The Death of Love (8 page)

“There’re good points and bad to that, but I can’t let anybody cop on or even sense the drift of you and me, who are not married, you see. You
do
see, don’t you?”

Ward thought he did, but he was not about to let on.

“As it is, my parents are over the moon because of the account they think I’ve made of myself in Dublin. You and I know it’s nothing, but they look at me, see a detective inspector in the Murder Squad, and they can hardly believe their eyes. To them and everybody else they can tell, I’m pure gold. It’s helped them get over my decision that I won’t be returning one day to take over the farm they’ve worked to build into the best single holding in the district. As you know, I’m their only child.”

She paused for a moment, as though considering the enormity of her mistake. “Above all else they would have preferred I married some young country buck with his own property, and popped out a brawny brood to work the acres and add still more in their time. It’s the farmer’s dream of immortality, don’t you know.”

Ward did not and he
would
not. Profoundly citified, Ward scarcely credited the possibility of meaningful life beyond the Pale of Dublin.

“You?” She looked down the five feet eight-and-a-half inches of Ward fondly. “You’ll just have to grow on them, I’m afraid.”

At thirty, how realistic was that, he wanted to say, if only to deflate the serious finality of her message. Sex wasn’t serious, it was fun. Well, fun if it happened, serious if it did not.

“And since we’re both here in Sneem, now’s as good a time as any, I suppose. For them to take their first bite.”

Which was Swift enough for any close reader, Ward thought. “But the place here. Parknasilla. The hotel. It’s
immense
. Floors and floors with dark hallways, all carpeted. Who’s to know?”

She shook her head. “In spite of what you might think about Kerrymen and culchies, thick they are not. They’ll take one glance at you and one at me, and if there’s so much as a long look or a lingering touch, we’re chat that will nestle—count on it—in my father’s ear. And you”—again she regarded Ward—“you don’t want that.”

“So!” another voice boomed. “Here you are.” It was Sonnie, who had treacherously misused the potential for stealth that Ward had assayed in the carpeted hall. “Come with me. I’d like a word with you.” And to Bresnahan, “Has he been bothering you, miss?” It was only then that he recognized her. “Why—Ruth Honora Ann Bresnahan, is it you?”

Apart from her name, Ward heard only a kind of warble that ended in “…ooo?”

“’Tis, and who else would I be, I wonder? How’re yah, Sonnie?” She held out her hand, which the tall man, who was only a bit taller than she, took. A full smile had transformed his features, and he looked her up and down. “It’s just that you look
different
.”

“And I will be, to be sure, if I don’t run.” She turned her head toward the ladies’ room.

“And lovely. Lovely! God, how you’ve grown. Are you staying with us now?” He meant in the hotel.

Bresnahan nodded.

“Wait till I tell your father, won’t he be proud. Tell me now”—without having released her hand, Sonnie stepped closer to her and in a near whisper asked—“is it official business that brings you here?”

She moved her head from side to side. “Yes and no.” Apart from McGarr himself, Bresnahan was the only other squad staffer instructed so to admit.

“You mean Paddy Power? Could it be…?” Sonnie continued, encouragingly.

“Ah, nothing of the sort. A mere formality, really, the government being overcautious, as you can understand. But, if it provides me with a bit of a buswoman’s holiday, well—who’s to complain? I’ve been here under other circumstances, don’t you know.” She meant as scullery maid,
a job she had taken happily during a summer holiday from school.

“I do, but—Janie—the
difference!
”

“Which reminds me. I’ve got to run.” Bresnahan broke away from him and moved toward the open door of the passageway in which they were standing.

“And
you
.” Sonnie turned and looked down on Ward. “I’ll say this once and once only. Somehow, through one of your Dublin connections, I don’t doubt, you were jumped over many a good local lad who would have
worked
this job gladly. And gurrier or no, you
will
, or you won’t work here long.
That’s
a promise.” He waited until Ward nodded.

