The Death of an Irish Lover (12 page)

“God—what happened?” Bresnahan managed to say, her voice muffled by the pillowy bags.

“Airbags,” Ward explained. “See if you can push back so I can free my hands.”

“I don’t think I can breathe.”

Which was when something big struck the roof of the car, and with the sound of shrieking metal, the sun-roof was pried off the car by what appeared to be, as Ward looked up, the heavy metal teeth of a backhoe.

And before either of them could struggle free, Ward heard the same man’s voice say, “Now—they want eels. Give ’em a taste of eels, boys.”

With that there was further engine noise, and Ward watched as the scoop of a bucket-loader appeared over the ripped-open roof of the car. It tilted, seemed to hesitate for a moment, then swung down, dumping its contents into the car on top of Ward and Bresnahan—a mass of slithering eels.

As Ward fought to push himself up through the writhing creatures toward the night sky, he heard gales of laughter, along with the voice saying, “Ah, Jaysus—it was perfect. Perfect! I could die right now, happy!”

Then Ward heard the engines again, moving away.

“Hughie! Hughie!” Bresnahan fairly screamed. “Get me out of here. The bastards are everywhere, and they’re biting me.”

No more than an hour later, Peter McGarr heard the clatter and whine of a tractor or tractors approaching the former riverside mill that—Benny Carson had told Bernie McKeon—Manus Frakes had purchased and used as the base of his eel-poaching operation.

Earlier, McGarr had picked a stout lock on a narrow door to enter the only part of the large complex that was still roofed.

There on the second floor he found all the impedimenta of poachers: rolls of netting material, several outboard engines, some small boats, anchors, and—concealed under a tarpaulin—two packing crates of Kalashnikov assault rifles. All had been brought in through what looked like a large elevated hay door on a barn; it was locked from the inside.

Only one Kalashnikov, however, had been unwrapped and cleansed of Cosmoline, the paraffin-based preservative in which, since WWII, guns and
munitions worldwide were often packed for long-term storage.

Contained in a bulky gun case, the one assault rifle was also equipped with a high-tech night-seeing scope and was probably the weapon that had been used in the attempt on Benny Carson’s life that had destroyed McGarr’s Mini Cooper.

Back downstairs, McGarr leaned the weapon against the wall where the door, when opened, would obscure it. Next he found the electrical utility box and disabled all the lights.

Returning to the second floor by the dim light of his tiny pocket torch, which was failing, McGarr had to struggle to open the interior lock on the hay door. But once it was open, he used the thick rope of the winch—which the Frakes had employed to hoist the bulkier items into the building—to let himself down.

There on the ground floor, he slipped the lock through its hasp and clamped it shut. When they returned, they would think the building secure.

But letting himself down was one thing; climbing back up the thick rope another. Thoroughly middle-aged now at fifty-four, McGarr had acquired a paunch in recent years, and his workouts in the gym—where Noreen insisted he go thrice weekly because of high blood pressure—consisted of a couple ambles around the track to loosen up, fifteen minutes on the speed bag, and a half hour of weights.

There was nothing aerobic about his workouts, McGarr discovered as he labored to pull himself back up. Sure, he still had enough strength in his arms, but by the time he reached the lip of the open hay door, he thought his lungs would burst.

With one final heave, he rolled his body onto the
well-worn planking in front of the door and just lay there, gasping for breath.

Which was when he heard the diesels in the distance and saw lights jouncing down the cart track that led to the mill.

“Shite!” he roared, clawing himself to his feet. And he only managed to pull the rope back inside and close the door before first one engine and then another were switched off. And he heard voices and laughter, two men, a woman, and—could it be?—a child.

McGarr scuttled downstairs mainly by feel now that the batteries in his penlight had nearly failed, and he threw anything he could find in the path between the door and the fuse box. Reaching for the Walther PPK that he kept in a shoulder holster, McGarr took three steps away and squatted down, handgun at the ready.

At length, he heard voices again, closer now. They seemed in a festive mood, apart from the child who kept asking, “But I haven’t et yet. Is there any food?”

“Is that all you ever think of?” the woman’s voice asked.

“But I’m hungry.”

