Read The Death of an Irish Lover Online
Authors: Bartholomew Gill
“Ach—the two of them were like rabbits, her and him. Always at it. He’d only have to come to town, and she was on him like green on grass. A right bloody bitch.”
“So you took a gun, the one you had—where?”
“Beneath the bar, of course. You can’t be too careful these days.” Carson was shaking now.
“And that gun is now—where?”
“Sure, I chucked it in the river.”
McGarr nodded. “So, to recap—let’s see if I have your confession straight. You decided to rid your young nephew of his adulterous wife and also—in passing—to do Manus and Donal Frakes the favor of
getting Pascal Burke out of their lives. He was horning in on their illegal eel trade, right?”
“That’s right.”
“So, with sublime stealth you managed to open the door, approach them on the bed, and dispatch both problems with one shot. Then, you tossed the murder weapon into the largest and deepest river in the country where it probably will never be found. It’s brilliant. When you get back to the drum, your mates there will call you a bloody genius.”
“Me, Chief?” Swords answered on the other end of the phone. “Haven’t I been telling you for years?”
McGarr ordered a car and rang off. Then, “May I make an observation?”
Carson was having trouble staying on his feet, and he leaned back against the house.
“The Frakes don’t seem very grateful. Or do you think they were shooting at me?”
“Are you taking me up to Dublin then?” Carson asked in a hopeful manner.
“Not until your confession becomes more credible.”
McGarr only led the injured man around the house to the kitchen entrance. He needed a cup of tea, and the Aga would still be hot.
In a very real way McGarr had loved that little car.
The newlywed Finns—Ellen and Quintan—had shared a mews flat down an alley off the main road by the bridge.
Carson had a key to the door in a high wall that led into a flagged courtyard with a wrought-iron table; chairs and flowers traced the perimeter.
“How long did you live here?” McGarr asked.
“Three years with Quintan. I’m out the six months since they’ve been married.”
“Where do you live now?”
“A flat at the front of the building. My brother-in-law owns most of the block.”
Two rows of arched windows in the Georgian style had been placed one on each side of the doorway, and in all the makeover of what had formerly been stables or a commercial building was imaginative and inviting.
With his uninjured hand, Carson opened the door and stepped in. “They never lock it,” he explained, be
fore calling out, “Quintan—are ye about, lad? Quintan?”
Carson moved toward a flight of stairs and called again, but there was no reply. “Must be out. Would you care for another cup, Superintendent—I’m parched, and these things are giving me the business.” He meant his scalp and hand.
Leading McGarr through a light and airy sitting room with stuffed chairs, covered in a floral pattern, and a smattering of tasteful antiques, they traced the length of a hall into what had evidently been a separate building. It now contained a large kitchen with sweeping views of the Shannon. Sliding glass doors opened onto a deck.
There was a note propped on a long kitchen table. Both men walked over to it.
Ellen, you right bloody bitch. Before we were engaged you swore to me you were through with him. And now it’s all over the county what a fool I am.
If you read this note before I find you, pack your gear and clear out. You should know this—you don’t want me to find you.
McGarr waited for Carson’s reaction; from out on the river they now heard the droning of the horn of a boat.
Carson tried to reach for the note, but McGarr kept him from it. Straightening up, he glanced at McGarr.
“Yesterday, a little after noon, I’d make it, Quintan was in the bar when Manus came in to deliver a carpet for the room that’s being refurbished.”
“The room across the hall from where they were found?”
Carson nodded.
“Manus was all alone, so he asked if Quintan would lend him a hand. They carried it upstairs.”
“Before Burke and Ellen went up?”
“Burke was already up there, I’d hazard, but I don’t know. Ellen came in and had a couple of quick vodkas to steel herself, like. And then she must have gone up.”
“Did you see her?”
Carson shook his head. “I get chatting with people. Burke must have had a key made for her, so she could—like—have a drink or two near the end of the bar. When others weren’t looking, she’d slip upstairs.
“Then there were the ‘planning sessions,’ Burke called them, that were probably just…you know,
sessions.
He’d have a bunch of maps, sometimes even a third eel police, and they’d all go upstairs. The third party leaving before Ellen.”
“What about this?” McGarr pointed to the,
Before we were engaged you told me you were through with him.
Carson’s eyes moved to McGarr’s. He nodded. “I don’t know what hold Burke had over women, even young women with…everything, including a future, like Ellen. But—”
Which seemed to contradict what the maid, Grace O’Rourke, had said about Ellen Gilday Finn. She had seemed genuinely shocked at having found her there, like that. And being the same age in such a small town, O’Rourke would have known practically everything there was to know about the murdered woman, especially a long-term affair with a much older man that had transpired above a large popular bar.
“You still haven’t answered me why the Frakes tried to kill you.”
Carson stepped toward the stove. “Because they knew I knew what I just told you, and there we were together and you out of the car.”
