The Death of an Irish Lass (7 page)

“But where, then, do the Provos figure in all of this?” McGarr asked. “Surely they didn’t have the money or the organization to finance such a project in 1966.”

“That’s just it. I wouldn’t know. Maybe they’re trying to horn in on the thing now. They can be gangsters, you know. Hanly may have been connected with the Provos all along, through his brother. Maybe this Quirk woman was making some sort of payoff. And maybe I’m doing too much talking.”

Nobody said anything. Whenever McKeon winged it without hard proof, he was always taken seriously, since he seemed to have a sixth sense for collusion and intrigue. He knew better than any of them how his
countrymen thought and he had been keeping his ear to the ground for almost thirty years now. The transmitter popped and sputtered.

They were approaching Black Head, a bald outcropping of dark rock. Noreen had to slow the Cooper to steer a path through five donkeys. McGarr had once heard they were wild in these parts, having been abandoned by emigrating farmers. Certainly their hooves had never been clipped; they curled up like the tips of snow skis.

The lights of O’Connor’s car were still in front of them.

McKeon continued. “About May Quirk. She was about six weeks pregnant. That probably places the happy event within this country, since she arrived back here about seven weeks ago, and—get this!—it wasn’t a holiday at all. She was on assignment. Something about guess who?”

McGarr sighed. He didn’t feel like playing guessing games, but he could understand McKeon’s insouciance. The detective sergeant handled all the research and administrative details back at McGarr’s office in Dublin Castle. He hardly ever got away.

“Rory O’Connor?” Ward asked.

“Who’s he?”

“Ah—Bernie,” said McGarr. “Spit it out.”

“The I.R.A., of course. I just got through talking to the assignments editor of the New York
Daily News
. She was supposed to be buying a story about how the I.R.A. is financing the operations in the North and where all the American donations go. She had been working on the story first over there in the States, and then she got a lead and came over here. He said she was carrying a lot of the paper’s money and wondered
if we had found it.” McKeon paused for a moment. He knew how McGarr operated. “I told him we hadn’t as yet, but would look for it.”

“And all along I thought the money was May Quirk’s retirement benefit.”

“I thought that’s what might have happened to it,” said McKeon.

McGarr wondered if Paddy, the I.R.A. fund raiser who had written the letter proposing to her, had known she was writing a story about him. One thing was certain: McGarr intended to meet his plane at Shannon tomorrow. “I want you to put a tracer on one Rory O’Connor. He’s a Lahinch resident, living in America now.”

Hughie Ward said, “New York also. He’s a popular novelist. Evidently pretty successful. I gathered his books wouldn’t get past the censor here.”

McGarr then thought about how the three of them—Fleming, O’Connor, and May Quirk—had been drawn to the hub of New York and each in a different way had become successful and important because of the city. Only Fleming had chosen to return; at least until now. McGarr wondered if O’Connor wrote about New York or Ireland. Who knows—maybe he wrote about Afghanistan or Mars.

Suddenly the rear lights of O’Connor’s car vanished.

“Where is he?” Noreen asked, slowing.

They were nearly at the end of Black Head now and had been passing campers who had parked their cars off the road and pitched their tents wherever they could find shelter from the stiff breeze off the ocean. The horizon was layered with narrow bands of red light that glowed like ruby near the water.

Noreen stopped the car.

O’Connor could be anywhere among the rocks. McGarr opened the door and stepped out on the road. He counted seven campfires. Three of the cars were small, like O’Connor’s Datsun. In the twilight everything metal looked red. The wind off the ocean was chilling but fresh. McGarr was hungry again. The surf made him think of oysters.

That was when he heard a car door slam. It was in back of them, down a sandy trail that led toward a small patch of beach between two massive boulders. In the shadow of one, McGarr saw O’Connor walking toward a blue tent that had a light on inside. Next to it was a large car. McGarr guessed it was a Mercedes. The license plate was oval, which made it foreign.

McGarr slid into the car. “In back of us and down the donkey path. Don’t use your lights unless you have to.” He pulled the Walther from under his belt and checked the clip. He slipped it into the nook below the dash.

“Do I need one of those?” Ward asked.

“Don’t think so,” said McGarr. “We’ll let Noreen handle the Howitzer this evening. I’m just getting it out of my pants so it won’t slow me down if that giant starts chasing me.”

