Anglo-Irish Murders (6 page)

He pulled harder. ‘Don’t get me started.’

Amiss struggled to be helpful. ‘You’re telling me that in practical terms your only option is C.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So you want to know if anyone can be infiltrated?’

‘That’s about it. Any ideas?’

‘Do you have a garda who could pass for an expert on culture?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice. Even if we were let do it.’

‘Don’t quite see how to smuggle one in then. Give me a minute to think.’

After a couple of minutes Amiss looked up. ‘I’ve only one idea that might possibly work and it’s a long shot. And at best it’s only one person and I don’t see how he’d be able to stop an armed gang. But he is smart and he could fit in.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve a friend in the Met who could easily pass for a civil servant and whose boss is also a friend of mine who is flexible enough to lend him discreetly if it’s at all feasible and he’s not actually up to his neck in something vital.’

‘When you say he could pass for a civil servant?’

‘All we’ve got to say is that he’s from the British Ministry of Culture and here to learn in a practical way about pan-Celtic multi-culturalism. Only thing is, could you guarantee that should he be unmasked, you’ll stop it turning into a international scandal about sneaky Brits getting up to their old knavish tricks?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be good for my career to admit I was in on it, but then there isn’t much left of that. So I’ll swear on the Sacred Heart that if it comes out I’ll say I asked him to help us out and that all that we were looking for was better security for all the participants and that we’ve no apologies to make for doing that.’

‘Done.’

‘Right. Now how do you get hold of this lad?’

‘Leave it to me. I’ll do the best I can.’

***

Chief-Superintendent James Milton picked up his pen. ‘All right, Robert. Give me the relevant details.’

He scribbled down an address, telephone number and travel details. ‘OK. I’ll do it if I can. But I’m not promising. You know that. It’s completely irregular. I should go straight to Special Branch with this…Yes, of course…Yes, I know. And I agree with you it would take days. So since I’d rather you and Jack Troutbeck weren’t assassinated, that’s why I’m considering an alternative to the proper procedures. But I have to do this in such a way that if things go wrong Ellis is in the clear.’

He jabbed his pen into his pad. ‘For me, I don’t care. I’m so fed up I’d probably be grateful to be sacked…Yes, I expect Ellis would love an escapade like this. He’s as bored as I am, stuck on a fraud case that’s going nowhere and involving tons of paper…No, I wouldn’t worry about that. Whatever he’s said about finding Irish politics bore him senseless will not stop him being instantly thrilled by the idea of hidden assassins.’

‘OK, leave this with me. I’ll be back to you soon. How’s Jack, by the way…?’ He laughed. ‘Par for the course. I wish I was there to enjoy the clash. Give her my love and tell her to keep her back to the wall.’

Chapter Six

Amiss was already at the bus station when Okinawa arrived bearing suitcase and camcorder. He put the case down as Amiss went up to him. ‘Mr Okinawa? I’m Robert Amiss.’

Okinawa bowed slightly, shook hands and said, ‘Please be so kind as to do this again so I can film you.’

As Amiss obediently froze, Okinawa took a few steps backward and pointed the camcorder at him. Feeling like a total idiot, Amiss walked towards him again and repeated his welcome. Satisfied, Okinawa lowered the camera, beamed and said, ‘Herro, I am pleased to meet you. Thank you. Now I am leady.’

The journey back to the hotel was mostly silent, since Okinawa was preoccupied with capturing the sodden scenery for posterity. When they arrived, Amiss ran for the entrance hall carrying the suitcase and waited there for five minutes as Okinawa stood in the pouring rain filming every last hideous part of the facade thoroughly. The baroness came downstairs as Okinawa came inside dripping and took off his raincoat. ‘Please let me film you,’ he begged, as Amiss introduced them. ‘I am, you see, constructing an historical lecord for my students to help them see the Ilish as they truly are.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘I hardly come into that category.’

‘Ah, but we must look more deeply and broadly to the lerationship between the sister islands. Is this not what the conference is all about? How ancient animosities must give way to new thinking as “peace comes dlopping srow,” as the poet Yeats put it.’

