Ward forced himself to look away. Christ—.
He stepped out of the car, buttoning his jacket.
“You make me feel better already,” she said, lifting her head so the brim wouldn’t get in the way as she kissed him, full on the lips, their teeth colliding. Her cheeks were cold.
“It must be difficult.”
They were on St. Stephen’s Green, and she took his arm. They began walking under the shade of the tall trees that grew over the sidewalk and shadowed most of the street. And they had company, tourists mostly, who stared, seeing in them—Ward imagined—a young, handsome Ireland far different from the worn Georgian row houses, most now converted to offices, around the Green.
And she had pulled him close, her breast against his arm, their legs together, stepping down the patterned blocks of the sidewalk into the park.
“Not really. The coffin is closed because of the—” she looked away, squinting because of the patch of bright sun they had walked through, “—post mortem. But I’m not sure I’d want to see her again as she was in that chair or in some funeral director’s idea of high fashion.
“I know it’s callous of me, Hugh, but once you’re dead you’re just so much flesh and bone and it’s barbaric to have people linger over you.
“The old people had the right idea—to put the person away by sundown of the next day. But the waking, the sitting up the night long with the…cadaver, and the relatives who hadn’t given a tinker’s damn for you when you were alive, coming hither and yon to thank their lucky stars you went before them, it’s…savage, uncivilized.”
Ward had the urge to slip his hand around her waist, but he kept himself from it. Yes—he could love her, and—dammit—he probably already did.
“Can you imagine…” With one hand she reached up and slipped out the pin, removing her hat. She tossed her head, and the fine black hair struck the side of Ward’s face.
He was staring down at the rolled clay of the park path, ostensibly concentrating on what she was saying, but really watching her narrow legs and ankles and her feet, which were long but remarkably narrow inside Prussian-blue shoes with low heels.
“…a man called the funeral director purporting to be my Aunt Grainne’s husband. He said that as the nearest relative his wife wanted the body sent to Galway, where the funeral and burial would be arranged.”
And there was a certain way she put down those feet, the oval of white flesh at the top of the shoes flicking out, turning slightly and seeming to pause before she set them down. Softly. Ward wondered if she ever wore out a shoe.
And for her part, she enjoyed his quiet confidence. He was intelligent without being a bore, young without all the inane problems and aspirations of the others she knew, like Sean, and he was quite handsome. And last night she had gotten the feeling that he knew something about women and had had experiences with them, and that alone, in Ireland, was to be prized. But it was rather disturbing too, and she wondered who they had been and what he really thought about her, in comparison.
“I had thought that Aunt Grainne was—” she glanced at him; should she tell him? “—insane…”
He didn’t look up; he had known.
“…and not really marriable. At least Mammy always told me she was a ‘lost soul.’” She turned to Ward and smiled, seeing only the dark curls on his temple. “In Mammy’s inimitable way, best left forgotten, that whenever she saw any of the family it only made things worse for her. And now she turns up with a husband.”
Again she looked straight ahead. “What do you know about this, Inspector? And how is it coming along, the investigation and so forth?”
Ward smiled. “It’s progressing. Of course, I’m—” he hefted her arm, “—handling the most interesting aspects.”
“If indeed ‘handling’ you are.” She pretended to tug her arm away. “But continue.”
He glanced down at her legs again, pulling her close to him.
It wasn’t his place, as a detective, to reveal any information, and from what McGarr had said about his interview with Bechel-Gore, the girl was ignorant of her origins. “It’s known to us, of course, that you have an Aunt Grainne, but, as I said, you’re my area of responsibility. I’m to concentrate on you.”
He flashed a smile that she knew was self-consciously shy. His teeth were even, spaced rather far apart, and seemed very white against his dark skin. “How did the father respond to the—was it a demand?”