“First rule—you’re here to serve patrons, not socialize with them. Second—never leave the bar without permission. Now, get in there. You’ve got the glasses and the stocking to do. The keg of Guinness needs changing as well.”

Ward paused.

“You
do
know how to change a keg, don’t you?”

Ward did not have a clue. “Years ago,” he lied.

“Doubtless time out of mind.”

MCGARR EXPLAINED TO Noreen that he did not want to be encumbered by wife and child, that the Power case was not just another investigation, and that she could best serve him by remaining in the hotel and keeping her eyes and ears open. “Also there’s the press conference at eleven when Shane Frost will announce Paddy Power’s death. Surely that’ll be more interesting than interviewing a dead man’s ex-wife. The press are out at the gate now, fighting to get in.”

“That settles it. I’m coming with you,” said Noreen, who usually wanted to be in the center of things. And the reason? “I’m tired of being confined.” Which McGarr thought the better of questioning.

At the gates they discovered a cordon of Gardai who were holding back what seemed like a motorized brigade of cars and media vans. McGarr pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and waited until a path was cleared before he ran the gauntlet, then sped toward the village.

Overnight a keen edge had been added to the wind, and a rime of frost had hoared the fields. Yet the day was brilliant, and Sneem sparkled in a thin, fresh sun. Each house on the two main squares had been painted a different, bright color, and immense tour buses were parked across from woolen and “traditional” Irish goods shops, which seemed to be doing banner business.

“We should stop and get Maddie a little knitted jumper and knitted tam,” Noreen suggested.

McGarr only eyed her in the rearview mirror.

“Well, later maybe. On the way back.”

Beyond the village, blue plumes of peat smoke were rising from the chimneys of farmhouses. Like neat cubes, the buildings were spaced out at generous intervals along the flanks of a vast sweep of gray-green mountain to the northwest. “Smoke,” he said to Maddie, who had insisted on sitting beside him and was locked into her crash seat to his left. He pointed to an azure billow that was passing across the road from a nearby farmhouse. “Smoke,” he repeated.

With her own pointed finger she followed his hand, then lowered it to the cigarette he was holding. “’Moke.”

“Very good, Miss Maddie.
Very
good,” he said, and she squealed her delight in his praise. “Now, where’s the smoke?” Again she pointed out the window and then to the cigarette, and McGarr repeated his acclaim.

From the backseat, Noreen said, “You know—she never does any of that for me. Sometimes I feel—” But she held off. McGarr knew the plaint, having heard it now and then since Maddie was born. “Sometimes I feel like Maddie doesn’t even
like
me,” Noreen had once told him. “She takes me for granted. But you she responds to. For you she’s always got a big, sunny smile or a laugh or a warble. Her mannerisms and gestures are
yours
, for Jesus’ sake, not mine, and she even
looks
like you.”

McGarr certainly hoped not.

Another time Noreen had come up with, “I guess I expected too much from you two. You’re both working-class Turks, hard as nails, like your people before you.” When McGarr had attempted to sound her out, she had added, “I just want somebody who likes, wants, me, needs me for myself. But if that’s all you have to give, well—I guess I’ve got no choice but to live with it.”

Or with you two Turks.

On the most extreme occasion McGarr had arrived home one evening to find Maddie playing with her nanny, and Noreen out in the back garden pacing, her eyes flashing up at the house. “I know it’s my hormones,” she had
said in a tight, wild voice. “But that doesn’t keep you from being a heartless, miserable, selfish son of bitch and the ruination of my life. Body
and
soul!”

It
happened to some women after giving birth and when nursing, a doctor friend had told McGarr, and was only somewhat less disturbing than what did
not
seem to happen anymore:
ess, eee, ex
. The McGarrs had not had a satisfying “session,” as it were, for longer than McGarr cared to remember. “Who’s counting?” Noreen had said. “Counting makes everything rather petty, wouldn’t you say? Or would you prefer charity or duty? For me there has to be a certain…magic.”

