The Death of an Irish Lover (13 page)

There he found her, standing on the lip of the crumbling wall with the boiling millrace below, still sobbing, both hands to her eyes. “Cara,” he called to her gently, so as not to startle her; she was only a half step from the edge.

“Cara—it’s me, the man,” from the inn, he rejected; she might think he was Tim Tallon, “the man who spoke to you about your beeper.” He was closing the gap as quickly as he could without rushing her. Hating himself, he added, “The one who thinks he can put you in touch with your mother.”

The girl’s hands came away from her eyes. “Me mammy?”

“Yes. Remember me? The man with the toy car. At the inn.”

“I still have the beeper. Can you ring up me mammy?”

In the light of the half-moon, McGarr watched her pull the small black device from the belt of her dress. But in stepping toward him, her foot strayed into the pocket of a missing stone, and she dropped the beeper. Reaching for it, she pitched sideways and tumbled from the parapet into the boil below.

McGarr did not hesitate. With the Kalashnikov to his eye, he caught sight of her head drifting toward the millrace grate that had snagged a wide apron of flotsam. If he could just get to her before she sank beneath that, maybe he could save her.

Dropping the gun, he jumped into the abyss and rose to the surface in time to see her head sinking
under the ragged edge of the floating debris. Forcing himself down, he pumped his arms and kicked and kicked, the swirling current pulling his larger body away from her.

He thought he felt some material, some textile like her skirt, and he pulled it toward him.

No. It was a seed sack.

One foot had come up against the grate, and he pushed off, ducking his head under the flotsam and sweeping his arms. Trying to find her and pull her in.

But the current was so strong it kept slamming him against the grate. And would her, too, he reasoned; her body had to be stuck, as his was, against the grate. Which is where he found her. And he had to tug with all his strength to rip her body off the thick teeth and hold her up into the air.

But now what? Could there be a ladder? Was she still breathing? Holding on to the grate with one hand, McGarr brought her face to his ear. He couldn’t tell; the sound of the water rushing through the grate was too loud.

McGarr looked around. There was no ladder. But there were boats tied farther up the wall, if only he could fight the current and get her to them.

Which was when he was startled by a voice above him. “Tie her to the rope.” Looking up, he saw two figures standing on the wall, silhouetted against the moon, their arms yoked together at the wrist. The brothers Frakes.

“Tie her to the rope,” the larger yelled again, and his free arm whipped out, sending a skein of rope sailing over the millrace.

Dropping into the water a few yards above McGarr,
it nearly shot past him. He had to release his hold on the grate to snag the rope, and the child and he went under again.

While securing the line around her waist and tying a sturdy knot, McGarr found he had to submerge, just to keep her head out of the flood. If she fell in again, he did not think he could save her.

“Right, now!” he hollered, and the larger brother—holding his arm and one of his brother’s well over the lip of the millrace so the child’s body would not scrape the wall—quickly had her to the top. And they were gone.

McGarr was relieved, but he wondered how long it would take the Frakes to return. All they had to do was discover the Kalashnikov, which was lying about somewhere in the field where McGarr had dropped it; using the night-seeing scope, they would shoot him like a rat in a barrel.

McGarr looked around. It was time to think of himself. The boats. Perhaps without the child he could fight the current and the slippery millrace wall and make it that far.

But they were open wooden boats, and even if he concealed himself behind the bow of one, the 7.72mm rounds from the assault rifle would punch right through the planking.

The flotsam. Maybe he could conceal himself under that when they returned, holding on to one of the logs and ducking under. Only his fingers would be visible, which among the clutter might not be conspicuous to them.

McGarr did not know how long he waited there midst the river wrack, concentrating on the funnel of light at the top of the millrace. But it was long enough
to realize that his body was growing numb, his breathing labored, and he would have to get himself to the boats after all, if only to keep from succumbing to hypothermia.

Even the moon had nearly passed out of sight, when finally another figure appeared at the top of the wall—rotund and compact with something that looked like the Kalashnikov in his hands.

He raised it to his eye, but McGarr paused before submerging. “Bernie,” he managed to call out, slapping the water with one unfeeling hand.

After quickly tying one end of the rope to a nearby bollard, McKeon had to throw it twice before McGarr managed to grab the line up. Securing a knot around his waist proved more difficult, and he went under several times more.

Then there was the wall. After his climb earlier in the night, it took McGarr some time to reach the top, even with McKeon’s help. He had to pause again and again to rest his weary arms, and by the time he hoisted himself over the lip, he was exhausted, and every muscle in his body seemed to be aching.

