The Death of an Irish Politician (5 page)

The McGarrs thanked Moran and left.

Tramping down the hill neither Noreen nor McGarr spoke. Both were thinking. This much they knew:
Virelay
had probably been used to smuggle arms into the country; Hubbard and Martin had not told McGarr the whole story about either the siren or the woman who had been present at the time of the Ovens injury; Hubbard had felt a sort of rivalry existed between him and Ovens. About the woman they knew only that she was wealthy, beautiful, and sometimes lived with Ovens. A man named David could figure in her life too. All things considered, McGarr now believed Ovens’ injury had not been accidental.

As Noreen opened the driver-side door of the Cooper, she said, “Shall we skip the Khy
ber for today? Perhaps we can catch a quick bite on the way to the hospital.”

McGarr nodded as he slipped the whiting into the trunk.

There the sister on duty told them Ovens had just regained consciousness. He was in the mercy ward, a long room lined with tall hospital beds made of iron tubing painted grey. Men in every physical state from moribund to nearly well shared this room. Worried families were cramped onto tiny, straight-back chairs around the beds of dying relatives, while near the solarium three men in robes smoked and talked jocularly. Old and young were here, bottles siphoning liquid into the veins of some, a portable television with earphones playing to others. Two men had pushed their beds together and were rolling dice on a game board.

Ovens’ entire head was swathed in layers of gauze bandages, but his eyes were open. The doctor, O’Higgins by name, wasn’t more than twenty-five, and his profession still regaled him. He said, “Your man was lucky. If the weapon had hit him a half inch either way, it would have cleaved the entire cranium. Then the succeeding blows would certainly have been fatal. As it was, the blows merely glanced off his scalp. He nearly drowned, however, from both the sea and the booze.”

“Can he speak?”

“I don’t think he’ll come around completely for another forty-eight or so hours. That’s the
usual time in such cases. He’s probably very groggy or confused or in shock.”

Ovens’ eyes, however, seemed to contradict the assessment of the insouciant young doctor. Dark brown, almost black, they told McGarr that Ovens knew the score: that his was not merely a medical problem that a favorable prognosis could eliminate, that whoever had done this to him had a very good reason, and those eyes, suddenly seeming very old, realized his troubles weren’t over.

“Can you hear me?” McGarr asked him.

Nothing, not even his eyes, moved.

McGarr began twirling the key on the float that they had found aboard the
Virelay
. “I know you can. You heard what the doctor said, I saw your eyes following the conversation. I’m Inspector McGarr and this is my wife, Noreen.”

Still Ovens’ eyes didn’t even blink. “No need for you to acknowledge what I’m saying. We’ll get around to that a little later. Let me tell you what we know. Horace Hubbard, the yacht-club steward, attacked you.”

Ovens’ eyes didn’t move.

“Because he’s in love with your girl, the one with the flat in Ballsbridge.” McGarr was bending over him now, nearly whispering into his ear.

“Right after hitting you, the two of them disappeared. We’ve learned they plan to get married.”

Noreen moved toward McGarr as though wanting to stop him.

Still nothing.

“He pulled the sea cock and
Virelay
sank.”

Nothing again.

McGarr straightened up and asked the doctor, “Forty-eight hours?”

“Maybe more, maybe less. It may well be that he does not remember the incident and will not for whole years. Perhaps only psychoanalysis will allow the man to recover the details in all their particularity.”

That still wasn’t what McGarr believed. The young doctor sounded like a textbook. McGarr had gained his experience firsthand, and he had the feeling that this man had understood all and had chosen not to talk. If so, from the little that McGarr already knew about Ovens, he would be a tough, if not impossible, nut to crack.

“Is he under sedation?” Noreen asked.

“A morphine base for pain. I’m sure he has a massive headache.”

McGarr took the young doctor’s elbow and began walking him down the ward toward the stairwell. He was a tall, thick-set, and healthy-looking—pink complexion, bushy blond hair—Irishman who, McGarr speculated, in other times and without the advantages of his education, would have become a policeman. “You and I will probably find ourselves working together on many cases in the next twenty years.
I’m a man with a good memory and I’m grateful. I’m wondering,” said McGarr in a low voice, “could you move him to a private room?”

“Who would pay?” O’Higgins asked.

