The Death of an Irish Tinker (8 page)

McGarr followed the round but heavily muscled young man as he swayed, flat-footed, side to side down the hallway. The house was a typical, attached, older county council cottage with scuffed lino on the floor. The sitting room, which they passed by, was furnished with overstuffed chairs with doilies on the arms. A budgie was singing merrily in a cage.

Apart from what looked like picture gallery—quality drawings, photographs, and paintings that could be seen on most walls and lining the stairway to the second floor, the house was not what one might expect of a major—no,
the
major—drug dealer in the country. And accomplished murderer.

The kitchen-cum-scullery was barely large enough for a table and—now—four people. A large framed photograph of Pope John haranguing a crowd hung over a big antique television. The screen was covered by a sheet of yellowing plastic.

“And who have we here, Desmond?” asked the granny, who was an elderly woman barely able to raise her neck because of the hump on her back. Her hair was snow white, her eyeglasses were some designer frame with sequined wings on the temples, and the ring on her finger was large and looked like a diamond.

There were playing cards on the table, the third hand having been dealt to Cornelius Duggan, the Toddler’s solicitor, who looked uncomfortable. He was staring down at the
table and had not so much as glanced McGarr’s way.

“This is Chief Superintendent Peter McGarr, luv.”

“From the guards? Is it a social call ye’re payin’, Superintendent. Or something…official?”

“A cup?” Bacon pointed to a teapot on the stove.

McGarr shook his head. “Ah, no. I’d like nothing better, but I can’t stay. Nor can you. If you’ll get your jacket, we’ll be off. It’s a bit chilly tonight.”

“Off where?” asked the granny.

“Just down to the lab.”

“What lab? Why?”

“A Garda lab. I’d like to perform a little test on your grandson.” McGarr raised a palm. “Mind you, nothing invasive.”

“What class of test?”

McGarr glanced down at Duggan, wondering what had happened to his tongue.

“Ballistics. I’d like to know if Desmond here has fired a weapon in the last few hours.”

Depositing a primer residue of antimony, barium, and lead on the hands of a shooter. Even washing could not remove all of it. But the test had to be performed within six hours of the event to have any value in a court of law.

“A weapon? If you mean a
gun,
why, he has surely, sir. Corny and Des spent the afternoon plinking clay pigeons at the Donabate Field Club. Did you not, Corny?”

Duggan flapped a hand to mean yes.

“And since then?”

“Why, we’ve been playing bridge, as you can see. Can I let you in on a little secret, Superintendent? I’ve won a few bob, so I have.” She tapped the pile of pound notes in front of her. “Most of it from Corny here, who don’t have a head for cards at all. At all.”

Duggan nodded, his hands gripped tightly before him. McGarr studied him: a handsome middle-aged man with a full head of steel gray hair corrugated in precise finger
waves. Duggan’s face was flushed, his eyes were bloodshot, as though he’d been drinking.

Three columns of numbers had been noted on the pad. A biro was stuck in the spiral binder.

“You know, I’ll take that cup after all. Where’s the rush? Have you been here all day?” he asked the old woman.

“Where else would I go, cripple that I am?”

“Down the shops, say. Who perms your hair?” McGarr glanced at the careful arrangement of blue-white hair that looked like a confection.

“My grandson here is a one-off. He has whatever I need sent in. Does the cookin’, pays the bills.” She gazed fondly at the Toddler, who was standing at the stove pouring McGarr some tea. “The very best lad in all Coolock bar none. Broke the form when they made him.”

One would hope, thought McGarr.

“I’m ninety-one now, don’t yeh know? And me pins isn’t what they should be.”

“But your mind—how’s that?”

Her old gray eyes rose to McGarr’s. “How’s your own, son? And I mean no offense.”

“None taken. So, you and Solicitor Duggan and your grandson here have been playing cards—how long?”

“Hours. Since the tea.”

“Which was when?”

“Early. Half five. I get tired so.” She squinted at the clock over the sink. “It’s past my bedtime already.”

“He go out at all?”

“Who?”

“Your grandson.”

“Not since coming back from the shooting.”

“Did Solicitor Duggan take tea with you?”

“Et everything on his plate.”

McGarr glanced at Duggan, whose nose was now running, and then over to the sink. It was empty. The rack on the drainboard was filled with dry dishes.