Rather less petty than no count at all. Or, to speak of magic, “ledger nodame,” though McGarr had wisely kept the smart, working-class-Turk remark to himself.

At Rathfield the road began its winding, switchback climb over rugged, towering mountains. It was narrow and bounded on the cliff side by a low rock wall that bore the impress of tour-bus bumpers or was gapped here and there the width of a car.

“Do you suppose…?” Noreen asked him.

He did not. The wall had simply fallen in on itself, although plunging out into the ether in such a picturesque spot would be a way to go better than some that he knew of.

Twice at step-asides they pulled in, “So Maddie can appreciate the singular beauty of her country,” Noreen enthused. But it was she who got out to stand with hands on hips, eyes narrowed in smile, and the waves of her auburn hair snapping in the cold, sea-tangy blast.

There below them lay miles of wall-ribbed chartreuse fields that more than a millennium of toil had won from the rough mountains; today they were being menaced by the wild Atlantic. The surge from the storm of the night before was pounding the cliffs and beaches, sending up clouds of spray that fringed the green fields with rainbow lace.

Farther still were Scariff and Deenish Islands—two dots of grass-tufted rock that appeared to be foundering in the giddy, foam-silvery sea. Every so often gannets, plying the
wrack, flashed like far-off bits of mirror. Geysers of spray from a rocky hazard in Waterville Harbor, which they reached ten minutes later, seemed to be carrying hundreds of yards over the chop, and tourists had gathered along the seawall to watch its plume.

McGarr wondered how it would be to live out here—on the edge of the continent, in the middle of the ocean, on the lee shore of the Gulf Stream—surrounded by the ever-unfolding high drama of nature. Great for the soul, he imagined, watching the tourists. Seemingly lost in their thoughts, they now began returning to the bus.

Having
seen something
—McGarr remembered from Paddy Power’s note cards—
but they know not what
.

How, McGarr wanted to know.

The Waterville Lake Hotel is modern and Promethean. With views out over Lough Currane in one direction and Ballinskelligs Bay in the other, its setting is enviable.

At the desk in its spacious lobby McGarr inquired after Helen N. Power.

“Has Nell returned from her round of golf?” one young woman asked another without looking up from the papers she was sorting through.

“Just. I’m only after seeing her coming in.”

“Room four-eleven.”

There McGarr knocked, and without so much as a “Who is it?” the door was opened.

In it stood a short, older woman with wide shoulders that were marked out by the sheen of a stylish golfing jacket. The collar was raised. Thin-hipped, she was wearing slacks of the same tan material and athletic shoes that were new and white.

Her hair, which was dark and wavy, had been cut short, and a deep tan made her look younger than her fifty-five or so years. With smooth, regular features and a definite
chin, she was still what McGarr thought of as fetching. Her eyes were two black buttons that regarded him, then glanced at Noreen and Maddie.

McGarr had reached for his identification case, but before he could introduce himself, Nell Power asked Noreen, “Don’t I know you? You’re—”

“Noreen Frenche.”

“Of course. Fitzhugh and Nuala’s girl. You’re married to—” Her eyes then returned to McGarr, who now raised his laminated picture I.D. into the light.

“Peter McGarr. I’m with the—”

“Yes, quite. I know who you are. Don’t stand out there all day now. Come in, come in.” She glanced up the hall before closing the door, and McGarr let his eyes sweep the sitting room of what looked like a three-room suite.

The furniture had been moved back against two walls to make room for a portable putting green made of some green synthetic material. Beside it was a practice tee wired to a small electronic machine that, McGarr assumed, informed the golfer about the precision of his or
her
shot. There were golf balls, golf clubs, golf bags, and golf shoes stored neatly against the furniture in one corner. In another was a stack of magazines, the top cover of which showed a woman spraying sand and the white dot of a golf ball from a trap. Grim determination creased her face.

McGarr turned his head to the wide modern windows that ran the length of the room. There a long table was covered with photocopies of note cards in handwriting no different from those he had found with Paddy Power’s corpse.

