The Death of an Irish Politician

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Without that confession,” said O’Shaughnessy, “we wouldn’t have a thing. He was chummy with Ovens, and they drank together. There’s no reason why his fingerprints shouldn’t be on that winch handle. A tax attorney could get the case thrown out of court.”

  “It’s the woman,” said Hughie Ward. “She’s the key to the whole thing.”

  They all turned to him.

  Bernie McKeon began jibing. “Would you listen to our young Lothario. He’s got women on the brain.”

  “She’s got to be,” Ward insisted. “I’m not saying this because I think she’s—” He flushed.

  “Beautiful,” McGarr supplied. “Because she is.” He turned to his men. “Are we agreed?”

  They all nodded.

  “It’s because she’s—different from your usual beautiful woman. She’s got something else.”

  “She’s rich,” said McKeon.

  “No—not just that. She’s—” Ward groped for the right word but couldn’t find it.

  All of them, however, knew what he had meant. She was different, entirely.

  McGarr said, ’Why don’t we talk to her some more, then.” He checked his wristwatch. It was half past eleven. “Send out for some sandwiches and tea, Bernie.”

  “Tea?” McKeon questioned. “You’ll have me running to the jakes at fifteen-minute intervals and most probably at the point when I’m about to exonerate you in toto.”

  “All right—a dozen bottles of lager.”

  “Two dozen,” said McKeon.

  “A dozen and a half.” McGarr turned to the window. A fine rain was blurring the glass.

  Just one day in jail seemed to have taken a toll on Leona Horrigan. In the direct beam of the shaded light, her face seemed gaunt, her cheeks just slightly hollow, her green eyes shadowed by the sweep of her eyebrows, recessed, older. Still, her figure was full and angular in a green cashmere sweater and black skirt, her posture erect on the bentwood chair. Now and again, she pushed her long black hair from in front of her eyes.

  For two hours Liam O’Shaughnessy went over her signed statement concerning her activities on the afternoon of the attack upon Ovens. She was again asked about the blood-spattered shoes and dress, her relationship with Ovens, why she had paid his yard bill, who her contacts in the IRA were, how much money she spent on the guns, bombs, and her other illegal activities.

  Through it all, she spoke seldom, answered only those questions that were in no way incriminating, and seemed bored by the entire process.

  When Bernie McKeon took over, he tried a new tack. In a soft voice he began reading from her father’s dossier, “O’Brugha, Mairtín. Born third December, 1902, at Clifden, County Galway.” McKeon broke off. He was sitting close enough to share the light with her. “Now—why did I think that poor old man was from Cork?” His puffy face seemed innocent, trusting, familiar.

  McGarr was standing in the shadows near the door to his office. Dick Delaney was taking the log of the interrogation in the far corner of the room.

  McKeon said, “Ah—now I know.” He lifted several pages of the dossier. “Married Megan Moriarty of Cobh, twenty-second June, 1931. Child: Leona Honora Margaret-Mary—that’s you—O’Brugha, born sixteenth July, 1933, Cork City, and a fine piece of work, if you don’t mind my saying so myself, Leona. May I call you that?

  She only drew on the cigarette.

  “Now then,” McKeon turned back to page one. “A precocious child, this Mairtín O’Brugha. Heralded all the way up. Here is a copy of his performance in school. In the margin, the schoolmaster has written this accolade.” McKeon glanced over at her, his eyes smiling and playful. “We’ll see how good Leitrim Gaelic is. ‘A mind quicker than a’ something or other, ‘and as deep as—’” He craned his head to McGarr, “Can you make this out, Peter? The schoolmaster in my town was my granduncle. I passed on a special dispensation.”

  “Light,” she said in a tired voice. “The flux of time.”

  “Oh—oh, yes.” McKeon again looked at her playfully. “Gaelic is given to exaggeration, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes flashed at him.

  McKeon had succeeded in getting an emotional reaction from her and began building on it. “But how do you know so much about your father? Wasn’t he always ‘away,’ so to speak?”

  “Precisely,” she hissed. “That’s all I really had to know—his criminal file.”