“Concentrating, are you?” She had noticed how he had been staring at her legs. Over Sean—who in many little ways, such as that, had made no pretense of his affection for her—she had felt a certain power, but with Ward it was different. He gave her the feeling that he was always in control, and she liked that. Control—something she herself could use a little of, now and then. “He told the man that I was Mammy’s closest relative and a legal adult and arrangements had been made to my wishes.
“They had a bit of an argument, it seems, and the man said he was going to take the matter to the courts, or so I gathered.”
“What did Father Menahan say?”
And her not being certain how much of his attention was because of her or his duty made Ward even more appealing to her. If he was making a pretense of his affection, he was very good at it; if not, she was flattered and could admire him all the more. For his reserve. “That he doubted it.”
“Doubted what?”
“That the matter would or could go to court.”
“The father’s very good for you.”
She wondered what that intended. Father John had been acting rather differently since—. Eager or something. “Yes. Our families have always been very close.”
“And what did he say about your aunt?”
“That he didn’t believe she could have a husband.”
“Then who could the man have been?”
“I don’t know.” It was that which had troubled Mairead most, but she put it out of her mind.
There was a man selling ice cream from an HB cart near the fountain, and Ward stopped. “Your favorite is chocolate on chocolate,” he said, remembering McGarr’s report of the contents of the fridge in her flat.
“How did you guess?”
“I’m a detective, amn’t I?”
McGarr felt a swell of pride in what he was seeing—the long reception room, all glass with a deep pile carpet, the low marble-top tables and designer lamps, the bustle below them in the work yard that stretched down to the quays where winches were lifting stacks of Norwegian and Finnish timber from the holds of two ships onto tall, fork-lift trucks that then scuttled the booty into warehouses—that the Michael Edward Murray he had known as a child, a friendless, disheveled kid and very poor, could have put the complex together, employing—what?—hundreds of people and providing the country with the building materials that were necessary to carry it into the twenty-first century.
Granted, the carpet was a red so bright that McGarr could scarcely look at it directly, and the designer of the lamps and tables had communicated but one thing—that a small fortune had been squandered on the materials—but McGarr imagined some concession had to be made to Murray’s abilities in commerce. Whatever way he had assembled his mini-empire—by payoffs, political favors, and ruthless undercutting of competitors, some said—and whatever way he expressed his new wealth, it was impressive, and McGarr had a soft spot in his heart for the people he had grown up with.
O’Shaughnessy, though, had scanned the room with unconcealed distaste. He had stared down at the material of the emerald-green couch before sitting down and hadn’t touched the tumbler of malt Murray had had sent out to them after McGarr had announced himself. “Colorful, isn’t it?” he had observed, and when McGarr had raised his glass, the Garda superintendent had only said, “Ice,” his expression as frigid.
“Peter!” Murray bellowed from the doorway to the offices. “And Liam. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He too had a glass in his hand, but also a fat cigar protruding from between
his fingers, and his complexion was an alarming red, nearly purple. His eyes were bloodshot and he seemed to have a tic or a muscle spasm in one lid. It fluttered uncontrollably, and he had to put a hand up to stop it.
He proceeded to show them what he called the operation, much of which was visible from the top floor of the tall building. But it wasn’t all of his activity, he put in. There was the Blackrock complex, the Limerick concern, the Ballinasloe plant, and so forth. “And then there’s the horses too.”
“In a way,” McGarr cut in, “that’s why we’re here.”
Murray’s head quivered, and he blinked several times. His bulbous nose was veined and raw. There was a drop of mucous on it, which he wiped away with his hand. “Yes—well, why don’t we step into my office?”
It was all that McGarr had expected, a somewhat smaller version of the reception room but with one wall covered by framed photographs of his family, friends, his political associates, his business operations, horses and riders. Two were of Mairead Caughey looking…noble, a derby on her black, bunned hair, a mud net over her face, which was set in concentration. In a hard, determined way she was as striking as McGarr had ever seen her.
“She does something for a horse, wouldn’t you say?” McGarr asked.