“Ah”—McGarr didn’t have the vaguest idea who would pay and speculated Ovens or his wealthy female friend would eventually have to bear the expense—“we’ll work something out. In spite of his appearance, he comes from a wealthy background”—which wasn’t far from the truth. “Also, young man, I have a favor to ask.” McGarr stopped him on the stairwell. “I’m going to tell the paper Ovens died.”

O’Higgins looked down at McGarr with profound incredulity. “You can’t do that.”

“And why not?”

“Because it’s a lie. It’s just not true.”

Noreen had walked to the window where, smiling, she looked out on the lawn and the stretch of dual carriageway that ran past the hospital.

“Not really, when you consider it’ll help us catch the person who did this to Ovens, probably prevent the deranged person from doing this to others. Right? And don’t worry. I’ll take the full responsibility. It’s the only way I know of popping the bugger who did this in the jug. You just make yourself unavailable for comment, if somebody should ask, which they won’t. The death of a Yank from seemingly
accidental causes isn’t the sort of scoop any reporter used to the blood bath in the North would pursue. Are you the only doctor on the case now?”

“Yes—I cover postoperative and mild traumatic care. Only in severe cases do I consult the…” O’Higgins smiled slightly. “…older doctors.” Younger Irish doctors were better trained than the older generations, and there was a certain amount of professional enmity between the groups. “I can’t envision any complications with Ovens’ recuperation. Even his liver may recover here.”

“Will you do it?”

“I don’t know. Are you
the
Peter McGarr, the one who worked for Criminal Justice in Paris?”

“Yes.”

Noreen turned to hear the exchange.

“I was studying in Paris at the time. Do you remember the editorial in
Le Monde
that said the only reason you kept making all the big arrests was that, being Irish, you had a certain innate guile that allowed you to think like a criminal and keep one step ahead of them?”

McGarr began to laugh. He had a framed copy in his study on the second floor of his Rathmines home. The
Irish Press
, giving secondary coverage to the story, had been outraged and had begun an editorial cat fight with the big Parisian newspaper, which ended with the
Press’s
asking McGarr how he could
continue working in a country whose largest newspaper had denigrated him so. The answer was simple: no criminal investigative agency had ever accepted any of his many applications for a senior position in Ireland, and the contention of
Le Monde
was largely true. McGarr had a definite penchant for intrigue.

O’Higgins continued. “I loved that piece. I showed it to all the guys and told them to watch out.”

“Will you do it, then?”

“I don’t know. This is so highly irregular. What if—”

“Don’t you worry about a thing. I know how this place works. The old boys won’t even know it happened. We’ll tweak their noses.”

McGarr and Noreen started down the stairs.

O’Higgins shouted after them, “And, Inspector, I’m training to be a pathologist here. Did I tell you that? In a couple of years we’ll be working together for sure.”

“That I should live so long,” McGarr said to Noreen. McGarr had had to wait until somebody died for a position to be offered to him. He was forty-four at the time. O’Higgins would find the post of chief pathologist even more exclusive. McGarr mused that in ten years O’Higgins would probably be chief pathologist in Rochester, New York, or Brisbane, Australia, or some other place of exile.

Noreen and McGarr drove straight to Dublin Castle.

The soldier at the guard house was surprised to see McGarr. “The few who were here, Inspector, have just left,” he said into the open window of the Cooper. “Only the night shift is left.”

“We won’t be long, Gerald.” McGarr knew the guard had a sweetheart who would come by to keep him company once the department chiefs had left for the weekend.

Dublin Castle is the set of mean brick buildings from which the British directed the subjugation of Ireland. No more than a quadrangle of barracks houses set on a small rise, its treeless courtyard was the site of innumerable political assassinations. It was McGarr’s opinion that the Irish Free State had made a big mistake installing even some of their own police and military here. They should have dynamited, then leveled the spot as a symbolic gesture, or failing that, opened it as a memorial to those who had died in the six-hundred-year battle for freedom.

With the lights off and the day dwindling, the corridors leading to the wing McGarr’s staff occupied were as dark as he had ever seen them. The few rays of slanting late-afternoon sunlight could not penetrate the rain-streaked and dusty windows. A dim glow alone outlined the battered furniture and heaving floors. The place still smelled like a barracks: old leather, dubbin, tons of aging pa
per in file cabinets, floor wax, and the pine-scented cleanser the British had used in the cells, all too familiar to McGarr whose official responsibilities had made the Castle the part of his life he enjoyed least. The one portrait he allowed in his office was that of Wolfe Tone.

