The Death of an Irish Lover (11 page)

“But how could she have got into Burke’s room. We assume he locked it, while he was engaged in…”

“The sex thing,” Carson completed, nodding? “Well, Gertie plies her trade mainly on the other side, and, pounds to pies, she’s got her own set of keys to the place. She’s a canny thief, that one, who’ll lift anything not nailed down. Didn’t I catch her right here, reaching across the bar for one of these bottles.

“When I asked her what the feck she thought she was doing, she said, ‘Service is terrible around here. I was only after a drink.’ Aye, I replied, one big one for the road. And didn’t I have to pull the bloody thing out of the bloody big purse she carries with all her goodies in it, her complaining all the while that she’d bought it in the off-license up the road.”

Chuckling, McKeon finished his pint and shoved it forward; Carson signaled, and one of the other barmen began readying another.

“The Tallons let her carry on there?” McKeon asked, folding his arms and leaning back on the stool.

“Nothing they can do, really. She comes on to some German or Dutchman who’s drinking in here. He’s dropped a few thousand quid for a fortnight’s stay over in the inn. And it’s late, there’s nobody about, and he’s got his key. They’re two consenting adults, and if some money changes hands, who’s to know? The room is paid for, and Hans or Henrik goes back to the Fatherland with a happy memory of a Celtic tigress. I hear she can get rough.”

Carson stood back, so the brimming pint could be placed before McKeon.

Who asked, “So, where is she now, this wild woman? And the Frakes? At this point, a word with them would be helpful.”

Carson sighed and rested his back against the bar. “I knew it would come to this…that you’d ask, Bernie.
And it’s not in me to grass on me mates or nephew. But that poor little girl had a right to her life, no matter what she was doing with Burke—and no outraged macho ego should have taken it from her.

“And so,” Carson’s eyes swung to McKeon, “I’ll tell this to you and nobody else. They can be only one of two places.”

“The house.”

Carson nodded.

“Where they’ll return, sooner or later, the three of them having the nastiest of habits, if you catch my drift.”

“And the second?” McKeon prompted.

“There’s a certain old mill upriver on the other side. Manus has a
private
lease on the place, and they keep their boats in a raceway there, out of sight.”

“Could you show me how to get there?”

Carson smiled. “Why not, I’ll get a pen and paper. It’s a bit of a drive from here, since there’s no near bridge.” Turning, Carson began working his way down the bar toward his office, saying hello and bantering with this one and that.

The moment he was out of sight, McKeon reached for the glass Carson had been drinking from and took a sip. Tea, as he had suspected.

Returning, Carson drew a rather detailed map that included mileage and how to get there without being seen. Handing it to McKeon, he asked, “You’ll keep my secret.”

“Which one is that?”

Carson pointed to his glass.

“You must have eyes in the back of your head.”

“I knew you’d taste it. Once a cop, always a cop. But don’t get me wrong, I drink my share. It’s just that
I’m about to consummate a deal to buy this half of the business from Tallon, and I’ve got to keep my wits about me.”

“Go ’way! Really? Tallon would sell this place.” McKeon glanced around the bar that was filling up, now as the day declined. “Why?”

“Sure, he doesn’t need the headache. And he’s doing a roaring trade on the other side where, he says, ‘The gouging is better.’ His quote.”

“Be Jaysus, Benny, you’re doing grand,” said McKeon, pushing the full pint away. “How can you manage?” Being only recently out of jail, was implied.

“I wasn’t entirely stupid in my former life and put a few pounds by. Tallon will hold the mortgage, and, sure, I’ll be in debt to the grave. Are you off, lad?”

McKeon stood up. “That I am, and I thank you for the conversation, the drinks and the tip. You should go easy on that stuff.” McKeon snapped a finger at Carson’s glass with its ersatz whiskey. “I hear it’s hard on the kidneys.”

“Nonsense. It’s a diuretic, the very best, and keeps me in shape, jogging to the jakes.”

