“How much earlier?”
“Six months ago at least.”
“But you didn’t tell your wife.”
“I was waiting until after, after the—”
Show, McGarr thought, the Show yet again.
“Because you had to pay for the information, and on top of all your other payments and having been injured you really aren’t doing well financially, in spite of all the recent wins.”
The ambulance doors slammed shut and the claxon sounded as it moved away rapidly.
Only then did Bechel-Gore turn his eyes to McGarr’s. “I don’t think I’ll manage it, really. Not now. And frankly I don’t know if I care.”
McGarr did, however; he cared very much. “How much did you pay?”
Another doctor now moved toward them with two attendants carrying a litter.
“About twenty thousand pounds. I thought it would put the matter to rest.”
McGarr wondered about the timing of Menahan’s recent affluence and Bechel-Gore’s payment. Between the two there was probably a great measure of—again the word—congruity.
“But still you continued the other payments—to Keegan and—”
“Of course, she’s my…daughter.” He turned to the attendants, who were trying to ease him onto the litter. “I can walk.”
“Then this way,” said the doctor.
McGarr swung around and found O’Shaughnessy, who had been observing the exchange. He nodded, and O’Shaughnessy moved toward Murray.
Ward pushed though the cordon of guards. “He’s in a horse van that’s parked in the departures area.
“Dead, dammit.”
“How’s—?”
The other police made way for McGarr. “Not very good.”
Ward looked away.
Five hours later McGarr was pacing in front of a window in the dayroom at his offices in the Castle. Sitting in a chair was Murray, the father, the front of his shirt open and showing a large white bandage on his chest.
O’Shaughnessy was standing in the shadows, leaning against a wall.
McKeon was in a chair by the door, a hand to his mouth. All his lower teeth were now quite loose and they hurt.
Said Murray, “Listen, Peter, and it’s the God’s honest truth—I just thought I’d throw a scare into him.”
“Is that an admission of guilt, Mister Murray? Who’s ‘he?’” O’Shaughnessy asked.
“Christ,” Murray looked away. “Can’t we talk about this alone, McGarr?”
It depended upon what he had to tell him, but McGarr knew Murray was too crafty and experienced to admit to any crime and wise enough to know they had nothing on him.
“How did you get the bullet wound, Mister Murray?” O’Shaughnessy continued, but in a quiet, low voice. He’d keep at him for hours and days, if he had to.
“For Jesus’ sake the last time, you culchie bastard—I shot myself while I was cleaning a handgun.” Murray’s face was the color of fresh liver, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was sweating; but without solid evidence they’d have to free him in forty-eight hours, that or impose the provisions of the Offenses Against the State Act and there too a judge would demand definite proof. And Murray had friends, journalist friends.
“And you were treated where and by whom?”
“Are you as thick as you look? I pulled it out with me teeth and spat it in the can.”
“And did you…”
No—McGarr continued pacing—. Frayne was dead and with him had died the possibility of making the connection between him and whoever had hired him. And then the second Skorpion—rather the fifth—had been dropped into the straw on the floor of the horse van: that was the new connection.
There was a rap on the door and through the frosted glass McGarr could see the massive shape of Ban Gharda Bresnahan.
McKeon had stood, but McGarr moved toward her himself.
“Peter—for the love of God, don’t leave me with these gobshites.”
McGarr closed the door and took the sheaf of reports from Bresnahan.
She’d found a break-in report that had been added to the computer’s memory unit only that morning. A pensioner in Ballsbridge had complained of a burglary that had occurred at the same time as the Caughey murder and three blocks away. The man had gone out for groceries and had returned to surprise the burglar. He described young Murray right down to the tan suit, the long, wavy hair, and the slightly bent nose. Fingerprints had been taken. All that remained was for the guards to lift Murray and lay the charges.
McGarr thought for a moment—he didn’t know where young Murray had been during the Horse Show, but he didn’t think that the boy was violent, and whoever was the connection had had contact with either Bechel-Gore or Menahan.
