The Death of Love (18 page)

“That doesn’t make sense.”

McGarr waited; often another opinion on (ahem) another wavelength was helpful.

Said Noreen, “To have the file doubly expurgated. Say, Osbourne, justifiably enraged at having read this sordid afflatus, decided to murder the effing louse and place the blame on the ‘other woman.’ In that case she might well have edited the cards to make it seem that their mutual, conveniently erstwhile, fat, bald old man had a better opinion of her than of his wife—do you have those cards?”

Certainly bald, no longer young, and as surely paunchy, McGarr indicated the photocopies in front of him.

“And the originals?”

McGarr pointed to the bedroom.

“But why then edit Mossie Gladden’s cards totally? Don’t tell me one or the other of those two good women might have stooped to the likes of that psychopath?”

McGarr didn’t know what to tell her, but with a feeling close to relief he watched her lower a shoulder and enter the bedroom.

Gathering up Gladden’s version of Paddy Power’s note cards, his eye caught on a two-line thought.

And in police work and marital relations?

SNEEM (
SNAIDHM
) MEANS “knot” in Irish, and the village is shaped like a figure eight. Picture-book streets of mostly attached houses and shops circle two greens.

The greens are also bisected by a river that here in the village sends water, cold from deep mountain bogs, cascading through fractured rock toward Sneem Harbor and the sea beyond. Spanning the falls is an arched stone bridge so narrow that its stone walls permit the passage of tour buses only one at a time. Even cars must slow to a crawl and ease by each other with caution. At such times tourists, who gather there to photograph the torrent below, must lean out over the parapet and pull in their legs.

There is no other bridge over the Sneem River in either direction.

Dr. Maurice J. (“Call me Mossie”) Gladden had chosen the site with care, McGarr judged. Under the best conditions, the bridge was a veritable traffic knot; now it was a tight, impenetrable tangle. Cars, lorries, and buses were lined in both directions, as far as the eye could see. Uniformed Gardai had arrived to keep order.

Since McGarr was known to most of the journalists who would have been sent to an event with the news value of an alleged political murder, he did not approach the milling crowd directly. Instead he parked his car at the east end of the village and walked to the back of Sneem House,
a pub that sat on the northeast bank of the river. It was also a place that Paddy Power had visited on Saturday, the day before his murder. The rear door was locked, and he had to pound.

“To the front with you now,” said an older man, having opened the door only enough to see who McGarr was. Inside was alive with noise, smoke, and the acrid stench of souring lees. Spent kegs were stacked in the hallway by the door.

“Civic Guard on public-house duty.” McGarr pushed his I.D. toward the man’s face and shouldered passed him. “And keep this door open.” He might need a convenient exit. “Fire code,” he explained.

The bar quieted, as McGarr made his way through the crowd of mostly taller men with wind-mottled cheeks, rumpled work clothing, and muddy Wellies. Local farmers, gathered where they might enjoy Gladden’s media event in the company of a glass and “instant analysis” from their mates. Gladden’s voice would not leave their ears before a judgment was rendered.

At the window McGarr nodded to three men who made space for him. One pushed an ashtray his way. The publican then appeared at his elbow. “Sorry the old fella didn’t recognize you bang off, Chief Superintendent. Will you be having something?”

McGarr felt like a victim of the “global village.” “Do you have brewed coffee?”

The young man’s brow furrowed. He glanced toward the kitchen, “Well, the water’s hot—”

“Good. Then make it four whiskeys.”

He pulled some pound notes from his wallet to show he meant to pay for the round; a local opinion of Gladden might prove enlightening.

Everybody smiled. One man offered him a smoke, which he took. Another had a light.

Exhaling, McGarr said, “Fair day.”

“The luck of it, yah?” one of the men ventured in a singsong brogue, hoping for a reaction.

McGarr remembered the words of Sean Dermot O’Duffy: “Sure, Dr. Gladden is his own self entirely.” He added, “A few drops wouldn’t keep him away.”

The others smiled, recognizing O’Duffy’s statement.

“And then he’s probably gotten a dispensation from some pooka for the duration of the morning.”

“That would be Mossie, yah? In the company of pookas.” The man who made the comment then tapped his forehead.

When he offered no more, McGarr said, “All those sheep and rocks. And dogs. Who knows what they might do to a man?”

“You mean the wild dogs he claims he sees?”

Said another, “On a still day you can hear his bloody blunderbuss three valleys away. Some class of buffalo rifle, I’m thinking.”

“There’s stories in the papers, but I haven’t clapped eyes on a wild dog in ten years. And then only with drink on me.”

“Whence her bum was duly numbered and recorded in the hall of shame,” said the third.