  “And such a pity it is to read too, such a waste. First honors in his Leaving Certificate. A stipend, a grant, later a moderatorship at University College. Again First Class honors but this time with Special Distinction in both ancient and modern languages, and here we have”—he turned a page—”a copy of a letter from a don at Cambridge saying all expenses will be met, lodging arranged, and a small stipend provided. That’s 1927.

  “But he wouldn’t take the King’s shilling, would he? No. The Sorbonne—studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Gaelic. Then on to European travels. Now, let’s see—where was your mother all this time, back home in Ireland pining for her wandering scholar?” McKeon searched through the dossier.

  Hughie Ward tapped McGarr on the shoulder, and when the chief turned to him, he motioned McGarr into the office. Ward shut the door and they walked into McGarr’s cubicle. Ward pointed to the phone. “It’s Sinclair. He’s found Driver.”

  “Really?” McGarr was very pleased. “He’s good, that Sinclair.” He reached for the phone. “Paul? Where are you?”

  “O’Donahue’s on St. Stephen’s Green, the sing-song pub where all the musicians and tourists congregate. Driver has been here all along. The barman said he slept here last night. From his personal effects, all I can deduce is that he probably went straight to the Shelbourne and got paid off by Horrigan, nipped into Barclay’s Bank to stash the best part of the funds in his pass-book account, which I’ve got in my hands now, and then made a tour of the pubs around the Green. He only got this far before he succumbed.”

  “Not dead, I hope.”

  “Not actually. I’ve called an ambulance. A German doctor here, a tourist, says he should have his stomach pumped, should be put on intravenous feeding and dried out. Doesn’t look as though he has eaten in weeks.”

  “We’ll have a patrol accompany him to the hospital”—McGarr signaled to Ward, who began copying down the orders—”and a man stationed by his bedside. No visitors. I want somebody to take down everything he says. Hughie will be over at the St. Stephen’s Green branch of Barclay’s Bank in a half hour with a writ to examine Driver’s transactions. That is his branch, isn’t it, Paul?”

  “Yes. He only lives—er, used to live right around the corner.”

  “I want you to do that just in case Horrigan slipped up and paid him off by check.” McGarr thought for a moment. “Oh, my God.”

  “What’s wrong, Chief?”

  “What was the amount of the deposit?”

  “You’re not going to believe this. It was ten thousand pounds. How stupid can Horrigan be? Driver has probably told half of Dublin about the money by now.”

  Sinclair could not have known that three days before, in Naas, Horrigan had handed McGarr a cashier’s check, which McGarr had grasped, then let go. “In this case, Paul, Driver’s alcoholism is working in Horrigan’s favor. Say, for instance, we can get Driver to change his story to the truth. Horrigan will say it’s the booze talking and then mention our official record that contains proof of Driver’s whereabouts on the night of the supposed theft.

  “Also,” McGarr added, “we’d better get the Technical Bureau to do a complete fingerprint analysis on the cashier’s check.”

  “How do you know it’s a cashier’s check?”

  “Trust me.” McGarr opened the top drawer of his desk and shut it again. “I know. But maybe we can discover a Horrigan latent. We’ll have Hughie see if he can trace the source of the funds as well. I know what we’re going to find, however.”

  “You do?”

  “McGarr’s fingerprints on the check, McGarr’s descrip
tion from the bank teller who made it out. Horrigan probably scoured the thirty-two counties for a dead ringer for me, then treated the innocent man to a tan raincoat, dark suit, and a derby.

  “Hughie will meet you at the bank, Paul. Good work.” McGarr hung up.

  Now, more than ever, McGarr needed Leona Horrigan’s confession. He walked through the office and opened the door to the day room.

  McKeon was still talking to her in the same soft tone. “Two years in Bologna, it says here, but it doesn’t say why he went there or what he was doing in Italy. Could he have turned to honest labor at last?”

  “His health,” she supplied. “He had developed a cough in Paris. How he got on is nobody’s business, since, it seems, he survived.”

  “That—that he did. Lived four years and seven months in Florence. I wonder how he got on there.”