Out in the car park, McKeon reached for his cell phone and rang up Dublin, asking them to put him through to McGarr, who might possibly be closer to the mill, having left on a tour of the river earlier in the day.

After receiving McKeon’s message, McGarr slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket and glanced out the window of the Shannon Fisheries Land Rover at the broad river.

A fiery twilight had cast the Shannon in the color of blood. The snowy banks were the walls of its artery, while a cataract—gushing pink from the top of a bluff—looked to McGarr like nothing more than some consequential terrestrial hemorrhage.

Overhead scores of seagulls were working the current for bits of edible flotsam that might have washed off the land into the floor. And from afar—as the Fisheries Land Rover skidded and slid through the muddy ruts of a riverside cart track—the pattern of the graceful white birds assumed the darting intricacy of wind-driven snow.

“At one time, the Frakes were using the copse up ahead as a base of operations,” explained Eamon Gan
non, the Chief Fisheries Officer who was at the wheel. “They had everything in there, including a bucket loader for the nights when their fyke nets pulled in every migrating eel from the river.”

As the Rover moved closer, they could see a car midst the tree trunks.

“Could that be them?” Maddie asked hopefully, pointing past the nose of O’Leary, Gannon’s black Lab. Following her hand, the dog saw the car as well and let out a low growl.

“If it is, they’ve already seen our lights. But it’s too late. For them.”

“Why? Can’t they start the motor and take off? That’s a big car.”

“A Volvo,” said Gannon. “A turbo and powerful. But it’s only got two power wheels, and I can’t understand how it could have gotten in here under these conditions, unless—”

“Unless it was driven in here before the storm,” Maddie concluded breathlessly.

McGarr, who was sitting in the passenger seat beside Gannon, reached back and patted her knee. What were the chances, he wondered, that because of outings like this she would go into police work when she grew up? He hoped not.

McGarr pictured his daughter in some pleasant profession—or, at least, pleasant as perceived by him—medicine, the law, teaching in some university with the summers off and sabbaticals. That would be best.

When McGarr himself was a lad, he had an uncle who had been with the Ulster Constabulary. But his family seldom saw the man. Could it be, he mused, that there was something genetic at play in career selection?

“There doesn’t appear to be anybody in it,” Gannon said, as he directed the vehicle down an even narrower road into the small wood.

“No tracks,” Maddie enthused. “It’s been here a while.”

O’Leary’s growling grew louder.

“Uh-uh,” Gannon admonished. “You growl when I say, O’, and only then.”

And the dog stopped, lowering its ears and turning its eyes to its master.

“That’s brilliant,” Maddie enthused. “He stopped. Daddy—did you hear that? Does O’Leary understand you?”

“Every blessed word, I swear. If he could pass the written test, I’d have had him in a uniform long ago.”

McGarr tapped Gannon on an arm. “Stop, and you two stay here.” On one of the knolls that they jounced over, he had caught sight of what appeared to be a head between the front seats.

“But it’s a bog out there. You’ll destroy your shoes.”

“What did you see, Peter?” In the last few months, his daughter had begun addressing McGarr as her mother did.

O’Leary had begun to growl again.

“I’ll be all right, but after I get out—could you back up?”

“How far?”

“Back to the road.”

“But we won’t be able to see anything.”

Or get shredded by shrapnel, McGarr thought. They were dealing with surds here. Or, rather, surds that not even the IRA could tolerate. True, the car had been in this place at least since the night before when the snow had fallen. But booby traps were an IRA specialty.

“Can you at least tell us why?” Maddie sounded so much like her mother that McGarr hesitated before opening the door.

“I will, after I have a look. In the meantime, please back up.”

Gannon nodded, obviously sensing the gravity of the situation.

“But—what about you? Will you be all right?”

McGarr was tempted to say, Well, I have been for fifty-plus years, based on what I feel, why I want you to back up, what this situation could be. But he only reached back and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

And to Gannon, “Could you manage to get out of here without your headlamps?” The last thing McGarr wanted was to be silhouetted against brilliant lights in a dark copse on the banks of the Shannon. The trap—if a trap—could be much simpler than a possible bomb.