The next report cleared that up.
Paddy O’Meara, Bechel-Gore’s chauffeur, had dropped out of sight. Bresnahan had called Coombe Memorial Hospital. Bechel-Gore had confirmed that O’Meara had taken the postal delivery of the returned tack from the Czech army horse purchase. It had been in those cartons that the six automatic weapons had been sent him.
McGarr signed the request of the detective who was investigating the Ballsbridge burglaries, and appended a note about young Murray’s supposed drug addiction.
“All points on O’Meara. Tall, blond, in his late thirties.”
“Already done, sir.”
McGarr glanced up at Bresnahan. “Charge?”
“Murther.”
“The English authorities?”
“Put in that request first. Armed and dangerous.”
McGarr nodded once.
Armed. The Skorpions. Five of six recovered and McGarr was willing to bet the last was the one Murray and whoever had been with him had used at Keegan’s place in Drogheda. They’d never find it, of course, but he again thought of the connection between Murray and Frayne, whose boot prints had been found there in Drogheda; and between Paddy O’Meara and Menahan, who had as much as admitted having told others about Bechel-Gore’s child, some of the locals out in Leenane. Menahan would know O’Meara and well, their being roughly the same age.
—The third report said Menahan, after having left the hospital, had returned to the Caughey apartment where Monsignor Kelly had been waiting for him on the doorstep. They had had a loud argument and Kelly had left. Later piano playing could be heard above.
Menahan. The piano. McGarr remembered Friday night and the way the twilight sun had made the gold letters seem as though they were lit from within and the photographs and the two women who’d been talking below in the back gardens. Missus Brady and—what was the other one’s name? Harmon. No. Herman. No.
McGarr reached for his smokes. Some sort of a bird. Walking toward his cubicle, he remembered. Herron.
She was at home, and after he’d identified himself, he asked her if she might know where Missus Brady’s husband drank, which she did, of course.
Back in his offices at the Castle, McGarr removed Murray from O’Shaughnessy’s clutches and saw to it his shirt was buttoned and his tie in place.
On their way down the stairs they met Fergus Farrell, the Commissioner.
“Back so soon. Short holiday, what?” said McGarr, moving past him.
“Where’re you going?”
In the doorway McGarr could see several guards who were keeping the reporters back. The voices of many rose to them and curses and shouts.
“Mick and I thought we’d pop out for a sup. Hot up there.”
Farrell, who knew Murray, nodded to him. “But don’t you think—”
“Not me. Had enough of that for the day. I think we’ll unstring the bow and that class of thing, eh, Mick?”
Murray didn’t know how to reply and he was watching McGarr closely. He didn’t care for his tone and the playful cast to his eye.
Farrell liked it much less.
McGarr paused on the top step. When the reporters had quieted, he said. “You know what happened today, but not why. Fogarty can tell you that. I’ll
have the rest for you tomorrow, and that’s a promise.”
“Will there be an arrest, Chief?”
“Yes.”
“Is Murray the man?”
McGarr glanced at him. “I don’t know.”
When McGarr slid into the Cooper, the others turned on Fogarty, who said, “He’s lying. I don’t know a goddamned thing.”
“‘Truer words…’” thought McGarr.
TEN
Fitting a Green Isle, Where It All Comes Down—Thin and Brash—To a Smile
A HEAVY SUMMER downpour had wet the city streets, and the tires hissed on the macadam.
“Isn’t it curious,” said Murray, “that after being kids together and all it should come down to this?”
McGarr reached for his flask and then, offering it, glanced at Murray’s puffy face. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No—indeed not, but it’s as good as dashed, my—” he gestured with the flask, “—life, you see.” His smile was thin. “But it’s curious too, you know. At least now there seems to be some…adventure in my future, if you know what I mean.”
It was a nice observation but odd, coming from Murray, and McGarr drove on.
He found Brady, and while Murray waited in the car he explained what he wanted.