“Hush now,” the woman said. “There’s no chance of food for a good long while, so put it out of your mind.”

McGarr then heard whimpering.

“Look—stop that, and stop it now. You’ll just make yourself miserable.”

“Don’t you tell her that,” a man’s voice replied. “She would’ve had some fookin’ thing to eat, if you hadn’t been tending your fookin’ traps.”

Now the child was crying.

“Which is my business, isn’t it? And she’s not my child, is she? Do I look like a nanny?”

“You look like what you are—a whore,” said a second man’s voice.

“Well, I’m not
your
whore, am I? And you remember that.”

“Not to worry. The memory is bad enough.”

McGarr could not hear what the first man said to the child, because it was low. But the crying quieted, and the next sound was that of a key being fitted into the lock.

McGarr braced himself, as a cone of dim light expanded into the room. The child complicated things, but there was no help for that.

The first figure to step into the room was that of a rather tall, well-built man. He tried the light switch beside the door. “Bloody fookin’ hell, when I get hold of the yoke who wired this place, I’ll throttle the bastard, so I will. Or, did you not pay the bill again, Manus?”

“I paid the bill,” his brother—McGarr assumed—said.

He could now make out a second man, who was holding the child.

“Where’s the torch?”

As though weary, Manus, the smaller man, said, “It’s in the boat, Donal. You know that. And you know where the circuit breakers are as well. Maybe there was a power surge, and they switched off. Could you check the box, please?”

“Why me?”

“Because I’m holding Cara.”

“Ah, fook—why’s it always me?”

“Because you’re the
mahn
,” the woman put in. McGarr imagined she was the fabled Gertie McGurk.

“Shut your bloody gob, woman, or I’ll—” Having
stepped into the deeper darkness of the room, Donal tripped over a box that McGarr had set in the path from the door to the circuit breakers.
“Fook!”
he roared.

“Ah, there it is,” the woman remarked. “The colorful cry of the truly feral male.”

Which caused Donal to roar again. Standing, he began feeling for objects before him and throwing and kicking them out of the way.

Until he arrived within a yard or two of McGarr, who rose from his crouch, kicked the tall man’s legs out from under him, and then brought down the heel of his palm—weighted with the Walther—on the back of his neck. And again for good measure.

Donal Frakes groaned or moaned, and McGarr, who had crouched back down, felt the body go limp.

“Donal?
Donal?
”

The woman began to laugh.

“Sh! Donal?”

But she continued chuckling. “What a night! This is better than the eels. Don’t I wish Benny was here.”

“Well, I don’t. The bastard is trying to hang a double-murder charge on me and you, too, just you watch. Unless you did it.”

The woman did not answer.

“Benny here?” the little girl asked.

But her father only handed her to the McGurk woman and turned to enter the darkened room, his eyes—McGarr imagined—by now having accustomed themselves to the darkness. “You two stay there,” he said in a low voice. “If anything happens, leave in the car. I put the key in the switch, just in case.”

“In case of what?” McGurk asked. “What could possibly happen, you fool? The fookin’ door was fookin’ locked,” she said with such an edge to her voice that the child again began crying. “You’re thicker than your fookin’ brother.”

“We’ll see.” Pulling what McGarr assumed was a handgun from under his belt, Manus Frakes stepped into the darkened room. And McGarr, who was still in a squat, holstered his own weapons and moved toward the advancing figure.

Once past the boots of the unconscious brother, McGarr turned around, so his back was to the oncoming figure, and then eased himself onto hands and knees.

“Donal?” Manus Frakes asked. “Donal?”

“Can y’ hear that, Cara? Your daddy is afraid of the dark.”

Which caused the child to wail.

“Donal?” he asked yet again, louder this time.

“Here,” McGarr said in a hoarse voice, as though injured. He did not want Frakes to move beyond him.

“What’s wrong, Donal? Where are yeh, lad?”

“Here,” McGarr repeated. “I’m hurt.”

“How many times have I told you that your fookin’ temper will be the fookin’ death of ye?” Frakes said in a broad Ulster burr.

And when McGarr felt Frakes’s hands touch his back and then move under his arms, as though to help him to his feet, he let his body go limp, so that the other man had to struggle to raise him up.