‘The way things are shaping up here,’ responded the baroness, ‘it’ll be war that’ll come dlopping fast. There look to be plenty of new animosities about to be created to bolster up the ancient ones.’

Okinawa put down his camera and looked confused. ‘Solly, solly? Is something wrong?’

‘Never mind. It’ll all become clear in due course. Now hadn’t you better register and get yourself dry?’

Making as gallant a bow as was possible for a small man so encumbered, Okinawa placed his camera back on his shoulder and walked over to reception.

‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to stand this,’ said the baroness.

‘Ssshhh,’ said Amiss. ‘He’ll hear you.’

‘Who cares? If he goes on like this it won’t be safe to go to the bog without checking if he’s there. I feel like swatting him. Tell him to stop.’

‘Crispin was very anxious that we give him all the help and full facilities to do whatever he wants. Apparently he’s somebody important’s cousin.’

‘Umph. Well, I suppose it’ll be better when there are more people here to occupy him.’

As if on cue, there was the sound of an engine and the sight of headlights.

‘That’ll be the coach, I expect,’ said Amiss.

His eyes bright with excitement, Okinawa came rushing towards the door, settled his camera cosily back on his shoulder and took up a position diagonally opposite the entrance. ‘You can do the welcoming and all the rest of the smarming, Robert,’ said the baroness. ‘I’m going to observe from the sidelines.’

***

‘Who are you?’ asked the first arrival—a large man with a weatherbeaten face shaped like a slab of granite. ‘I’m Gardiner Steeples.’

‘Robert Amiss, Gardiner. We’ve spoken on the phone a few times.’

Presumably seeing no point in responding to such an obvious statement of fact, Steeples shook hands silently. Conscious that a queue was forming, Amiss pointed. ‘Reception’s over there, Gardiner.’

Steeples caught sight of Okinawa. ‘What’s that wee scutter doing taking pictures of me?’ he asked in tones of the deepest suspicion, turning his head away sharply from the camera. ‘I thought there was to be no journalists.’

‘Don’t worry. There aren’t. Mr Okinawa isn’t a journalist, but an academic who’s filming the conference for the historical record.’

‘Waste of money, if you ask me,’ said Steeples, and walked away.

Amiss thankfully turned to the beaming man next in line. ‘Robert Amiss. You’re very welcome.’

‘Sean O’Farrell.’

‘Sorry? Sean O’Farrell? I can’t quite place you.’

‘That’s because you didn’t know I was coming,’ laughed O’Farrell. ‘I’m here instead of Jimmy Mangan.’

‘What’s happened to Jimmy? I was talking to him only yesterday.’

O’Farrell twinkled with amusement. ‘Ah sure, you know what Jimmy is like.’

‘I don’t,’ said Amiss stiffly.

‘Well, he’s a great lad and all that, Jimmy, but you don’t always know where you are with him. Anyway, he rang me last night and said something had come up so would I stand in for him. So here I am.’

‘How kind of you,’ said Amiss stiffly. ‘Are the others with you?’

‘Afraid not. Vincent couldn’t make it either and Fintan had a heavy couple of nights so he’s cried off.’

‘Are you telling me you’re the only person here from the southern Irish cultural committee?’

O’Farrell’s merry laugh rang out again. ‘Jaysus, we’re awful and no mistake, aren’t we?’

‘You said it,’ muttered Amiss under his breath.

‘Have you met these two?’ asked O’Farrell, throwing his arms around the pair behind him. ‘Billy Pratt and Willie Hughes. Now they’re great fellas entirely. If only all unionists were like them, sure we’d all be as happy as Larry.’

Pratt, who was thin with well-coiffed hair and Hughes, who was bald and pot-bellied, laughed and shook hands with Amiss. ‘And if all nationalists were like Sean,’ said Pratt, ‘all unionists would want to join a United Ireland.’ The three of them went merrily off to reception together.

Amiss turned to the next trio, who had been posing for Okinawa. ‘
Is mise Laochraí de Búrca,
’ said the buxom, henna-haired thirty-something woman, ‘
agus tá gearán agam.
’

Amiss put his hand out. ‘I’m Robert Amiss, Laochraí, and I’m sorry but I don’t understand Irish.’