Resting there while McKeon rushed for the blankets that were contained in the Garda emergency kit, McGarr suddenly found himself shaking uncontrollably. He had to get himself someplace warm. Fast.

Reaching out to push himself up, his hand fell upon something square and hard. It was the beeper.

McGarr was neither suspicious, nor did he believe in imminent justice. But finding the device was like a reward for all he’d been through.

“What about the Frakes?” he asked, when McKeon returned.

“Gone. I only passed one car on the road, getting
here. Must have been them. But I’m glad I didn’t try to stop it.

“At least we got the Kalashnikov.”

“And this.” McGarr handed him the beeper, his fingers being too weak to hold it any longer.

When McGarr opened his eyes the next morning, he could see that it was late. A dun sky freighted with lowering clouds was sweeping past the windows. Yet the room was well lit.

It had to be at least nine, the hour that he had scheduled a staff meeting in the dining room of the inn. He should make himself presentable and get downstairs. Pronto.

But attempting to throw back the covers, McGarr was visited with the reality of the night before which had ended about three, after fending off the press, who had still been on the job at such an hour, God bless them. And more crabby than usual.

Scribbling a brief report and a hot bath had come next, so—McGarr tried to compute the hour that he had finally closed his eyes—it must have been closer to four. Five hours was not enough recuperation after what he’d been through.

No wonder he felt like the case was about to claim a fourth victim. Himself. Already it had destroyed his antique car, a Vacheron-Constantine timepiece that had been a wedding present from Noreen and would need restoring, maybe his Walther PPK, and his Garda cell phone, which he would replace temporarily with Noreen’s. Added to those losses were a hat, a pair of shoes, and probably a sports jacket and trousers because of all the scraping on the walls.

Also, never had his arms felt so sore or weak, and a weal of pain shot through his torso as he sat up. Finally and ominously, there was a squeezing sensation in his chest that made him think heart attack. Or was he merely having the usual problem with his lungs that he felt before the first cigarette of the day? Enhanced by all the high jinks of the night before.

Behind him, McGarr heard a door open. Then, “Mammy says you’re to make yourself presentable and come down to the dining room as soon as possible.”

His thought exactly. “Everybody there?”

“No, just Mammy and Bernie.”

“Where’s Hughie and Ruth?”

“Mammy is trying to rouse them. She sent me to you.”

Kind of her, thought McGarr. And more charitable still, when what he needed was now placed on his lap by Maddie—a small tray with a brimming bowl of muddily black French coffee, from its smell, and a smallish snifter that contained another aromatic fluid.

Ah, McGarr thought, the advantage of having an understanding younger wife, one who had witnessed the decrepit return of her aged hero. How he had removed his sodden ruined clothing and then subjected his equally ruined body to the balm of hot water, only
to…whimper, no it wasn’t quite a whimper, climbing in bed.

And sleep? It had hit him like an articulated lorry.

Now, all he needed was: “A smoke—you don’t happen to see my smokes about?” he asked Maddie, who was still in the room somewhere behind him. McGarr didn’t dare turn his neck more than a few degrees to either side.

“Even if I did,” she informed him, “I would not be your enabler.”

School, he thought. He sent her to perhaps the finest private school in Dublin—one of her mother’s alma maters, as it happened—that cost much of his annual salary. And what had she learned there? Verbal parent abuse.

“Well, I suspect I’ll just have to get them myself.” McGarr had to rock back and forth, just to test his legs and his arms—holding the tiny tray out before him—to rise off the bed.

Which was when a packet struck the tray with a suddenness that rather frightened him. Ditto, the matches.

“There—have your death,” said Maddie, her tone as histrionic as the voice on a television advisory condemning smoking. The last line of which was, “The Irish smoke more than any other English-speaking nation.”

Maybe it was the fault of the language and not simply an oral fixation, as McGarr had long thought. You know: English not being theirs, having to speak the oppressor’s language made the Irish resort to smoke.

“And don’t expect me to witness your attenuated suicide. Smoking is so incredibly banal. And alcohol at this hour? Well…” With that, the door closed.

McGarr breathed out the smoke and reached for the
snifter, deciding that, after all, he was getting value for the enormity he was paying for her wonderful education.

“Attenuated” and “banal”? Maddie was only ten.

“Where’s Hughie and Ruth?” McGarr asked, taking a seat at the round table that had been set in a corner of the spacious dining room. He signaled to a waiter and pointed to his coffee cup.