While Noreen sat in his chair and, swiveling it away from the desk, looked out the west window at the startling contrast of the greenery in Phoenix Park, a mile distant, McGarr scrawled several notes and then copied them into their running log book. In a country where pubs were social centers and the imagination was as yet unshackled, McGarr believed the procedure entirely appropriate. More than one of his men had a touch of Ireland’s special failings.

First he ordered Ward to pick up Brud Clare and grill him until he revealed the woman’s name, to learn everything he could about Horace C. K. Hubbard right down to dental charts. He then sent Kevin Slattery to lawyer Greaney’s office on Leeson Street to find out who owned 17 Percy Place, who leased flat 5A, and who paid the rent. Paul Sinclair, a new man who had returned home after seventeen years on the Sydney police force, was to stake out the apartment. McGarr assigned Bernie McKeon and Harry Greaves the thankless task of canvassing the entire hill behind the Killiney Yacht Club. There remained the possibility
that another shut-in like Moran might have been scanning the docks when Ovens was attacked. Also, a tourist or sightseer might have snapped a picture at that moment. He asked them to assign a few uniformed men to cover all the chemist and photography shops, even the Agfa-Gevaert and Kodak processing plants, to see if anybody might remember handling a tourist’s or sightseer’s photos of Killiney Bay on a sunny afternoon. Friday afternoon, the weather had been spectacular.

Midway through this procedure, Noreen asked, “Shall I get hold of Liam O’Shaughnessy and ask him if he could arrange to rent his brother’s lobster boat for tomorrow? How long does it take to run out to Inishmore? I’ve never been to Kilronan.”

McGarr nodded, then added to McKeon’s orders the job of examining the Loretto Avenue garage in Dun Laoghaire that Ovens had used as a workshop. He called the home of a reporter friend and told him about his plan to release news of Ovens’ death. The man concurred and thought he could slip a back-page article and an obituary short into the Sunday papers.

Noreen had taken McGarr’s phone directory from the top drawer of his desk. Both knew their first order of business was to find out if the attack on Ovens had resulted from something to do with the gun oil on the cabin flooring of
Virelay
. If so, the case would then
become enormously complicated, and McGarr would have to use his contacts in the contending factions of the IRA to learn more. Because of the treacherous waters of Galway Bay, especially near Inishmore, an island some twenty miles out to sea, it was difficult for authorities to patrol the area. A boat with a skilled pilot or experienced captain, such as Ovens, well might have negotiated the channel and off-loaded a cargo. Spud Murphy, the Inishmore IRA contact, owed McGarr at least that much information for a favor done him in the past. Also, McGarr was tolerated by many elements of the IRA. He seldom had trouble learning the details of past operations.

Noreen said the phone rang only once before O’Shaughnessy picked it up, announcing “Bronx Zoo” into the mouthpiece. With the noise of a Gaelic band in the background, the huge man pretended he couldn’t hear her. He was half lit and had every intention of torching whatever remained, he told her. A party was in progress, just the sort of house gathering McGarr enjoyed most, with poteen and roast pork and, outside, miles of rock walls, small cottages with yellow lights in the windows, and the cleanest air in all of Europe to clear one’s head. They were only 110 miles away. The Cooper made it in less than two hours. McGarr found that in no way was he dressed out of character here. The sweater was right, and the rest of their garb was accepted
as perfectly appropriate because they, friends of a friend, chose to wear short pants and canvas boating shoes. Killiney Bay, Dun Laoghaire, and Dublin itself were still part of that other culture’s pale.

FROM OFFSHORE, INISHMORE was a block of shale. Gorse was shaggy on top, bright green dappled pink and windswept. Sea gulls in legion flew out to meet the lobster boat as it bucked the Atlantic swells.

This coast, McGarr mused, thinking of his years in France, was indeed a
côte sauvage
, the ragged end of the continental land mass. Gulf Stream tides and ocean storms pounded away at the rocky beaches and precipitous cliffs. The wind was roaring, impelling the steady rain in horizontal torrents that stung the face. The hull clapped, shuddered, then sank on every second wave.

