The Death of an Irish Politician (7 page)

“His name is Carleton Driver and he lives on Fitzwilliam Square.”

“Age?”

“Mid-forties.”

“Married?”

“To literature and the great Celtic oral tradition, if you know what I mean.”

“How is his office work?”

“Phenomenal, when he’s there. If I only had half his brains and he half my sense!”

“Political leanings?”

“Definitely left.”

“Temperamental?”

“Yes.”

“Where does he drink?”

“McDaid’s.”

“Why do you think your wife stole the report?”

This took Horrigan by surprise.

“Would you mind if—” McGarr began to stand. He wanted another drink, even if he had to extort it. He had the feeling that much more information than what the minister had offered was yet to come.

“Oh, please do. Excuse me.”

McGarr poured himself a very sufficient drink.

“Have you people been conducting your own investigation?”

“No.”

“Then how—?”

“Call it a leap of faith.” McGarr offered him a Woodbine.

Horrigan accepted, saying, “I haven’t had one of these for years.”

“Don’t make it a habit. They tell me they’re
a force more lethal than the IRA. You don’t live together?” In spite of the care taken with the details of the room, there was not one feminine touch anywhere. Everything was too ordered, nothing placed by whimsy.

Horrigan looked askance at McGarr. “Has another minister asked you to—”

McGarr shook his head. “You obviously credit me with knowing my profession, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me here.”

Horrigan stood and walked to the window as if he wished to heighten the confessional nature of the exchange. He drew on the cigarette and blew out the smoke immediately. “What can I tell you about Leona?”

McGarr, perhaps because of the Ovens case, had not quite understood the minister’s pronunciation of the name. “Excuse me, what is her name?”

Horrigan turned to him. “Leona. Do you know her?”

McGarr shook his head.

The minister turned back to the view of the courtyard. It had begun to rain and the sky was slate. “When we first married, we were poor but plucky. Both fresh out of university—she teaching national school here in Dublin for money that wouldn’t keep a friar in holy water, me trying to scrounge up legal work. I prosecuted my first case against the Dublin County Council when my maiden aunt
slipped on a puddle of ice in front of her flat and broke her hip.”

“Children?”

“Three and grown. The youngest is a senior sophister at Trinity, of all places.”

“When did you begin living apart?”

Horrigan turned his head sharply to him. He honestly couldn’t remember. He walked to the table, picked up his glass, and then went to the sideboard. “Maybe fifteen years ago. The youngest was walking, I remember, and just about to enter kindergarten. We never talked about her leaving me, mind you, or about separation, living apart, or divorce. I had begun to make big money a few years before that, and we started adding a place here, a suite of rooms in London. We bought a boat.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds. She traded boats, bought, sold, rented, leased them in such multiplicity I don’t know what we own right now myself.”

“You don’t sail yourself?” McGarr was now fitting the pieces of what the minister was telling him into the Ovens case. He wondered why the man had really called him here like this. Could it be that
he
had attacked Ovens and, definitely a nervous type, couldn’t wait for the investigation to uncover his wife’s involvement with the man?

Horrigan chuckled into the whiskey glass. “I would have liked to sail and now realize that
for the sake of my marriage I should have, but I either told myself I didn’t have the time or really didn’t have it. Another thing is the training. I tried it once, but I was born a Dublin guttersnipe. Do you know the sort of person who sails in Ireland, Peter?”

“I know the sort of person who sails.” McGarr thought briefly of Ovens, who was an American, and then Horace C. K. Hubbard. McGarr had tried unsuccessfully to know some of the people who had sailed on the Riviera. To him they were different—ignorantly exclusive, inveterately romantic, eccentric.

“They’re born to it. In her own way, my wife was too. Her father used to build boats for them at Cobh, and because of that they accepted her in a patronizing way, if you know what I mean.
Later
”—Horrigan raised his voice—“they accepted her because she could buy and sell the lot of them with the small change in her checkbook!” Merely talking about this situation seemed to anger Horrigan, but McGarr wished he knew the man better. There seemed to be just the slightest bit of affectation in his speech, a small touch of the histrionic in his gestures.