She shook his perfunctorily. ‘Where’s the interpreter?’

‘Hasn’t arrived yet.’

She glowered. ‘I have a complaint. The bus driver couldn’t speak Irish.’

‘Sorry about that, Laochraí. But will you introduce me to your colleagues?’

She waved forward a tall, slim man of about her age, who looked at Amiss with some suspicion but put out his hand and nodded civilly. ‘This is Liam MacPhrait,’ she said, ‘and this is
An tAthair
Cormac O’Flynn. They’re standing in for Saoirse and Seoirse, who couldn’t come.’

‘Welcome, Liam. And you too, Antar.’

‘Not Antar,’ said the plump man in fatigues. ‘“
An tAthair
” means “Father.” But I’ve no truck with titles or status, so you should just call me Cormac.’

It was a propitious moment for the baroness, who had clearly been getting bored, to heave herself to her feet and join them. ‘This is Lady Troutbeck,’ said Amiss. ‘Jack, Laochraí de Búrca, Liam MacPhrait and Father Cormac O’Flynn, who prefers to be called Cormac.’ He tried not to notice the expressions of contempt that greeted his mispronunciations.

‘I know who you are,’ said Laochraí. ‘The conference chair.’

‘The conference chairwoman,’ said the baroness, holding out a hand which, in turn, each of them took with some reluctance.

‘I should warn you,’ said Laochraí, ‘that we reject the labels, titles and trappings of the British Empire.’

‘Which are discriminatory,’ added O’Flynn.

‘I don’t give a tinker’s curse what you think about such matters,’ said the baroness brightly, ‘anymore than you should give a tinker’s curse what I think. But if you’re beefing about being expected to call me “Lady Troutbeck,” that’s one grievance you’ll have to do without. Call me “Jack” as everyone else does, unless I’m in the chair, in which case you call me “Chairman,” “Madam Chairman” or “Chairwoman.” I do not answer to the preposterous politically-correct alternatives.’

‘The use of the word “tinker” is in itself…’ began O’Flynn.

But Laochraí was already in full flight. ‘We haven’t resolved this matter of the bus driver not being able to speak Irish. He was almost dismissive when I complained.’

‘Sorry about that,’ said Amiss.

‘I find it equally offensive that you, the sole organizer of this conference, are not bilingual. The very least you might have done was to have the interpreter here on time.’

Okinawa lowered his camcorder and came forward. ‘May I be of help?’

‘Only if you can speak Irish,’ said Amiss wearily.

‘Certainly I can speak Ilish.’ He bowed in Laochraí’s direction. ‘Ah, so. You have here a native Irish speaker who knows no English. How unusual. I didn’t think there were any reft.’

‘No,’ said Amiss grimly ‘that isn’t what we have here. What we have here is a native English speaker who objects because I know no Irish.’

Okinawa bowed to Laochraí and spoke in what sounded to Amiss like fluent Irish. She looked perplexed and asked Okinawa a brief question, to which he responded volubly. Her puzzled response was again brief. Okinawa turned to Amiss. ‘I think we need a diplomatic solution to this, Lobert. Raochrí cannot understand my Ilish.’

‘Is that because it’s a Japanese variant?’ asked Amiss desperately.

‘Maybe it is because I learned my Ilish in the south-west of Ireland, in Kelly, and she does not understand the dialect. Her diarect is difficult for me too.’ He turned to Laochraí. ‘Will it be easier if we speak in Engrish?’

She looked cross. ‘It is my human right to have people speak my language.’

‘But is it not their human light to have you speak theirs? However, if it helps you,’ he bowed again, ‘I will stay with you and do my best.’

Laochraí looked at Okinawa and then at Amiss. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It can wait until the official interpreter gets here.’ And with her two friends, she headed towards reception.

Another set of headlights came into view. Okinawa picked up his camera and walked back towards his vantage-point, but not before giving Amiss a little grin.

The baroness watched him go. ‘I’ve always been dead against foreign intervention in our affairs,’ she said, ‘but after watching the demolition of Lucrezia Borgia there, I’m beginning to change my mind. That is one useful Nip.’