  “Tutored while he studied history at the university.”

  “He also became involved with the establishment of the Italian Communist Party—sounds bad, doesn’t it? I hear you’re a capitalist of no slight leverage yourself, ma’am.”

  “He’s entitled to his beliefs. I’m not a capitalist, I’m a realist.”

  “It seems you must have gotten all that practicality from your mother, since from the time of your father’s leaving Florence in the late twenties right up until today—we’ve got him downstairs, you know; he’s confessed to the attempted murder of Ovens; they’ll put him away for good this time—his career as a human being has been all downhill. Murder, assassinations, bank robberies, gunrunning, sabotage, kidnapping, espionage for a hostile foreign power. No sooner was he released from prison than he was involved in some dirty deed or another, and there he was again, back in the pokey. One death sentence was commuted because the Taoseaich respected his mind, another because he had information concerning the IRA hierarchy, which David Nelligan believed they could pull out of him down at the Curragh.

  “Well, this time it’s no noble cause, is it?” McKeon placed the dossier on his lap and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s just a bloody ugly little deed—trying to take the life of an unworldly, quiet, kindly man whose only crime was to love you, Leona, and hate the part he played in running antipersonnel weaponry into the North at your insistence.”

  McGarr thought he saw her wince a little when McKeon alluded to Ovens, but she said, “Cheap histrionics again, Sergeant? Please try to moderate your technique. Even the most convincing dramatic performance grows stale after a time.”

  McKeon suddenly bawled, “Well, why do you think an experienced Fenian would ever even consider trying to conk a man with a winch handle in broad daylight? Do you think he would botch the job? Why does the man who resisted all the atrocities of the Curragh confess in five minutes? Why does he come along with us meek as a lamb? Because he feels his life is over, because he doesn’t want his only sibling to rot in the can the way he did? Things don’t match up here, and I’m betting you’re such a cold bitch you can sit there and watch him do it! I bet you’re such a ‘realist’ you can clap him into a cell for the rest of his life and not even bat an eye.”

  She looked over at McGarr in the shadows, smirked, and drew deeply on the cigarette. Her skin, which was very white, was just slightly translucent and reminded McGarr of Carrara marble that had been smoothed to a gloss. She said, “My father is nothing but a jailbird anyhow. Have you ever thought of that? Maybe he’d never admit it, but it’s what he has always wanted, what he got for most of his life, and what he deserves.”

  That was when McGarr pushed himself off the wall. “I don’t believe you mean that. Get O’Brugha up here, Bernie. We’ll let her tell that to his face.” McGarr had dealt with people like Leona Horrigan before. As long as she could dehumanize her conception of her father, she could make him her scapegoat. McGarr wondered if her father had ever told her about his fifteen years—a record, the dossier stated—in the Curragh solitary cells. McGarr doubted it. O’Brugha was a hard man, just the sort who would keep the ugliness of his imprisonment from his family at all costs.

  And the old man was haggard. McKeon had awakened him and he looked as though he had aged ten years since McGarr had first seen him on the Killiney Yacht Club docks four days before. His jawbone protruded right back to his ears. His eyes were glazed and he breathed through his mouth. His hand shook when McGarr gave him a bottle of Harp.

  His daughter hadn’t looked up when he entered the room.

  McGarr didn’t offer O’Brugha a chair, just stood him across the table from his daughter.

  After taking a swig of beer, the old man cleared his throat and, placing the bottle on the table, rubbed his eyes. The room was utterly silent. O’Brugha’s narrow shoulders barely held his suspenders. “How are you keeping, Leona? Have they been hard on you? Where’s your solicitor? You ought to have one, you know. Hadn’t she?” he asked McGarr.

  Still she hadn’t as much as glanced at her father.

  McGarr said, “We haven’t yet used the cattle prods on her, Mairtín. After that, if she has told us what we want to know, she can call her solicitor.”

  O’Brugha jerked his neck toward McGarr. He tried to smile. He realized McGarr was codding him, but it was as though the prison atmosphere of the Castle had reminded the old man of other days and other practices. “You boys don’t do that sort of thing any—” He glanced down at his daughter.

