The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  But you have been speaking to him, and at length, Bresnahan thought. Now Bresnahan’s Irish was up; she had read Power’s note cards, the ones that had been found with his corpse, and she knew Power’s opinion of Frost. According to Power, Frost was a self-serving chameleon and toady. McGarr had told her to play devil’s advocate, if necessary, and she called out, “Who was the attending physician when Mr. Power was taken?”

  Sensing Bresnahan knew more than they and was onto something, the reporters in the room quieted.

  Frost’s ears pulled back, and McKeon, sitting directly in front of the podium, smiled to see the man’s jaw firm. Frost’s polish was beginning to wear thin, and his eyes shied toward the windows where Gladden and the man with him were still arguing with hotel security. “Dr. Maurice J. Gladden, who was Paddy’s family physician here in Sneem.”

  “A postmortem of Mr. Power’s remains was performed.” It was not a question but rather a statement of fact to be denied at Frost’s peril.

  He nodded.

  “What was the finding?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t read the report.” Frost glanced up at Bresnahan, who let the silence carry the thought that he had already spoken of the cause of Power’s death without having read the postmortem report.

  “Is there any question of foul play?” another reporter jumped right in.

  Frost only stared at him.

  “Why was a postmortem ordered?” yet another put in.

  “Has the Garda been called in?”

  “Was that the reason for the delay in announcing Mr. Power’s death?”

  “Are there copies of the report available?”

  Frost closed his eyes and turned his shoulders away from the lectern. “Please. Let us spare Paddy’s family any undue agony. Their loss is great enough. Paddy was a brilliant, resourceful, involved man in the prime of his abilities. A potential leader. If the Garda were informed, it was merely as a formality. At the moment it’s all that can be said. Try to keep yourselves from sullying his record accomplishment and humanitarianism.” Frost stepped away from the lectern.

  A barrage of other questions were shouted at him, but he only clasped his hands behind his back and maintained a polite, if grim, smile of resignation.

  Gretta Osbourne had already left the room.

  O’Shaughnessy nodded to McKeon, who rose to take a turn around the terrace where Gladden could still be seen. On his way out the door he heard one reporter ask another, “Who the hell is she?” meaning Bresnahan.

  “Dunno.”

  Said the walrus with the shoe-brush mustache, “Canadian television. I saw her a number of times over there. Brilliant, isn’t she? And—”

  And, the others were thinking.

  Frost was now surrounded by reporters, but he pushed through them and approached Bresnahan. “I’m Shane Frost. I don’t believe we’ve met.” He held out his hand. “You’re—?”

  “Ruth.” She did not take his hand.

  “May I buy you a drink?” He checked the glitter of his gold watch. “The sun is over the yardarm, as is said. Just. Two past twelve. What say?”

  “If I can ask you some questions.”

  “And I you. I think you’re somebody I should get to know.”

  “Here or in the bar?” she asked.

  Frost turned his body, as though scanning the room or wishing her to study his distinguished profile.

  “The bar,” she decided. If Hughie could stay close enough, she would have a witness to Frost’s remarks.

  Out on the terrace, McKeon watched Gladden harangue a group of reporters, while another man distributed fliers. Thought McKeon, studying Gladden’s wind-reddened features and his wild and unlikely glossy green eyes, now there stands some sly class of culchie madman who will do anything to get what he wants. The photocopied sheets announced a “different” press conference that Gladden would give at the bridge in Sneem on the morrow.

  “The hypocrites!” Gladden roared. “They murdered Paddy. Now they’ll mourn him. They scoffed at his proposal when he was alive, wouldn’t even send a representative down to his conference here. By Friday—mark my words—it’ll be their conference with their priorities and their agenda.”

  Several reporters attempted to sound him out, but Gladden would only say what was also printed on the fliers. “Tomorrow at noon I’ll give you the facts on the murder of Paddy Power. The motive. Who benefits and why.”

  “What d’you mean by murder?”

  “What proof do you have, Mossie, or is this another of your charges?”

  “Give us some proof!”

  When Gladden refused to offer any, the reporters began withdrawing to their cars. Gladden turned to the man with him and said, “I’m off now, straight home. I’ll have the masters there in your office by four at the latest. That should give you plenty of time to make copies before the press conference.”

  “How many will we need?”

  “At least enough for all the major papers, radio and television. Say, a dozen, to be safe.”

  His assistant looked away, as though it was a tall order.

  “Do you have enough paper? We don’t want to run out again.”

  “With that ream you bought, I should have enough.”

  Gladden then launched himself at his battered Land Rover, his odd, rolling gait making his shoulders pitch and heave. He grappled himself into the ancient vehicle that with a cough and a cloud of diesel smoke churned toward the gate.

  McKeon fell in behind Gladden’s helper, whose car was parked farther up the drive. “Fair day in spite of the chill,” he remarked.

  “’Tis, but we’ll see frost again by sundown.”

  Count on it, thought McKeon. “Overheard you speaking to yer mahn.” He meant Gladden. “You wouldn’t happen to be a solicitor hereabouts, would yah now?”

