Anglo-Irish Murders (16 page)

‘So she chickened out,’ said the baroness. ‘She certainly seemed decidedly nervous about the risk of further tragic accidents.’ She took another sip of Martini and smacked her lips appreciatively. ‘You know I’ll never understand about clergy. If they really believe that happiness can be found only in the next world, why do they seem so confoundedly reluctant to get there? Dammit, it should be us atheists who are quaking in our boots at the prospect of oblivion.’

O’Shea concentrated fiercely. Then his face cleared. ‘What was it the fella said? “
Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste
.”’

‘I don’t do French,’ said the baroness. ‘And who was the fella?’

‘“The last act is bloody, however charming the rest of the play may be.” And it was your man Pascal, of the
Pensées
.’

‘In whom you presumably have a proprietorial interest?’

‘Old party trick of mine finding occasions to quote the poor tormented oul fecker. What else could I do, stuck as I was with a name like that? Though mind you I wasn’t called after him but after me Great-Uncle Pascal who ran a pub in Magherafelt. But what I’m getting at is that at the end believers do worry about hell or purgatory.’

‘I doubt it in Sister Id’s case,’ said Gibson. ‘Like Call-me-Cormac, she’s far too radical to believe in such out-moded concepts.’

The baroness shook her head. ‘Well, I’m disappointed. I’d have enjoyed roughing her up a bit.’

‘Nothing for it, Jack, but you’ll have to make do with us,’ said O’Shea. ‘Now whose round is it?’

***

There were very few at dinner. As well as Steeples, Laochraí, MacPhrait and Kelly-Mae had been whisked away by their friends of the previous night and Wyn Gruffudd had been so outraged by Sister Q’s talk that she was opting for prayer and room service. At nine o’clock the remainder gathered in the television room to watch the news. The five minutes allotted to the happenings at Moycoole Castle caused the baroness to snort so loudly as almost to drown out the newsreader and the interviewees. Billy Pratt had almost disappeared as a subject of conversation, as the propaganda reason for his fatal climb was now beyond doubt and the Irish media preferred to ignore it. ‘They’ll be laughing their bollocks off,’ said O’Shea, ‘but sure we have to keep a straight face because Billy’s dead and all. They’ll be playing it down in the interests of peace and that. But Jaysus, you have to laugh.’

Father O’Flynn was a different matter and now centre stage. There were myriad tributes to his selflessness, his dedication and his unremitting work on behalf of the oppressed. One MOPE interviewee went so far as to compare him to Roger Casement, whose heroic work in the early part of the twentieth century exposing cruelty towards natives in the Congo had been followed by his espousal of the cause of Irish revolution.

‘There’s a similarity, all right,’ conceded the baroness. ‘But he got hanged and Call-me-Cormac got bottled. And besides, the priest wasn’t a queer.’

‘For God’s sake, don’t let any of the MOPEs hear you talk like that,’ said Gibson. ‘They’re so hot on gay and lesbian rights these days that the prevailing orthodoxy is that homophobia is a disease exported to Ireland by the Brits.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said, scowling at a clip of O’Flynn in full clerical rig blessing a group of anti-Orange protestors and another of him screaming as a policeman tried to remove a youthful protester from the middle of a road. ‘Did I hear aright,’ she asked, ‘or was he shouting “Resist the forces of Satan?”’

‘Sounded like it,’ said Pooley.

‘Whatever happened to turning the other cheek?’

‘You’re so old-fashioned, Jack,’ said O’Shea.

‘Ghandhi-ji has been out of fashion for many a long day,’ said Kapur. ‘It is dacoits that we admire these days.’

‘Dacoits?’ asked Okinawa.

‘Desperadoes. Miscreants.’

‘Ruffians,’ proffered Wallace.

Okinawa looked even more puzzled.

‘And Che Guevara’s more popular these days than ever, right-wing pope or no right-wing pope,’ said O’Shea. ‘Sure, the junior clergy in Ireland would make him archbishop and no questions asked if they’d half a chance.’

***

Conversation had come virtually to a halt by ten o’clock.

‘It’s like a bloody morgue in here,’ said the baroness.

‘Thanks, Jack,’ said Amiss. ‘Always the
mot juste
.’

‘What about another round?’ asked O’Shea.

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Taylor. ‘Now.’

‘And me,’ said Gibson.

Within three minutes, there were only four of them left. ‘Do you know,’ said the baroness. ‘I think this might be my last. I admit to feeling a trifle weary.’

Kelly-Mae’s arrival at that moment did not lift their spirits. ‘May I get you a drink?’ asked O’Shea.

‘Water, please.’

‘Sparkling or still?’

‘Still.’

O’Shea called the order to the barman.

‘Why don’t you get it from a tap?’ asked the baroness.