“Meaning that you think Manus was in on it.”
“How else could it have been done? The two of them burst into the room, catching them like that, and Manus—he’s strong—held her down in place while Quintan shot her. Once being enough for the both of them.” Carson bit his lower lip and looked away. “The carpet thing was just a ruse. They knew those two were up there.”
“Why would Frakes do something like that for your nephew?”
“Because Quintan’s one of them, I’m told. The eel trade, stolen cars, bootleg ciggies, building materials, anything not nailed down.”
McGarr waited while Carson filled the kettle, since more of an explanation was in order—why a young man from a well-off family would link up with two known former IRA thugs.
“It’s the romantic thing, I guess. Quintan’s a…wee fella. And he’s forever trying to prove himself. Spoiled like his mother was. Willful, you know. With the temper and all.”
While Carson made tea, McGarr toured the rest of the dwelling. In the master bedroom he found a partly opened drawer that was filled with every manner of lingerie—teddies, garter belts, thong underwear—along with an assortment of vibrators and other items from sex shops.
Among them was a packet of Thunderbolt condoms with the lightning-bolt-and-cloud logo, the same as McGarr had discovered in Ellen Finn’s purse. Like that packet, it was unopened.
Back down in the kitchen, McGarr refused Carson’s offer of tea. “I’d like you to stay in town.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“Do you think you need protection?”
“Not now that I’ve been warned.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean carrying a weapon.” Which for a convicted felon would mean immediate and lengthy jail time.
“I’m too smart for that.”
By how much remained to be seen, thought McGarr.
“What about your head and hand? I could have you driven to hospital.”
“Thank you, no. I’ll ring up the local medic. He’ll come and take care of me here. It’s more my style.
“And Superintendent,” Carson added as McGarr was nearly out the door. “Thanks for the bit at the car. It makes me grateful for my tea.” Carson raised his cup.
Peter McGarr awoke the next morning to a wonderful surprise. Snow.
And not the snow that was usual to Ireland and often capped the tops of mountains during winter or coated fields with an inch or two of dampness that was gone in a morning. This was a deep abiding snow of the sort that McGarr could remember only a few times in his life.
Looking out the windows of the suite of rooms in the inn, he could see that, sometime during the night, the sleet of the night before had turned to fluffy snow. Perhaps a foot mounded the cars in the courtyard and the walls of the formal garden. And was still falling in swirling windblown clouds.
The white slope down to the jetty made the river look black and slick, and only the boats of two fishermen tending their eel nets near the piers of the bridge revealed that the surface was water and not dark pol
ished stone. Gulls, looking like bright bits of kinetic snow, wheeled in their lee.
On the bridge itself, an articulated lorry was creeping along in what had to be its lowest gear with warning lights flashing. On the far side a car had gone off the road and was abandoned. And the sky above was the color of slate. It would rain soon. Or snow more.
And yet the sitting room of the suite that McGarr was sharing with his wife and daughter was snug and silent with the piped heat pinging in baseboard registers, the only sound at—he checked his watch—7:10.
Picking up the phone, McGarr ordered a pot of coffee, cocoa for Maddie, and a selection of buns. He then went back to the window to survey the unusual scene again. And muse.
After leaving Carson at Quintan Finn’s flat the night before, McGarr had found the Leixleap police barracks where Declan Riley, the sergeant, was waiting for him. Together they walked the three blocks to the house of Ellen Gilday Finn’s parents.
“I suspect you do this more than me,” Riley said, as they were waiting for the door to open.
McGarr only drew in a deep breath, having known from his first days as a policeman that, while every job had some challenges, there was none in any occupation as troubling as this. Even doctors seldom informed parents that their child had been taken from them by a violent act.
“They only had the one,” Riley whispered, as the door opened.
And like so many other parents in McGarr’s experience, Ellen’s were so shocked that they could be of no help, save to say that they had not been aware of any
problems between their daughter and Finn. “They’d been together forever, you know. Since school. And getting married was like something they’d been waiting for all of their lives,” the mother said.
“But did Ellen have anybody pursuing her?” McGarr asked.
“Pursuing?”
“Ringing her up, asking her out. That class of thing.”
She had to think. “I can’t say. Not after she was married. But Ellen was a pretty girl, and all along there were boys wanting to take her to the ciney and all, even though she had her cap set for Quintan.”
“What about Pascal Burke, her boss?”
Both parents only stared, before McGarr said what he knew for them would be the hardest part. “Your daughter was found with Burke in a room in the Leixleap Inn. Both were murdered. Shot with his gun.”
Tears burst from her father’s eyes. “The eels. The bloody eels and the bloody IRA. We never wanted her to take that job, but it was always the environment…the environment for Ellen. The kayak. The sneaking around in the dead of night. And look where it got her.