McGarr sipped from his whiskey.

Now Horrigan was leaning against the sideboard. “And so ours became one of the first of what they now call an ‘open’ marriage. She did her thing, as the saying goes, and I mine. Hers included several downright rotters. I
hired Hugh Madigan—do you know him?”

McGarr nodded. Madigan was a private detective with offices in London.

“He told me that much. Along the way, about the time our oldest son became a research student in London, it became fashionable for certain ‘Anglo-Irish’ intellectuals—and I use both terms advisedly, Inspector McGarr—to champion the causes of the Bernadette Devlins of the North. Leona had money, you see, and Eoin—that’s our son—was just at the age when a party with free booze would invariably draw a bunch of freeloading blowhards he thought brilliant. So Leona gave parties.” Horrigan stubbed the cigarette butt into the ashtray. “She never seemed able to discriminate about people who weren’t exactly Irish, exactly her age, and exactly from her station in life.”

“But about you?”

“Yes, goddammit! About me she could give you a litany of my personal failings that would run to volumes, but about that collection of fairies and sycophants, moochers, drunks, and plain old con men she couldn’t learn a thing. She became embroiled in some organization that had its base in the Bogside and its financial support in London. From the money she spent, I would believe she alone was its backer.”

“How much?”

“Forty-seven thousand pounds! You could
buy a bloody tank for that much! I often wonder how much of it was pissed over bars on its way from Euston Station to Belfast.”

“Much of it, no doubt,” McGarr said. He was acquainted with the habits of professional quasi-revolutionaries. It was a bunko game much practiced by a certain type of Irishman in London.

Horrigan poured himself another drink. “You know, she was always swinging between feeling guilty for having so much money to feeling inadequate that she hadn’t had the money for very long at all. I told her that if the money bothered her so much I’d put some in a blind bank trust and she could go back to Cork and live the simple life.”

“And?”

“Oh, Christ! It’s gotten so I can’t open my mouth in her presence. She called me a cheap bastard who with ill-gotten millions would deny her and her children the necessities of life.”

McGarr stood, walked to the sideboard, poured himself another drink, and raising the glass to his mouth, looked directly into Horrigan’s eyes. He asked, “Did
you
try to murder Bobby Ovens? Is that why you called me here? I’ll find your fingerprints on that winch handle, blood spatters on your clothes, you know.”

Again Horrigan was surprised that McGarr had jumped ahead of him. He looked away,
out the French windows, into the courtyard below. “No, I didn’t. Of all her…‘flings,’ I think I liked him the best. At least he was genuine and not interested in her money.”

“I understand she’s a beautiful woman.”

“Yes, she is that. Perhaps too beautiful.”

“Younger than you?”

Horrigan was now becoming drunk. His eyes were filling. “Not in years.”

“Do you think she tried to murder Ovens?”

Horrigan tried to take a big sip from the tumbler. The fluid splashed on his upper lip. He coughed. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he explained, “I got a telephone call from her Friday night. She wanted to know what I could do to hush up the whole thing. She told me she didn’t do it but said the whole situation would prove terribly embarrassing for all of us, me included, should all the facts be known. I told her I couldn’t do a thing. She berated me, as usual, for being spineless and, you know, ‘bourgeois.’”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I had the call traced and the operator told me it came from a coin box in Dublin.”

“Do you know about the flat in Ballsbridge?”

“I do now.”

“You mean since you checked the running log in my office. That’s what you were doing in the Castle, wasn’t it?”

Sheepishly, Horrigan nodded his head.

“Then your telling me that somebody stole the report was phony.”

“No. Somebody stole it.”

“But
not
the IRA. What reason would they have for wanting to ruin you? When you come right down to it, you’re their best friend in the present government. Already some of the investigating officers have leaked enough information to the press to implicate them. When the report comes out, they’ll just say some fanatic did it.”

Horrigan shook his head. “No,
not
the IRA, at least from what I can learn from the sources I have in the official wing.”

“May I use your phone?”

“Certainly.”

McGarr finished his drink and dialed his office. “Bernie, please.” When McKeon came on, he said, “I want you to pick up Carleton Driver at the Department of Justice and get a statement about his activities Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Then put a tail on him.”

