Anglo-Irish Murders (14 page)

‘Pascal was very hard to persuade to bed. He wanted desperately to share with you what characteristics of the English doomed Anglo-Irish relations to inevitable disaster, but I cheated him out of this by promising him we would all join him in his room for a drink within a few minutes and he was so fuddled that he didn’t notice I was getting him on to his bed.’

‘I’m very impressed, Ell…Rollo. I like that. El Rollo. We’ll make an epic out of you yet. Anyway I’m impressed that to your normal resourcefulness you’ve added the necessary deviousness and prevarication to get things done in this environment. I’m glad you came. Otherwise I suspect I’d be feeling a lot worse than I am now.’ He paused to consider that statement. ‘No, perhaps not. If you think about it, I’d be more drunk and less hungover and therefore feeling not so awful.’

‘Have some breakfast and you’ll feel better.’

‘That’s a rash statement, but I’ll try. Are you coming?’

‘Not yet. I want to phone Mary-Lou.’

‘Give her my love and tell her she missed something.’

‘I don’t think the natives would have stood the excitement,’ said Pooley.

***

By the time he reached the dining room, Amiss’ brief euphoria had evaporated and his health had taken a marked turn for the worse. He sat beside the baroness. ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

He looked blearily at her. ‘I wish you didn’t look so well, Jack. I haven’t had a head like this in a very very long time. And I don’t want to have one like it ever again.’

‘Stop moaning. Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’

‘In a way. But not like you.’

‘Serve you right for not dancing. You wouldn’t have had as much time to drink and would have got some of it out of your system through honest sweat.’

‘I had never realised that you had aspirations to be an Irish dancer.’

‘Just being cross-cultural. Applying to the Irish scene techniques I learned as a girl doing Scottish country reels.’

‘I don’t remember the end of the evening—though I’ve been filled in on it by Ellis—but I do seem to remember a few tumbles during it.’

‘There were times when they were all going the wrong way except me. But, with due encouragement, that chap in wellies who partnered me most of the evening was able to direct the tide our way. On balance, I’d say we won.’

She smiled broadly. ‘Ah, here’s Philomena. Good morning, my dear. And what should I eat this morning?’

‘The kippers. I made them get some specially. But have you heard the news?’

‘What news?’

‘There’s been another accident.’

‘What?’ cried Amiss. ‘Christ! Who? And is it bad?’

‘That funny priest. Now, don’t panic. It’s not too bad.’

Amiss jumped up. ‘I’d better do something about this. Talk to McNulty.’

‘The Inspector’s probably still at the hospital. Best thing you can do is sit down and have a decent breakfast. Father Cormac’s been taken off to casualty and Pat says at worst he’s got a broken leg.’

‘But how did it happen? And when?’

‘Seems to have slipped on the stairs coming down from his bedroom.’

‘It couldn’t happen to a greater pain in the arse,’ said the baroness. ‘Now about those kippers, Philomena, are they…’

The Sailor’s Hornpipe drove Amiss out of the dining room.

‘Have you heard about Father O’Flynn?’ asked McNulty.

‘Just.’

‘It’s worse than we thought. A lot worse. There’s a possibility that he might die.’

‘What? Philomena said he’d only broken his leg.’

‘Looked like that at first. Along with mild concussion. But by the time he got to hospital he’d lapsed into a coma and the doctors think he’s got a blood clot—and a dangerous one at that. They’re operating as we speak.’

***

‘My, my, we weren’t exactly thick on the ground to begin with, but this really is becoming a most exclusive event,’ said the baroness, as she sniffed at the kipper Philomena had put in front of her. ‘This is excellent, Robert. You should have some.’

‘Don’t be so callous, Jack. What the hell are we going to do about the press?’

‘I wouldn’t do anything at the moment. We’d better wait and see if he croaks. What does Simon think?’

‘The same really. I rang him and he’s going straight to the hospital to make sure he’s been properly looked after.’

‘Considering the way he feels about him, that’s noble,’ she said, removing the bones with great care. ‘I’d be more inclined to bludgeon him to death with his guitar. Now, I suppose we’d better break the news to the survivors before we get stuck into a truly exciting session on negotiating our differences or marginalizing our attributes or whatever this latest member of the intellectual caravanserai wants to urge upon us.’

***

Pascal O’Shea crept into the dining room looking very grey. ‘I wouldn’t be up,’ he quavered, ‘only that they were on to me at the crack of dawn this morning about reactions to Billy’s death. Apparently it’s being claimed that it could be more than an accident. Anyway I explained that we had a wake for him last night—as cross-cultural a one as we could. Thank God I had the sense to toast him early on or there might have been criticism. Did you see the news this morning?’

