Toddler having made it plain. “I haven’t asked much of you ever, my man,” he had said from the Royal Dublin Hospital two days ago. “It’s all been one way, me providing you. Now there’s something you and the Monck can do for me. Yourselves, since I want it done right.”

Wrong. But at least he could put the blame for the mistake on the Monck and McDonagh, since with any luck at all
they were dead. And he could always do the girl again. Himself.

After skidding to a stop in front of the caravan with the tarp-covered Mercedes by it, Baileys jumped out and moved directly to the boot of his car. A collection of maybe a dozen men and boys were sitting around a campfire about a hundred feet off with bottles of Guinness in their hands, watching him now. Closely and intent.

Not moving, when he pulled the Steyr Aug Bullpup assault rifle from the back of the car and slotted in a clip of forty-two rounds, slipping another under his belt. And still not moving when he closed the lid of the trunk and made for the stairs of the caravan, holding the stubby gun down by his side.

It was a high-tech—looking thing, a sweep of cast alloy with a stubby barrel and a long silencer that made it sound as if it were blowing bubbles.

Baileys’s real name was Donal Davies. Wearing his usual dark business suit, shirt, and tie, he was a hugely built, balding man who at forty-eight had run to fat He had been a drug dealer since his days at Trinity College, where he discovered that he really didn’t care for mindlessness himself, while others would pay anything for a steady supply of hashish or heroin flown in via the diplomatic pouch of his addict brother, who was the Irish consul in Istanbul.

With profits always over 1,000 percent, he could think of no other career as rewarding. But now rich beyond his wildest college dream, he should have got out years ago, retired to the Maldives, and lived like a pagan prince, he realized as he climbed the metal stairs of the caravan.

The door, when he tried it, was open. Stepping in, he could hear snoring. “Maggie?” he called into the deep shadows. “Ned? You there?”

He heard a grunt and then a cough, and a figure moved in one of the bunks. The snoring was coming from the other side of the narrow caravan. Which was enough for Baileys.

“What is it?” an old woman’s voice asked. “Do I know you?”

“No. But I have a message from the Toddler.” Baileys raised the stubby gun to direct a burst of high-velocity 5.56 mm fire at the old woman.

But something flashed in the darkness—again and again and again—driving him back to the door, over the metal strap, out the door, and then off into the night, sailing back, arms out, where he landed in a heap in the dirt and mud at the bottom of the stairs.

With curious dispassion and little palpable pain, he tried to place the stocky older man who now appeared in the doorway, gun in hand. He’d seen him before, but where?

And the woman he could see getting out of a car a few feet away: tall, red. He’d seen her before too. She also had something in her hand, and he could see up her skirt, which caused him to smile slightly. The absurdity of noticing that when he was dying.

When he tried to raise his body and reach for the Bullpup, which had fallen a few feet away, the man made no attempt to rush down the caravan steps and prevent him. Instead his gun came up and flashed once more.

Bresnahan paused, her own gun now pointed at the man on the ground. But it was over, McGarr’s final shot having struck Baileys in the middle of the forehead. Cleanly, the wound looking like the smudge of absolution given on Ash Wednesday.

Straightening up, Bresnahan tried to act calm, composed, as if it were all in a day’s work. Which it had been of late. But her voice was reedy and forced. “Who is he, Chief?”

Or was he? thought McGarr as he moved slowly down the stairs, ejecting the clip from his Walther and slipping it into a jacket pocket. McGarr had always told himself he never liked this part of the job, and he didn’t. But somehow this was different, the dead man at his feet having made himself eminently executable. Killing the Toddler might
even prove pleasurable, he imagined. And think of all the others he’d save.

“Baileys, he’s called. One of the Toddler’s ‘independent producers.’”

“And a fookin’ scut!” said a girl with a chartreuse Mohawk rushing around Bresnahan. When she raised a boot to stomp the fallen man’s head, Ruth grabbed the back of her denim jacket and spun her toward the gathering crowd.

Said McGarr, “I’ll need some names, some statements.” As to how the dead man was reaching for the assault rifle when McGarr dispatched him.

Bresnahan nodded and reached for the Bullpup. “And after that?” Should she go back to Dublin? she meant.

It was strangely quiet, given what had happened. McGarr scanned the crowd, who were speaking only in whispers, regarding him with a mixture of fear, awe, and gratitude.

McGarr turned his head to Ned and Maggie Nevins above him in the door of their caravan. “You should shift now.” As they had discussed when McGarr had first arrived. “And you with them,” he said to Bresnahan. “Don’t ring me up at the office with your new position.” In case Hannigan was more adept than he seemed. “Phone Noreen at the picture gallery.”