  “No, we don’t. But they did it to you, didn’t they, Mairtín—out in the Curragh? Haven’t you told Leona about your fifteen years of solitary in a tiny iron cell no bigger than a steamer trunk? No heat, no light but what little came through the slit. How about the guards, Mairtín? Tell Leona what you told us out at the Harbour Bar about the Curragh. What sort of shoes did the guards wear?”

  O’Brugha’s light blue eyes flashed down on his daughter’s head, then back to McGarr. He knew what McGarr had in mind, how these questions would work on Leona’s pity for him.

  “What kind were they, Liam?” McGarr asked O’Shaughnessy. “Can you remember what he said they were?”

  “Rubber shoes—‘so as not to disturb the solitude of one’s reflections’ was the way he put it.”

  “And how long like that? Certainly fifteen years is a”—McGarr searched for the right word—“hyperbole.”

  Leona Horrigan had raised her head and was staring at her father.

  His eyes were moving about the shadows, seeing anything, everything but his daughter’s face, upon which the lamp over the day-room table shone brightest.

  “Surely there must have been a break, a month, a day, several hours, a week at least?”

  O’Shaughnessy answered McGarr. “Every prison has an exercise yard, Peter.”

  O’Brugha was swaying beside the table. He put out his hand and steadied himself. When he looked up, his eyes met his daughter’s. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Sure and I could do a thousand years standing on my head. They’re just trying to box you in, Leona. Don’t be taken in by him.” O’Brugha pointed to McGarr. “He’s worse than any of them. He’s Nelligan but with greater guile. My life is over. When all is said and done, I rather like prison. Nowadays, they let you have books, a little job, the food isn’t half bad, and—”

  “How long were the exercise periods?” she asked.

  “Oh”—he flicked a hand off the tabletop—“hours—three, four.”

  “Five minutes,” said McGarr, “including the time it took them to haul you to and from your cell. How many times did they chuck you into that treeless courtyard, O’Brugha, and you too stiff to crawl through the clinkers? And nude! The IRA wouldn’t recognize the Free State, Leona—you know this, don’t you?—and so the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms. You got a thin army blanket at night, but they took that away in the morning, didn’t they, Mairtín?”

  O’Shaughnessy asked, “And how many years all told did you spend in prison? Twenty? Thirty years? Not thirty years!”

  “Thirty-four years,” said Leona Horrigan and lowered her h
ead.

  “Time is relative,” O’Brugha said, sensing that they had broken her resolve. In his own way, he was pleading with her to keep her peace. “The years just flew by. I was there, now I’m here. Simple as that. It wasn’t at all as tough as they make out. A man has time for reflection, contemplation, meditation, just like the saints of old.”

  McGarr asked, “And how about visions. Did you have any of those, Mairtín?”

  Forgetting himself, O’Brugha said, “Oh yes—a man can find a great depth of solace in the proper vision.”

  Again she looked up at him.

  “You place such emphasis on the word ‘proper,’” said McKeon.

  “A word that is in vogue today is ‘hallucination,’” said McGarr.

  “And did you talk to yourself too, Mairtín?” asked O’Shaughnessy.

  Leona Horrigan slowly turned just her head to McGarr. She was about to say something, when O’Brugha’s hand jumped across the table and grasped his daughter’s, which were folded in front of her. “Don’t, Leona. You can still take it back. Your solicitor isn’t present. They didn’t inform you of your rights. I’m an old man. A few more years wouldn’t touch me.”

  She stared down at their hands. Her eyes were blinking rapidly. It was as though she were trying to summon either the courage to confess or the heartlessness to continue with the ruse that her father had committed the crime and would take her punishment for her.

  McGarr said to Delaney, “Read her last statement before we brought O’Brugha up here, Dick.”

  But before Delaney could flip through his notes, she said, “You’re nothing but a jailbird anyhow, Mairtín. Maybe you’ve never admitted it to yourself, but it’s what you’ve always wanted and what you deserve.”

  The old man’s thin face received the words like blows. He staggered slightly and said, “Ah, yes. Yes.”