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Peter McGarr stepped out of the laneway into Dame Street, at the end of which stood the granite eminence of Trinity College about a quarter mile distant.
It was early morning -- half 8:00 -- and the street was thronged with automobile commuters creeping to work. Cars rolled on a few paces, stopped, and their drivers looked away blankly, used to delay. Faces of passengers in double-deck buses, through windows streaked with urban grime, were careworn and bored.
A solitary articulated lorry appeared lost amid the clamor, its wide headlamps searching for a street that might lead to a highway and freedom.
Like Trinity itself, where McGarr was headed, the early traffic on Dame Street was a given of his day, something he seldom noticed.
But since the murder of his wife, Noreen, more than two years earlier, McGarr had gone from being an acute observer of the city to being necessarily blind to its changes and nuances. Save those, of course, that concerned his family, who had been reduced to his daughter, Maddie, and his mother-in-law, Nuala. She now cared for the child while he worked.
Trinity, which he was now approaching, was a case in point, he realized. Back when he'd been a student, the bastion of Protestantism and privilege had been declared off limits to Catholics by the bishop of Dublin. Of course, as the seventh of nine children of a Guinness brewery worker, it was no place he could have had hopes of attending, anyhow.
And yet in his own way, McGarr had coveted Trinity's complex of mainly Georgian and Victorian buildings that walled off traffic and noise and provided a quiet haven of wide lawns, cobbled footpaths, and civility in the heart of the city. It was a gem of a place, a kind of urban diadem. But for the nearly twenty years of his marriage, he had associated the college with Noreen, who had studied there.
The arched entranceway was crowded with returning students, and across a wide courtyard, he could see uniformed police cordoning off the Old Library. In front of the barrier stood press and television crews -- details that he'd sooner forget, if he could.
But Peter McGarr was chief superintendent of the Serious Crimes Unit of the Garda Siochana, the Irish police, and since the tragedy, his work had become the sole sustaining element in his life, the one constant activity that helped him forget.
Also, there was the chance -- however slight -- that he might discover who exactly had murdered his people. And why.
At the corner of the Old Library, McGarr paused for a few tugs on a cigarette before running the gauntlet in front of the police line, even though he'd promised his daughter he'd quit.
More guilt. How could he have failed to recognize the danger that his occupation posed to his family? How could he have allowed the tragedy to occur?
Feeling as he did most waking hours -- that his life was effectively over in his fifty-fifth year -- McGarr dropped the butt into a storm drain and stepped toward the reporters.
A somewhat short man with gray eyes and an aquiline nose bent slightly to one side, he still presented a rather formidable appearance with wide, well-muscled shoulders and little paunch.
Courtesy of Nuala, who had taken charge of his appearance, he was well turned out in a heather-colored tweed overcoat, razor creases in his tan trousers and cordovan half-cut boots polished to a high gloss.
"You've got to get a grip on yourself and get on with life, Peter," she had told him going out the door. "If only for Maddie. And forget the bastards what done it. They're a sly and craven lot, not at all like your common run of criminal, and more than a few, I'm thinking. And if they thought you were onto them ... "
Unless, of course, they didn't know he was before he struck. The niceties of the law being dispensed with. Revenge was what McGarr sought, not justice.
As he waded through the clutch of reporters, whose questions McGarr fended off with his eyes, all that hinted at his inner turmoil was a certain drawn look and his deep red hair that tufted out under the brim of his fedora. He'd been too distracted for barbers.
While waiting for the door to the gift shop to be unlocked, McGarr glanced up at a sky freighted with clouds moving in from the east. Although it was only early October, the wind carried an edge. The fair weather would not hold much longer, he could tell.
Bernie McKeon -- McGarr's chief of staff -- had already arrived, along with a pathologist and several members of the Tech Squad.
A man and a woman, who McGarr supposed were library officials, were standing off from the others.
McKeon handed McGarr the notes he'd taken since arriving.
"You've heard of squab under glass. It's served at the finest restaurants, I'm told. And duck too. But blue-d uniform security cop is 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 cornflower 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 figure in academic and arts circles and had attended openings at the picture gallery that Noreen had owned.
Death in Dublin
Excerpted from Death in Dublin by Bartholomew Gill
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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