The Death of an Irish Lover (9 page)

Yet two of those who had been trying to accomplish that had just been murdered, thought McGarr, getting out of the car and helping Maddie from the back. And were there tears in her eyes? When he bent to look more closely, she turned her head away quickly, the braided pigtail whipping over her shoulder.

McGarr tried not to smile, realizing how difficult it must be to arrive at an age when suddenly you could understand complexities but were still very much a child emotionally. Wrapping a hand around her shoulder, he pulled her into him so Gannon wouldn’t see the tears that were now streaming down her cheeks.”

O’Leary, the Lab, bounded ahead of them and scratched at the door of the shack.

“I’ve asked Paddy Keating, Ellen’s partner, to be here to speak with you,” Gannon explained. “He was with her Friday afternoon when her beeper went off. But he’ll tell you himself.”

The interior of the shack was toasty from the ruby glow of an electric fire in one corner. But apart from a silvery light streaming through the only window, the room was dark.

At a table sat a man in his thirties who was dressed for the weather much like Gannon. There was a mug and Thermos before him with a pencil, a pad, and a two-way radio nearby. After introductions, McGarr and Gannon took the two other seats, and Maddie wandered over to the window.

“Can you tell me about Friday?” McGarr asked.

Keating hunched his shoulders. “What’s to tell? We’d just got here and were planning how we’d handle the night.” He glanced up so the light fell across his face, and McGarr caught sight of a long fresh scar on his forehead.

“We’d got a report from a farmer saying he’d found tire tracks and footprints all up and down the riverbank, and the field was filled with dead coarse fish.”

“There’s no concern for other species,” Gannon explained, glancing over at Maddie and lowering his voice. “When they pull in the fyke net, they just trash the other fish and make no attempt to put them back in the water. Unless it’s a salmon, of course.”

To be sold over the bar at some pub, McGarr well knew.

“And we thought we saw a pattern in how they were working the river,” Keating continued. “Using the
same sites on the various rivers but jumping from the Brosna to the Shannon and then the Blackwater.” The other two rivers were tributaries of the Shannon. “That’s when her beeper went off.

“Ellen didn’t recognize the number, and the one cell phone we had is a dud.” Keating pointed to an equipment rack on one wall. “It hasn’t worked in a dog’s age.”

“Budget,” Gannon explained, shaking his head.

“So, after being paged twice more, she decided it had to be important, and she drove into town. It was the last I saw of her.”

“Did she write down the number?” McGarr asked.

Keating shook his head. “The first time she asked if I recognized it, and she said the number to me. And don’t think I haven’t been trying to remember what it was.” He turned the pad and showed McGarr what appeared to be several telephone numbers. “Not one of them rings.”

“What about recent investigations? Were you concentrating on anybody in particular?”

Keating glanced at Gannon, and nearly together they said, “The Frakes,” Gannon adding, “They’re scofflaws of the worst sort. It’s the whole bandit thing from the North—laws were made by other people to keep you poor and oppressed.”

“And should be broken on principle,” Keating put in. “You should see them in the pub—they get jarred and start singing all the old rebel songs. And if you should so much as look at them sideways, they’re on you. The both of them.”

“What happened to your forehead?”

“I got thumped in Leixleap three months ago in the courtyard in back of the inn. Broke my leg, bruised my
liver. This”—Keating pointed to his forehead—“was the least of it.”

McGarr waited, the man obviously having more to say.

“Two men in balaclavas and eye masks. Northern accents. Told me they’d kill me unless I quit this job.” Keating paused before adding, “I guess they made good on Ellen.”

“You reported it to the police?”

“Declan Riley, the sergeant at the barracks?”

McGarr nodded.

“He pulled in the Frakes, Manus and Donal. He’s the younger wild one. It’s said he’s killed five men with his hands alone. But nothing came of it. They swore they were in the pub when it happened.”

“And got Carson to confirm it,” said Gannon.

“Benny Carson, the barman?” McGarr asked.

Both men nodded. “He’s one of them,” Keating added. “More than that—he’s the brains of what they do and how they can keep doing it without landing in the drum.”

Not anymore, McGarr thought. “Could it have been somebody other than the Frakes who beat you? Who else from the North is active here?”

