The Death of an Irish Consul (6 page)

“Well, could you?”

“I could but I wouldn’t. The poor man is dead.”

“That’s precisely the point. The poor man
is
dead, and we don’t have a clue as to why.”

“Well—”

“And then there’s Mrs. Hitchcock. Do you know she stands to benefit from her husband’s death to the tune of one hundred twenty-five thousand pounds? Could you arrange to have me talk to her?”

“I don’t know, McGarr. Perhaps after a while, but right now she’s—”

Suddenly McGarr’s temper squalled. “Listen, Cummings—your feelings aren’t important in this matter. Two men have been murdered in my country. All I know about them is that they worked together and at
one time occupied your post. They were executed. If I were you, I’d be wondering if, perchance, these murders aren’t following some bizarre pattern.”

“I’ve thought about that.”

“Then, can you get me an interview with Mrs. Hitchcock?”

“Well—not immediately, since her doctor has had to put her under heavy sedation.”

McGarr doubted that. The woman he had met would require nothing like that.

“And when you do, I won’t stand for any bullying or badgering of her, McGarr.”

“I’m a slow learner,” said McGarr. “I can remember nothing of the techniques you employed in the dining room of the Proscenium Club this afternoon.” He hung up and asked Mallon for the Shannon Garda office number.

When it answered, McGarr said, “This is Peter McGarr again, do you remember me from this morning?” He was probably all the patrolmen had talked about since then. Their lieutenant was gone and no explanation, other than McGarr’s altercation with him, could be given.

“Yessir.”

“Do any of the rent-a-car franchises there have new, black Morris Marina two-door models for hire?”

“Yes sir, Ryans.”

“Could you go over there and impound the one that a large black man was driving today? I think he’s a Jamaican by the name of Moses Foster, although I could
be wrong. There was another man with him—white, curly hair, black moustache, sallow complexion. He was wearing a tan coat with a tall fur collar. Both were well dressed.”

He said to Mallon, “You’d better leave now. Scanlon will pick us up at the Hitchcock house. Find out, if you can, what flight they took. Do you have their descriptions?”

“Yes, I’ve been listening.” Mallon thanked the old woman and left.

Gallup already had his coat on and his hat in his hand.

McGarr had returned to his jam jar of poteen.

“Hadn’t we better…?” said Gallup.

The phone began ringing.

Kathleen shambled over to it, saying, “Ah, there now you warmed it up for me and it’s working. I wonder who that could be.” She lifted off her glasses, put the receiver to her ear, and listened. “Where’d ye say? London? Then, ’tisn’t for me, this call. I know no one there.”

Already Gallup was rushing toward her with his hand out, “I’m from London, ma’am. Perhaps it’s for me.”

But it wasn’t.

It was Hugh Madigan for McGarr. “Your man, McKeon, gave me this number, Peter.”

“And you’re at the Carlton, Hugh. Forgive me. We had to leave on a matter of some urgency.”

“No problem. The reason I’m calling is that I happened to bump into an oil industry contact of mine here. Over dinner, for which I plan to charge you, he told me about a disputed oil claim in the Scottish offshore oil fields. It seems that a small, newly formed outfit called Tartan Oil Limited bought the exploration rights to a sliver of property which, because of inaccurate surveying by ENI engineers, is located between two of their big claims. Tartan immediately erected a derrick and began pumping. ENI claims Tartan has canted its well holes down into the ENI pools, since the geological configurations pretty much prove that there could not be any oil directly under the sliver of property. The matter is before the courts now, but if the determination goes against Tartan, they’ll have to indemnify ENI for every barrel they’ve pumped so far. Tartan is an around-the-clock operation. The rig itself cost nearly five million pounds. If Tartan wins the fight, however, they can put up more rigs. The Tartan principals then would become very wealthy men indeed.” Madigan seemed to think this story was fraught with significance. He had been drinking a good deal, McGarr could tell.

“But, I don’t understand,” said McGarr. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Didn’t I mention that Hitchcock was a co-founder of this concern along with a chap named C. B. H. Browne?”

That knocked McGarr back. “No—no you didn’t.
Tell me, Hugh, did a fellow named Moses Foster work for them as well? He’s a big black man, former SIS too. Pretty much of a rough customer.”

