The Angel Tapes Read Free

didn’t.
    She turned to look at him, but had to swerve then to avoid colliding with a taxicab.
    â€œWell, they had to make some thing up, with the state visit just around the corner.”
    â€œState visit?”
    â€œAh, Blade, I swear to God I’d do something about that drinking if I was you. Your mind’s gone. Sure it’s only the president of the United States who’s paying us a little visit on the fourteenth.”
    *   *   *
    A cordon had been thrown across the roadway on either side of the devastation, between the O’Connell Monument and Abbey Street. Hundreds of curious onlookers lined the sidewalk, held in check by uniformed police officers and lengths of taut, plastic tape that read GARDA—NO ENTRY . Sweetman showed her ID and they were allowed to pass.
    The crater was smaller than Blade had expected, yet the force of the explosion had utterly demolished the taxicab; twisted pieces of metal lay scattered over a wide area. What was left of the engine and gearbox had come to rest in a blackened heap on the traffic island, close under the statue of William Smith O’Brien, the nineteenth-century freedom fighter. One of his stone legs had been sheared from the knee down by the blast. The island’s beeches were leafless and scorched, like trees on a battlefield. Other vehicles had taken some of the explosion; they stood abandoned at crazy angles in the roadway and on the traffic island, amid shards of windshield glass, many of them bloodied. Blade had seen bomb damage before and wasn’t surprised that every store window within a wide radius had been shattered. The great arched doorway of a branch office of the Bank of Ireland had suffered most; nothing remained of its glass panes.
    A camera crew from RTÉ television was filming from a helicopter that made crisscross passes above the rooftops. Newspaper reporters jostled for position behind the tape, battling for the attention of every patrolman who came within shouting distance. The air crackled with two-way radio broadcasts; garda squad cars with flashing lights came and went in quick succession, as if following choreographed instructions.
    Yet it wasn’t the police vehicles that drew Blade’s attention, but five small trucks belonging to Bord Gáis, the gas utility company. They formed a semicircle around the bomb site, effectively blocking the onlookers’ view of the activity. An inner cordon of red-and-white plastic traffic cones marked the lip of the crater; they were stenciled with the curious words DUB GAS . A dozen men in hard hats and Bord Gáis overalls were assessing the destruction; some communicated by walkie-talkie; others made notes on clipboards. To the bystander, all this might have appeared perfectly normal: the explosion had, for all intents and purposes, been caused by a leaking gas main. But Blade had recognized two of the men in hard hats. He’d last seen them near Tyre in Lebanon, wearing the blue beret of the United Nations. They were soldiers.
    â€œMacken,” a voice behind him called out, “where the Jayziz have you been? We’ve only been trying to reach you for over an hour, y’know.”
    Blade rounded on the man with whom he shared both the running of the department and an intense, mutual dislike.
    â€œAsleep. What’s it to you, Nolan, where I’ve been? And who’s this ‘we’ when they’re at home?”
    Detective Superintendent Charles Nolan was unfazed.
    â€œDuffy, the DC, everybody. Jayziz, Macken, you look like shit, y’know. What’s the—”
    But Blade and Orla Sweetman were already moving away toward a knot of men in business suits and a gray-haired police officer with braid on his uniform. Assistant Commissioner Duffy acknowledged them with a nod.
    â€œGlad you could make it, Macken,” he said without a trace of sarcasm. “Look, I’m putting you in charge of this investigation.