Gannon closed his eyes. “Who isn’t? The chance for quick cash profits, either poaching or ripping off some poor defenseless fisherman in the dead of night having brought them.”

“Or both,” added Keating.

“Most come down for a day or two of ‘sport,’ so to speak, then blow back across the border with a few thousand quid in their pockets. But around here, only the Frakes stayed, that I know of.”

McGarr wrote the main number of the inn on a busi
ness card and handed it to Keating. “If you think of the number of the call—or anything else—phone me.

“May I take this sheet?” McGarr pointed to the pad with the numbers.

Keating handed him the piece of paper.

Ruth Bresnahan and Hugh Ward had not conducted an investigation together for nearly a year, ever since Ward had moved in with Lee Sigal, the woman who had given birth to his son fourteen years earlier but who had kept the birth secret from Ward until recently.

Granted Ward had been recovering from gunshot wounds at the time, and the moving in had been more de facto than de jure—Lee having the leisure, money, and inclination to nurse Ward back to health. Bresnahan, of course, had to work.

How it happened was Ward, during the course of an investigation, discovered that a woman—who had seemed familiar to him but had given her name as Lee Stone—was actually Leah Sigal, who had been his history instructor during the one semester fourteen years earlier that he had attended university. They had a torrid affair, but Ward had not seen her since.

But when she had introduced him to her fourteen-
year-old son whose name was also Hugh and looked so much like Ward that it was like looking into a time-warped mirror, she had to tell him. And Ward was glad she had, all children needing to know—and to have the benefit of knowing—their fathers.

Gravely injured in a gunfight shortly after the revelation, Ward had arranged for a licensed nurse to tend him in his bachelor digs as he was being released from hospital. And in retrospect probably should have, since Bresnahan and he were still very much involved. But Ward had come close to dying, and his perspective on life had changed dramatically.

And so, when Lee had revealed how much she loved him—never dating other men and maintaining an album of press clippings from his days as an amateur boxer and his career with the Garda—and asked that he give her another baby “with no string attached. Not one,” Ward had complied. Knowing in his heart of hearts that it was no mere string that would bind him to her, his son, and the as-yet-unborn baby. But rather an unbreakable chain of affection.

Also, at the time Ward’s affair with Bresnahan had grown flat, with both maintaining their own digs and neither owning up to the reality that they should be married. In other words, what Ward believed to be the
moment
that occurs in all affectionate relationships, when something greater could have happened, had passed.

Yet for some reason that Ward only vaguely understood, he still felt deep guilt about how and why they had broken up, perhaps because he had made the decision when he was still recovering from his wounds and his judgment had been clouded. But he could not go back on it either, which made the deep affection he still felt for Bresnahan all the more maddening.

At times he told himself that it had just been…you know,
events
—what had happened while he had been on the mend and beginning to feel better while living in the house of his former lover. Which was the rekindling—no, the immolation—of a torrid passion that dated back to his youth. The heat had simply been too much to deny and had overwhelmed him.

At rare other times, when Ward could view things dispassionately, he acknowledged the truth, which was not pretty: that he was probably a semiferal male who could love two women simultaneously and equally—Lee, who was dark, diminutive, considered in her ways, and the mother of his child and soon children.

And Ruth, a tall angular redhead, who was feisty and visceral, and whom Ward could not bear the thought of other men…dating. At night his dreams—erotic and otherwise—were still filled with her.

Bresnahan’s own feelings were not dissimilar. Hurt and angry after Ward had chosen the other woman for what she knew was the best of reasons—since she could not bear the finality of the thought of marriage and was surely not the motherly type—she had gone out with a spate of other men. But it had not been the same. The certain something that was Hughie Ward in the particular was always missing.

Probably it was his utter maleness. How sure he was about who he was and what he was doing, from his long tenure as one of Europe’s best amateur boxers, which the recent injuries had probably ended. To how he pursued his chosen career; someday he would run the Garda, she was certain.

And then, of course, he was darkly handsome in a way that was Bresnahan’s cup of tea exactly.

Thrown together now in a car on the wet and slip
pery cart track leading to the safe house that the brothers Frakes and Gertrude McGurk had occupied, the tension between the two was nearly palpable.