No other guests were nearby.

“I knocked on Rut’ie’s door to deliver the daily activity sheets from yesterday, but there was no answer,” Noreen said. More suspiciously still, when she tried to slide the sheaf of memoranda under the door, she discovered it was slightly ajar. Pushing it open, she found the bed still made up. But there was no Bresnahan in the suite, nor any sign that she had stayed there.

Then, knocking at Ward’s door, she asked him if he had seen Ruth. There was a definite hesitation before he replied.

“Hughie said he’d be right down,” she now told McKeon and her husband. “And that he’d just seen Rut’ie out his window, walking in the street.” Glancing at McGarr, Noreen raised an eyebrow in a way that told all.

Perhaps five minutes went by before Bresnahan and Ward arrived under the archway of the dining room, their appearance so extraordinary that a passing waitress slowed to stare at them.

On Ward, whose skin was olive in tone, the bites and nicks from the eels were not conspicuous. But Bresnahan looked like she had chicken pox or measles.

“Is it contagious?” McKeon asked. “Or have you two been at each other again?” But when nobody re
sponded, he added, “Oh-kay—do I continue, Chief? Or commit hara-kiri right here on the spot?”

“What a brilliant idea,” Noreen said, affecting a smile. “May we watch?”

“Thank you, Shogun Noreen. Your encouragement is acknowledged.” McKeon shook out the lab and other reports that had been sent by courier from Dublin. Fitting on half-glasses, he looked down and read for a while.

In the silence, Ruth jotted a note on her pad and showed it to Noreen.
“I want you to know: the only reason I slept with the rotter again is, after the eels, I needed somebody to hold.”

And was it a healing experience? Noreen was tempted to ask in a big-sisterly way. But she only nodded, as though understanding; they would, of course, talk later.

“Not to keep yous in suspense, b’ys and gir-rills,” McKeon said, exaggerating his brogue. “But it says here the Frakes have rap sheets that would make career criminals proud. Including charges—but not convictions—of murder.

“Likewise their boon companion, Gertrude McGurk, whose own past encounters with the criminal law include arrests for loitering, pandering, and prostitution. Also, there was the punishing run-in with our victim, Ellen Gilday Finn.

“In civil actions, Ms. McGurk has twice sued to receive bequests from wills that had been denied her by the solicitors of the deceased. Both men. The earlier action failed, but she was successful to the tune of twenty-seven thousand pounds against the estate of a certain Antony Moran, late of Leixleap.

“Then, we have two opinions about the note that
Peter discovered on the kitchen table in the Finns’ flat, the one that casts suspicion on the husband.

“The first analysis says that the note is genuine, but that Quintan Finn wrote it while distraught or in some way impaired or both. Although smudged, his fingerprints are also on the sheet.

“The second says no, it’s a forgery, albeit, a high-quality forgery. The lab has sent the note out to an independent expert for a third opinion.”

“Don’t we have it somewhere that Carson was a forger for the IRA?” Ward asked.

McKeon nodded. “Their best. He specialized in financial instruments—negotiable bonds, stocks, letters of credit—that class of thing. And was never caught. It was manslaughter that put him in the poky.”

“But isn’t Carson a slight older man?” Noreen asked.

“Ten stone tops.”

“How could he have disabled Ellen Finn and then accomplished her murder on top of Burke, like that?”

“Speaking of which, the lab says Ellen Finn had a preexisting contusion and gash on her temple before she was shot there, evidently in an attempt to cover up how she was disabled.”

“And cover up when Burke was shot,” Ward put in. “As always, murderers try too hard.”

“Or murderer,” said Bresnahan, who was doodling over the note that she had shown Noreen earlier.

Ward turned to her. “Aw, c’mon—it’s got to be the Frakes in collusion with Finn. Who else would have been strong enough? And they both were on the scene.”

“As placed there by Carson,” said Noreen.

“And by one of the guests.” McKeon leafed to the
back of the report. “All have been interviewed, all shown photographs of Manus and Donal Frakes and Quintan Finn.

“A certain Georgette Freuling was in her room down the hall from the murder scene. She says that while her husband fishes, she ‘grouses,’ her quote, meaning she takes walks and reads outside.

“But because the weather was closing in, she returned to the room and was disturbed by the sounds of the carpet being delivered and later all the banging as it was being fitted to the room.

“Opening the door, she looked out, which was when she definitely saw Manus Frakes and maybe—she’s not entirely sure, since he only passed by the open door—Quintan Finn. But she heard Frakes call the other man Quin!

