Back Home in Derry: The Dan Delaney Mysteries, #7

By David McGill

The ceasefire has begun in 1995 between the Republicans and the Loyalists as Dan Delaney and his family are in Ireland seeking ancestral roots. They are drawn into helter-skelter pursuit of and by alleged IRA terrorists and Protestant and Catholic police from County Cork to Dublin, Belfast, and Derry. Ex-policeman and ex-national security operative Dan Delaney is 79 and regrets bending to family pressure to travel around Ireland. Instead of finding his grandfather's origins in County Cork, he finds his own troubles with car theft. The trouble ramps up in Dublin, where his daughter is almost killed in a grenade attack outside the Abbey Theatre. His mother's wrong-side-of-the-blanket relations in Derry have left him disinheritance hassles. Unlike the song, he does not wish he is back home in Derry, or anywhere else in this turbulent island of his ancestors. Can the trip trigger change all his long life he has resisted?

In the final outing for Dan Delaney, Republican and Loyalist enmities are the historical backdrop, but it is the ad hoc Kiwi approach to problem solving that helped Dan and his family survive national security threats in Sydney, Israel, his native West Auckland, and Wellington, and his most testing threat in Derry. His long and modestly undistinguished career reaches a final solution to both his origins and his family's survival. It is a win/lose scenario -- and the loser dies.

 

'One of the most exhilarating or disturbing starts to a story a reader could imagine, depending on whose side you are on. The time is 1970 and the scene is infamous Falls Road, Belfast, at the time of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland ... Forward to late 1990's and Dan Delaney is visiting Ireland to find his Irish roots spurred on by his wife and their two daughters ... when one is nearly killed by a hand grenade thrown as she leaves the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, thus beginning a rollicking tale through both Irish history, Irish politics and Irish towns and cities. As is the case with such stories you don't know who are the goodies or baddies ... One of the defining and endearing aspects of the series is the involvement of Delaney's family. This is unusual because most detective stories have 'lone wolf' protagonists who often involve a series of uncommitted lovers who they change with each story, a la James Bond.' Dr Michael O'Leary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Owl Press
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9780995133679

David McGill

David McGill is a New Zealand social historian and fiction writer who has published 60 books. Born in Auckland, educated in the Bay of Plenty and at a Christchurch seminary, he trained as a teacher and did a BA at Victoria University of Wellington. He worked as a feature writer for The Listener, Sydney’s The Bulletin, London’s TVTimes, wrote columns for the Evening Post in Wellington and edited a local lifestyle magazine before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. His book subjects include Ghost Towns of New Zealand and the country’s first bushranger, local and national heritage buildings, Kiwi prisoners of war, the history of the NZ Customs Department, a biography of a criminal lawyer, a personal history of rock music, a rail journey around the country, historical and comic novels, several thrillers and six collections of Kiwi slang and recently seven Dan Delaney Mysteries. He collects owl figurines and reads thrillers. His website www.davidmcgill.co.nz includes blogs related to his books and synopses and reviews by clicking on covers.

Book preview

Chapter Two

Ballykilty, County Cork

Dan Delaney was peering at the map they picked up in Cork when the Lexus lurched onto the verge. Jas was already out of the driver’s seat and striding into the thick, deep-green foliage. He flashed on her tumbling out of her MGB and appearing to eat grass. That was the best part of a decade ago and back in New Zealand and indeed she was sucking grass. She had been speed scoffing a boiled egg, it stuck in her throat, and she was choking. Grass was the only moisture available, she told him when she could speak. What was it this time?

‘Are you okay?’ he yelled as he dropped the map, secured his slipping glasses, and elbowed the door open.

He couldn’t hear her reply. Without his hearing aids he rarely heard anything she said these days unless she raised her voice. She was holding up the newfangled digital camera she purchased in duty-free, pointing at the thick hedgerows. She showed no apparent distress. He leaned against the open door, grimacing at a sharp twinge in his lower back. He had to remember not to move suddenly.

Jas was edging sideways along the hedgerow that towered above her and in places overhung the road. The same overgrowth on the other side was aiming to meet up and create an informal tunnel underneath. No council maintenance worker in these parts keeping nature at bay.

It was blurry because he had maintained reading mode. Dan was still getting used to the progressive lens, tilting until he could see his wife clearly. In her tailored black jeans, a loose silk shirt as green as the grass around her, she was a grand sight, to use an adjective he heard more than once on the ferry and around Cork. What the devil was attracting her as she marched alongside the hedgerow, pausing at frequent intervals to point the camera? There was no livestock, no foxes, not even a hedgehog -- if they had such things in Ireland.

She swivelled on her shiny black pumps, scrolling through the viewfinder at the back of the camera.

‘Come and look,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen fuchsia so …’

He didn’t quite catch her last word as he bit back a dismissal of roadside growth as warranting this sudden stop. It could have been disastrous if his glasses had detached and cracked against the window and the inconvenient wait while insurance decided whether to pay for new lenses. He put in his hearing aids while trying to decide if she had said the fuchsia was incandescent or perhaps iridescent? Best not ask her and make a fool of himself yet again. He leaned to look, distracted by the glimpse of her black lacy bra revealed by her undoing another button. He could see the faintest sheen of sweat, but any odour was masked by her preferred citrusy perfume.

She elbowed his ribs. ‘I said the photos, not my cleavage.’