All laughed. There was a pause while the whiskeys were delivered. McGarr raised his glass. “To medical practitioners the world over. A selfless lot.”

“The best of them,” one of the men added with a twinkle in his eye.

McGarr only wet his lips, so they would not think they had to buy him back.

One man cleared his throat. “As long as we’re chattin’, yah? I have something to ask.” His was the thickest brogue, and, as though speaking in a difficult, foreign language, he kept asking if he was being understood.

McGarr nodded.

“Don’t misunderstand me now. I’m not takin’ away from you, yah? Mossie can be a cantankerous bastard, all here will tell you, and he probably deserved a good fist in the gob. But is he right, yah? What he says?”

About Gladden’s claim that Power had been murdered, McGarr guessed he meant. Keeping his eyes on the crowd outside on the bridge, McGarr canted his head. “It’s murder, I’d say.”

The other men were now very quiet. It was one thing to read a report in a newspaper, quite another to question the source.

“But Paddy Power? Was he…by the
government
, like?” Nobody wanted to hear that. “Paddy was so natural, like anybody here. Like yourself, say. Before he took the Pledge, he’d come in here and have a session, just like any other man from the village. Which he was, of course.”

“With the difference when Paddy drank, Paddy paid,” another put in. “Not like some—”

“Frost,” said the first man, so McGarr wouldn’t think they meant him.

“—who’d come in here and splash out a few rounds, like it was his kind of welfare, then leave. Shane Frost, who hired in a gang of men from Dublin to build him a summerhouse.”

Yah, thought McGarr. Something that was bad form in most country places in Ireland; something Frost would have known about and have done more out of niggardliness or as an affront than a mistake in judgment. A few serious moments lapsed while they considered the enormity of Frost’s action.

“Paddy would stay and chat and and tell wonderful, grand stories about what he’d seen and done. Then, after he swore off, he didn’t change a bit. Still here, still brilliant fun.”

“And still with the readies.” That man winked.

“Was he ever here
with
Frost?” McGarr asked.

“His protégé, he called him.” The man shook his head and looked to the others, who agreed.

“With Gladden?”

One of the men began laughing. “Hasn’t he told you, yah? Gladden’s our local Pioneer.” The Pioneers were a Catholic society who forswore alcohol of any kind. “But not like some who just don’t drink and leave you alone. Mossie was always mentioning the debilitating effects of this or the harm to your liver with that. Sort of made every sip sweeter, don’t you know.”

The others smiled.

“What about the woman? Gretta Osbourne.”

“She was Paddy’s steady companion before the fire. After it, when he began staying up at Parknasilla, he came alone. Paying a call, like.”

Another put in, “Back when she came, she’d sit in the
lounge nursing a few drinks while Paddy carried on, then get him his hat when it was time to go. A fine-looking girl, tall and curvaceous.”

“‘Designated driver,’ he called her.”

“‘Number-one iron,’” added another. “Paddy golfed when he was young.”

“Until she went in the fire, yah?”

No. All eyes turned to him, and he raised a palm. “That was the whiskey. And wrong.”

Yah. “How’d it happen?” McGarr asked.

“Him smoking in bed, was the finding. It was in his parents’ house. Paddy got out. When his head cleared, he realized she was still in there, and he went back in.” The man held up his hands to show where Power had been burned, and McGarr remembered the burns on the hands of Power’s corpse. “By that time she was a holy mess, scorched everywhere, I know. Wasn’t I along on the trip to Shannon, Paddy at the wheel, the caravan belting about the road like he’d kill us all. He hired a plane there and flew her to Dublin.”

“No Mossie for
her
.”

“Which Mossie n’er forgot.”

“And few others. It was the beginning of the exodus from Mossie. A matter of confidence, don’t you know. A new doctor had set up a surgery in the West Square, and it seemed like only a few years later there Mossie was, resigning his seat in the Dail.”

“The way he did—all bitter and nettled.”

“And O’Duffy, yah? He scorched Mossie worse than any fire.”

All three men nodded.

“Finally upped and moved out altogether, surgery thrown in. Lives up in the mountains, but that you know.” The man shook a newspaper that he was holding in his hands.

“What about Power’s wife?”

The other two men turned to the oldest, who looked to be about Power’s age. “A good woman, a pretty woman, I’d say. But a bit of a shrew, though Paddy was no saint and I always take the man’s side. Only child, you know,
Nell was. Father and mother had good custom, and they doted on her. Chemists, like Frost’s father.”

McGarr cocked his head, as though to say, Really?

“Sent her off to university to study it, so she could return and take over. Trinity, like Paddy. It’s not where they met but where Paddy
discovered
her, don’t you know. She being a little younger.”