The shoes that McGarr had worn were actually the boots he wore when fishing, which were kept in the back of Noreen’s car along with fully waterproof stockings.

Yes, his feet might get cold, and surely his trousers would get wet, but…he thought of his Cooper, as he approached the Volvo. How it had been destroyed, how it probably couldn’t be replaced, at least not in the condition that he had maintained his own. Which had been with much care.

But he was thinking too much of himself and something as evanescent as an automobile, when, in fact, life itself was ever so much more precious and fragile. Witness what he now saw in the car—a body with a wound to the temple. It had slumped away from the
wheel, the bullet having exited the head and shattered a side rear window, which was covered by blood and brain. The gun—a Glock—was resting in the young man’s right hand, which was stretched across the passenger seat. A note was on the dashboard.

Even though the lock latches were raised, McGarr stepped around the back of the car and reached for the door handle of the rear passenger-side door, which was less likely to have been touched. There would be no bomb, he decided—not with a note.

Sliding in, he carefully reached over the body and picked the note off the dashboard, holding it by a corner. That was when he heard footsteps behind him, and his hand jumped for the Walther automatic under his jacket.

But it was only O’Leary, the dog, followed by Maddie, who snatched up the leash, explaining, “He had to get out of the van, and I asked if I could hold him. But he’s strong, he is, and quick.”

They heard a sharp whistle in the distance, and the dog bolted off into the darkness.

McGarr thought to ask why she had disobeyed him; the car could still be wired, for all he knew. But he thought better of it when he saw her looking beyond him at the corpse. This—her first experience with violent human death—would be chastisement enough, he imagined.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

McGarr nodded, holding the note in the dome light.

“Did he kill himself?”

The note said, simply, “This evens the slate.” The handwriting looked similar to that on the other note that had been propped on the table in the Finns’ flat.

“How old would you say he was?” Maddie asked, matter-of-factly.

“Twenty-six,” said McGarr.

She pulled in some breath. “Young, to take his own life. Or was he…murdered?”

McGarr didn’t know. He’d have to get an expert to compare the handwriting, the tech squad to go over the gun and Finn’s right hand to learn if he had been holding the weapon when it discharged. The blowback would have covered it with spent gunpowder.

“Was it his wife that was found with the man in the room?”

McGarr glanced at her and noticed that she seemed rather pale and was staring down at the man’s shattered head as she spoke. The bullet had been either hollow-tipped or had shattered on bone. The exit wound was a red wet hole, as though something sizable had taken a deep bite from the skull. “You’ve been reading the papers.”

She nodded. “You never say anything to me about what you do.”

McGarr reached the slip of notepaper over the corpse and dropped it back on the dash. “Now you know why, I hope.” Getting out, he closed the door and wrapped an arm around his daughter’s thin shoulder.

“Do you think it hurt?” she asked, as they made their way slowly back toward the lights of the Rover. At ten, Maddie was just old and young enough to ask questions that older people thought they’d answered for themselves.

“Only for the shortest time, I should imagine.”

“Why would somebody do something, like that, to himself?” They took a few more steps. “Or commit murder?”

It was, of course, the question that McGarr had
spent nearly all of his adult life trying to answer. “Because they can no longer believe in themselves.”

“You mean, those who commit suicide. What about those who commit murder?”

“Because they can no longer believe in themselves. And they become angry that others not only believe in themselves but they believe in life so thoroughly that they attract love or money or power.”

“But aren’t some people just…damaged? And they don’t know any better?”

McGarr nodded. “But the real damage is that they can’t believe in themselves. For whatever reason.”

Maddie thought about that for a few steps. Then, “Do you believe in heaven?”

McGarr glanced up at the night sky that had cleared and was visible through the leafless bowers of the tall trees. And with no other lights but the headlamps of the Rover, the stars were layers deep.

McGarr thought of something that he had read about the formation of the universe and how planets and life, as we know it, could not have developed without the violent collapse of early stars, in the furnaces of which all the heavy elements—carbon, iron, silicon—were created. And in such a way, the writer had continued, human beings are essentially star dust. “I will when I get there.”