‘I’m not going to put my health in jeopardy here,’ said Kelly-Mae. ‘You have to drink bottled water abroad.’

‘We’re not abroad,’ said O’Shea, with a rare flash of irritation.

‘No, but Kelly-Mae is,’ said the baroness maliciously. ‘To her, this is a Third World country, and it behoves her to take every precaution. Taking your malaria tablets, are you, Kelly-Mae?’

‘Let it go, Jack, let it go,’ hissed Amiss.

With a flounce, Kelly-Mae marched over to the bar, collected her water and left. Silence reigned. Even O’Shea joined in the general gloom, so it was only twenty minutes after Kelly-Mae’s departure that the gathering broke up.

It was an hour later when the night porter rang McNulty to report that he had heard an explosion.

Chapter Seventeen

When McNulty spoke to Pooley, half an hour or so later, he was ashen. ‘God, Rollo, I’ve seen some grizzly sights in my time with traffic pile-ups and that, but when you know someone it’s worse.’

‘Laochraí’s dead, is she?’

‘Very.’

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know. Some kind of bomb. She’s wasn’t blown up, exactly. But bits of metal and wood have done awful things to her. We’re hoping we can get the explosives experts up here by helicopter in the next few hours. But for the moment we’ll have to say it’s an explosion and we don’t know the cause.’

‘So you’re allowing them the possibility that it might have been another accident?’

‘Well they’re not all complete eejits, so I’ll have to tell them we think this time it was definitely done on purpose. Will you go and get Lady Troutbeck and Robert so we decide how to play it?’

***

‘If I had time,’ said the baroness darkly, ‘I would go and lie down in a darkened room. As it is, I suppose I’d better get cracking on a statement about how much we’re all going to miss Lucrezia.’

McNulty gazed distractedly at her silk blue-and-white-polka-dot robe.

‘I’m flattered that you can admire my dressing-gown at a time like this, Inspector. It’s my Noel Coward look.’

He buried his face in both his hands. ‘Sorry, mam. I’m in that much of a state I don’t know where I am.’

‘Alive,’ she said waspishly, ‘which will probably soon put you in a minority.’ She pulled out her pipe and began to stuff it with tobacco. ‘You know, Inspector, I wouldn’t say that I’m a nervous woman, but this is beginning to resemble Agatha Christie’s
Ten Little Niggers
. You know, the one in which they all sit around in an isolated house from which there is no escape waiting to be murdered one by one for no reason that any of them can grasp. Just assuming that this isn’t some lunatic coincidence, somebody has knocked off a house-trained loyalist, and two MOPES, a priest and a cultural activist. Who’s to say who might next tickle his fancy? A mustachioed Corkman? An aristocratic detective-sergeant? A humble baroness?’

‘A deranged conference organizer,’ added Amiss. ‘I’m with Jack. Who could rationally have it in for that threesome?’

‘Really only people who can’t stand those who justify terrorism,’ said Pooley.

‘Oh great. That’s very logical,’ said the baroness. ‘So the only likely murderer in these circumstances is somebody who’s against murder.’

McNulty looked up and a faint smile crossed his face. ‘This is Ireland, after all. Maybe it’s an Irish solution to an Irish problem.’

The baroness lit her pipe and sucked vigorously. ‘Enough of the merry badinage, Inspector. Are you going to break the news to everyone or what?’

Suddenly energetic, he jumped up. ‘Yes, yes. I’ll send Bradley to wake them all. I’ll meet ye all in The Crock of Gold in about fifteen minutes.’

‘Have I any little words of comfort to give them in the meantime? Or should they all be locking themselves in their rooms armed with defensive weapons?’

‘You can assure them that security will be stepped up.’

‘And perhaps warn them to stay away from flagpoles, Guinness bottles and whatever you in due course tell us did for Lucrezia.’

***

‘I don’t think anyone is likely to call this an accident,’ said McNulty to the assembled gathering, who were sitting in their night-clothes in a frightened half-circle round the table in the seminar room. ‘She was murdered and that’s the long and the short of it. Which makes it more likely that Mr Pratt and Father O’Flynn were murdered too.

‘I know ye’ll be anxious…’

‘Whadyemean “anxious?”’ cried Kelly-Mae. ‘Get me the American consul. I’m in danger of my life here.’

MacPhrait put his arm around her and patted her shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right, Kelly-Mae. It’ll all be all right.’

‘How can you say that when Laochraí’s dead? And Cormac…’

‘There, there. Let the garda speak. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

‘Promise. Oh, Gawd, I’m so frightened. I might be blown up.’

‘Now you know what it feels like to be afraid of bombs, Kelly-Mae,’ said the baroness. ‘You can tell your IRA-loving friends back in the Bronx about it. That is, if you ever make it home.’