“Do you know who Manus Frakes is?” he nearly shouted through his tears. “Find that bastard, and you’ll find Ellen’s killer.”
And her mother had broken down as well. After a while, McGarr and Riley withdrew, leaving them to their…what? Their sorrow? No, McGarr thought—having but one daughter himself—it was keener than that. More like desolation and the ruin of their lives.
Quintan Finn’s parents lived on what could only be called an estate a few miles south of town. Built rather recently on a hilltop, the house was modern in design,
with large bay windows on its four corners, rather like a glass castle, every pane of which was lit.
“Don’t let the house fool you,” Riley advised as the Garda car fishtailed up the slippery slope. “He’s down-to-earth, Dermot is. If you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s got three degrees in what he calls plant nutrition. ‘Bull shit, more shit, piled high and deep,’ since it’s the fertilizer trade that bought this place. Dermot’s into it in a big way.
“But it’s Honora, the wife, who wanted a spread like this. And she’s forever giving out to Finn for smelling like the money that bought it.”
But neither knew the whereabouts of their son. And the father slumped into a seat in the posh living room that looked like something out of California when he learned why McGarr and Riley were searching for the young man.
“What about the Gildays?” was his first thought; he was a short man with a wide once-powerful body and a significant paunch. His face was windburned and his hair white. “They must be—”
“To hell with the Gildays,” the wife cut in. “What about Quintan, our son? Where’s he? Those Frakes—didn’t I tell you they’d brought their trouble with them? Himself even gave them jobs.” She pointed at her husband.
“Isn’t that better than having them steal from me?”
“Ah—see how he thinks.” She was a pretty woman in her early fifties with a trim body and a new perm. “He’d never think of calling you.”
But Finn ignored her. “How can we help?”
“Find your son and have him contact us,” said McGarr, handing Finn his card. “The sooner, the better.” He then asked if they had any recent photographs of their son.
“Only the wedding pictures, and you can’t have those,” she snapped.
Finn got up and retrieved several. With tears in his eyes, he handed them to McGarr. “I’ll find him for you, don’t worry.”
As they made their way back to their car, the wife called to them, “What about the Frakes? Aren’t you going to arrest them? It’s them, you know. It couldn’t be anyone else. Quintan and Ellen were loved by everybody. Are!
Are loved!
”
Back at the barracks, McGarr scanned in the photographs and faxed the lot to Dublin, then told Riley to close up and go home. “I’ll stay,” replied the older man, pointing to the end of the room that led to cells that would have cots. “Finn is a man of his word, and he won’t sleep. And then, we’ll be having some information coming in from Dublin, I suspect.”
McGarr nodded and bid him good night.
Back at the inn, he found Tallon waiting up for him. McGarr raised a hand to his questions and made for the stairs. “Please—I’m knackered. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“But, Janie—it’s out, it’s all over the country. We just had a phone call from an editor at the
Times.
He’s got their names and who they were, and he even knows it was the Frakes that did it and how they tried to kill you only this evening. Blew up your car.”
Which stopped McGarr, since it could only have been Carson who had phoned the Dublin paper. Why? To put so much heat on his erstwhile comrades that they would have to leave the area and go to ground someplace else? Carson, an old fox who had said he could take care of himself. And was doing so.
McGarr continued up the stairs.
“After the
Independent
called and RTE, we took the phone off the hook. Peter—I implored, begged, pleaded with you to keep a lid on this thing, and now—”
McGarr had closed the hall door and made his way to his rooms, where he found his wife in one of the two big beds and his daughter in the other. Rather than wake them, he took a long hot shower and slept on the couch in the sitting room.
Now looking out at the snowscape, McGarr moved into the bedroom, where he woke his daughter. Holding a finger to his lips so his wife could sleep, he motioned Maddie into the other room.
“Look at that,” McGarr said, parting the curtains.
“Oh,
snow!
” Maddie enthused. “And it looks deep.”
“Ever since I was a lad, we’ve only had a few days like this. See the slope down to the river? I bet the metal trays they’ve got downstairs in the dining room will go great in it this morning.”
Which is how Tallon found them, puffing up the hill for another glide down the slope. “Is this what you’re doing when I’ve got the place filled with press and everybody in town is after asking what gives?”
McGarr ignored him and tromped past, Maddie in his wake.
“They want to see you.”
“Tell them I’m busy.”
“I’ll not tell them a thing.”
“Good—then, you’re covered.”
“But what am I supposed to do with them about?”
“Here’s something—I’ll need a breakfast table set for six in one hour. Someplace private. No press, no staff.” Nor you McGarr was tempted to add. “Ready?” he asked Maddie.
“One, two, go!” she shouted, jumping on her tray and skidding down the hill.
McGarr gave her a little lead before following, to make sure she’d win.
“You’re a right bastard, McGarr—do you know that?” Tallon shouted after him. “You were then, you are now! A
bastard!
”