“What’s it about, chief?”

“It’s better that you don’t know.”

“Hush-hush?” McKeon was from a small village in Leitrim and had a love of intrigue, especially in high places.

“Also, put a tail on Neila Monahan, who works in the same office. I want discreet questions asked her neighbors about her activities
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Lastly, when Liam O’Shaughnessy arrives, I want him to go to the Department of Justice in his plain clothes and take a statement from the minister for justice himself.” Cupping the receiver with his hand, he asked Horrigan, “When will you be there?”

“I’d prefer him to come here.”

“I wouldn’t, if you don’t mind.”

“Two o’clock.”

“At two.” McGarr listened for a moment. McKeon thought he heard O’Shaughnessy coming down the hall. The huge man was a favorite in the Castle, his step and greeting unmistakable. When he got to the phone, McGarr said to him, “Bernie will tell you what I want, Liam. The statement you take from the minister will give you an idea of how important the situation is. I want you to put all your other work aside and concentrate on this investigation alone.”

O’Shaughnessy began to complain. He had details to gather, reports to write.

“Put it all on my desk. I’ll get Delaney to handle the paper and Boyle the leg work. Now—listen to me:
you
are in charge of this investigation entirely. I don’t want to hear from you again until you’ve got things sorted out. Let me speak to Bernie.”

Horrigan was agitated.

McGarr explained. “I’m not passing the buck. When the investigation begins to take
shape, I’ll take over. What I’m doing is institutionalizing the search, so that if the public prosecutor, the press, your political party, anybody wants to know what you or I or the department did once you found the papers missing, we can show them the record or present them with a battery of witnesses to prove this was no clandestine operation.” McGarr resituated the phone. “Bernie? Who’s waiting for me?”

“Just about everybody. What’s all this about a ‘clandestine operation,’ boss? What’s O’Shaughnessy got that I don’t have? Mary and me were talking this over last night. Why is it you never give me the interesting assignments and always have me covering for you around here or shagging bird watchers out on Killiney Bay or tracking down shutterbugs in photography stores or speaking to a passel of Krauts in the Agfa-Gavaert factory, and just generally—”

“Bernie,” McGarr cut in, “it’s because you’re a good detail man.”

“Details, my arse!” McKeon roared.

“We’ll settle this in an hour.” McGarr glanced down at his fisherman’s sweater. “And a half.” It would be very pleasant to take a shower and change clothes. By the time he got to the office, McKeon would be so immersed in the details of this and other assignments he wouldn’t even remember the outburst.

As McGarr made for the door, Horrigan said, “Wait—there’s something I’ve got to ask you. How do you feel about the IRA?”

Now it was McGarr who was taken by surprise. He wondered why this question, why now. “I don’t understand.”

“You see, if you do manage to find the report before it’s released to the press, then—well—I must know if—”

In that light, the question seemed innocent enough. After all, Horrigan had his entire public career on the line. As Horrigan himself had said, McGarr repeated, “I support the IRA.”

“Well—how much, you know, theoretically?”

“Right down the line. Some tactics, of course, I deplore. For instance, the bombing of any target other than military. Cops are paid to take their chances. But as for the violence itself, have they any option?”

Horrigan smiled and nodded. “Oh, and here.” He reached into his suit-coat pocket and drew out what looked like a bank cashier’s check. Face side down he held it out to McGarr. “Just to reimburse you and your wife for having gone out of your way to meet me here today, and for whatever additional burden my wife and family will put on you during the course of this thing. Please don’t mistake me, it’s only a harmless gesture.”

McGarr, who had grasped the check, re
leased it and drew his hand away. “No need—I’m paid to be of assistance to all Irish citizens. Perhaps not well enough, but that’s a bargain between me and the state.” McGarr left.

MCGARR’S DUBLIN CASTLE office had not been designed for the baker’s-dozen detectives who comprised his staff. Nor had the builder considered the possibility that persons other than mild British civil servants with low voices and an ease of manner might people these rooms. When the number of detectives not away on assignment rose above six, the main room teemed with activity, the clacking of typewriters, ringing of phones, citizens with complaints or information pushing close to a detective so as not to be overheard.

