Pádraig Ó Ruairc, formerly of Ranelagh, Dublin, opened the morning mail with the same neat precision he once used for the tumblers of a safe. He still wore his maroon silk dressing gown, which had a cigarette burn on the lapel, and his slippers were a soft brown, the colour of well-worn items that had seen years of comfort.
He found a letter from the ESB, a leaflet about stairlifts, a postcard of Hook Head lighthouse from a cousin who had never left Wexford, and folded in a stiff blue wallet embossed with the harp of the Irish Government, his bus pass.
He held it at arm’s length and squinted. “Ah,” he said to the empty kitchen. “The final indignity. I’m not dead yet, but the government has decided to start the embalming process.”
It wasn’t as final as a death certificate, he reassured himself, but there was the grim reaper, smiling from behind the promise of free travel on the DART. To someone unfamiliar with the situation, that meant convenience; to a man of taste, it hinted at a whiff of mothballs.
Sixty-six. Surely not old. He still had his own teeth, a good liver, and a wardrobe of Donegal tweed that could make a poet weep. But the number was heavy. Sixty-six years since he was first wrapped in a blanket in the Rotunda Hospital and marked, by family and fate, as an Ó Ruairc of TBP, the family acronym for Thieving But Polite.
He could almost hear his late father’s voice: “Never rush, Pádraig. Never shout. And always say thank you. A polite thief is halfway to invisible.”
This wisdom had served three generations of Ó Ruaircs well. His grandfather, Seamus, achieved quiet immortality among connoisseurs of theft for the 1907 Dublin Castle job, where the Irish Crown Jewels vanished under the nose of the Viceroy’s Guard. Never caught, never even suspected. “The Ó Ruaircs,” the underworld used to say, “don’t steal for profit, but to remind the world it still has style.”
Pádraig’s own contribution to that tradition came in 2007 when he “liberated” four hundred kegs of Guinness from the Storehouse. He pulled off the heist in broad daylight, using forged invoices, borrowed uniforms, and a rented lorry. The Guinness showed up at a wedding in Westport House, where it was said to go down smoother than the bride’s speech. The tabloids dubbed it The Great Black Stuff Robbery. The Gardaí never found the thief, though one inspector once said, “If it was that crowd from TBP, fair play to them.”
The medal from that adventure, a coaster with the Guinness harp and a ring of dried porter stains, hung framed above his mantel.
That morning, however, the medal felt more like a relic. The silence of the flat was profound, broken only by the rustle of a tabloid and the faint hum of a kettle. The world’s last Gentleman Thief was sipping instant coffee and worrying about free travel.
He needed something. One last, truly refined job. Not for money, God forbid, but for principle, artistry, and statement. He considered his options. The modern world offered little romance. Cybercrime felt crude. Cryptocurrency theft showed no style whatsoever. But then, as the kettle clicked off, inspiration struck, sudden and complete.
He would steal the Book of Kells.
Not to keep, of course, but to borrow, to make a point, to prove that the old ways still worked. He would return it after a short “holiday” in Ranelagh, with a note and, for old time’s sake, a copy of Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy, open at the notorious page 86.
He smiled into his cup. It was, he convinced himself, the perfect encore.
The first rule of TBP was to observe before acting.
Two days later, Pádraig entered Trinity College Dublin as a tourist. He paid his sixteen euros at the entrance, chatted with the ticket clerk “grand day for it, though the rain’s only resting” and let himself be swept along by the crowd of visitors from all over.
The Long Room smelled of oak, dust, and pride. Thousands of books, many chained, stood lined up like a silent tribunal. Pádraig paused before the display case where the Book of Kells lay open beneath protective glass, its pages glowing in monkish golds and greens.
“Hello, old friend,” he murmured. “You and I, we’ve both outlived our keepers.”
He noted everything. Cameras in the ceiling corners, discreet motion sensors, one guard at each end of the room, and a glass case secured by electromagnetic locks. But the human details were even more telling: the bored guard, the talkative guide, the cleaning crew that came through at dusk. In their routines, he sensed an opportunity.
He left with a polite nod and a gift shop bookmark—“A souvenir,” he told the cashier, “to remind me of my sins.”
That evening, he dined at his club on Kildare Street, the famous Kildare Street & University Club, where portraits of dead statesmen and revolutionaries watched the living play billiards. Over a glass of Powers and a perfectly rare steak, he made his plan. It would only need one accomplice, one night, and impeccable manners.
Sean O’Donnell, a former stevedore and lifelong friend, now ran a tidy pub in Howth. He was a man with a generous belly and limited scruples, always happy to help with what he called “acts of cultural redistribution.”
“You’re serious,” Sean said when Pádraig explained. “The Book of Kells? Jaysus, Padraig, couldn’t you just rob a bank like a normal pensioner?”
Pádraig stirred his coffee. “Banks are crude. Besides, there’s no poetry in it.”
Sean sighed, then grinned. “Fine. What do you need?”
“Only a distraction. Something big enough to make Trinity’s security forget the alphabet for ten minutes.”
Sean leaned back. “You know the student union’s having their annual ball? We could arrange for a few unexpected barrels of Guinness to show up at the gates.”
Pádraig raised an eyebrow. “A callback, Sean? How sentimental of you.”