“Oh, you will. You’ll get there,” she said with perfect confidence.

Back in the Land Rover, McGarr asked Gannon if he knew of an old mill farther up the river.

“I do, of course.”

“Perhaps you can drop me there and take Maddie back to the inn. It’s getting late.”

“I will, surely. But you’ll not find anybody there. It’s been abandoned for years.”

In another car—the Opel
Vectra
with the sun roof and spoiler that had been selected
not
to look like an unmarked Garda patrol car—Ruth Bresnahan and Hugh Ward had been staking out the Frakes’s safe house for all of ten hours from a laneway not far from the drive that led there.

A few hours earlier the pair had agreed to nap in shifts, tossing a coin to decide who would sleep first. Ward had lost, and Bresnahan and he had traded places, Ward getting behind the wheel, and the tall redhead climbing into the passenger seat.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the back?” Ward had asked.

“Not with these legs,” she had said, smacking her thighs.

Ward had looked down upon her legs, which he could not see because of the sweatpants she was wearing, but he knew…intimately, he could not keep himself from thinking.

“And the seats don’t go down.”

Precisely, Ward had thought.

Dropping back the seat, Bresnahan had arranged herself and nodded off almost instantly in a way that had always bemused Ward during the time that they had been together.

It was as if her early formative years—living on a farm perched on a mountainous bluff above Kenmare Bay and consorting with the beasts of farm and field—had imparted to her a spontaneity that not even a dozen years in Dublin could change. Ruth was always in…
touch
(was probably the operative word) with her own needs. And how to achieve them.

Ward was in a self-pitying mood. Because no
sooner had she fallen asleep than her body turned to him, one of her long legs insinuated itself over his ankle, and her hand reached out and took hold of his left arm, as she had slept with him—he tried to compute the total number of events but couldn’t—literally hundreds of times over the four years that they had been together.

Then. And hugely provocatively. In the midst of her sleep, Bresnahan had suddenly raised her body off the reclined seat, turned her back to Ward, pulled up her cashmere jumper and said, “Can you unsnap this? It’s pinching me, and I can’t get any rest.” By which she meant her brassiere.

All while still asleep, Ward had few doubts. But they were nagging. What if she wasn’t really asleep? What if her turning back to him and taking his arm again and folding a leg over his but more completely this time, what if it was a conscious act? Or at least an unconsciously conscious act of the sort you do when you know something is wrong but you conveniently tell yourself you forget why and do it anyway.

No, Ward told himself. She was asleep. In the near-total darkness with nobody about but some cows that were continuing to graze in a nearby field under a brilliant half-moon, he could feel her slow, even breathing on his neck. And the familiar warmth of her hand and breast against his arm convinced him that she was.

Until her head moved across the small space between the two seats, and her mouth rose to his ear. “Kiss me,” she whispered. “Life is short, and we should not allow this foolishness to go on any longer. I know you love me.”

Taking his right hand, she raised the waistband of her jumper and placed it on her bare breast.

“But I also love Leah,” Ward blurted out.

“That’s your problem. I don’t care who you love, as long as you love me.” Her lips jumped for his, and their kiss was a long passionate kiss that was as much a kiss of recognition and reaffirmation as one laden with the possibility of gratifying sex.

But when Ward opened his eyes again, he saw a figure silhouetted against the half-moon, standing in front of the bonnet of the car. He was holding something like a bat across one shoulder.

As were the two other figures on either side of the car.

“Ruth,” Ward said, trying to push Bresnahan away and reach for the Beretta in the holster under his jacket.

But the man in front of the bonnet yelled something like, “Right, lads—now!” And he and the other two swung what looked to be heavy sledgehammers at the car—the bumper and the sides—and there was an instantaneous explosion, as the front and side airbags inflated and Ward and Bresnahan were crushed together.

Ward couldn’t move, and what was he hearing? It sounded like the whine of a diesel engine in a small tractor or van. Or two diesel engines.