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

head—“I was just doing my job, such as it is. And I love you.”
    “Yah.” She raised her head and closed her eyes.
    Their lips met briefl?y.
    “I love you too, Peter.”
    And then, as McGarr descended the stairs, Maddie called out, “Love you.”
    “Love you,” McGarr answered her call again and again, until he reached the kitchen and picked his hat from the rack.
    Nuala was washing the dishes. “Going out?”
    “Yah.”
    “Back to work?”
    “Up the street. Above in Flood’s.”
    Glancing up into the window, which at night became a mirror, she took him in. “One of these nights you should get some rest. And tomorrow a haircut. You’re looking a bit tatty.”
    Flood’s was packed mainly with the immigrants who were now as local to the neighborhood as McGarr himself had been for nearly thirty years—people of all shades and hues speaking languages from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, not a word of which Mc-Garr understood.
    Most were young, their conversations loud and an i mated, their smiles bright. Smoke—from a turf fi?re and cigarettes—was everywhere, and the din was deafening.
    Without having to ask, he was slid a drink, which he carried into the lounge, if only to escape the noise. There he found a low stool, the last by the hearth that was glowing with the cracked red eye of a mound of real peat.
    Although the burning of anything but EU-approved solid fuel was now illegal in the city, the turf fi?re was a nice touch, McGarr decided—a bit of old Ireland amid what had become very much a motley international country peopled by a motley international crew.
    Tugging on his drink, McGarr turned away from the fi?re to fi?nd somebody standing before him. Pleated black slacks, black stockings, black pumps.
    He looked up. It was Kara Kennedy, the keeper of old manuscripts at Trinity.
    “Twice in one day. Could it be coincidence?”
    McGarr only cocked his head and regarded her—the chestnut hair, the jade-colored eyes.
    “D’you live around here?” She had a glass of wine in one hand, her purse in the other.
    “For ages. And you?”
    “Not far. I just couldn’t stick to my fl?at tonight—all the bother on television and my still feeling so much... really, so much the failure.” The hand with the purse came out. “Despite what you said about my not being responsible and all. I appreciated your co n cern, I really did. But I’m afraid when it comes to guilt, I’m quite a mess.” She looked around, as for a stool.
    McGarr stood. “Sit here.”
    “No, really—where will you sit?”
    “I’ll stand until another frees up. In fact—” He caught the eye of a barman and pointed to a stool.
    The barman nodded. Producing one from the stor e room in back of the bar, he passed it across to McGarr.
    “You have clout here, I see.”
    “And elsewhere, as it turned out today.”
    “So I’ve been watching.”
    He regarded her—the protrusive upper lip, the u m ber eyebrows that nearly met, with the arch repeated in a deep widow’s peak. Long neck, fair skin, square shoulders.
    She had changed since he’d last seen her into som e thing like a black tank top covered by a cashmere cardigan just the color of her eyes.
    “I don’t know why this has affected me so co m pletely.” As though embarrassed by what she was sa y ing, she was looking down into her wineglass. Two bright patches had appeared in her cheeks. “But earlier tonight, back at my fl?at, I felt...well, nearly suicidal. It’s such”—she shook her head, then brushed her longish brown hair off her shoulder; it was slightly tinged with gray—“such a huge loss, such a crime, such an enormity. And, of course, there’s Raymond’s death.”
    When she turned to McGarr, her eyes were bri m ming with tears.
    She had said all that earlier in the day, McGarr thought, but suicidal was different.
    Also, beyond her good looks, there was something he found attractive about the woman, perhaps how vu l nerable she seemed. Or how much she