“It’s tradition,” Sean replied. “Like your tweed.”
And so, on a damp Friday night in June, as trucks and taxis jostled along Dame Street, a delivery van bearing the familiar harp logo backed up to Trinity’s front gates. Inside were not barrels of porter but stage props, sound equipment, and a forged delivery slip from “Guinness Events Division.”
The guards, confused by the sudden arrival, waved the van through. Students cheered. A brief blackout followed when someone, in his excitement, tripped the external circuit. For ten minutes, the security system blinked, cameras froze, and Pádraig Ó Ruairc walked calmly through the side door, past the distracted staff, and into the darkened Long Room.
He wore black gloves and his best Donegal tweed. To a camera, if any were working, he would seem like an elderly academic out of place. In his hand, he carried a large leather briefcase, a relic from his father’s day.
The locks were electronic, but he’d studied their type: a standard magnetic plate with an emergency manual override. The keyhole was purely symbolic, perfect for his needs. He took out his silver penknife, his father’s, and in two practiced motions released the clasp. The case opened gently. He left the obscene-page Borstal Boy in the empty spot where the Book had rested. He straightened the book’s spine and smiled. “Good manners, always,” he whispered.
Ten minutes later, he was back on the street. The distraction was over; the van had left. He walked calmly through College Green, across St. Stephen’s Green, and home to Ranelagh, where he poured himself a small whiskey and placed the Book of Kells on his kitchen table like a guest of honour.
For two days, he did nothing but admire it.
The vellum pages shimmered like fish scales. The colours, lapis, ochre, Verdigris looked as if they were glowing from within. He thought of the monks who had bent over these very words twelve centuries ago, and of the thieves, perhaps, who had already borrowed it before him: Vikings, revolutionaries, scholars. In a way, he was only continuing an old conversation.
On the third day, he wrote a letter.
To the Librarian, Trinity College Dublin,
My sincerest apologies for the brief inconvenience caused by the absence of your celebrated manuscript. Please find it returned in good health and none the worse for its adventure. A modest “late fee” has been deposited anonymously to the Library’s restoration fund.
Yours faithfully,
TBP
The late fee, as promised, arrived via electronic transfer: €10,000 from an untraceable offshore account once used for TBP’s “pension arrangements.”
At dawn, he carried the Book, wrapped in brown paper, to the gates of Trinity and left it beneath the bronze statue of Burke. By noon, the city was buzzing. “Book of Kells stolen and returned!” shouted the Irish Times. “Thief leaves donation and obscene novel!”
Pádraig smiled over his tea. It was, he thought, his best performance. Not a theft, but a conversation with history.
A week later, Pádraig sat in Sean’s Bar in Howth, watching gulls tilt against the harbor wind. The Book was safe, the library was grateful, and the Gardaí were puzzled. No one had linked him to the crime, though the librarian, in an interview, said, “I believe the perpetrator had exquisite taste.”
He sipped his pint of Guinness slowly. The foam clung to the glass in perfect lacing, like a well-remembered sin. Sean leaned on the bar, polishing a glass.
“You’ve done it, Padraig,” he said. “The last great job. You should be proud.”
Pádraig smiled. “Pride’s a sin, Sean. I prefer satisfaction.”
They drank in comfortable silence. From the radio, The Parting Glass drifted softly. Outside, the sea glimmered pewter.
Then, as the afternoon light softened, a shadow fell across his table.
“Excuse me,” said a voice, young and confident. A woman, perhaps thirty, stood before him in a navy coat and sharp boots. Her eyes sparkled with the restless curiosity of a born conspirator.
“You’re Mr. Ó Ruairc, aren’t you?” she asked.
He inclined his head. “At your service.”
She smiled. “My grandfather used to tell stories about your family. TBP, wasn’t it? Thieving But Polite?”
“I see our reputation precedes us.”
“I’ve a proposition,” she said, leaning closer. “There’s a shipment of bullion due in from Antwerp. Heavily guarded, of course, but nothing impossible. I think you’d appreciate the elegance of it.”
Sean coughed discreetly behind the bar. Pádraig looked at the young woman, noticing her bright eyes, eager grin, and slight tremor of excitement.
“My dear,” he finally said, “I am retired. Entirely respectable now. My crimes are confined to over-tipping and under-sleeping.”
She laughed, unconvinced. “You’d turn down a perfect job?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “But I’ll give you this: I admire your courage.”
She stood, buttoning her coat. “If you change your mind, Mr. Ó Ruairc, the world still needs gentlemen thieves.”
When she left, Sean approached with another pint.
“Bullion, was it?” Sean asked.
“So she claims.”
“Going to take her up on it?”
Pádraig swirled the foam, studying its dark depths. “No, no. Those days are gone. Besides, I’m a pensioner now.”
Sean laughed. “Right so. Another?”
“One more for the road,” Pádraig said. “And make it a small one. I’ve a free travel DART to catch.”
He drank slowly, thoughtfully, as the sea turned gold outside the window. The gulls wheeled, the world kept spinning, and somewhere in the distance, he fancied he heard the clink of coins and the whisper of turning pages.
He smiled, that small, secret smile of a man who has done everything he set out to do and still, against his better judgment, wonders.