Menahan was still at the piano when they arrived. He objected but put on the only suit that McGarr could find in the Caughey woman’s former—now Menahan’s—closet. It was made of some fine, light gray material and fit him well. And a derby. McGarr found that there too. Vanity, he thought, and pride.
The light at the bottom of the Caughey staircase wasn’t strong, and the setting sun, obscured by the rooftops of the houses across the street, cast only a pale mauve glow. But McGarr suspected the little lad’s eyes were sharp, and he had his father there with him in the closet for support.
McGarr handed the derby to Murray. “You first, Mick.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just put it on, open the door, and walk up the stairs.”
Murray looked down at the derby, turning it in his hands. “You wouldn’t happen to have—”
McGarr again reached for the flask, then opened the door and said into the empty hall, “Ready?”
He heard a muffled reply. Tony Brady, the boy, was standing in the dark with his eye to the crack between the stairs, his father behind him.
His mother was watching with Missus Herron, the two of them out on the front lawn with their arms crossed over their chests, cardigans hanging loose by their sides.
Murray handed the flask back to McGarr and fitted on the hat, his jowls rippling as he adjusted it. He seemed to gird himself, then reached for the handle, pulled open the door, and stood there a moment, diffident, before he moved forward.
When Murray returned, McGarr took the derby from him and moved toward the priest, who was smiling.
“You to play, Father.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove here, Inspector. The word of a child, you know, isn’t admissible in any court of law.”
“Only the truth, Father.” McGarr glanced up the street. House lights had been extinguished, and people were standing in the darkened doorways. At least several press people had learned of McGarr’s whereabouts and were out on the sidewalk. “And I’m sure in all his innocence little Tony Brady can tell it us.”
Fergus Farrell opened the gate and approached them.
Still with the smile on his face—forced, it was, making him look more like a commercial traveler than a priest—Menahan raised the derby and fitted it on his brow.
But before he could move forward, Missus Brady stepped up to the hedges. “If all you’re after wanting to know is if Father John Francis came back on Friday afternoon, Inspector—he did. And didn’t I see him with my own two eyes, dressed as he is. Had his back to the door so I couldn’t see his face at first, and I heard Missus Caughey ask who was it and he gave no reply. It took her some time to get down the stairs, you see, so I had a…peek.
“The father said he forgot his key. Isn’t that so, Father?”
Menahan turned but not to her, only McGarr. What little of his smile remained made him seem ill. “That’s not enough, and you know it.”
“Ah, but I don’t, Father. The truth is sometimes—” he appropriated Menahan’s own words, relishing the opportunity, “—difficult, is it not? Just like the situation you tried to generate.
“Let me piece it out for you.
“You didn’t find it sufficient to shop the truth to Bechel-Gore two months ago. He paid you a full twenty thousand pounds, but he did nothing with it, so you turned to Murray here and made it work for you twice. You told him everything, about how Bechel-Gore had gotten Grainne Keegan pregnant and that the child had been taken by Grainne’s older sister and brother because they thought she wouldn’t be a competent mother and, later, they saw a way of getting back at Bechel-Gore.
“For Murray here, who was way out of his element in the horse business, the situation was ready-made. He’d committed himself to his operation, and if he could just get it going, make a showing, he’d be able to float another loan or unload it. At least he’d be able to keep his head above water.
“But in spite of the Skorpion you supplied Murray with—through Paddy O’Meara, your boyhood chum who was working for Bechel-Gore—he blew it. He hired Frayne and some others with I. R. A. connections to raid Keegan’s place in Drogheda, where he’d established an identity as Doctor Malachy Matthews. But instead of throwing a scare into Keegan and making him want to go for Bechel-Gore, they almost killed him. Murray himself took a slug and it made him wary. He’d had enough.
“It was then, Father,” McGarr said derisively, “that you saw your opportunity to—” he turned and faced Menahan directly, “—rid yourself of many of the people—Margaret Kathleen Caughey, in particular—who would keep Mairead from you.