‘Yes,’ said the baroness. ‘I gather they burned bonfires in his honour last night on the Shankill Road. He’ll be starring in a mural of heroic Protestant heroes defending the symbols of the state before we know where we are.’

Amiss gazed about him distractedly. ‘Why?’

‘Because his death is being seen as martyrdom since he died demanding parity of esteem for a symbol of British Ulster,’ whispered O’Shea.

‘Have some breakfast and calm down,’ said the baroness. ‘I recommend the kippers.’

O’Shea looked at her plate and his colour changed to white. Muttering a broken apology, he ran from the room.

Chapter Fourteen

McNulty’s car came up the drive as Amiss finished telling Pooley about O’Flynn. They ran out to meet him.

He looked at them and shrugged helplessly.

‘He’s dead.’

‘Cormac?’

‘Yep. The hospital just rang. Died fifteen minutes ago apparently.’

‘That’s going to look great, isn’t it?’ said Amiss, with a note of self-pity in his voice.

‘You’re sure it was an accident?’ asked Pooley.

‘I don’t know. Any more than I did with Billy Pratt.’

‘You mean there’s nothing to explain why he slipped?’

‘He seems to have slipped on some empty Guinness bottles.’

Amiss clutched his head.

‘Come inside the caravan,’ said McNulty. ‘It’ll be warmer there.’

When they were settled, Pooley asked, ‘Where were the bottles?’

‘Presumably on the staircase. That is to say, there were five of them around his body, one of which was broken.’

‘Why would there have been bottles on his staircase, for God’s sake?’ Amiss was almost shouting.

‘Maybe he was carrying them?’

‘Why would he be carrying them? Couldn’t he have disposed of them in his wastepaper basket?’

‘Maybe he was a secret tippler and didn’t want the chambermaid to know.’

Through the woolly miasma that was gripping Amiss’ brain came a memory. ‘Simon said he was keen on drink.’

‘So he’s covering it up. He takes the bottles out, drops them and manages to stand on them on the way down.’

‘But why didn’t he see them?’

‘That’s the most suspicious aspect,’ said McNulty. ‘It was dark. The bulb at the corner had failed.’

‘An unlucky coincidence?’ asked Amiss hopefully.

‘Unless somebody planted the bottles and changed the light bulb,’ contributed Pooley.

‘Which would suggest they were prepared to put in danger anyone who came down that staircase—ranging from the maid to other guests. Seems very unlikely.’

‘Not really, Robert. He was the only guest using that staircase. It’s very narrow and leads up to just one turret bedroom. No one else would have been using it until the chambermaid arrived.’

‘It still makes no sense,’ said Amiss doggedly. ‘If he’d dropped the bottles, he’d have advanced very gingerly, wouldn’t he?’

‘We’ll call it an accident for the moment,’ said McNulty. ‘That’s what Dublin will want. Rollo, I’d like to talk a few things over with you. And Robert, you’d better be getting back to whatever you’re supposed to be up to. Something that’ll take your mind off things, I hope.’

‘You must be joking,’ said Amiss. ‘This morning’s torture is “Hegemonic historicity or archipelagian marginalization?”’

‘There are moments,’ said McNulty thoughtfully, ‘when walking around in wet grass in the middle of driving rain can seem almost attractive. Now look, all you can say about the poor Father is that you’ve heard the sad news that he died from an accident. Don’t go into detail. It’s enough to say he fell down the stairs. And then you can put out another of those statements about how much you’ll miss him.’

‘And what’ll you be saying?’

‘That it looks like an accident, but we have to examine the remote possibility that the death might be suspicious.’

‘If the ministry lets you go so far.’

‘Indeed. They may try to make me say it must have been an accident. But I won’t.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Nine o’clock. You’d better be on your way. I hope you don’t have an outbreak of panic.’

‘Shouldn’t we simply cancel the rest of the conference as a gesture of respect to the two deceased?’

‘That’s the last thing I want you to do,’ said McNulty. ‘Think about it. I don’t want these lads going out of this jurisdiction. If we’ve a murderer here, here is where he should stay or it’ll all turn into tussles over extradition and God knows what. If anyone starts asking to go home, refer him to me. In fact you can tell them I’ll be needing to speak to them all and will be along at coffee time to tell them what’s going on.’