The man who had spoken least now asked, “If it wasn’t the government, like Mossie claims, then who?” Murdered Paddy Power, he meant.

McGarr shrugged. Picking up his glass, he pointed to the crown of the narrow, arched stone bridge, where Gladden and another man now appeared. “Who’s that with him now?”

“Kieran Coyne. He’s a solicitor hereabouts. New fella—moved down from Dublin for the sake of his wife, who’s a local.”

McGarr knocked back his drink and began turning to signal for more, when his eye caught some movement in the crowd below the bridge. It was a new Mercedes that had eased through the gathered reporters to park across the street. Out of it now stepped Bresnahan and a young man who, though dark, McGarr thought must be her brother, until he remembered she was an only child.

“Would you look at that? Bachelor number one with bachelorette of the same order. In the matrimonial stakes,” the man explained. “He’s
The
O’Suilleabhain, as his mother says. Rory, by name. He’s the ‘strongest’ farmer in every way in all of South Kerry, and a fine young buck to boot. No education to speak of, but he’s got a good head all the same.”

And handsome, thought McGarr, with leading-man good looks and the stature to match. Although the sun was out, it was almost cold, yet O’Suilleabhain was wearing only a plain white shirt, cut like a tunic and open at the neck. Given the breath of his well-muscled shoulders and the straightness of his back, it billowed around his torso and snapped in the stiff breeze.

Waves of jet-black hair, which he kept long like some rock star, cascaded down his back. Turning his head to reach for Bresnahan’s hand and lead her through the
crowd, he smiled, and his eyes, which were some light color and clear, flashed. McGarr thought of Hughie Ward.

“They say he’ll stand for the Dail, yah? The very next election.”

“And win too,” another chimed in. “There hasn’t been a man from here cut like him since Shane Frost.”

“The girl—well,
woman
—I’ll bet you know.”

McGarr hoped well enough.

“Janie—how’s she’s changed, yah?”

The three men nodded, regarding Bresnahan’s long brown legs, the riding jacket with its flatteringly severe cut, and how she now turned to this one and that, saying a few words, smiling.

“Not Janie at all anymore. And just what Rory’ll be needing up in Dublin, I suspect.”

Gladden raised a bullhorn to speak over the roar of the cataract beneath the bridge, and one of the men beside McGarr opened a window. With his voice distorted through the instrument, Gladden sounded, as well as looked, harsh and peculiar, like some large, gaunt, and damaged bird—the blackened eyes, the swollen nose angled off to one side, the spray of stark white hair that was riffling in the breeze.

“You know me, and you know what I stand for,” he rasped out. “All those years you sent me to the Dail, the one thing you know you got from me was the truth. I wasn’t afraid to tell it then, I’m not now.”

Gladden lowered the bullhorn to show them his beaten face.

“I also stand before you a man with a heavy heart both for my good friend and patient Paddy Power, who was murdered in Parknasilla, and for this country, which is led by the men who murdered him. That is the truth.”

Again Gladden lowered the bullhorn and seemed pleased to see he had the crowd’s full attention. All that could be heard was the rumble of the waterfall, the cries of gulls working the race, and the gears and shutters of cameras.

“They murdered Paddy Power for three reasons. First, to rid themselves of the only real political threat to the
continuing tyranny of Sean Dermot O’Duffy and his capitalist crowd. Paddy Power was admired and loved by the people of Ireland, for whom he did and planned to do so much.

“Second, to emasculate his conference, which would have revealed the truth about our national debt and who it has benefited. And third, to suppress the memoir that Paddy was planning to write about his years in government.

“Knowing the O’Duffy government as he did, fearing something like this would happen. Paddy had given me for safekeeping his original notes for the memoir. At the murder scene those notes were discovered to have been stolen.

“Yesterday morning, the same government man who did this to me”—Gladden again swung the bullhorn to the side and pointed to his face—“the same government man who is investigating Paddy’s murder, learned that I planned to reveal the notes and give them to you and the press here this morning.

“Yesterday afternoon without writ or warrant, this same senior official of the Garda Siochana broke into my home and stole the cards from me. When I attempted to stop him, he then beat and transported me to the Waterville Lake Hotel, where—come closer while I tell you, good people of Sneem—he attempted to frame
me
, whom you know;
me
, your medical doctor who has cared for you all, no matter who, where, or when,
me
, your
Teachta Dail
for over a dozen years;
me
, Paddy Power’s oldest and best friend”—Gladden smote his chest—“for his
murder
, which even for those men from Dublin, even for Sean Dermot O’Duffy, is a low, base, and foul obscenity.”