“I wouldn’t have the vaguest, but if you’ll hold on—” Suddenly, McGarr could only hear the sounds of a bar crowd, a small band, and a chanteuse wailing a sultry nightclub number in decidedly American dialect. At least five minutes later, somebody demanded, “Is this McGarrity?”

“McGarr. Who’s this?”

“Rod Drake of Exxon.” He too was quite drunk. “How ’bout that nigger of yours—he pack a punch?” Drake had a heavy Texan drawl.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then, he works for ENI. Damn near handed me my head three weeks ago.”

“Why so?”

“Got in an argument with him in a bar. Not much to do out there in Scotland but drink and fight and—” The bar crowd drowned out the last word. “He’s got a thing about Cuba. Says it’s a form of necessary totalitarianism.”

“He does?” McGarr was surprised that this line of conversation could have come from a man like Foster who had spent years as a covert agent in several Communist countries including Cuba. Perhaps his recent troubles with SIS, McGarr thought, had changed his approach.

“Some happy horse manure about the citizen-worker. I asked him to step outside. That sidewinder
grabbed me by the craw and chucked me down the gulch out back. Told me if he saw me again he’d break my back. He ain’t seen me again.”

Madigan came back on the line. “Isn’t there a dandy little conflict of interest here, Peter? I say—working for one outfit’s security section while your own company is pumping its reserves dry. We both know Hitchcock could have used the money.”

“Could you do the same sort of background investigation of Browne too, Hugh? And Foster, if that’s possible. And Tartan itself. Would you mind?”

“Now—no. I’m interested in this whole messy business, and I’m beginning to think I’m over in the States.” When McGarr didn’t say anything, Madigan completed the thought. “All the money I’ve spent today is green.”

McGarr groaned and placed the receiver in its yoke. He took thirty pounds from his wallet and fitted the bills under the mat on the table. He had decided on the amount previously, thinking it enough to cover the food, drink, and phone calls. Now he wasn’t quite sure and added ten more to be safe.

Gallup handed him his hat and coat. “Let’s get up to the house and look around, then get me back to Shannon.”

“Don’t you want to call Cummings?”

“Not until I look around up there at the house. You know how he is—sticky on details.”

“Perhaps I better tell you a few things as well,” said McGarr, “but first—” McGarr turned back to the old
woman. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Thank you for the very fine dinner, as tasty—
tastier
—than I remember my mother’s as being. I put a few quid under the mat there. Buy yourself something special with what’s left.”

“Isn’t that nice of you, lad. What did you say your name was again?”

“McGarr, Peter McGarr.”

“And I could tell from your conversation that you’re a policeman.”

“That I am.”

“It shames me to think I asked you to commit a crime.”

“It isn’t the first time a pretty woman has.”

“Nor, I hope for your sake, the last,” said the old woman.

As they tramped down the road toward Hitchcock’s vacation house, McGarr told Gallup what he had learned on the phone:

—that Browne, like Hitchcock, had worked for ENI.

—that the two former C.’s of SIS had hired a certain Jamaican, named Moses Foster, who had had access to SIS ketobemidone and was disgruntled with that agency. Because of Hitchcock’s and Browne’s deaths, Foster would become the security chief of the Scottish operation, a very well paying position.

—that Hitchcock and Browne had been involved in Tartan Limited, a company that was exploiting a discrepancy in the mapping of the ENI oil fields, infor
mation to which the two of them would have been privy.

—that McGarr may have seen Foster both at a Shannon inn two days ago and at the Shannon airport earlier in the day. Both times Foster had been with the same Latin-looking man.

It was this last bit of information that disturbed McGarr. “If, say, both Hitchcock and Browne had been ferried in by helicopter and Foster was involved in their deaths, then what was he doing in that car? Who is the other man?” McGarr noted the slight tang of salt spray and ozone off the wet rocks below the cliff. The sky overhead was cloudless, and the air, purified by winds of the Gulf Stream, was as clear as any he had ever breathed. Consequently, stars, layers deep, and the merest crescent of a moon lit their path.

At the house, the other policemen were clustered around the car.

McGarr looked at O’Shaughnessy, who shook his head. The others had found nothing. They all looked tired.