***

‘Be solemn, for Christ’s sake, Jack.’

‘You do it, Robert. I mightn’t get the tone right.’

She marched into the seminar room, which, being minus O’Flynn, O’Shea, Pooley and Hughes, looked rather empty. Wyn and Taylor, who were talking to a stranger, looked up.

‘Ah, Jack,’ said Taylor. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Dr Schwartz, who’s just arrived, and who, as you know, has this utterly fascinating theory about us all being of the same stock and there being no difference between Anglo-Saxons and Celts after all.’

‘It’d take a lot to make me believe that,’ she grunted, but she shook hands with Schwartz civilly and bade him sit beside her. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘Robert’s got something to tell you.’

Amiss, who had been wrongly optimistic that an adrenaline-rush would deal firmly with his throbbing head, stood in front of the group. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he said. ‘But we have experienced another bereavement.’

Laochraí leaped to her feet. ‘It’s Cormac, isn’t it?’

‘Well, er…’

‘Isn’t it?’ she screamed.

‘I’m afraid so. He’s had an accident.’

‘Accident?’ she shouted. ‘Accident? Don’t lie. They’ve murdered him.’

***

Pooley and McNulty sat side by side in the caravan, brooding.

‘What time did he fall?’ asked Pooley.

‘No idea.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘A jumper and jeans. Though now you mention it, he certainly wasn’t dressed for the daytime. He had no socks or underpants.’

‘So why would he have left his bedroom dressed like that?’

McNulty frowned. ‘He had a perfectly good bathroom of his own, so it wasn’t that.’

‘Would he have been looking for a book?’

‘Where?’

‘They’ve got some on those shelves in the fake-library corner of the bar.’

‘He had books in his room.’

‘Maybe they were all unreadable treatises on liberation theology.’

‘Well, they weren’t my idea of light reading,’ said McNulty. ‘But presumably people take with them whatever it is they want to read. Anyway he had a couple of political magazines:
Republican News
and some things about Marxism.’

‘Maybe he was hungry or thirsty.’

‘I can’t really see him raiding the kitchen or the bar, can you?’

‘Unless he was liberating capitalist property. But no, I suspect not. Insomnia? Wanted to go for a walk?’

‘With all the security people around and him being paranoid? And it lashing with rain? And with everyone having been warned it would be dangerous to go outside without first letting us know? Which he didn’t.’

‘A sexual tryst?’

‘Now you mention it, it’s a possibility. Unless he was up to no good where some other inmate was concerned. Which again, seems unlikely. The Father mightn’t have been everybody’s favourite priest but nobody ever suggested he was a terrorist.’

‘There isn’t much choice, is there?’

‘Miss de Búrca, Miss O’Hara or Lady Troutbeck.’ A slight smile crossed McNulty’s harassed features. ‘God, there’s a choice. Now left to meself, I’d probably settle for her ladyship, but I wouldn’t say a MOPEer would.’

‘You are of course assuming his tastes were heterosexual.’

‘Fair point. But I have a feeling it’s one thing for a priest to take the risk of being found in bed with a woman at a conference full of his enemies. But he’d have to be a right eejit to take the risk of being found in bed with a man.’

‘In these enlightened times?’

‘I don’t think the Jesuits are that enlightened.’

The William Tell Overture sounded and McNulty answered his phone. ‘Right…right…That’s timely. Thanks, Robert.’

‘I think we have the lady. Robert says Laochraí is in a right state. Positively hysterical.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look, Rollo, I’d like you to listen to the interview, but you can’t be seen. I’m taking over a small sitting room in the hotel that has a curtained recess. Would you mind sitting in there?’

‘Delighted.’

‘Right. Now I can trust my Sergeant Bradley, but no one else will know. Second floor, east wing, beside the lift. It’s called “The Little People.” Off you go and hide. We’ll be along shortly with Miss de Búrca.’

***

Laochraí was surprisingly easy to crack. Listening from behind his curtain, Pooley felt almost sorry for her. She had recovered from her bout of hysteria, which she attributed to being a close friend and admirer of Father Cormac’s, but she finally cracked up when McNulty said he agreed there was a chance he might have been murdered. She suddenly burst into tears.

