Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 Read Free Page A

a new one on me,” McKeon said in an undertone.
    McGarr glanced at his colleague, whose dark eyes were bright with the grisly irony that passed for humor in the Murder Squad.
    The victim was encased, literally, under thick glass or high-quality Plexiglas. Not only was his security uniform a deep, midnight blue, but his face was some lighter shade of the color, rather like cornfl?ower blue, except for where it was covered in blood, which had also smeared the glass.
    “To control the deterioration of the manuscripts, the cases are hermetically sealed and the atmosphere’s withdrawn. Or so says your man,” McKeon continued. “He’s the head librarian and she’s the keeper of old manuscripts.”
    “Trevor Pape?” asked McGarr, glancing over at the two. Pape was a well-known fi?gure in academic and arts circles and had attended openings at the picture gallery that Noreen had owned.
    “Aye. She gave her name as Kara Kennedy. She found the victim, after getting a call from Pape about another guard at the Pearse Street gate. He’s in the ho s pital with a fractured skull.”
    McGarr pointed to the victim, who, although a
    rather large man, had been stuffed down into a quasi-fetal position in the narrow space. Alive. He had stru g gled for any air he could fi?nd; his mouth was open and his eyes—blue, as well—were swollen and protrusive. “Raymond Sloane, head guard here for decades.”
    “What’s that in his hand?”
    “Hard to tell through the blood. There’s more over here.” With a penlight, McKeon fl?ashed the beam over the fl?ooring stones that were splashed with drying blood. “Looks like he put up a fi?ght, he did. One hell of a way to cap off a career.”
    “Know him?”
    “Not well. Started out with me in the army. I’d see him now and then. Around town.” Before joining the Garda decades ago, McKeon had been a drill instructor in the Irish army.
    It was Dublin again. In spite of the population e x plosion and recent infl?ux of immigration, in many ways it remained a small town.
    “What’s missing?”
    “The books, of course—two of four Kells books, also Durrow and Armagh,” McKeon said.
    There lay Raymond Sloane, devoid of life and spirit and now merely a subject for a pathologist’s scalpel.
    “Let’s see what’s in his hand.”
    McKeon waved the librarians over and explained what was needed. Reaching under the case, Pape threw a switch and the case hissed as air entered the chamber.
    Suddenly the lid sprang open, with Sloane’s arm and shoulder rising up. The woman gasped and jumped back, sobbing.
    A forensic photographer aimed his camera, and cold achromatic lightning raked the room. Closing his eyes, McGarr watched the light burst red through his eyelids as the camera continued to fl?ash.
    With surgical gloves, a tech sergeant removed the object from Sloane’s right hand—a thick black sock that was fi?lled with a stack of maybe thirty 50P coins.
    “Because he didn’t carry a weapon?” McKeon asked.
    McGarr shrugged. Nevertheless, it had proved us e less against the glass.
    “Couldn’t swing it.”
    Shattered capillaries in the man’s protrusive eyes swirled down, like tiny red worms, into his sclerae. McGarr thought of the small red wet hole in the back of Noreen’s ear. It was all the damage she had suffered, but enough to kill her.
    “You, I know,” he said to Pape, who with hands clasped behind his back only nodded. “And you are?”
    Her hand came forward. “Kara Kennedy. I’m in charge of the stolen books. I mean, the books that were stolen. Or, at least, I was. In charge, that is.” Her eyes strayed to Pape, who only maintained his stony consi d eration of McGarr.
    A woman in her early to mid-forties, she had brown hair, pleasant features, good shoulders. “Tell me ever y thing you can about this. Who the victim is. How the theft could have happened. Impressions.” McGarr swirled a hand.
    “Well, I think—”
    “When I am present, I speak to the public about