Bresnahan was at the wheel. A powerful, four-door car with a sun roof and spoiler, the Opel
Vectra
had been selected because it did not look like an unmarked Garda patrol vehicle. And Bresnahan drove the automobile as its designers intended.

Born and raised in the mountains of Kerry, she had learned to drive a tractor when she was only ten and with her father’s permission had plied the narrow and often perilous roads of that mountainous county even before she was old enough to apply for a learner’s permit. Thus, a slushy Midlands farm track posed her little problem.

Ward, on the other hand, was a confirmed Dubliner who never drove when taxis or public transportation were available. In fact, he did not own a car and only took the wheel of a Garda vehicle when absolutely necessary.

Working the gearshift and the accelerator with Eurotour skill, Bresnahan slammed and bucked the Opel through the mire that became, like the fog, all the deeper as they approached the river. Until the house with the cinder of McGarr’s Cooper nearby suddenly appeared out of the gloom, and Bresnahan swung the passenger side of the car in a juddering skid as close to the front door as possible.

“Olé!”
Ward cheered, if only to break the silence.

“Hop out, Super’. I’ve still got to bring meself in for a landing.” It was the
breezy
manner that Bresnahan had decided to adopt when alone with Ward, as though the past didn’t matter, that what they had was just water-over-the-weir, so to speak. Such an approach
would allow them to continue as an investigative team, and also perhaps just drive him mad, which was a happy thought.

“Why don’t you just hop over that and get out on this side?” He pointed to the drivetrain and leather-swathed gearshift.

“Surely, you jest. What you have here—
had
, shame on me—is a sizable woman and a small car. In spite of our mutual experience, you are deceived if you think I’m a contortionist.”

With that she pulled shut the door, and Ward knew enough to move away, as she hit the gas and twisted the wheel, sending a rooster tail of creamy mud into the yard.

Ward didn’t know what to think. Was she making fun of him and what had been for him the only other important love relationship of his life? Feeling suitably compromised—at once understanding that they couldn’t have the same relationship as before but mourning the fact—Ward snugged his oilskin cap over his brow and drew his Glock from under his all-weather jacket.

It was unlikely that the Frakes had returned to the house, but they would take no chances. Keeping down so as not to be seen passing by any of the first floor windows, Ward worked his way around back.

“Hah-loo,” Bresnahan called out, twisting open the handle and pushing the door open while concealing herself on the other side of the wall. She was nothing if not professional. “Is anybody about? Hah-loo! It’s Ruth from the village, wondering if you’d like to contribute to our football effort.”

Meanwhile, Ward had found the back door open, which would not have been the case, he assumed, had the Frakes been present. Yet he kept his weapon drawn
as he moved into the kitchen. The pantry. And obviously a children’s room off the kitchen.

Glancing down the hall, he saw Rut’ie—as he referred to her himself—entering the residence, gun first. He waited until she saw him, then he moved toward her. Now inside, they would check the rest of the house together, backing each other up.

But Ward had little hope that either of the Frakes or their—what was she?—companion Gertrude McGurk had returned. Situated on a shelf of raised ground on the riverbank, the house had soaked up the moisture of the Shannon and the cold of the wintry day like a stone sponge, and he imagined that a hot stove was a necessity there year-round.

And all that was contained in McGarr’s report of his visit the day before appeared to be untouched—a collection of nets and what seemed to be building material in the sitting room that contained no furniture.

Like all other rooms save the well-fitted-out kitchen with its large Aga cooker, the crib in the child’s room, and a rather ornate bed and mirrored armoire in the room that obviously the McGurk woman inhabited. The Frakes slept on mattresses on the floors of separate bedrooms, with their personal belongings strewn about them.

Ward dug a coin from the pocket of his trousers. “Heads or tails?”

Bresnahan slid her Glock back into a kidney holster. “You know me—I’m easy.” Smiling, she glanced at him in a way that suggested she was having him on.

“Which?” Ward demanded, looking away.

She shrugged.

He slid the coin back in his pocket. “You lose.” He pointed toward the stairs.

“Whatever you say, Super’. You de mahn.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said—you de mahn.”