“But—get this—after the banging stopped, she then heard a short sharp report that she thought was the backfire of a car in the street. Unfortunately, she then dozed off for a while, and she doesn’t know for how long. But she was awakened by the sound of a man and woman—or it could have been two men and two women—in the hall and the rather loud closing of a door.

“Nodding off again, she was awakened yet again by another backfire, and she saw it was around six and time to get ready for dinner, since her husband would be returning soon.

“He took over the interview here, saying he bumped into Tim Tallon, the proprietor, in the hall, and Tallon showed him the new carpet, in addition to discussing the day’s fishing.

“He added that, since the wife and he were leaving and heading north, Tallon told him to fish Lake Gowna
in Cavan, which was where he was found and was proving a great stay.”

“What was Tallon doing there? Didn’t Carson tell Peter at some point that he ran that side of the operation?” Noreen asked.

“More than that.” McKeon paused to remove his half-glasses. “Carson told me yesterday afternoon that he’s been negotiating with Tallon to buy the pub half of the business.

“‘Tallon doesn’t want it and doesn’t need the headache,’ he told me. ‘He’s doing a roaring trade over there on the other side, where the gouging is better.’”

Observed Noreen, “Not bad for an older man only a short while out of prison—a good business and a premier property.”

“Also, there’s the pretty riverbank house he’s now in solo,” said Bresnahan.

Noreen nodded. “And he might even get his cute little granddaughter to keep him company, if the Frakes go to jail.”

Bresnahan turned her notepad; she was drawing a picture of a glass eel, the face of which looked very much like Ward’s. “But Carson’s not the woman who had sex with Pascal Burke. Find her, and we’ll find our murderer.”

“No,” Ward objected. “We’ll find our murderers, who are the Frakes and their trollop. The body of evidence points to them.”

“Really now?” McKeon secured the bows of the glasses over his ears. “Says here that the Kalashnikov I found in the field near the millrace—the one with the night-seeing scope—has not been fired recently.”

Ward hunched his shoulders. “Maybe they have an
other. Didn’t Peter’s report say they have a case of them?”

“Of assault rifles that are still wrapped in Cosmoline,” said Bresnahan, still working on her drawing. “Nightscopes are quite another item, altogether. As I said, when we find the woman who had sex with Burke, we’ll find our murderer.”

“Speaking of which—woman, that is—we have this bit of disappointing information,” McKeon continued. “There’s now proof positive via DNA that Ellen Finn did not have sex with Pascal Burke, nor was the fetus his.

“And while we’re on DNA, the DNA on the outside of the condom was not hers either, nor was it the DNA of the woman who left the bleached blond hair with hair follicle still attached on the pillow beside the two bodies.”

“Which means—there’re
three
women involved?” Noreen asked. “Ellen Finn”—she counted on her fingers—“whoever had sex with him prior to his death, and now whoever left the hair in the bed.”

“If the maid changed the covers,” Ward noted.

“Mr. Tryster,” McKeon said. “Remember—he’d only just arrived that morning after being a fortnight away. And there was Leixleap’s special Welcome Wagon, beating down the door to greet him.”

“In triplicate,” Ward put in.

“Pity he had to die and take his secret with him.”

“His comeuppance, entirely,” said Bresnahan.

“Twice over. First literally and then figuratively.” McKeon glanced back down at the report.

“Also, the lubricant that was found on her person is not the same as what’s applied before packaging to Thunderbolt condoms—love that name—at the factory
in Morristown, New Jersey, where genius obviously resides.

“Here again, as in the earlier report, it’s said that the condom on Burke was another brand made by Sheik.”

“Is it too early to know if the baby was her husband’s?” Noreen asked.

McKeon nodded. “All we know about Quintan Finn’s death so far is that it occurred in his car, where Peter found him, and that in all likelihood he pulled the trigger. There’s a bruise on his left index finger.”

Which was an indicator of suicide, McGarr well knew, the shock of bullet tensing all muscles in the body. Briefly.

“What’s the possibility of somebody inserting his finger through the trigger guard and pulling the trigger for him?” Noreen asked. “You know, after they drugged him or got him drunk.”

“And we all know it’s happened before,” Bresnahan put in.

“What about his blood?” Ward asked.

McKeon scanned the next page. “Don’t you just hate it when amateurs are right? I mean, beautiful gifted talented amateurs with a friend in a high place. Finn had a blood alcohol level of two point oh three.”