‘Who could have murdered such a great man? He was a leader. He would have saved the church from the reactionaries and the paedophiles and those that had always been too cowardly to help us in our struggles. Cormac knew that ours was a just cause and a holy war, whatever the Pope might say.’ She stopped sniffling and went into aggressive mode. ‘If he’s been murdered, you don’t have far to look. The securocrats. The opponents of peace. The RUC. M15. M16…’

‘Miss de Búrca,’ said McNulty patiently, ‘first we have to decide if he was murdered. That’s stage one. Wild allegations like this are absolutely no use to me. And what I really need to know is what light you can cast on the fact that he was out of his bedroom in nothing except a T-shirt and jeans and with no reason for it except that he was visiting someone.’

‘I’m not an informer.’

‘What’s an informer got to do with it?’

‘Informing on someone’s movements to the police is informing.’

McNulty surveyed her incredulously. ‘Listen, Miss de Búrca. You say you admired this man. He is now dead. If he was in fact murdered do you want his murderer caught?’

There was a pause. Then a muttered, ‘I suppose so.’

‘So, will you please tell me if you know of any reason why he would have left his bedroom during the night? If there is no good reason, then no one could have been expecting him to do so. If there was a predictable reason, then murder is more likely.’

‘I suppose I might as well tell you. Otherwise there will be nothing but harassment.’

‘And anyway you know perfectly well I will find out somewhere else.’

‘Probably. There are no depths to which you would not stoop.’

There was a pause. ‘Come on, Miss de Búrca. Spit it out. He was coming to see you, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it wasn’t to discuss liberation theology.’

‘There’s no need to be crude. We were friends.’

‘You were more than friends.’

‘Yes. More than friends.’

‘When did he arrive?’

‘About two.’

‘And he left?’

‘About six.’

‘Thank you. That is very helpful. Now I’d like to know how long your affair had been going on?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Miss de Búrca, I’m sorry for your trouble, but please stop being ridiculous. Of course it’s my business. I need to know how many people are likely to have known of this in order to see who might have been able to predict his movements.’

There was a further pause. ‘It started last summer at the festival.’

‘What festival?’

‘What festival? The only festival that matters in this country. Our Belfast festival of culture and protest.’

‘You were attending?’

‘We were co-organizers.’

‘Of what?’ McNulty sounded increasingly irritated. ‘Just tell the story, Miss de Búrca. It’ll avoid me having to harass you.’

‘I was one of those running the international side when Father O’Flynn came to me to suggest an event about international suffering and its relevance to our struggle. He thought it should be called the Rainbow Revolt.’

‘Rainbow?’

‘People of different colours. Like in South Africa.’

‘Right. I think I see. He was going to provide you with a few blacks, was he?’

‘He’s very well connected in the anti-imperialist religious network. And very well respected. It was because of his drive and energy and contacts that we were able to devise an event with members of the ANC, the PLO, several South American resistance groups, veterans of the American Civil Rights Movement and, of course, the Basques.’

‘Why do you say “of course the Basques?”’ asked McNulty, almost idly.

‘They’re our closest allies in struggle. They and we are brothers.’

‘Don’t the Basques want to separate themselves from Spain whereas you want to become part of United Ireland? Aren’t you the opposite of each other?’

‘That’s a simplistic interpretation.’

‘Oh, never mind,’ said McNulty, tugging his moustache hard, ‘I’ll never understand any of this. So the two of you got together this…what did you call it?’

‘It was a performance in song, poetry and prose of the literature of the various struggles in which we shared our mutual suffering, praised the courage of our communities and communally pledged to overthrow the tyrannies we’d groaned under all our lives.’

‘I know this is slightly off the point,’ said McNulty, ‘but isn’t the ANC in power and haven’t several of the other groups already got most of what they want?’

‘As Father Cormac always pointed out, no struggle is ever over…’

‘Till the fat priest sings…Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss de Búrca. I didn’t mean that. It just slipped out.’

‘I’m going to write a letter of complaint about your crudeness and cruelty.’

‘I wouldn’t bother your arse, Miss de Búrca. Those complaints always go in the bin. Save the stamp and get on and tell me about yourself and the priest.’

‘We fell in love and then became lovers.’

‘No problem about him being a priest?’

‘Of course there was a problem,’ she snapped. ‘For as long as the church is dominated by outmoded, anti-feminism as well as anti-liberation prejudices there will be a problem. And he didn’t want to be thrown out of the priesthood where he could do so much good for so many people.’

‘If you say so, Miss de Búrca. If you say so. So you kept it quiet?’

‘As quiet as we could, but inevitably, there were some people who guessed.’ She burst into tears. ‘When you’re united in a search for justice and freedom, love sparkles with a passion that no bourgeois person could understand. People could see the aura around us and though we denied it we were not always believed. There were even some anonymous letters.’