“Rita, where be Oney?” Maggie demanded of the girl with the Mohawk.

“Back at the dance.”

McGarr walked toward the crowd which broke before him. His personal car, which was a Mini-Cooper.

“Where you off to, Chief?” Bresnahan asked to his back.

“Dublin.” And the Raglan Road house that now had the “packet” in the freezer and two of Hannigan’s guards posted out front, all at the Toddler’s request.

Why? Because the Toddler knew Biddy Nevins/Beth Waters would return there eventually. And how did he know that? Because he would make sure she did by—McGarr had no clue, only the feeling that he should get back there fast.

How long would it take? Dublin was 140 miles away by the best highways, and his car—small, agile, and fast—could top the ton (100 mph) on straightaways. Two hours with a portable dome light spinning on the roof, he decided. And no tie-ups.

CATCHING THE FINAL few rays of the setting sun, the complex of new buildings off in the distance looked more like the nest of an eagle than the lair of a Toddler, thought Hugh Ward. Hanging well back, he was following Biddy Nevins in her new Volvo across the treeless expanses of the Wicklow Mountains.

In Baggot Street near the Royal Dublin Hospital, Ward had waited nearly ten hours before a speedy Ford stopped at the rear bumper of the parked Volvo to block traffic. A carrot-headed passenger hopped out, key in hand. In mere seconds he was behind the wheel, had the engine started, and was out in traffic, almost before Ward had his own car ticking over.

And then they were off to the races, the Volvo and Ford jinking in and out of traffic, around buses and lorries, and nipping between lackadaisical, homeward-bound commuters. They even drove up on a footpath for a while, losing Ward completely.

He wasn’t worried. The general direction was south, where he alerted all available traffic gardai, and the Volvo and Ford were passed from picket to picket until they were
observed pulling up in front of a bus kiosk. There a woman got behind the wheel of the Volvo. Ward asked the next picket to stop traffic, until he could catch her up.

Now he was tailing her across a barren ridge a few miles beyond east of Hacketstown. In the near distance was the Toddler’s estate, glowing like a castle in the air, and Ward imagined that any visitor or threat could be seen miles away around a full 360 degrees of the compass.

Fenced all around with chain link and razor wire, the estate had great chrome steel gates by the road with flooded bogs, like moats, to either side. From there the drive was straight and open across maybe a quarter mile of bog, until it struck the flank of the mountain and began switching back and forth. Small structures dotted each corner.

Sentry houses? Or pillboxes with gun slits? In the failing light, Ward could not make them out exactly, but the place had the definite look of a fortress.

Maybe a half mile away now, he slowed, then stopped to watch Biddy turn her car onto the drive, where another car was parked, as though the driver—having failed to open the gates—had walked around them and then up the long drive to the house on the crest of the mountain.

But Biddy hardly glanced at it. Instead she backed across the road to the far margin of the opposite shoulder, which was a sloped hillock of maybe twenty-five feet. Ward shook his head, knowing what she would do.

How far did she think she would get, given the Toddler’s prowess with a rifle? And the complaints—never proven—that he had not hesitated to fire at other intruders. In the past few days the squad had dug up everything possible—official and otherwise—about the man.

Yet the sparkling green Volvo shot forward, off the hillock, across the road, and straight toward the bright metallic gates that flew up in the air when the car struck them. But held.

Whole seconds later the harsh metallic sound came to Ward.

Yet undaunted, Biddy reversed and again crossed the road to the hillock, the grille of the Volvo spewing steam. And again she shot forward, this time bursting through the barrier, sending one of the gates bouncing across the top of her car that careered down the long dirt road toward the mountain.

Ward began moving forward, thinking he should at least be a bit closer, when suddenly the Volvo jerked or halted or staggered momentarily, before lurching forward for another hundred yards and rolling to a stop.

Only then did Ward hear the noise—a sharp crack followed by a howling roar that echoed through the mountains—and could be just one thing: the report of some large-caliber weapon.

To Biddy it felt as if the car had struck a boulder. Or a small tree. The force of the collision threw her against the steering wheel, and the air bag deployed in her face, knocking her back against the seat.

Then the windscreen on the passenger side exploded, and the headrest burst into a cloud of leather and stuffing. Biddy only just managed to open the door and roll out of the car when the window above her head shattered.

She threw herself off the drive and rolled down the grassy verge to conceal herself in a depression in the bog where peat had been cut years past and the water was only ankle deep. The car suddenly exploded in a stunning fireball that singed her eyebrows and hair. And even through the roar of the blaze the howl came to her: of a rifle.