  A quick, suspicious gaze fell on him. The man was a tall, lean, tough-looking customer with a pocked complexion that the sharp wind made look red and blistered. “Are you with the press?”

  McKeon closed his eyes and expelled some air, as though it was the last thing he’d be. “Not at all, at all. I’m a banker, here for the debt conference. But I’ve always been in love with Kerry, don’t you know. And thinking about buying a bit of property in the area, now that I can. I’ve got a problem though, since I spend most of my time in Dublin, I had it in the back of me mind that a solicitor—Here.” He reached into a pocket of his suit coat and drew out a card, the ink of which he hoped was dry. It said:

  Bernard Quintus McKeon

  Managing Director

  Information Services

  Allied Irish Banks

  “Have you one of your own?”

  The man did. “Of course. My office is on the square in Sneem. On the laneway leading to the church. Anything I can do to be of service, just ring me up. Here, I’ll include my home phone.” He wrote that on the back.

  As McKeon had suspected, Kieran Coyne was a solicitor with an accent no less unmistakably Dublin than his own. And hungry for any fees he could find in this godforsaken place. Or clients, like Gladden, whom he might charge for copying documents. Of what, McKeon could not guess.

  The postmortem report? No, he decided, ambling back toward the lounge where, now that it was past noon and lunch would soon be served, McKeon could resume his enjoyable work in earnest. The postmortem of Paddy Power was now a matter of public record and would soon be in the possession of every reporter who had just left Parknasilla.

  Some transcript of Power’s proposal to the debt conference? Perhaps, given Gladden’s promise to the press. Or Paddy Power’s note cards, copies of which had been sent to Power’s ex-wife and had been discovered by McGarr in her suite at the Waterville Lake Hotel?

  No—that would be too much to hope for, since Gladden would be as much as implicating himself in Power’s “murder,” as he was calling it.

  CHAPTER 8

  O’Duffy’s Man, Slane

  FROM THE ROAD below, Mossie Gladden’
s farm looked like a green bite that had been nipped from the gray mountain. Contained in “The Pocket,” which Paddy Power had called a “topographical curiosity,” it looked more to Noreen like “the kind of pleasant, atavistic vision of the Ireland you see in the travel brochures.

  “You know, the independent farmer’s small holding, complete with thatched roof, two-room cottage, and a neat row of outbuildings to the rear. And clear, cold streams—twins, no less—gushing from the cliff face of a mountain with a high, glorious sky beyond. Tell me I’m not counting four green fields, as in that old chestnut of a song the Abbey Tavern Singers forever abuse. It’s a wonder Guinness or Harp or one of the other beer companies haven’t snapped it for an advert.”

  McGarr thought they had, or at least it was a sight that he had dreamed or imagined before. What wasn’t showing, however, was the labor it had taken to clear the fields of boulders and rocks, and how dark, musty, and cold that pretty cottage was in most weather, and how cramped on a brilliant autumn day such as this. McGarr could see no utility lines leading into the house. Gladden either had his own generator, or he had “eschewed”—Frost’s word, when excoriating Gladden—that aspect of modern life as well.

  Yet there was a wisp of turf smoke curling from the chimney, and, when McGarr parked the Rover in the turnaround on the drive and climbed out, he was struck by the near-silence of the place. All he could hear was the distant plashing of the twin streams and the occasional jingle from the bell of a far-off sheep.

  As advertised, Maddie was asleep, and Noreen had rolled down the window. “Listen,” she whispered. “The weeping cries. That’s lapwing—you know, crested plover—which winters here in Kerry and then flies back to Norway in the spring.” As if on cue, a small flock of birds appeared, wheeled overhead, and beat toward the mountain. “I think I’ve also heard thrush, lark, and linnet.”

  McGarr didn’t know one from the other. He was a Dubliner born and bred; his parents had had no country house in Kildare, like hers, and the closest he got to nature was the carefully nurtured confines of his back garden.

  “This place could be on Mars for all you can sense of the rest of the human world,” she went on. “I wonder how long Gladden has had it?”

  Or how long it would take him to return, thought McGarr, who wished to look around undisturbed. “Honk if you hear somebody coming.” He then advanced upon the house, first checking around back to make sure Gladden had not returned from Parknasilla, and pulled his truck in where it could not be seen from the drive.

  No dog, which was a blessing but curious for a farmer with sheep. Not in the sheds or in the house. McGarr knocked and called out to make sure, then pushed open the door, which was hung on goatskin tethers and clasped by a hand-carved wooden latch.

  Inside was clean, neat, and warm, heated by a shiny Stanley number-eight range, the pipe of which had been inserted into the flue of the chimney. Near it an accordion rack held drying clothes. A large, similarly bright kettle on a trivet was jetting a funnel of steam.

  To one side of the large, open room, which had once been divided in two, was a long, narrow pallet padded with eiderdown comforters where, McGarr assumed, Gladden slept. Nearby were an armoire that held Gladden’s clothes, a comfortable reading chair with a spirit floor lamp behind, and a tall case of books.