After hanging up his hat and coat, McGarr signaled to Hughie Ward. He already knew what Ward would divulge but planned to act surprised, if only to make the young man think his work had not been in vain.

Into the closing door of the cubicle, McGarr heard McKeon say, “More smoke and shadow! This place will be a bloody fen before our roving Inter-police man gets through.” McGarr’s staff was very proud that their chief had been one of the most prominent international detectives in the world.

Ward sat on the edge of McGarr’s desk and said in a low voice, “Leona Horrigan is her name.”

“Not—?”

Ward nodded. “The minister’s wife.”

McGarr pretended to ponder the fact. “Where’s Brud Clare now?”

“Back at the boatyard.”

“Did you make sure he understood how sensitive our investigation here has now become?”

Ward nodded again.

“Send in Slattery, then swear out arrest warrants for Hubbard and her. You can call her address the Shelbourne, for form’s sake, and his Fitzwilliam Square. I don’t know the number. You better check to see if he’s an alien. If he is, notify the British Embassy.”

“Then what?”

“Wait for me.”

Slattery’s inquiries at lawyer Greaney’s had resulted in the name, Cobh Condominia Ltd., a holding company. The law clerk at the office refused to tell Slattery who owned the company or if it held title on other property than
the 17 Percy Place address. Slattery had insisted on seeing Greaney himself, who told the detective he’d need a magistrate’s order before he would reveal more.

“Get it and get the information. I want to know the name of everybody involved with that property and a list of the company’s holdings. Then I want you to take every person concerned and run their finances down. Greaney himself included. Seems to me he’s not the sort of lawyer that people operating aboveboard usually retain.”

McGarr then called in Harry Greaves, who said the canvassing of Killiney hill was half completed without a witness having been discovered yet.

McGarr placed a call to Hugh Madigan in London, who corroborated Horrigan’s story. McGarr couldn’t extract any additional information, but got the impression Madigan wouldn’t accept another assignment from Horrigan.

“Did he pay you?”

“Yes—promptly and in full.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I couldn’t tell you without betraying the confidence of my client. You wouldn’t want me to do that, Peter.”

“Not often. But in this case it would be extremely helpful.”

Madigan paused for a while.

Vaguely, beyond the line static, McGarr
could hear other telephone conversations, the voices layered over each other so that only a word or two became intelligible now and then.

“I wouldn’t be a friend unless I told you to watch out for the man. He’s unpredictable and utterly ruthless.”

McGarr had just put the phone down when it rang. Paul Sinclair, who was staking out the Percy Place apartment, had observed a tall, striking woman in her thirties enter the premises. Being alone, he could only cover one entrance.

“Hair?”

“Black.”

“Built?”

“Like a pregnant kangaroo.”

“How’s that?”

“She had on a fur coat. In such important matters I dare not trust my imagination.”

From the speed with which McGarr grabbed his hat and coat, the office staff knew this was no time to fool. Ward was holding the door for him and they rushed down the stairs into the courtyard. Ward switched on the lamp and the bell, and they raced down Dame Street.

Trinity College students, having just returned from summer vacation, were flooding across Parnell Square toward the university gates. Blue-and-grey mufflers were wrapped about their necks. Most of the men were incredibly hairy and many smoked pipes. The gait of the women held a promise, just the
slightest lubricity of young hips, that McGarr found disconcertingly attractive.

This scene, however, had exactly the opposite effect on Hughie Ward. He pumped the brakes, pounded the heel of his fist into the horn button, and shouted, “You blasted lard arses! Can’t you see we’re in a rush? Move it, idjits!”—which just caused the students to slow their pace yet more and assume an even more disdainful expression. Self-consciously anti-institutional as only the sons and daughters of the profoundly middle class can be, these kids seized any opportunity to bait society’s most conspicuous institution, the police. McGarr was old and successful enough to find the stance ludicrous, but Ward was wroth.

He jammed the Rover into first and nearly burst the engine hurtling up Nassau Street. McGarr said nothing, just grasped the lid of his bowler and let his assistant sublimate his aggressions on the machine. A block and a half from the Percy Place address, McGarr reached over, silenced the bell, and switched off the light.