He dutifully switched to looking at a close-up of a pendulous purple and red flower dangling like a lantern. Sexy, in a botanical way. The next images were of clusters of these and other flowers and longer shots of the hedgerow disappearing around the bend, with all those plump flower lanterns suggesting a dumped surplus of decorated Christmas trees. Not as fulsome as the pohutukawa blooms on the New Zealand Christmas tree, but pretty enough.

‘Cyclamen fuchsia,’ she said too loudly. He stepped back, adjusting the volume on his hearing aids.

‘Look at the foxgloves. Bishop’s purple. Those rhodos are about to burst into bloom. It’s the way everywhere used to be. A Garden of Eden.’

He could see dead insects at the edge of the road. Maybe bumble bees. So many carcasses suggested the council had indeed been spraying the Roundup. Not all was well in the Garden of Eden. ‘What’s that on the ground? Snakeskin?’

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘Do you have to spoil everything?’

‘Why didn’t you say you were stopping?’

‘I did. If you’d had your hearing aid in, you’d have heard me say this was the kind of country lane you don’t see anymore.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Perfection. Nature at its best.’

‘Needs a good trim.’

She glared at him. ‘Philistine. This place is amazing. I’ve shot gorgeous blue cornflowers, white wild strawberry, heather, ivy, blue scabia, clover, ketch, honeysuckle, yellow hollyhocks, I could go on.’

‘All this time I thought you were only interested in grapes. You should be on Maggie’s Garden Show.’

‘I take it you have not noticed the copies of New Zealand Gardener around the house. And the new magazine, New Zealand House and Garden. Is there anything you’re interested in? Apart from snarky remarks.’

‘My family. Spy novels and police procedurals. World peace.’

‘We’re supposed to be finding your family connections, that’s why we took the long way to Dublin. Ali thinks there are Delaneys in this area.’

‘Your idea, not mine. My father had no interest in the past, and I agree with him.’

‘Don’t you want to learn about your ancestors for the sake of our daughters? They know where I come from, they’ve been back to Dubrovnik and met relations, and they loved it. They can’t wait to go back once things settle down. You can’t leave it all to Ali to research your ancestors.’

‘Well, she is the expert. We’ll know what she’s uncovered in the archives in a few days’ time.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Daniel. We are looking at unspoiled countryside, the way it was when your father’s father was a boy. He might well have walked this very road -- if your father remembered correctly about where he came from.’

‘Probably bare foot. And starving. He got out of this bog and found a better life.’

‘The country’s changed, on the up and up. That’s the other reason we’re going to Dublin. If you recall, I told you Marty has sent on some of our prizewinning sauv blanc.’

‘Can they afford it? If they even want it. I thought the Irish were all Guinness and whiskey.’

‘The Irish are on a roll since they got into Europe. They’re not being called the Celtic Tiger for nothing.’

‘Smacks to me of Rogernomics. And look how that turned out for the average Kiwi bloke.’

‘You’re determined to be negative about everything, especially your heritage. Have you no pride? Oh, don’t bother answering, just forget it.’

She tossed the camera over her head into the glossy leather back seat of the car Marty loaned them and stared out the window. Best let her cool down. She would come right once she was driving the super smooth car Marty had acquired, probably through some dodgy deal. Like father, like son, Marty Webber Junior was a classier version of the refugee ratbag who made his first fortune selling black-market goods to the Yanks in Second World War Wellington, while most Kiwi men were away defeating Hitler and Tojo. Here was Jas hitching their wine company European expansion to Smoothy Chops. Dan hadn’t forgotten his wife smitten by a slick French wine merchant, until he revealed his true colours as a spy and saboteur. Mustn’t brood. As she said, he should be thinking of what was good for his daughters. He would try.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m just finding it hard to relate to roadside growth.’

Wrong way to apologise. Her chin went up, she engaged the key and slammed into drive, shooting divots out of the rampant berm as she shimmied back on to the road. Amazing torque, for a car that was eerily silent compared to the Holdens he used to drive. It worried him that she was not used to so much grunt, her little MGB was fast enough, but nothing like this seemingly sedate sedan in the zero-to-100 category. He kept an eye on the rev and speedo numbers, but carefully, in case she noticed. And for a cop car lurking, but they had not spotted any local surveillance. His wife had never lacked confidence behind the wheel, but this was a different set of wheels and different road conditions from what she was used to. The roads were so darned narrow.

He held his tongue, and to distract himself from thoughts of ending up as roadkill he looked out the window at another gorgeous crescent of golden sand lonely as the poet’s cloud. Spectacular. Too damned cold to attract the sunworshippers. Mission Bay or Oriental Bay before the world warmed up and the pakeha came to sunbathe and score the world’s worst skin cancer stats. No likelihood of the Irish getting a tan. They were all as pale as pumice.

This bay was dotted with mossy rocks. It was truly the Emerald Isle. Magical. Maybe such a place would have leprechauns perched on the rocks, beckoning the unwary to slip on the moss and drown? Best not say anything about leprechauns, Jas would judge him to be sneering from a position of almost total ignorance. His knowledge of leprechauns came from that absurd Hollywood movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People, one of the odd films his wife insisted they go to when she was pregnant with Maria.

She powered past all this tranquil beauty with not a glance. He wished she wouldn’t accelerate out of corners like she was Carlos Sainz -- except the rally driver had the luxury of knowing there was nothing coming the other way. Like the funny old Wild West caravan looming up on the wrong side of the road and Jas with no time to brake. He saw the terrified looks on the faces of Ma and Pa Kettle as they wrenched at the reins attached to a blinkered draught horse that had no idea how close it was to extinction. Jas calmly steered around the obstacle, the car coping with barely a