“I would. I would that, but it’s what she does with a horse that I admire.”
“Almost as skilled as Grainne Bechel-Gore on Kestral, I’m told.”
Murray looked down at the top of his desk and seemed to sigh. He slumped into the tall, leather chair. “You’ve got a bad source there, Peter. She does much more, and you’ll see if you go to the jumping tomorrow.”
“That good, eh?” McGarr kept staring at the picture. There was something frightening—or was it intimidating?—about the way she appeared, as though she were wearing a modern-day equivalent of a medieval knight’s battle helmet. And the expression in her black eyes and on the clean lines of her face was sinister, threatening. A kind of brutal and hard but feminine centaur.
“On the proper mount.”
“And you have that?”
“Several. I only wish she could have torn herself away from that blasted piano to have competed overseas for me. Now, with the mother dead and all—” He looked away.
McGarr turned to him and walked past O’Shaughnessy, who had not accepted the proferred seat but stood at the glass wall, looking out at the city. “Don’t mind me saying this, Mick, but you look terrible.”
Murray’s eyes quavered. “Up all night. The Show and—”
“Your son, Sean.”
The eyes fixed McGarr’s. The man was sweating, although the office was air conditioned. “Is that what brought you?”
McGarr nodded and pretended to search his pockets for a smoke.
“Cigar?” Murray offered.
“Love one.”
O’Shaughnessy shifted his weight.
When McGarr had it lit, he sat. “Sean’s got problems, Mick.”
“I know.”
“How long have you known?”
Murray swiveled in the chair and looked out the window. “For longer than I’ve wanted to admit to myself, but now he’s gone off the deep end. I’d thought—what the hell is a little hemp? Smoked it myself, to no effect.” He raised the whisky glass.
“Maybe…maybe I made too many demands on him, pushed the business on him, the law, Trinity. I’m not one to believe that any cause is ever really lost, but I hear it’s like booze—you never really come back from it a hundred percent, there always seems to be something missing.
“Sean and me, we had it out, and…” Murray looked out the window, over the work yards and the Liffey and toward the city in the distance. “But I suspect you’re not here, talking to me like this, just because Sean has a drug problem.”
O’Shaughnessy moved again.
McGarr cocked his head. Surely he would have come to him, an old acquaintance, with precisely that information, had it been all that he knew of the son’s recent activities. “Are you still representing him?”
“I don’t think he’d want me to, now.”
“Mind you, Mick—I’m not interested in making an arrest, but there’s been a rash of break-ins in the Ballsbridge area.”
Murray turned to him, but he said nothing.
“Around the time of several—four to be exact—Sean’s car was ticketed in the vicinity.” McGarr waited. There was no reaction from Murray, but McGarr hadn’t expected any, him being a solicitor and a good one.
“In another case and recently, a young man was chased from a woman’s flat. She described a fellow very much like Sean. He got into a yellow roadster. The last three figures on the plate correspond to Sean’s.”
Still Murray remained as he was, the stream of cigar smoke rising up pale blue and sinuous.
McGarr waited.
The cigar moved toward Murray’s mouth. The end was gluey.
McGarr looked down at his own—all leaf tobacco, a maduro wrapper, a light, white ash that held—and drew in on it. Cuban filler, top leaf, a first-rate smoke, expensive. “Blodgett & Zinn?”
Murray nodded.
O’Shaughnessy moved once again.
“But that’s not why you’re here, the break-ins?”
McGarr was again surprised by the question. Wasn’t it enough? “Do you mean the cover-up, your getting Doyle and Scanlon to lie for you?”
Murray frowned. It wasn’t that either.
“And then, his car was tagged a black from the Caughey house at the time of the murder. He had the means to get in, he’s proved that since.”
“Motive?”
“He and the mother didn’t get on. Your son’s a jealous sort, Mick, and he rather fancies Mairead, I believe.” McGarr turned his head to the photos on the wall. “Not that I can blame him.”