As she moved away from him he perused the curve of her hip and the line of her legs. Today the entire smooth package was contained in skintight sweats of the same forest green color as the cashmere sweater she was wearing, and which—it now occurred to Ward—she had chosen to wear just to taunt him with her body, what he could probably never ever again have. Which also accounted for her provocative allusions.

Well, he decided—wrenching his eyes from her back—he wouldn’t bite, so to speak. He’d treat her as he treated the rest of the staff—with what he thought of as distant familiarity.

And yet, could the tights be Gore-Tex, Ward wondered as he turned toward the heaps of dirty laundry in the first bedroom. If so, where had she gotten them?

Skiing in Norway, he decided. It was a favorite venue of hers, and she had just returned from a fortnight holiday about which she’d been uncharacteristically mum in the office. Could she have spent it with another man? Ward wondered, feeling the sharp sting of jealousy.

How could he be jealous? he asked himself. He had no right to be jealous. Still, if he could just get a feel of that material he’d know if it was Gore-Tex. But when he looked back, she was gone.

And so they passed an hour going through everything they could find in the house. What struck Ward was how poor and comfortless was nearly everything that the two brothers had owned, from the absence of furniture to their clothes that were the tawdrily stylish
gear seen on the covers of rock-group CDs—tight jeans, tighter (he imagined) jerseys, square-heeled boots, even what looked like an imitation leather bolero jacket.

It was stuff that could be had—and he could see from the labels had been purchased—at cut-price shops in Derry and Dublin. Even the collection of thin gold rings in differing sizes for different pierced parts of the body, Ward imagined, were only gold-filled, as if they considered themselves unworthy of anything of quality or substance, no matter how much tax-free swag they pulled in.

Mattresses with dirty—no, filthy—sheets on the floor. Beer cans. A brimming bowl of stubbed-out cigarette butts with a crack pipe in the ashes, lids of aluminum foil from same, and a roach clip complete with roach.

In the second bedroom, which had been used by Donal Frakes—Ward assumed from a court summons that had been thrown away—he found snapshots pasted on the wall of women striking provocative poses mainly in the buff.

In others, Donal Frakes had been captured having sex with two women who were also having sex with each other. And a final large and grainy blown-up shot pictured Donal Frakes having sex with Gertrude McGurk—Ward believed she was—against the door of the room. Life-size, it had been hung, of course, on the door of the room where the event had occurred.

Art shot, Ward thought, moving out into the hall and toward her room, the door of which was open but contained the advisement, “KNOCK FIRST” in block capitals. The door had also recently been equipped with a new lock and dead bolt, the one that McGarr
had just finished opening when the shots rang out that nearly killed Benny Carson and destroyed McGarr’s car.

But the room was an island of order and comfort, with fresh paint on the wall, a recently hoovered imitation oriental rug on the floor, and a high posted bed. There was not a sexual reference in sight, not even in the small desk by the bed, where Ward found some bills that were unpaid and letters from McGurk’s mother, who lived in Newry, urging her to come home.

Ward slipped the envelope with its return address in his pocket. As well as the 32-caliber Beretta with a full clip and the safety thumbed off. Gertrude McGurk had been afraid of someone or something, and had concealed it between the mattress and box spring on the side of the bed farther from the door.

An answering machine was attached to the telephone in the room, and the light was blinking. Ward tapped the playback button. A man’s voice said, “It’s me, and I’m baaaaack! And just devastated that you seem to be busy now on Thursday evening about”—there was a pause—“half eleven. What about a wee visit tomorrow morning. You name the hour. I’ve just got to see you. You know where I am.”

Ward took the tape as well, before turning to the armoire that functioned as a dresser. And it was while he
was going through the top drawer that was filled with what he thought of as “nightware”—chemises, bustiers, boas, thong-type underwear, the silk stockings and garter belt that she had worn when being serviced against the door—that Bresnahan entered the room.

“Hard at it, I see.”

Ward was holding a handful of the tawdry items in one hand while rifling through the drawer with the other.

Bresnahan snatched a strapless brassiere out of his hand and wrapped the cups around her own breasts. “Great form, this woman—wouldn’t you say? Good breasts, thin hips, nice legs as displayed on the back side of the door in the next room.