‘For the love of Mike, will ye stop that, the pair of ye,’ shouted McNulty.

‘The thing to do is we all keep a steady head,’ said Steeples. ‘And say our prayers.’

‘That’s right,’ said Wyn. ‘We’ll ask Jesus…’

‘Miss Gruffudd. Please. I must get on. Now, as I was saying, I know you’ll all be worried, but there’s a bit of comfort for most of ye and that is that even if the three deaths are all murder, there’s a paramilitary tinge to all the victims.’

MacPhrait and Kelly-Mae leaped up as one in protest. ‘How dare you…’

‘Don’t give me that crap,’ said McNulty. ‘Sure wasn’t Pratt as thick as thieves with the UVF and the other two with the IRA, whatever they said. So for all I know it’s score-settling.’

‘That’s not much consolation to me,’ said Willie Hughes.

‘No, nor to Mr MacPhrait. But forewarned’s forearmed and all that.’

‘What about Gardiner Steeples?’ shouted Kelly-Mae. ‘The Orange Order is paramilitary.’

‘It is not, so it isn’t,’ said Steeples. ‘Any Orangeman having anything to do with paramilitaries dishonours his collarette, so he does.’

‘That’s right,’ said Wallace. ‘It’s the same in Scotland.’

‘You can’t be sure this particular assassin is that politically sophisticated,’ said the baroness. ‘The trouble with people who…’

‘Excuse me, mam. Now there’s people scouring your rooms for relevant evidence, so I’m sorry to say I’ll have to keep ye up for the moment. But the hotel staff are trying to fix up other accommodation so ye can get a night’s sleep. It’ll be a bit rough and ready, but it’s the best that can be done.

‘If I might make a suggestion, while you’re waiting, you might be well advised to have a drink to settle your nerves. I’ll send in the porter.’

‘There’s an idea,’ said O’Shea. ‘It would never have occurred to me.’

‘The trouble with this country,’ observed the baroness as McNulty left, ‘is that everything’s an excuse for a drink. You use it to celebrate, to mourn, to help you think, to help you talk, to get you through a hangover and, now, it emerges, to keep up your courage when you’re trapped in a remote castle with Bluebeard. Mind you, it’s a philosophy that suits me. Mine’s a large brandy.’

‘Me, too,’ said Steeples.

***

At two o’clock the explosives expert arrived.

‘Now you’ll be finger-printed and tested for contact with explosives,’ McNulty warned, ‘and then you can go to bed. But you won’t be allowed back in your own rooms or given access to any of your possessions until all our tests are complete. You’ll just have to make do tomorrow until we can organize someone to get ye some necessities in the nearest town.’

The baroness stood up. ‘I’m sure we are all sticklers for duty and I’m sure we all have high concepts of
noblesse oblige
, but I’m inclined to think that to convene…’ she looked at her watch, ‘in five hours time to discuss what we have learned from this conference would be high-mindedness to a fault. Does anyone have any objection if we abandon this conference finally? Now?’

There was complete silence for a moment and then Taylor gave a rare smile. ‘We’ve reached agreement on something at last.’

‘Very well. Henceforward you are in the care of Inspector McNulty. I wish you all a good night and hope you survive until the morning.’

She and Amiss followed McNulty out. ‘Inspector,’ she said, ‘unless in the next hour or so you can prove without a shadow of doubt that Lucrezia and her priest committed suicide—and probably even if you can—I shudder to think what MOPE are going to do in terms of creating two new martyrs.’

‘I know what they’ll do all too well, mam,’ said McNulty wearily. ‘They’ll blame the RUC, the gardaí, the securocrats, the British government and probably the World Monetary Fund. But what I’ve got to get on with is trying to find out as best I can what actually happened. So if you’ll excuse me…’

He turned towards the front door and then looked back at them. ‘If I were ye, I’d be careful, though we’ll do the best we can. My lads are checking the whole hotel for weapons.’

‘Considering one person’s been killed with a flagpole and another with a Guinness bottle,’ said the baroness icily, ‘I don’t see that checking for weapons is going to make much difference. The way things are going, I’m expecting imminently to be bludgeoned to death with a lavatory brush.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said to Amiss, as they went back towards the seminar room; ‘at least we’re out of that session tomorrow. Every cloud has a silver lining.’

‘You didn’t murder the three of them just to achieve that, Jack, did you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d have chosen Kelly-Mae or Charles Taylor before Lucrezia. She was better-looking.’

***

Although by three, when he finally got to bed, Amiss feared he might die of exhaustion, he set his watch alarm to wake him for the eight o’clock news. It rapidly became clear that the British and Irish media knew they had what was potentially a wonderful story, but that they were so short of facts that they could do little but speculate wildly and interview people who knew either more or less than they let on. Dublin had the advantage of having been able to get hold of Sister Id, who spoke of Laochraí as a beacon of feminism whose eternal flame would never be snuffed out.

