Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 by Bartholomew Gill Page B

any names?”
    “Only Raymond’s.”
    “He speak with you later?”
    “ ’Twas the last I seen of him. Ever, as it turns out.”
    “Big BMW up the street,” said one of the men b e hind her. “Midnight blue. Gold wheel covers.”
    Like Raymond Sloane’s new wheels, which, Mc-Garr supposed, the son, Ray-Boy, had driven off in.
    “How long did they stay?”
    “The drink, is all. Fifteen minutes, twenty. They had business with Raymond, if you know what I mean. A f ter it, he was out of here like a shot.”
    “Big shit-eater on his puss” came from one of the men.
    “He could see his future before him,” said another.
    “Notoriety. Front-page headlines.”
    “Stardom and a big glass box.” Laughter gurgled from the crew.
    “Warped arseholes,” the old woman opined. “Ima g ine swearing any one of them in a court of law.”
    More immediately, McGarr was interested in the possibility of one or another having got a good look at the man or woman who met Sloane in the lounge. “Would you mind if I sent an artist over here?”
    “Depends on her act. If she gets the lads all riled up, then leaves, no telling what might happen.” Behind the soiled lens of her eyeglasses, one rheumy eye winked.
    McGarr tossed back his drink, put a ten on top of the singles, then slid the bank notes forward. “Buy the lads a drink and one for yourself.” Warped or not, later he might need them.
    “Where’d you learn about the balaclavas and all the...crime scene details?” He slid off the stool.
    She swung her jaw at the teley. “Some big fella— one of your own—was on twice. Once at Trinity, a se c ond time from Garda headquarters in Phoenix Park.”
    Sheard. What possibly could he hope to gain in r e leasing those details? McGarr wondered. “Your name?” He held out his hand.
    “Does it matter?”
    He nodded. “You’ve been helpful.”
    “Foyle. Annie Foyle, like the name of the place. But I don’t think I’d do you much good in court, either.”
    McGarr now remembered—Foyle’s had been the name of the pub at least since he’d been a child.
    He had actually known her father, who had been a friend of his own father. “Small world.”
    “It’s occurred to me.”
    Twenty minutes later, McGarr found himself climbing a battered staircase toward his headquarters on the third fl?oor of a building in the complex of structures called Dublin Castle in the heart of the city.
    The brick structure, Edwardian in style, was a fo r mer British army barracks and still reeked of coarse t o bacco, dubbin, leather, sweat, gun oil, and fear. The British had been oppressors and in that role hated and sniped upon. Like the Garda itself, these days.
    And paper, McGarr decided, bumping open the door into the offi?ce proper. The place now also stank of p a per, reams and reams of it, as Maddie had said of her homework. Along with a more recent smell—the acrid plastic stench of simmering circuitry.
    “Chief,” said one staffer, as McGarr passed down the rows of desks.
    “Chief,” said another.
    “Chief,” some of the others then chorused.
    It was the standard greeting.
    “You got Rut’ie and her consort in your cubicle,” said John Swords, who since Bresnahan’s removal had acted as McGarr’s amanuensis. “Bernie’s in there too, nursing his stitched pate.”
    “Which you’re calling a heads-up?” McGarr asked, if only to break his somber mood.
    “Only the ‘nursing.’ You’ll see what I mean.”
    With the next step, he did:
    McKeon was ensconced in McGarr’s chair, feet up on the desk. In front of him was the bottle of whiskey that was usually kept in the lower left-hand drawer of the desk and could get McGarr sacked, given long-standing regulations prohibiting drink in Garda facil i ties. McGarr’s personal cup was in McKeon’s right hand, doubtless fi?lled with the potent fl?uid.
    Bresnahan, on the other hand, was seated in M c Keon ’ s usual chair, with Hugh Ward occupying the edge of the planning