***

After thirty minutes in which Amiss, with the help of the newly-arrived Simon Gibson, welcomed the baroness’ Indian friend, one Scot, Welsh Wyn, one Englishman, a Dublin minister and his entourage, the interpreter and the signer and the main speaker, he was able to steal a moment alone with Gibson.

‘What’s going on with the DUPEs, Simon? They seem to be best pals with the Irish. Look at them. They’re hugger-muggering with the MOPEs now.’

‘You’ll see plenty more of that. MOPEs and DUPEs have plenty in common and specialize in the “let’s-go-the-extra-mile-for-peace” lingo they’ve learned from the useful idiots who equate words with deeds.’

‘Still, the DUPEs seemed a lot more reasonable than the MOPEs.’

‘I’m afraid these MOPEs are particularly grim,’ said Gibson, ‘but in some ways bloody O’Flynn aka Call-me-Cormac’s the worst. He’s been a nightmare addition to MOPEery.’ He shook his head. ‘Not that there wasn’t a kind of tragic inevitability about the kind of priest they would attract.’

‘Quick drink before we go back on duty?’

‘OK. I need it.’

When Amiss returned with their gin-and-tonics, Gibson had become contemplative. ‘You know, you spend your life in that bloody place—Northern Ireland—trying to break down prejudices, and then people wilfully or ignorantly insist on reinforcing and indeed exaggerating the stereotypes you’ve been challenging.

‘Thus the kind of Jesuit sent off to be a spiritual adviser to MOPEers isn’t a perfectly sane chap with an interest in ethical philosophy and a desire to promote tolerance but a dimwit who thinks they don’t sufficiently realise how thoroughly oppressed they are. So he sets out to make them develop a more bitter sense of victimhood than they already had.’

He took a large sip. ‘You can’t entirely blame Call-me-Cormac. He was no doubt doing useful things in South America and they took him away and posted him to Belfast. So naturally he runs around the place trying to persuade the well-housed inhabitants on generous welfare benefits that they are trampled-upon peons who are entitled to rise up against their tormentors.’

‘The British? The unionists? Who exactly?’

‘Well you and I know that their main tormentors are their own so-called community leaders—MOPEs and DUPEs alike—who brain-wash the gullible and beat up anyone who challenges them. We also know the British government pours resources into the place that it would never devote to the quiescent needy closer to home.

‘But these people are dangerous because of their great rage against people who have what they haven’t got. It’s like an underclass anywhere, but it’s been given an ideology to justify envy and revenge. Anyway, in Call-me-Cormac’s view all terrorism is a response to tyranny and therefore is usually justified. Unless it’s the loyalist underclass killing Catholics, of course. Or even more so, any action by the state which smacks of heavy-handedness. IRA man shoots policeman dead—legitimate form of protest. Policeman accidentally kills terrorist in self-defence, call in Amnesty International and demand public enquiry.’

‘Does the chap have saving graces?’

‘Don’t think so, unless a penchant for too much stout qualifies as a saving grace. Probably if he’d been a priest in Oxford rather than South America he’d have developed a taste for port. But since nowadays he’s a friend of the poor and the Irish poor at that, stout it has to be. And it makes him sing even worse.’

‘Sing what?’

‘Protest and peace stuff, naturally. And accompanies himself badly on the guitar.’

‘Oh, God. Does he…?’

He was interrupted by the baroness, who plumped herself down beside them, waved her large Martini in a celebratory manner and said, ‘Yum, yum. They certainly did all right on the interpreter.’

‘Is that so, Jack? I haven’t had time to notice. Unlike you, I’ve been too busy trying to grasp who is who to have time to study the carnal possibilities of anyone here.’

She smacked her lips. ‘I could really take to Aisling. I’ve always liked blue-black hair and green eyes.’

‘Well, well,’ drawled Gibson. ‘I hadn’t expected romance to blossom so early in the proceedings. Gives us all hope.’

‘Keep your filthy hands off our interpreter, Jack,’ said Amiss. ‘You shouldn’t be mingling pleasure with business.’