Not a house was in sight through the driving mist until the cliffs rose into a massive promontory. Around this Liam’s brother, Mi
chael, spun the wheel. Once past, the land softened dramatically, although the rocky coast was still hazardous. A cluster of limed cottages with thatched roofs and nets drying on driftwood racks appeared through the mist. The old boat needed all the power its diesel could muster to keep from broaching on a wide shoal over which the surf boiled. Michael headed up into the wind, and McGarr, being dashed with spray and pelted with wind, ran the boat hook through the eye of a permanent mooring. He pulled the barnacle-encrusted line onto the foredeck and secured it to the cleat.

A double-ended beach boat came out to lighter them ashore. Liam had reached Spud Murphy on the wireless. The long boat with eight men manning the oars pitched and yawed and finally, mounting the crest of a wave, surfed ashore.

The beach of pulverized oyster shells made one color with the seafoam, driving mist, ashen skies, and cottages in Kilronan: a grey as glossy as from a tube of oil paint. Upon this background, the beach boat, the tanned faces and wet woolen clothes of the crew, oars over their shoulders, seemed to be imposed starkly in too sharp a focus. Thus the men looked older than they were, the boat battered, the cottages mere shelters from these unremitting elements.

McGarr was drawn to this place with what
he well knew was the appreciation of a dilettante. This was the Ireland of the picture books he had read as a child. Here life was hard. The sea yielded her bounty at a price exacted in toil and life loss. Nearly a third of the men ever born on this island had been lost at sea. The road, like the beaches, was a glistening surface of crushed shells.

Murphy met them in a small building that abutted the seawall on the outskirts of Kilronan. A plank between two porter barrels sufficed as a bar. Coal oil, dried fish, candy, tobacco, oilskins, rubber boots, and week-old newspapers were also offered.

Murphy was a stout man even shorter than McGarr. The name Spud suited him with great precision, for his face was a fleshy welter of moles and bumps, his skin deep brown. His eyes were dark. He wore a soft cap, black rubber bib overalls that formed boots at the feet, and a filthy tweed sportscoat. In spite of the pipe he drew on so often that he seemed forever wrapped in a cloud of acrid blue smoke, Murphy stank like a mackerel. It had been this sour stench that had landed him in McGarr’s Dublin Castle office two years before.

A customs officer at the Dun Laoghaire docks had asked Murphy if he had anything to declare. “Only a couple of fowling pieces for grousing, don’t you know,” the old fisherman had declared. It had been the middle of
the winter and a storm had sickened many of the mailboat passengers in the line behind Murphy. The officer was about to let him pass, since the top piece was indeed a shotgun and the stocks of the others, all of which had been stripped to components, seemed similar, when he detected the reek of the mackinaw Murphy was wearing. The officer then consulted the address on Murphy’s identity papers. The only grousing Inishmore offered was that which Murphy could do with his mouth. All of the guns but one had been M14s. McGarr, wanting to cull the favors of as many IRA contacts as possible, and knowing his countrymen to be inveterate gossips, told the prosecuting magistrate that since none of the guns had been loaded, no crime had been committed. Murphy had left Dublin Castle with his shotgun in hand and a good word for McGarr.

“Chief Inspector,” Murphy said in a voice so high it was like the warble of a bird, “have y’ been exiled? You can’t be planning to fish since there’s not a mullet between here and the Grand Banks this past week. Good to see you.” He extended his hand. “I recognize this whale to yer right”—he meant O’Shaughnessy, who was paying the proprietress for the jug of poteen he had lifted onto the plank—”and his squid of a brother Michael. How are you, boys?” Murphy shook with them. “And who, dear God, might this be?” A small coal sputtered from his pipe and fell to the floor. He
made as though he would put his arm around Noreen’s shoulder, saying, “A trim red woman with lots of fire. Sure and I’d give you a hug myself if I hadn’t come from roiling in the ‘flits’ of several species of bait fish we peddle in Dublin.” Like many men who lead solitary lives, the mere sight of a visitor made Murphy jolly. “People there, they tell me, are nothing but carp themselves, swimming in that turbid bowl the Liffey forms between Rathfarnum and Swords.”