“Circumstantial evidence. You couldn’t make it stick.”
“Wouldn’t have to. The drugs, the other break-ins, his violent temper. I hear he’s all banged-up right now. And then there’s the questioning—I understand he’s not one to put up much of a front.”
O’Shaughnessy was pacing in front of the window, hands in pockets, hat on head, head down.
Murray watched him for a while, hating the culchie bastard. Little did he know, less could he care, what it had taken to build all that Murray had out of nothing. And he was jealous—Murray could almost feel it. A civil servant, a leech.
“He’s my only son, my only child. I thank you for coming here like this, Peter, but I must tell you that I’ll fight it tooth and nail with everything I have, fair and foul.”
“I thought as much.”
“But between us—” he paused, his eyes suddenly filling with tears; he swallowed and looked away, “—I guess I’m as much to blame as Sean or Bridie. No—” He shook his head. “Not Bridie. She’s a good woman, the best. And Sean, he’s been like day and night since he’s been to that bloody college of his. It’s there, I’m sure, that he got in with them muckers and gobshites. I should have sent him to a Catholic university. I—” his voice broke. He reached for the drink.
It was an embarrassing moment, but McGarr had been with many people in such situations and was content to watch the smoke drift up from his cigar.
Not O’Shaughnessy, however. “Where were you at four-fifteen Friday afternoon, Mister Murray?”
Murray looked over at him and blinked away the tears. He turned to McGarr. “Is he included in this conversation, Peter?”
“It would seem so.”
“Do you want me to answer that question?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you not to answer it, Mick.” McGarr placed the cigar in his mouth, drawing in the rich, musky smoke that tasted of the dank earth in which it had been grown. Spicing it was the aroma of the cedar humidor. He tasted the drink. It pleased him as well.
Murray considered McGarr—always was a little gouger, that one, he thought. Small and tough and fast. He never got caught. Had he been a fool to think he could play along with him, l
ike this? He had, but it was too late for that now. “I was in my office.”
“Here?”
“No, my law office.”
“Where’s that?”
“In Kildare Street.”
“Where in Kildare Street?”
Murray snapped his head to McGarr. “Why him and all these questions, goddammit? Kildare Street isn’t very bloody long, or doesn’t he know?” He turned back to O’Shaughnessy, muttering something else under his breath.
“Near the library or away from it?”
“Every bloody thing on the entire bloody block is near the bloody library, you fool.”
O’Shaughnessy remained unperturbed, staring out the window, hands now clasped behind his back, his tall and wide figure shadowing the room. “When was the last time you were in the library?”
“Is he serious? Years!” he nearly shouted. “Years and years ago!”
“You’d make a statement to that effect?”
Murray sighed, pushed himself back in the chair, and drew on the cigar. They’d gotten to him, they had. He must be slipping. Tired, he was, dead tired, but with Sean having as much as dropped the Show in his lap, and the other thing that was bothering him, he couldn’t have slept even if he’d tried. He smiled wanly. “Sure. Why not?”
“And sign it?”
“Je-sus.” He pushed himself forward, picked up a pen, and scrawled on a pad. “I,” he said, “M. E. Murray, T. D., have not been in the National Library in five years.
“Here you go. Have a happy day, my friend.” He held it out.
O’Shaughnessy did not move. “And Father Menahan—is he on your payroll?”
“Yes, from time to time, although I wouldn’t call it payroll. He come to company dinners, banquets, the like. The man is a brilliant speaker. He plays the piano like…like Rachmaninoff.”
“He came to your house last night. What for?”
“A personal matter, having to do with my son. I need advice, Superintendent. It’s not every day one discovers that his son is a dope addict.”
That was too quick, too defensive, and McGarr sat up, pushing the drink away from him. O’Shaughnessy went on.
The Death of an Irish Tradition Page 20