“You murdered her, Father…”
Menahan went to object, but McGarr held up a hand. “…cold-bloodedly, right upstairs in front of that chair. And you then commissioned Jack B. Frayne, who was a psychotic and whose record was public knowledge, to initiate, along with several of the others who had worked for Murray, an attack on Bechel-Gore, to feed Kestral the apples, to shoot at him and miss. The whole attempt was to make it seem like a feud between Bechel-Gore and the people on whose former land he lived. They had wronged each other for years and it would appear that things were just working themselves out. And if the police could get beyond that, there was always Murray. He’d committed himself personally, even had a bullet wound that would tie him in.
“But Frayne—now, he’s the interesting case,” McGarr’s voice was icy. “He turned out better than your wildest dreams, didn’t he? At least for a while.” McGarr studied Menahan’s facial features closely, the fleshy cheeks and the bright, dark eyes that held his gaze. “He just liked to kill and it didn’t matter much who—Bechel-Gore, if he could have gotten a clear shot at him, his accomplices in the kip, the Netherlander we found in the back of the car, and, alas, he even tried to kill your Mairead.”
Menahan’s slight smile was set, stonelike and implacable.
“Frayne was a—” McGarr remembered Descartes and tried to think of a term that was mathematical, “—variable. Wild and unpredictable and a liability because he knew enough to incriminate you. So you sent him to the Horse Show, thinking he’d create some sort of havoc, perhaps slay the mother or Bechel-Gore, if Keegan himself didn’t get them first. Only Paddy O’Meara could put a bend on you, and you knew him too well. He’d keep his mouth shut if you could just get him away. It was he who was waiting for Frayne in the back of the van at the Show Ground and with the final, the sixth Skorpion.
“Now, why is the curious point, is it not, Father?” McGarr spoke through his bottom teeth, remembering the way that Menahan had spread himself across the front seat of the Cooper that morning, godlike, his tone patronizing, his gestures didactic. “You saw your chance here,�
�� McGarr swirled his left hand and the man flinched, “to play at god, didn’t you? The mother said she was going to take Mairead away from Dublin, and you, you decided it would be easy and perhaps a bit of fun to manipulate all—” what was it Menahan had said during the first interview?—“all God’s pap, the coarse and talentless, just to keep her with you.
“Bechel-Gore’s knowing of her would open up another direction. She’d probably want to stay with her parents out there in Galway and you’d remain as her teacher at least a while longer. But the money you extorted from him showed your true ‘nobility,’ Father—you being one of the ‘big’ persons yourself. And it titillated you too, didn’t it? With enough of it—why, you wouldn’t need Bechel-Gore or Murray or any of them. And if you played things right you could find yourself suddenly with quite a bit of it and in control of a big talent, like hers, and she a handsome young woman who stood to inherit a smart sum herself.
“Just like—” again McGarr remembered Menahan’s dossier, “—a mathematical equation, you could reduce things down to zero or at least one, Mairead, or perhaps two, you and Mairead, when in fact the equation solved out to no more than avarice and lust and a particularly repulsive piece of corporeality, physical and otherwise, Father, namely yourself.
“We’ll see how ‘god’s pap’ judges seven deaths and perhaps an eighth, and she—” McGarr gestured with his hands, “—your big talent.”
Menahan only closed his eyes and folded his hands across the top of his belly in a manner that was definitely priestlike.
“Don’t you feel anything, even for her?” McGarr demanded.
Slowly Menahan opened his eyes. “Oh, surely, Mister McGarr. Most definitely. But you see—” he turned his head to him, his smile soft, almost beatific, “—Mairead will survive. That’s assured.”
“By whom?”
Menahan only closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “And I must warn you here and now,” his voice still carried the soft, pleasant tone, “if you arrest me, I’ll slap a lawsuit on you and, mind, I’ve got the will and the money to make it stick. And after triple damages I’ll have to consider you a benefactor.”
The Death of an Irish Tradition Page 26