“She hasn’t left by the front door. I did see the curtains move on the ground floor, however,” said Sinclair, bending to speak into the front window of the car.

McGarr said, “You take the rear, Hughie. If you see her making off, don’t wait for us. Suspicion of murder, high treason, grand theft,
and violations of the arms-control bill are the charges.”

McGarr popped out of the auto, and he and Sinclair hustled across the street. Sinclair was a tall, thin man who wore exquisite Savile Row suits, soft hats from Cavanaugh’s, and carried an umbrella. He had been a full superintendent Down Under and was a member of the Australian Bar. He had the manner of a psychiatrist, and McGarr had strained his relations with the minister for finance getting the government to pay Sinclair only a hundred pounds per year less than he received himself, although by the rules of the Civil Service Commission that man’s job classification could only be pegged at detective first class. McGarr was not afraid of competition, since he believed policemen, like athletes, could improve their game only with steady competition of a high order of excellence.

Sinclair rapped on the porter’s door. A whole minute later, it opened.

McGarr pulled the arrest warrant from his raincoat pocket and attempted to show it to the old woman who called herself Megan. “Peter McGarr again, ma’am. This is Detective Sinclair.”

The tall man was trying to see over the top of the old woman’s head. They could hear the Rover winding down the alley out back.

“I seem to have misplaced my glasses,” she said, but when she began fumbling with the
shawl on her upper chest in search of her spectacles, McGarr pushed by her. He wasn’t about to let any doddering old shrew keep him from making this arrest. He wanted to prove to the government that the Dublin Castle Garda had the tact and discretion to handle even the most sensitive assignment. Under other chiefs the Dublin Castle had been a meat-wagon squad that specialized in bullying, intimidation, and even torture. De Valera’s regimes had used them for political purposes. McGarr had taken the job only on the promise he would be allowed to make the department into a first-rate investigative agency. Now he wanted to nip any political complications of this case in the bud. Arresting Leona Horrigan would be the first step.

“Where are you going? Two A has been declared void, you know,” she shouted after him as he made a quick tour through her flat and opened the door that led up to the tenants’ apartments. 2A was the Emergency Powers Act that had suspended civil liberties and had given the government the power of internment during the Troubles in the thirties. 2A hadn’t been withdrawn, but the old woman’s acquaintance with the law surprised McGarr.

The apartment was unoccupied, but the odor of a perfume that smelled like fresh gardenias was still heavy in the air. From the porch, McGarr signaled to Ward in the alley. He hadn’t seen anybody leave. The back gate,
however, was slightly ajar, as was a drawer of the dresser in the bedroom. Somebody had rifled through it, perhaps taking fresh clothes. A pair of women’s shoes, the soles still wet from the street, were in the closet. McGarr slipped them into a paper bag he took from the bottom drawer of the fridge. He handed these to Sinclair, saying, “Have the lab check them for blood of Bobby Ovens’ type, please, Paul. And then look up Liam O’Shaughnessy at the Department of Justice. He’ll fill you in on the details of what he’s doing. Tell him I told you to concentrate on Carleton Driver, the minister’s first assistant.” McGarr wanted his best men on that aspect of this investigation now, the two parts of which he was sure would dovetail very soon.

Sinclair left.

Back in the car, Ward asked, “Where to?”

This was no time for a long shot, but McGarr said, “The Killiney Bay Yacht Club. I have a hunch she’s panicked. If so, she’ll run to Hubbard. The old woman probably told her about my earlier visit, pointed Sinclair out to her.”

As Ward cranked up the Rover, again sounding the alarm and activating the blinker, McGarr called Will Hare at Internal Security and John Gallagher at Customs, asking them to detain anybody named or resembling Leona Horrigan.

Gallagher asked, “Is that
the
Leona Horrigan, the minister’s wife?”

“The same.”

“And a prime piece of fluff she is,” said Gallagher. “What’s she done? A crime of passion, no doubt.”

