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

him. “The woman I was with.” He pointed t o ward the hearth.
    “Told me to tell you she was tired of waiting. And just tired. She gave me this to give you.”
    On the back of her card was written, “Knackered. Going home. Thanks for the drinks. If you need me, please call.” She had included a second phone number.
    Back down in Flood’s offi?ce, McGarr rang up Mc-Keon, Swords, and Ward and Bresnahan, asking them to assemble at his house.
    Out on the street, he met Orla Bannon, the Ath Cliath reporter, who was sitting on the bonnet of a car with her legs folded under her.
    “Ran out on you, did she? Never trusted academics much meself. It’s the whole tenure thing. What the fook is tenure but a way of saying you can breeze through the rest of your life and still be in the chips? With all the time in the world.
    “Drink?” From under a brightly colored cape that looked like a serape, she pulled a pint bottle and held it out. “It’s me pukka pose. Like it?
    “What did Sweeney hand you? Looked like a video. Buds now, are you? Into swapping naughty fi?lms?” She tsked. “Men are so inscrutable. How quickly things change for you. Or is there something I should know?”
    McGarr had stopped in front of her, again wonde r ing at her appearance there just as Sweeney was han d ing him the tape. Could it have been felicitous, merely her having tailed either Sweeney or McGarr himself there to witness the exchange? Or did Sweeney and she have some other purpose that was, at least for the m o ment, inscrutable? And fi?nally, what was her work arrangement at Ath Cliath if, as Bresnahan had said, she and Sweeney were at odds? “Chazz didn’t tell you? You, his diva. His ace reporter.”
    Becoming more complete, her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes, making her seem rather feline, given her pose. “Done some legwork, I see. Which is good. But not complete enough by half, I’d hazard. Your man Sweeney? He’d sooner give me the sack than the time of day. What’s in the video?”
    “Why do you work for him?”
    “Beyond money? Space. Where else could I get pages and pages and no—I repeat, no—editorial inte r ference? He touches me copy, I’m gone.”
    “Gone with what?”
    She only smiled and raised the bottle.
    “What about Opus Dei? Ever write about them?”
    She nodded. “But I wasn’t working for him then, and we all have our sacred cows. Could it be, M c Garr—you and Sweeney share that particular bovine but from different ends?”
    Fair play, thought McGarr, all three of the potential murderers of Noreen and Fitz having been associated with the reactionary Catholic sect.
    “What about the New Druids? Ever write about them?”
    “There’s little I haven’t. They send you that via Sweeney?” She waved the bottle at the video that Mc-Garr now slipped inside his jacket.
    “A ransom demand on tape? It’s a nice touch. Eli m inates the whole handwriting analysis thing.” The legs came out from under her, and she swung them off the fender. They were shapely legs encased in black stoc k ings.
    As though pondering, she raised them and stared at her shoes, which were suede with heels that gave her some height. “But why Sweeney of all people, consi d ering who they are—anti-Christian and all their other rot?”
    When she glanced back up at McGarr, her eyes na r rowed. “Offi?cially—as written on the papers they had to fi?le when registering as a political party—Celtic United is unattached to any other organization and is run by a woman who calls herself Morrigan.” She pr o nounced the name “Mor-ee-GAN.” She cocked her head slightly.
    McGarr nodded, the name being known to every schoolchild. Morrigan was the unconquerable goddess of war who battled Cuchulainn in the Celtic legends that made up the books of the Ulster Cycle.
    “But, really, she’s just another big, blowsy, middle-aged woman full of herself along with mounds of shite and drivel that she unloads at the slightest provocation.