Said Power’s ex-wife, moving into the room after them, “Please pardon the shambles. I’m in training, don’t you know.”

Noreen turned to her, awaiting further explanation, while McGarr stepped closer to the table.

“I’m thinking of entering the senior women’s tour. You know, the one for old cows over in the States. At one time I regularly shot men’s par, and I was thinking that if I could again here, I’d give it a go. As you probably know, the Waterville course is the most challenging in Ireland. And probably the best.

“So, tell me about your parents. How are they keeping? And who is this little one in your arms with the face of her mother and the eyes of her father?”

Whose own were now scanning the neat, crabbed hand of Paddy Power. Photocopies of his note cards had been arranged according to subject heading. There was a grouping for Shane Frost, another for Gretta Osbourne, yet another for Eire Bank. O’Duffy, and “The Debt,” were some other arrangements. In the shadows beneath the table was a large, plasticized courtesy sack printed with the name of “M.J.P. Frost, Chemist, Sneem.”

McGarr picked up the pile that was titled “O’Duffy” and fanned through the sheets. There were six cards arranged neatly and photographed on each page. Subheadings said “Political Roots,” “Political Debts,” “Economic Policy,” “Favors Owed,” “Election Financing,” “I, Bagman,” “Dirty Tricks.” McGarr replaced the grouping.

Noreen introduced Maddie, and while Nell Power was making a fuss over her, he stepped into one of the other two rooms, which turned out to be a newly made-up bedroom. A rather complete wardrobe for a mere golfing outing hung in the closets, and the storage areas of the toilet suggested that Nell Power had been there for a while. There were many and different types of cosmetics, placed on all the shelves and not just the lower ones that would be handiest for a person of her height. The only medicine he could find was aspirin.

The women were still talking when McGarr stepped back into the sitting room. Passing to the other side of the table, he entered the third and final room of the suite.

It was a kind of study that contained a writing desk positioned before another floor-to-ceiling swath of glass, and several comfortable reading chairs. On the desk was an addressed envelope and a partially written letter to a daughter in Washington, D.C. It described in detail Nell’s attempts to “groove” her swing and how she had to remind herself constantly to keep her hands loose. With the golf club in them, McGarr supposed. The daughter was evidently arranging the Stateside aspects of the woman’s attempt to get onto the senior women’s golf tour, and much of the letter was devoted to that.

Paddy Power was mentioned only once.

Gretta Osbourne, McGarr supposed, was the “blessed perfectionist woman.”

In an open briefcase beside the desk McGarr found two of three quarterly reports of Eire Bank for the present year, and the full annual reports for each year since its inception some fourteen years earlier.

He opened the report for the last fiscal year to learn that “Eire Bank is a privately held fiduciary trust with some eleven owners of record to date.” None was named. He could not tell—and understood that it would probably take somebody skilled at financial reporting to know—if Eire Bank had made a profit in that year, though some £15 million had been claimed.

If Eire Bank was private, why the elaborate annual report with full-color pictures of the new banking complex in Dublin? His eye caught on a sentence in Chairman Shane Frost’s opening statement: “Eire Bank continues to enjoy the full faith, credit, and support of the government of the Republic of Ireland.”

In the most recent quarterly report Frost also said, “Given the current international banking environment, Eire Bank has informed the government of its willingness to
explore the possibility of extranational merger and/or acquisition.”

He closed the report, replaced the several documents in the briefcase, and stepped out into the sitting room.

Nell Power waited until her conversation with Noreen had drawn to a close before she turned to McGarr and in the same pleasant voice, asked, “Well, sir, now that you’ve gone through my belongings, may I ask the purpose of your visit? Or is it just habit, after all your time with the Guards?”

Flourishing his hand, McGarr offered it to the woman. “Now that’s what I like—a compliant woman with a sense of humor. I must confess to the latter. Noreen here will tell you, I’m a born snoop, and wasn’t I wondering just what a soon-to-be professional athlete—and woman at that—would choose to have about her person while training.”