“Dessie, of course. And a slap-up job. Won’t he make some lucky girl a right husband one of these days?”

The Toddler set a cup in front of McGarr and then sat on the remaining chair. He smiled, or he tried to. It was more like the baring of teeth. In his round, fleshy face the Toddler’s eyes were small, dark, hard, and watchful. Shaved close, the skin of his face was blue. The patch of baldness on his head had the shape of a bishop’s miter.

“And what did you eat, Solicitor Duggan?”

The bloodshot eyes rolled past McGarr in what seemed like panic. “Ah…chips. That’s it—bread and chips. And tea.” He raised his cup, which fluttered in his hand. Now his face was an alarming purplish shade, and he bore little semblance to the man that McGarr had spoken with only two weeks earlier.

“Would there be any left?”

“Chips? Of course,” said the old woman, still acting as interlocutor. “Are yeh hungry?”

The kitchen was so small that the Toddler, sitting in his chair, could reach over and open the oven door to reveal a heap of chips on a cookie sheeet. “The gas is on.” He patted them. “Still hot.”

“Did you not have any yourself, Mr. Bacon?” It looked as if nobody had.

“Diet.” Without taking his eyes from McGarr’s, the Toddler patted his stomach. “I look at a chip, I put on weight. Do you have that problem yourself, Superintendent?” His accent was strange—not identifiably Irish or American or British—and he sounded rather like a man on the evening news.

McGarr stood. “Solicitor Duggan, you’ll give a deposition stating that you spent the afternoon and evening with your client here?”

Duggan did not look up at him.

“I say, Solicitor Duggan—”

Slowly Duggan’s ruined eyes rose to him.

“I’ll need a statement from you.”

“As to what?”

“That you went skeet shooting”—which would be easy to check—“and came back here and played—just what is it you’re playing here with all those numbers?” McGarr picked up the sheet.

“Bridge,” the granny put in too quickly.

“For money?”

“Would that I could spend it. But Dessie never lets me spend a farthing. But sure, it’ll all be his soon enough.”

McGarr pushed the score sheet into Duggan’s line of sight. “Can you recap the winning for me? How does it go? Do you have to bid to win?”

“Or lose, and then you pay everybody.” She cackled a bit. “There’s also the honey pot for the best cumulative score. Yeh tot up everybody’s winnings, divide by three, and that’s what the losers have to pay the woman with the best score.”

“I’m new at it,” Duggan managed. “I never played but this once.”

“Bridge? Or
gambling
on bridge.”

Both, it was plain by the ciphers under his name.

McGarr dropped the sheet on the table. “Gamble much, Mr. Bacon?”

Again their eyes met. “Only on games of skill, not chance.”

“Like the shooting?”

The Toddler canted his head to the side; it appeared all the more oval in shape because of the miter pattern of his baldness. “I’ve been known to put a few bob on the barrel of a gun. You must be a fair shot yourself, Superintendent.”

“Certainly not up to your caliber. Have you heard about the Hyde brothers?”

Bacon’s smile did not fade.

“Dermot and Donal,” the old woman said, nodding. “Sturdy lads—they’re always so polite.”

“To a fault, now that they’re dead.”

She gasped, and Duggan turned to the Toddler, obviously not understanding until that moment what he had got into.

“When did they die?” Still, it was the granny.

Now the Toddler’s eyes seemed almost merry.

“This evening. Early. While you were playing bridge, I suppose. Or could it be while your grandson was shooting?”

She shook her head and tsked. “It’s tragic, really. A disaster.”

“Any reaction, Mr. Bacon?”

“Oh, I’m devastated. Destroyed. I’ll have to do something nice for their mother.”

“Because they worked for you.”

“Ach, it’s more than that, isn’t it, Granny? Our families have been close for generations. But since you asked, Dermot and Donal did work for me. And I can tell you without qualification, they were model employees. Loyal, dedicated. And you know, I had the feeling they enjoyed what they did.”

“And you’ve no interest in how they died?”

The smile was back. “Your being here, I can imagine it wasn’t pretty. I’m sure I’ll read about it in the papers.”

“Dessie, you should go over to their mammy now.” The old woman flicked her hand at her grandson. “See if she needs anything. See what you can do.”