Said McGarr, “Speaking of fish, Spud, have you shot any with automatic weapons recently? Meet my wife, Noreen.” And then to her, he added, “He’ll grouse as much now as when I had him on the hot seat at the Castle.”

“Pleased, pleased.” Murphy’s eyes fixed on Noreen’s, then darted to her chin, her nose, her tight copper curls, and elsewhere.

Since Murphy’s entrance the proprietress, an old woman with a red face and pure white hair that stuck from her head in patches, had been gesturing to him with her eyes. She wished to speak to Murphy behind the curtain in back of the candy counter. Finally, she said, “Murph, boy, may I see you for a second out back?” and she stepped behind the blind.

“It’s just my girl, Eileen. Jealous, I should think.” He stuck only his head beyond the curtain and whispers passed between them. The wind howled through the chinks in the roof
corrugations and eddied the thick clouds from Murphy’s pipe.

Their consultation gradually rose in volume so that McGarr heard the words “…police…jail…bloody Tanner…” from Eileen. Then Murphy, pulling her by the wrist into the room, said, “This is Eileen McFadden, my fiancée. Chief of Detectives McGarr and his lovely wife, Noreen. I take it you know that walrus and his brother the giant grouper from Dublin.”

“Shall we flatten him?” Liam asked his brother.

“Not without some hot oil and a pan.”

Plainly embarrassed, Eileen tried to smooth the tufts of her hair. She then wiped her hands on the apron several times.

“Pour yourself a sup, girl,” said Murphy, “just in case they’ve come for you.”

Reaching for Eileen’s hand, which was as rough as nailboard, McGarr said, “It’s not Eileen I’m after but some information about the schooner
Virelay
. It put in here about a year and a half ago.”

Eileen flushed. She turned her head sharply to Murphy and said, “Oh, God, didn’t I know it. Didn’t I say it’d come to this. Don’t tell him, Spud. Don’t do it.” She pronounced his nickname “Shpood.”

McGarr added, “Ovens was attacked Friday. Head split open.”

“Muscha—say no more, no more,” the old
woman muttered as though to herself. She poured a drink into a custard cup the like of which the others were using and tossed it back. She wiped her mouth with her apron.

“I’m investigating only the attack.”

“Where did it happen?” Murphy asked, reaching for his cup.

“Killiney Bay.”

“Then why come here?”

“I think you know. We found gun oil on the cabin flooring of the boat. His charts show us he was headed here. I’m not interested in the whereabouts of whatever arms the boat might have carried, who handled them, or where they were stored, only in the person or persons who tried to kill Ovens. I’ve come here because we’ve been unable to learn much about the man. He stumps me. One of our few clues is the gun oil on the floor. Was Inishmore
Virelay’s
landfall?”

“Not a word, not a word,” muttered Eileen.

Murphy flicked a thumbnail up the head of a match, which burst into flame.

“Ah, Spud boy, don’t. Don’t. He’ll clap you in the can as quick as you can say King Billy was a bloody bastard.”

When all turned to her, she said defiantly, “Well, he was! Does that upset you? If it does, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

Murphy sighed, the smoke pouring through his nostrils. He took the pipe from his mouth. “I knew this would happen to them.”

“Them?” McGarr asked.

“Please, God, don’t let the foolish man say more.”

“Ovens and his sweetheart. A fetching thing, she was. Ample.” He nudged Noreen’s elbow and chuckled.

Noreen said, “I thought you liked trim women with lots of fire.”

“I like women, woman. Give us a squeeze. I can tell you’re a girl with a good ear for a deserved compliment.” Murphy pulled Noreen to him and kissed her cheek.

“Listen to him, would you? And why do you think we’ve been unmarried all these years? It’s barbarous the way he’ll chase a skirt. The merest flutter of a hem in the wind!”

But then Murphy’s mood sobered. “Sure, there
was
something tragic about the two of them.”

“What was her name?”

“Lee was what he called her. It’s the American for Lea, she told me.”

“Irish?”

“I think so, but, you know, a city girl.”

“Last name?”

“I never caught it, but later I was told by a certain well-placed Dublin fellow I should feel lucky I didn’t. Somebody very, very important she’s connected with, you see.”

“In what way?”

“Don’t know.”