“If this is the German fellow I heard about, there’s going to be trouble,” said Hughie.

They were halfway down the path. The Cooper, which was light, was having trouble in the occasional patches of sand.

“Well, if you even see a gun, Noreen,” said McGarr, “don’t be afraid to use this one.” He placed it in her lap. “The safety is on.”

She glanced at him and tried to smile but only succeeded in looking slightly ill. Whenever in the past she
had gotten into a dangerous situation while accompanying McGarr on his duties, she had exulted in having gotten through the scrape—but after the fact. During it, however, as in the pub that afternoon, she had performed well but seemed scared skinny every minute. McGarr had often thought about how she might one day be injured seriously, but there was no keeping her from the work. When McGarr had tried to keep her in the dark, she had threatened to sell the gallery on Dawson Street and become a Ban Garda, that is, a female Garda. She knew McGarr wouldn’t have that.

They were close enough now to see figures silhouetted against the blue material of the tent. Two men of about the same height were standing nose to nose. The one closer to the flap had his fists clenched by his side.

McGarr supposed that was O’Connor. The other man had a large object in his right hand, pointed right into O’Connor’s belly.

Before McGarr could snatch the Walther out of Noreen’s lap, O’Connor grabbed the other man’s wrist and struggled with him. They blundered to the back of the tent, then staggered toward the lamp, which they tumbled over. It went out, and then the tent collapsed.

McGarr popped open his door and began stepping out.

That was when a shot roared from under the heap of tent material and bucked through the radiator of the Cooper.

McGarr threw himself onto the ground and swore. From the report of the weapon, it was something powerful—a Mauser or Luger—and the bullet had probably shattered the block of the engine. Then McGarr smelled raw gasoline. “Get out of the car and run!” he shouted to Noreen and Hughie.

They did as he said, running off into the darkness. Noreen fell. Ward picked her up.

McGarr himself ran toward the men under the tent. If the Cooper exploded, it might set the tent on fire.

But again the gun exploded, sending a jet of orange flame from under the billows of tent material.

McGarr again dived onto his belly, but he saw the smoking protrusion that was the gun. He scrambled up and charged the tent. Using the very toe of his shoe, McGarr kicked at the gun for all he was worth and heard both men groan, but suddenly the protrusion was gone.

That was when the Cooper went up. The little car was blown right over onto its roof in a ball of white fire that turned yellow, then orange, then white again as a second explosion—the gas line—rocked it another time.

The tent in front of McGarr had small patches of flame the size of half crowns all over it, and something was burning McGarr’s back. He tore off his shirt, pulled out his pocket knife, and made a rent in the tent material. Noreen and Hughie grabbed opposite sides and tore the tent open.

The two men staggered to their feet.

Hughie Ward fished around for the gun and came up with a Mauser just like the one May Quirk had been carrying.

O’Connor had only to realize that he was not going to burn to death before he gathered himself and lashed out at the other man. O’Connor had been in a crouch, and the punch came right up from the ground and caught the German under the chin. It raised him right off the ground and knocked him back several feet. He made an odd sound that seemed to come from inside his chest and did not move again.

Nevertheless, O’Connor started for him.

Hughie Ward jumped between them.

O’Connor wound up to punch him, but Ward was too quick. When the punch swept over his head, Ward pivoted back on one leg and kicked out at O’Connor. He caught the big man, who was now off-balance, in the kidneys. The force of the kick drove O’Connor’s face into the sand. Ward followed him down, laying his knee on the inside of O’Connor’s left bicep while he jacked the other arm up and snapped handcuffs on the wrist. By the time the big man had thrown Ward off his back, his hands were cuffed behind him.

McGarr waved the Mauser in front of his face and said, “Sit down.”

Ward kicked one of O’Connor’s feet out from under him and shoved him back. O’Connor fell back onto the sand.

McGarr went over to the blond man and rolled him over. He had a splotch of blood on the lower front of his green turtleneck sweater. His skin was waxen, like that of a man who had lost a lot of blood. His breathing was quick and shallow. McGarr lifted the sweater. There was a bloody gauze bandage covering his lower stomach. McGarr ripped the adhesive tape off that. The man had a bullet hole there with a drain in it. A professional medical person had worked on the wound. McGarr wished he hadn’t wasted all the whiskey in his flask on Hanly.