It would make the searches of the house and all the other premises owned by the Toddler that much easier. The operation would begin the moment that McGarr walked out the door with several teams working through the many buildings that the man owned here in Coolock.

“Is there anything else, Superintendent?” The Toddler pushed back his chair and stood. “The number of the sports club? The name of the manager? I’m there so often I even remember the numbers.”

From the pockets of the cardigan the Toddler removed a small pad; he reached for the biro on the table. “Ask for Vinnie. Better—interview him. Polygraph. The works.” He ripped off the page and slapped it on the table, startling
Duggan. “Now then, I really should go over to her.”

McGarr was tempted to go with him, just to witness what he’d say, how he’d act.

Instead he waited in his car across the street and watched McKeon and three others from the squad present a search order to the Toddler, just as he was leaving the house.

Nonchalantly, as though he had opened the door to a crew of workmen, the Toddler scarcely glanced down at the papers before stepping aside to let them in. Pulling on a leather jacket, he sauntered out into the night, his short but powerful body swaying from side to side.

At a house several doors up the street, he paused by the gate and scanned the street for a good two minutes before waving to McGarr and making for the door. Without knocking, he entered the house of the two men he had just murdered. Of that McGarr was now certain.

A moment or two later Solicitor Duggan was flushed from the granny’s house with what looked like a shoe box in his hand. McKeon would have examined it before allowing Duggan to leave, but McGarr only let Duggan drive his pricey BMW as far as the Malahide Road before pulling him over.

“You’ve no right to do this. I’ve broken no law,” Duggan complained through an inch or two of open window. “If you persist, I’ll have you up on charges.”

“Really? Name them, solicitor. Now, step out of the car, please.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to see if you’re sober.”

“That’s nonsense. I haven’t had a drink all day.”

“Then you need one, to steady your nerves. You’re shaking. Perhaps you’re not well. I’d say a blood test is in order.”

There was a pause while Duggan considered his options; cars whipped by them on the busy artery that led into Dublin proper. Finally Duggan said, “What is it you want?”

“The truth. How long was Bacon gone this evening? What time did he leave? What time did he return? I want it in writing. You can say that at the time he asked you to perjure yourself, you had no idea what he was about. He was your client, to whom you wished to be loyal. You might even make some statement about yourself that will elicit the sympathy of the court. I’ll give you all the help I can.”

Again Duggan waited, as though wrestling with the pros and cons of telling the truth and the penalties either way. Now, staring straight ahead out the windscreen, he drew in a breath and let it out slowly. He shook his head. “I’m a solicitor. Desmond Bacon is my client. Our relationship is privileged.”

“Even when he’s out murdering? Come now, solicitor, could you be over your head with this man? Think of the others who joined him in murder: Archie Carruthers, who supplied the car and venue for Mickalou Maugham’s murder. The Hydes, who helped him murder Gavin O’Reilly and Maugham, that we might have proved, and more than a few others that we could not. Now they’re gone. All murdered themselves.

“And here you sit in—what?—a narcotic stupor?”

“Hold on now. I don’t care for your tone.”

“Tone?”
McGarr nearly roared. “Good Christ, man, we’re not talking tone here. We’re talking murder, dozens of them, and cocaine, heroin, crack, crank, hashish. Is that what’s in that box?”

Duggan’s head snapped to the box on the passenger seat, as though he’d forgotten it. “Hashish?”

“No, of course not. Not you. Not hashish. Cocaine’s more your speed, I’d say. Pity he hasn’t seen fit to give you something for those shakes. Yet. But there’ll come a day. I’m sure he’ll know when.

“You don’t seem to realize, Cornelius.” McGarr went on in a gentler tone, since it seemed to be in question. “You’re not back in university or in some club consorting with somebody of your own class. Not even with some of the major
thieves and very grand larcenists you’ve represented in the past.

“And it’s not just your career that’s in question. That man—the one we just left, who already owns you body and soul? He wouldn’t turn a hair snuffing you out. Me to you? He’s probably already planned it—you and Vinnie out there at the shooting range of the sports club. Wrap everything up in a neat little packet.

“So you’re going to have to choose, and soon, just how much of your life you can salvage. I could be wrong, it could be too late. But like I said, I’ll help you every step of the way if you’ll let me.