Free Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 by Bartholomew Gill

others.
    “Which leaves us?” Ward asked.
    “Waiting for the demand,” Bresnahan concluded.
    “Anything else?” Ward asked.
    Swords cleared his throat, stepped fully into the c u bicle, and reached a printout toward McGarr.
    The E-mail message was from the commissioner, r e peating what they had heard the taoiseach announce on the television: the 30,000-Euro reward and that Jack Sheard would head up the investigation. With a fi?nal remark that cut McGarr to the quick.
    “Jack’s expertise is theft. He’s studied these things, Peter. He knows how thieves think.”
    As if McGarr, with more than thirty years of police work both in Ireland and on the Continent, did not.
    Turning to Swords but actually speaking to Bresnahan and Ward, McGarr said, “I want to martial the staff. They’re to drop everything else and concentrate on Trevor Pape, Kara Kennedy, the victim Sloane, this Derek Greene, and Orla Bannon. I want to know every little thing about them, from their last phone calls to bank balances, mortgages, liaisons, what programming they watch, how many fi?llings in their molars, the works.”
    Still smarting from the commissioner’s message, McGarr tugged on his hat. “Finally, send an artist over to Foyle’s in the Liberties. I want a mock-up of an u p market man and woman who met with Sloane two weeks or so ago.”
    “Look at that big pumped-up pussy,” McKeon was muttering, as he stared at Sheard on the computer screen. “He can yap more nothing about nothing much than any man alive.”
    Among his handful of admirers within the Garda, Sheard was known as “The Communicator,” McGarr now remembered it said.
    They would now see how potent an investigator he was.
    “By when, Chief?” Swords asked to McGarr’s back.
    “Ten. Tomorrow.”
    CHAPTER
    5
     
    GOING HOME, BEING HOME, ENJOYING THE HOME HE once loved was a trial for McGarr, fi?lled as it was with so many memories of Noreen.
    A detached Georgian house made of brick and stone, it occupied a corner on Belgrave Square in Rat h mines, a suburb of the city that was now also fi?lled out with recent immigrants, students, pensioners, and the working poor. It had not always been so.
    McGarr parked his Mini-Cooper down a narrow cul-de-sac that bordered one side of his property and got out.
    The night, like the day had been, was fair, and even with the ambient light of the city and a quarter moon, the stars were myriad and deep.
    Instead of walking round to the front door as he us u ally did, McGarr moved toward the laneway and the low door that opened into his back garden.
    There in the dim chalky light, striped with brighter luminescence from the kitchen windows, he surveyed his garden, which he had all but abandoned for three entire summers.
    But in hopes of carrying on in the coming spring, he had planted a bit of winter wheat that would add nutrients to the now-well-rested soil, when he turned it under before planting.
    There had been a time when gardening had been a passion for McGarr, a way of truly re-creating himself while producing a satisfying variety of vegetables, fruits, and fl?owers. When engaged in gardening, he had no thoughts other than those related to the pastime, which were few since he’d been gardening for decades. It was like second nature to him.
    McGarr knew other people who had suffered losses as great as he had but whose hobbies had given them succor and solace.
    Well—he glanced up at the house where he could see Nuala’s head moving to and from the stove— maybe in the coming year. A light was on in Maddie’s room, where she would be doing her sums.
    He should go in and fi?nd out how she was and how her work was progressing, make small talk with Nuala, who would be interested in the trouble at Trinity, maybe pour himself an aperitif and make a few phone calls about other cases that would now go ignored.
    And yet McGarr removed his jacket and began pulling up dead plants and tossing them on the co m post heap. He worked