The baroness rang as the newscast finished. ‘Good old Id. Never pass up an opportunity for a phallic reference. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting up. There’s something about being trapped in the den of the secret nine that makes sleep elusive.’

***

The Sailor’s Hornpipe sounded. ‘What am I to make of this, Robert?’ asked Milton.

‘Haven’t you asked Ellis?’

‘Couldn’t reach him. I’m going to have to tell someone he’s there, don’t you think?’

‘Can’t you stick to the fiction for now?’

‘No. I’ll talk direct to McNulty. Stay safe.’

***

‘It’s all very well for Jim Milton to urge me to stay safe,’ said Amiss to the baroness when they met in the dining room. ‘But we don’t even know what we’re staying safe from.’

‘Jesus and his Holy Mother,’ said Philomena. ‘If I were ye I’d get out of here as fast as my legs would carry me.’

‘They won’t let us go yet, Philomena.’

‘And here have I been praying to St Jude to help you with the conference.’

‘I fear he may have got his instructions wrong, Philomena. Maybe he thought you just wanted him to put us out of our misery,’ offered Amiss.

‘In case he doesn’t know where to stop,’ said the baroness, ‘look upon us as condemned men and give us a hearty breakfast.’

***

Pooley and the inspector were on their third cup of coffee. ‘We’re going to have to seal this place tight as a drum,’ said McNulty. ‘I thought it already was, but it obviously wasn’t,’ he added testily. ‘Otherwise no one could have smuggled in a feckin’ grenade, which is what the fella says it was. And it’s got to be one of the conference attendees. Since Saturday, no one else, staff or tradesmen, got in or out without being searched and having a metal detector run over them.’

‘And why weren’t we searched?’ asked Pooley.

‘Because bloody MOPE protested to Dublin, Belfast and London about the indignity they suffered. Garda harassment, they called it. And of course authority caved in as usual. It was your woman de Búrca in the lead on all that. She’s certainly paid a heavy price for being a pain in the arse.’

‘Were the police and the army searched?’ asked Pooley.

‘No,’ said McNulty heavily. ‘And I appreciate you being ingenious and all, but if ye don’t mind, I’ll concentrate for now on slightly more likely suspects.

‘Now we can be pretty sure, because of the dogs, that the hotel was clean before everyone arrived. No one left the place on Saturday night, but everyone did on Sunday and there isn’t one of ye, in theory, couldn’t have taken delivery of a grenade on Sunday night.’ He chuckled. ‘Though from your evidence, Rollo, several of them would have blown themselves up before they ever got inside the door.’

‘Look,’ said Pooley hesitantly, ‘I’m sure you’ve thought about this, but don’t we need to know more about what these people were really up to behind the scenes?’

‘You mean when they weren’t spouting peace and culture were they up to any funny business?’

‘Involved in internecine warfare, for instance?’

‘Sure, even as we speak isn’t there a fella from the RUC Special Branch on his way here to give us a confidential briefing on the corpses and any of the suspects they know about. It’d be a help, for instance, to know if de Búrca was the Virgin Mary or…’ He paused. ‘Well, no, she wasn’t the Virgin Mary, obviously. But it’d be a help to know if she was a Jezebel.’

‘Come again?’

‘If she was involved.’

‘Involved?’

‘Actively involved in the IRA. A Volunteer, as they dignify themselves. But while I’d like to have you along when I meet him, to tell you the truth, I daren’t take the risk. As I said to your boss this morning, I don’t want you known about yet. I’m uneasy about those gobshites in Dublin and I don’t want to give any hostages to fortune. The boyo from the RUC’s here on the sly as well.’

Pooley paused, cocked an ear, ran over to the window and opened it.

‘What in the name of God is that racket?’ said McNulty.

‘Sounds like “Rent-a-mob” have arrived to protest about something.’

They ran out of the room, down the stairs, across the drawbridge and down the drive. There, at the gates, was a line of police and soldiers holding the gate against a dozen or so shouting protesters, who bore banners saying ‘
DISBAND THE GARDAí,
’ ‘
GARDAí COLLUDE IN MURDER OF NATIONALISTS
’ and ‘
IS THIS PEACE? IT LOOKS LIKE WAR.
’

McNulty pushed his way through, opened the gate wide enough to get out and closed it behind him. ‘SS Gardaí, SS Gardaí,’ chanted the crowd.

McNulty stood there patiently until they ran out of steam. ‘Now look it, ye’re upset and that’s only natural. But we’re doing everything we can and this doesn’t help anyone. All you’re doing is wasting police time which would be better spent trying to find out who murdered your friends—if they were murdered. Would you ever be sensible people and go back home?’