Excerpt 1 from
Restricted To Beer
It was always thrill to approach the fortress of Pike Moon skulking behind trees, its angular roofs poking above. Perimeter guarded by arrowhead railings, like the collar of a fighting dog, it had withstood the temper of the Irish Sea for two hundred years. The house belonged to a boom period, when the chandelier echelons of Georgian society had an eye on Napoleonic Paris and fancied a piece of their own. So Malahide was begotten – a salubrious suburb one hour’s carriage drive from the burgeoning sprawl of Dublin.
Two centuries onward the
property slump of the 1990s hit hard. But along came a hero, a
pinnacle of criminal society, self-made tycoon – satisfying
descriptions, thought Donal Dunne. He’d snapped it up and
redesigned the house from top to bottom. Period architecture was
complimented by finest upholstery, lavished in silk and satin. It
honoured the history of the house, the records of which had
disappeared from
the local library shortly
before he’d moved in. It was unlikely anyone remained in Malahide
who remembered its smuggling connections.
The old land
registry described a rundown hovel and four acres of grazing, until
the Georgian renovation. And that had uncovered a secret. Under the
flagstone of the cooking stove was sunk a shaft, twenty-six rungs
deep. There it opened out into a cavern, where smugglers stored
their contraband before shipment to England. The Georgian owners
never disclosed it and its existence passed into rumour. Now the
one surviving record was secure in his safe.