Miraculously, however, another appeared in front of him. It was Noreen’s. She always carried a spare for him. McGarr tried to lift the blond man to a sitting position. Noreen had to help him.

The man was young and very handsome in a Nordic way—broad forehead, long straight nose. He had a
cleft in his chin. McGarr first wet his lips, then poured a drop or two on his tongue. The man jerked his head a bit but wanted more. He opened his eyes, which were blue beyond the glazing and seemed about a quarter-inch deep. He was in very bad shape.

Hughie Ward returned from the Mercedes, where he had been rummaging about. “Tax stamp says his name is Max Schwerr. He’s not German at all. I mean, he lives in Blessington.”

McGarr gave the young man another small dollop of whiskey. McGarr said the name over again. Two…no, three years ago he had investigated the theft of a race horse from the house of a family named Schwerr. They too had lived near Blessington, having bought a large tract of hilly, scrubby land after the Second World War. This they had successfully reforested. Now they were beginning to reap the harvest. McGarr could remember that he had been singularly impressed by the family. They had money, were foreigners of a sort, but were good citizens in every way—politically active and nationalistic, they had funded a chair at Trinity, built a wing for the new hospital in Wicklow, and generally taken an interest in the higher affairs (symphony, museums, opera) of the country.

He gave Schwerr a little more whiskey.

Ward added, “Here’s an envelope. I found it in the glove compartment. It’s full of money. Most of it’s foreign. And—” he paused, “—there’s a pitchfork in the trunk. May Quirk’s missing shoe is under the back seat.”

McGarr turned to O’Connor, who was still sitting where Ward had dropped him. “How did you know he was here?”

“Fleming told me.”

“How did Fleming know he was here?”

“He worked on him. Some farmer called him out here. May shot him, I guess. Before he killed her. I only put it together when you told me about her. He came into Griffin’s last night. She had been waiting to interview him.”

“For what?”

“An article she was doing.”

“On what?” McGarr turned his back to shield the man on the ground. The wind had changed briefly and pushed a gust of smoke from the turtled and still burning Cooper toward him. The smoke was black and pungent with the reek of plastic, rubber, oil, and petrol. It snaked in thick ribbons from the wreck. McGarr had really enjoyed owning that thing until he saw it like that and realized how silly it had been for him to have invested his feelings in something so unimportant and fragile. How precarious were all things tangible.

Ward was now trying to make the campers, who had gathered around the wreck, disperse.

“The finances of the I.R.A.”

McGarr assumed Schwerr had something to do with that as well. He had been selected for this aspect of the illegal organization because he was German and his appearance probably kept him above suspicion, to say nothing of his wealthy background and patrician parents. If May Quirk had shot him before he killed her, McGarr wondered where he had gotten the pitchfork, why he had chosen to use such a weapon, and why he hadn’t chucked it over the cliffs, as McGarr had suspected. That caused McGarr to think briefly about McAnulty and his crew and Commissioner Farrell.

Schwerr stirred. McGarr gave him a bit more whiskey. He groaned and coughed. “Perhaps,” McGarr
had only to say and Hughie Ward started for the Mercedes. “And park it down the road, Hughie. Then insinuate yourself among the people who are with McAnulty and, when he’s alone, tell him about the car. We’ll let him decide how he’ll say we found that pitchfork. Maybe he might want to work the car over right there in front of all those media types. That’ll pacify him some. I hope.”

Schwerr had his hand on the bottle. McGarr was choking him with the stuff.

McGarr lowered the bottle and asked, “She shot you, didn’t she? That’s why you jabbed her with the pitchfork.”

Schwerr said nothing. He didn’t even blink. Suddenly his eyes cleared and he looked at McGarr.

McGarr said again, “May Quirk is dead. You killed her with a pitchfork. After she shot you.”

He turned his eyes back into the cloudless night sky overhead. He blinked once, very slowly, and reached for the flask. When he could, he said in a hoarse voice, “I don’t believe you.” He turned and looked at O’Connor, and then McGarr saw his eyes quaver. Schwerr realized what McGarr was saying about May Quirk was true. Why else would O’Connor have tried to kill him? He sobbed. He bit his lip. He tried to raise himself. The pain almost made him pass out again. “She shot me, that’s true, but that’s all. I’d never kill her. Never, never. I…she…” His voice broke.