Ward began to laugh. Gallagher was a free spirit. Anybody with a citizen’s band radio could be listening to them, to say nothing of all the police cars and station commanders across the country.

“We went to university together,” Gallagher went on. “She had a certain way of tossing her hair, you know, that made me want to commit a mortal sin. She was”—they could hear Gallagher sigh—“the Lauren Bacall of UCD, but healthier, if you know what I mean. Nicotine could never violate those lungs!” Gallagher rang off.

Topping Killiney hill at the Khyber Pass, McGarr noticed the yacht-club van parked near the entrance to the lounge bar. He stifled the bell, turned off the light, and directed Ward to swing around.

When they got to the bar, McGarr noticed a neat whiskey and one with soda in front of adjoining stools. A cigarette with a lipstick smudge on the filter smoked in the ashtray. McGarr flashed his shield at the barman, who pointed in two directions, toward the men’s room and out the front door.

McGarr took the former path and burst into
the toilet. Along the outer wall, a bank of windows was open, the floor still wet, air heavy with chemical cleanser. McGarr was about to squeeze under a window and reconnoiter the yard beyond when he noticed the tracks of rubber-soled shoes leading to a stall. He could not, however, see feet below the door. He drew his Walther, and with a snap of his knee thrust a heavy-lidded wastepaper basket over the tiles so that it crashed into the stall door, jamming it open. There, squatting with his feet on the bowl rim, was Horace C.K. Hubbard. He looked very much like a frog on a rock.

“Who am I to question your toilet training, Horace? Climb down off there, please. Then come out here and place your hands on the wall.”

From outside in the parking lot they heard the soft thump of automobile sheet metal collapsing, then the tinkling spray of shattered glass.

Hubbard shouted “Lea!” and made as though he would charge out of the toilet.

McGarr shoved the large man against the wall. Hubbard spun and punched wildly at McGarr’s head, knocking off his hat. The chief inspector followed the arc of Hubbard’s arm, and when the elbow swept past, McGarr thrust his weight into it. Hubbard’s fist smashed full force into the wall tiling of the toilet. Through the elbow McGarr could feel Hubbard’s wrist snap. The big man pulled the
hand back from the wall and stared into it curiously as it dangled limp, the knuckles bluing, the swelling immediate and full. He looked at McGarr as though for a diagnosis.

“You won’t be thumbing your nose at me for a while, Horace,” said McGarr.

Leona Horrigan was unhurt. She was indeed beautiful. She clung to Ward as though even in her collapse and embarrassment she was attempting to use her glorious body—a tall woman with straight, athletic legs and an erect carriage that emphasized her firm buttocks and large breasts—to win over the handsome young detective. She was sobbing, and like a child who derives emotional support from a teddy bear, wouldn’t release Ward, who said to McGarr in a hushed voice, “And who said this job doesn’t have its moments?”

McGarr directed the three of them into the rear seat of the Rover and drove to the hospital himself. The radiator of the car was leaking some, but the engine didn’t overheat. He called the Bray barracks for help at the hospital. McGarr enjoyed the heady aroma of gardenias and the spectacle of Hubbard in agony, the woman mortified.

While the emergency room ministered to Hubbard’s needs, McGarr made a discreet inquiry as to Ovens’ condition, which had improved so significantly that Dr. O’Higgins was contemplating releasing him. The young doctor, McGarr found, was scheduled for ward
duty that night. This bit of news pleased him, although the ward report said Ovens had not said a word yet. He had persistently refused to talk to the doctors, nurses, sisters, and priest.

Hubbard’s fingerprints were on the winch handle along with those of another man. McGarr swiveled in his chair and looked out the window. The dirty brick buildings that bordered the Liffey appeared crimson as an autumn twilight descended. He picked up the telephone and began dialing the pubs he suspected Billy Martin might frequent. At the ninth, he reached a publican who had just seen the man leave. He advised McGarr to wait five minutes and then call Pim’s Lounge Bar on the Stillorgan Road. “You can set your watch by the man. He rides a mo-ped, you know. Takes it right up on the sidewalk when the traffic’s jammed.”

While he waited, McGarr called Noreen, filled her in on the details, and advised her he wouldn’t be home.