McGarr and Gallup walked to the end of the kitchen yard and climbed over a stile in the rock wall. Taking a pocket torch from his raincoat, McGarr searched two adjacent fields until, in a third, he found the grass flattened in a whorl and the tracks of helicopter landing bars in the soft earth. Also, he discovered very good impressions of two pairs of shoes, each person having debouched from sides of the craft. One set, he as
sumed, had been Browne’s. They were huge. The feet of the other man were tiny, size seven or perhaps eight at most.

Staring down at the dark earth and dew glistening in the beam of the torch, Gallup said, “They probably needed that Foster fellow for muscle. Whoever owns feet that size is a near midget. He’d have trouble handling Browne even trussed.”

McGarr asked Scanlon to take casts and ship a set to Dublin.

Far different from the afternoon was McGarr’s reception now at the Shannon Garda office. Mallon was waiting at the counter with a sheaf of reports, and his two assistants were at their desks, heads bent over their work.

Mallon handed McGarr a sheet of paper and a carbon copy to Assistant Commissioner Gallup. He explained. “The black man rented the car under the name of Ignacio Garcia, when he arrived here a week ago from London. He used a British passport for identification. I’ve since checked it with the British. It’s false.

“Since the other man didn’t have to identify himself, I couldn’t find his name, so I sent the Ignacio Garcia name to Detective Sergeant McKeon, who then conducted a computer search for the passenger lists of planes, ships, trains, and border crossings that the Garcia name might have appeared on. I figured that, unless he entered the country illegally, his name would have
been logged and placed in the memory bank of the computer.”

This computer process was new to Ireland and one of the many innovations which McGarr had made since becoming chief inspector. It allowed the police to keep tabs on visitors to the country.

“Here is the list.” He handed another sheet to McGarr and a carbon to Gallup.

One name caught McGarr’s eye. It was that of Enrico Rattei, the head of the ENI consortium. He turned to Gallup, who had also noticed it. McGarr, thinking back on the seven years he had lived in Italy while working for Interpol, could remember Rattei as looking very much like the man he had seen in the inn the day before and in the car here at the airport just a few hours ago.

Mallon continued, “The flight is from Birmingham via Dublin. I’ve circled the names of all the passengers who boarded at Dublin.”

Rattei and “Garcia” had taken the flight from Birmingham.

“Check this name”—McGarr underlined the Rattei on the list—“and see where he went tonight. He departed from Shannon within the last six hours.”

Mallon called over a Garda patrolman who set about the task.

“As far as we can determine, Garcia has not left the country, although a jet that was carrying an American basketball team to Russia stopped at the airport to re
fuel. They left with one more passenger than they had when they landed.”

“How many blacks aboard?” asked Gallup.

“Nearly all of them.”

“See if you can check with the airline about who the additional passenger was. When the plane lands in Russia, the airline telex should be able to tell us his name.

“Also, put a general alarm out for this Garcia bloke. He’s six feet tall, seventeen stone, balding, speaks English with a Jamaican accent, no doubt. His other name may possibly be Foster. If it’s not, we can hold him for possessing a false passport.”

Mallon wrote these instructions on a small pad, then said, “Otherwise, this Garcia could have left on any of the small private planes that used the airport today. We’ve checked all fifty-three flight plans and passenger lists, but anybody wanting to smuggle him out of the country had only to put Garcia aboard without logging him on the list. We have no regular agency to check the veracity of private plane flight plans or passenger lists. They go and come as they please.”

Mallon handed McGarr yet another sheet of paper. “This is my preliminary fingerprint report. Both occupants were wearing leather gloves.”

Again McGarr and Gallup exchanged glances. Foster, if indeed the black man
were
Foster, would certainly wear gloves throughout any assignment such as
the execution of Hitchcock and Browne. But McGarr wondered why Rattei hadn’t, like Foster, used an alias. The latter, being a professional, should have insisted upon it.

McGarr’s thoughts then ran to Hitchcock. He probably would have gone to great pains to prepare that dinner for Rattei. Officially, Rattei was his boss. Rattei was probably used to eating well. And Hitchcock might have felt some guilt regarding his involvement with Tartan Oil Limited.

At the end of the room, a Garda patrolman ripped a sheet from the autowriter of the telex, walked over, and handed it to Mallon, who read, “Rattei, Enrico: Shannon to Dublin to Birmingham, where he changed to Caledonian that flew him to Aberdeen.”