Which discouraged her. Utterly. She felt weak, powerless, dead. How could she hope to challenge such a man who could strike her from such a distance? She’d been a bloody eejit to try. Even the bag that she had strapped across her chest was a burden too great to bear, weighed down as it was with the handgun.

She had to get out of there and move away from the bright light of the blazing car. If she kept herself low in the peat
trenches, she might make the road, where she would hail the first passing car. Or—she now remembered—boost the car that was parked there, which gave her some hope.

Yet feeling more terrified than she had in all her born days, Biddy set out. The
shadog,
the one who had told her to go back to her house where they could protect her, had been right. She’d do that now. She might even ring him up and tell him, so that the police would be in place when she got there.

He—Ward, the
shadog
who had warned her—was out of his car, having determined the position from which the rifle was being fired. It was not from the house. In fact, it was beyond the fence of the Toddler’s estate on top of another ridge that was rather close to Ward’s car.

It could be dangerous traversing a bog at night. But Ward had lived near one as a child in Waterford, and he had a feel for the terrain. Also, he was approaching the sniper on a flank from his target, Beretta drawn.

When Ward got closer, he could see two figures that looked like children and seemed to have abandoned their attack. Or counterattack. They were standing away from their weapons, which were now plainly visible on two three-legged stanchions. Hands folded at their waists, they did not move as Ward approached.

The weapon, he guessed, was an M-1 Garand equipped with a night scope. The other stanchion supported a large complex-looking spotting scope that, given its bulbous shape, was probably also enhanced by infrared.

The shooter bowed to Ward when he announced himself, then placed her hands together in a position of prayer or supplication. Both she and her spotter were pretty, doll-like Oriental women dressed in tight gold dresses with high collars, ornamental headbands, and slippers to match.

Ward lowered his eye to the nightscope of the rifle and peered into the smoldering cinder that was now Biddy Nev
ins’s automobile. He then glanced at the Garand, which was both an antique and unusual in Ireland.

But he knew it was one of the most accurate and powerful combat weapons ever made, especially when shooting—Ward picked up the box of cartridges on a camp stool between the stanchions and played the beam of his penlight over the label—.300 Winchester Magnum shells with 176-grain Sierra bullets. High-priced, specialty ammunition, perfect for target shooting. Or assassinations.

Ward dropped a shell into the breach and shoved the bolt forward, locking it into the chamber. Through the nightscope, which made everything appear green, he sighted in the bonnet ornament on the burning Volvo that was maybe a thousand yards away.

Ward wasn’t an expert shot by any means, but he was adept in most things that required hand-eye coordination, and he rather enjoyed target shooting. Touching his cheek to the rifle stock, he pulled in a breath, held it, and waited until he could assess how the beating of his heart affected his sighting in of the bonnet ornament. But the stanchion was sturdy and the movement slight.

Was there a crosswind? No, it was virtually still now that night had come on.

Slowly he squeezed the trigger, the stem of which had been filed and oiled to reduce friction, he could tell. Without the slightest errant movement, the pin snapped down on the case head of the cartridge, firing the gun. Even the recoil seemed muted against his shoulder.

When Ward brought the scope down onto the target again, it was gone. Gun and scope were perfectly matched; the shooter could not have missed Biddy Nevins with that weapon fired from this perch.

Straightening up, he said, “You weren’t trying to kill her?”

The woman, who was standing in back of the gun and must have been the shooter, shook her head. “Scare her,” she said in barely intelligible English.

“Why?”

“So she go home. Please excuse.” From the sleeve of her dress she pulled out a slip of paper, on which the other woman, who was much younger, trained the beam of a pocket torch. The older woman read, “My name Lo-Annh. This…my nice”—she glanced up at Ward—“Hon-Soh.”

“Niece,” he corrected.

She bowed slightly before continuing. “Cambodia staff Mr. Bacon. We hereby request”—there was a pause—“political asylum.” She glanced up at Ward, her pretty dark eyes triumphant.

But when Ward got the two women down to his car and the lights switched on, he could see that the other car, the one that had been parked by the now-smashed gates and still-burning Volvo, was gone. Taken, he assumed, by the only other person in the area who had ever boosted cars.

He reached for the cell phone to ring up his office.

The car that was parked near the Toddler’s gate had been unlocked with an ignition key in the switch. A note taped to the steering wheel said, “Miss Waters, You should take this car straight back to your house. I have guards posted front and back, and I guarantee your safety.” It was signed “Detective Superintendent Hugh G. Ward.”

Biddy folded it carefully and placed it in her purse. She didn’t know how he’d anticipated her coming there, but he was a genius. And a savior.

Biddy had turned the car directly toward Dublin.