“And do you have a hint who that might be?”

“No. I figured it was better not to know, in case—and then here you’ve appeared and fortunately I’m unable to tell you more.”

“Good boy, Spud. Good lad.” Eileen reached for the jug.

“Tragic in what way was their relationship?” asked Noreen.

“Love stories are dear to the hearts of all beautiful women.” Murphy took the opportunity to give Noreen another squeeze. “Sure, and I could tell you a barrel of them garnered from personal experience.”

“Take my advice, y’ talk too much. And keep your bloody mashers to yourself. In that barrel of which he speaks,” Eileen confided to Noreen, “he plays the part of the worm, if you can understand me completely.” She tossed back her drink.

Now the wind was howling through the chinks in the roof.

“Ovens arrived here a confused man. He had not known what the cargo she had asked him to transport really was. Small arms—sure, he had agreed to carry that much. But—”

Eileen moaned.

“—jelly, rocket launchers, and the sort of antipersonnel mines the Geneva Convention should ban? He found them hidden under the guns when he tried to repair his busted motor.

“And the girl got here the next day saying
she knew nothing about it.” Murphy drew on the whiskey and looked out the side window where the sea was clapping into the wall and sending up spumes of spray that blew across the road. “Just two kids the Provos played for fools.” Murphy mused for a second. “Or were they? I wondered, to tell you the truth, if she wasn’t acting. Something about her was just not right. He landed. I radioed my contact. She got here within hours, as though she had been waiting in Galway City. He told her about his finding the other weapons. She seemed to share his dismay—”

Eileen finished the story. “And three hours later, a boatload of gunmen arrived, stuck up half the town, and took everything off that boat including galley knives. When the Yank objected, two others held the man like so”—Eileen threw back her arms as though being held; suddenly she was very drunk—” and the chief bully boy beat him senseless.” She tossed her head from side to side. “And the little skirt as much as says, ‘Ah, what the hell. That’s the way it goes,’ like those brigands had stole a tub of tripes. She then pays me brother Mick a small fortune to haul her to Limerick, of all places. As far as I’m concerned, that’s where she belongs.”

“Like she knew—” Murphy tried to say.

“Like she knew what was up all along. There you have it, the unvarnished truth.”

“Are they married?” Noreen asked.

Again Eileen answered. “Perhaps, but not to each other. She had a ring mark on her fourth finger left hand that was bigger than the ring she wore. There’s certain of us what notices them things.” Without turning her head from McGarr, she directed her eyeballs, which now were as red as her face, to Murphy.

“Now that was a detail I missed completely,” Murphy said sheepishly into his raised custard cup. He drank, then explained. “You see, Eily and me are getting married just as soon as my aged mother passes on. We’re waiting so we can have a home to call our own. Building materials is scarce in these parts, and what with the inflation and all—”

“And she’s a relic, that bitch!” Eileen hollered. “I promise, I’ll do the hag in one of these days!” Murphy led her behind the curtain.

As Noreen and McGarr stepped outside, they heard her say, “You’re a divil with the ladies, Murph boy. Give us a touch. Who knows—it’ll probably be all we’ll have to remember.”

“Later, later,” Murphy said and returned to the O’Shaughnessy brothers to help dent the crock.

The McGarrs walked arm and arm down the road directly into the blast off the water. The whiskey had made them warm enough to ignore the cold wind that thundered in their ears, tight enough to marvel at the cascading water. They tried to talk without success. This
place was harsh, but so different from mild Dublin they loved it. Behind a low stone outcropping, a myriad of bright wild flowers thrived in patches of yellow and deep red.

They had to spend the night in Eileen’s guest room, since the seas had risen too high for them to return to Galway. The room was on the second floor, its bed a deep valley that threw them together. Toward dawn, the weather broke and the sun rose so bright it woke them. Eileen was already up with hot tea, fried herring, scones, and marmalade. Over breakfast Spud Murphy tried to convince McGarr that he should join the IRA. It was his patriotic duty to the ideal of a thirty-two-county Republic such as what the martyrs, “the poets and dreamers of the Easter Rising had envisioned.” McGarr told him he was neither a poet nor a dreamer, and the thought of becoming a martyr he found positively chilling. With that, Eileen broke out a small crock and they shared several libations.