Which is when McGarr struck, seizing the wrist that held the gun and twisting it so sharply up and away that he felt bones break as the weapon clattered to the floor.

Frakes screamed only once before McGarr spun him around and chopped both hands simultaneously into the base of his neck. Pushing him away as he slumped by his brother, McGarr debated rushing the door. But he no longer knew where all the obstacles were, and there was the child to consider. Time was of the essence. He could not tell when one or either of the Frakes would come around.

Instead, he reached for the electrical supply box and the circuit breakers.

“Manus?” the McGurk woman asked, concern now in her voice. “You there?”

McGarr’s hands fumbled in the darkness. “Yeah,” he answered.

“What happened?”

While the fingers of one hand searched for the main switch, McGarr drew out his Walther with another, only hoping that the last person to touch the light switch in the room had left it up. On.

No luck.

“What happened, Manus?” With the child in her arms, the woman took a step away from the door.

McGarr moved toward her. “Shock,” he muttered. “The fookin’ thing burnt me.”

She stepped back again. “Manus?”

McGarr tried to move quickly, but he banged into one thing, and then another, and the woman was no longer visible in the doorway.

Stepping outside, he saw her rushing toward a car that was parked near two tractors that were maybe a hundred yards distant. “Halt! Police!” he roared, reaching for the Kalashnikov with the night-seeing scope.

Switching on the device, he had to wait a moment
or two while his right eye accustomed itself to the greenish glow, but gradually he saw that the McGurk woman was now walking backward toward the car with the bawling child held out before her. As a shield.

She then shifted the upset child to a hip and opened the car door. But instead of placing the child in the car before sliding in herself, the woman pushed the little girl away from her, got in, and slammed the door. Without lights, the car bolted away.

What to do? He could try to stop the car with the rifle, but he’d have to act fast before the vehicle moved into a nearby wood. Then there was the child to consider, who had fallen but was now picking herself up. He could hear her crying, and he watched as she toddled off into the darkness toward the river. And behind him, he heard some stirring.

Setting down the Kalashnikov, McGarr did not switch on the lights for fear of making himself a target. Instead he used his penlight to find his way back to the Frakes in time to catch Manus reaching for the handgun on the floor.

Kicking it out of the way, McGarr plunged both hands into the man’s leather jacket and hauled him to his feet. “You broke my wrist,” Frakes said in an even tone. “I won’t forget.”

“When I break your head, you will.”

McGarr clipped one end of his handcuffs to Frakes’s uninjured wrist and the other to a stout pipe. He had to hurry. Moving back to the brother, McGarr stood well away. “Donal. Donal!” he shouted.

The man didn’t move.

“Nudge him in the ribs. He’ll come round,” his brother suggested.

Which McGarr interpreted as an invitation to move closer. Instead, he stomped the large man’s outstretched hand, and Frakes rolled over quickly and began to stand.

But McGarr’s foot, lashing out, caught him on the side of the head, sending the man skidding into the wall beside his brother. A second kick slammed the head against the stone surface, and Frakes’s eyes drifted up into his head as he slumped to the floor.

“Your daughter is in the field, walking toward the river,” McGarr said, removing the handcuff that was attached to the pipe and clamping it to the wrist of the brother. If only he had a second pair, he could clamp both of them to the pipe.

“Get her, man! Go, now!”

“I’ll try.” McGarr reared back and slammed his fist into Frakes’s face, knocking him over his brother’s outstretched legs.

Snatching up the handgun and the Kalashnikov in case either of the men came around, McGarr rushed outside. “Cara!” he shouted. “Cara!”

God, if he found her in the river, he didn’t know what he’d do, having failed to protect the one person on the scene worth the effort. Once in the field he shouted again and again, but there was no answer. Nor could he see her.

But the Kalashnikov—it was still in his hands. Like the handgun, which he now dropped.

With the night-seeing scope to his eye, McGarr scanned the field, then the riverbank. Then the river. No child. Despairing, he was about to turn back and rush around the mill to peer downriver, when he re
membered from his early reconnaissance of the place that the old structure had a walled millrace where the Frakes kept several of their boats hidden.