  After closing the armoire, McGarr checked the titles. Irish classics on the topmost shelves. All were well thumbed, especially Yeats’s Countess Cathleen, which McGarr seemed to remember was a dreamy play about an Irish countess who sold her soul to save her people but got into heaven all the same. He replaced the book.

  The lower, more accessible shelves were stocked with newer books, by the look of their bright dustcovers. Most seemed to deal with political and economic issues. McGarr switched off the lamp and turned around.

  The length of a country kitchen table divided the room. On the other side was a kind of rough surgery with a raised hospital table of gleaming stainless steel, several medical cabinets nearby, and another collection of books, all medical. Overhead was a large lamp, again lit by alcohol, of the sort that McGarr had used before and that was equipped with a mechanical spark.

  He pushed the red trigger. On the second snap the wick caught and burned with a blue flame that he turned up into a bright white light. The medical cabinets contained lotions, ointments, salves, gauze and plaster bandages, splints, and two neatly arranged drawers of medical instruments.

  Of pills, tablets, and ampules, there were dozens of vials, bottles, and containers; McGarr tried to guess at the number and type of people whom such a remote surgery could possibly serve. Other than mountain farmers, such as Gladden had said he himself had become. But from where, some even more remote reach of the South Kerry Mountains? McGarr hadn’t seen more than a dozen farms after they had left the main road beyond Sneem, but he remembered Bresnahan saying that Gladden would treat anybody and never turned a patient away.

  McGarr was about to close the drawers when a device caught his eye. It was made of some strong, light metal, like aluminum, and was essentially a stationary arm with a lever that, when thrown, brought pressure to bear on a central point. There, small dies in different shapes and sizes could be inserted into yokes in each arm to produce, McGarr guessed, pills and tablets.

  In the kitchen, which was no more than a cubby with a two-ring cook stove, a sink, and a single, cold-water tap, McGarr found a plastic sack. In it he placed the device and its dies. It all looked clean and gleaming, but the Tech Squad might find residues.

  The small kitchen itself came next. Apart from a flitch of bacon, hanging from a rafter, it too was spartan. McGarr could discover only the wedge of cheddar cheese, the stale heel of barmbrack, and the tins of brislings that were a feature of bachelor digs the country over. Gladden obviously took most of his meals in some other place.

  Behind a door he found a shotgun and a .306 bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight, and some targets hanging from a peg. The top one pictured what looked like a wild dog with SEAN in Gaelic letters written below the head. McGarr remembered Power’s note card, the one that had been clutched in his dead hand, describing how Gladden had been forced to begin shooting the wild dogs that were preying on his sheep. Sean was a euphemism, McGarr supposed; as in, having lost another sheep to—

  Maddie had wakened, and McGarr could hear her complaining as he made his way across the haggard to the outbuildings. He chose the farthest shed first. The door was locked but yielded readily to one of the several picks on McGarr’s key ring. Inside he found a half-dozen pieces of rusting half-inch steel plate. Three pieces had recently been cut with an acetylene torch and tank that sat on a dolly nearby. Farther in was a nearly new Ford Granada with number plates from Northern Ireland. Cupping a hand to cut the glare, he peeked at the odometer, which read just 367 miles, about what it would have taken to drive it from the North to Kerry.

  McGarr replaced the cover. He closed the door, slipped the shackle through the swivel eye, and snapped it home.

  In the next shed he found farm implements and various animal feeds. The next was a chicken coop with an alarmed brood that scolded him. Closest to the house was a kind of changing shed where Gladden kept the roughest of his farm work clothes and foul-weather gear. Beside them were a collection of dirt-encrusted slanes, a breensler, and spreading pikes, tools that were used for cutting peat. A heavy black coat, cinched by an old belt, was hanging from pegs there, but the side pockets of the coat yielded nothing but a physician’s thermometer and a small pad for writing prescriptions. Gladden’s name was printed on top.

  In the large interior pocket that farmers sometimes used to warm a newborn lamb, McGarr’s fingers felt something thick and soft, and he pulled out what looked like human hair. It was an ash-blond wig, the synthetic strands of which were at least two feet long. McGarr asked himself what Gladden could possibly want with that. Some disguise for hunting the wild dogs that were preying upon his sheep, since the pocket also rendered a handful of .306
-caliber cartridges? Some other farm use—say, to warm wild-bird or duck eggs that Gladden discovered while tramping the mountains? Some…dramatic use for a play Gladden had been in? McGarr thought of the several play scripts in the case of books near the reading chair. Or perhaps some predilection of Gladden that was known only to himself.

  McGarr replaced it and stepped farther into the outbuilding. There, he found saddlebags for a horse, and other leather satchels that could be hung on an ass rail, which was shielded by a tarp. All were empty.

  McGarr was about to return to the house for a closer search, when his foot blundered into some old Wellies that lined a dry, shadowed corner of the shed. Two had fallen over, and in picking them up, McGarr found he could not get the soft rubber to remain in the former upright position. Somehow they were too worn or too heavy. He squatted down and tried again with no luck.

  Only when he held the top of one boot to the light and looked in did he see the cause. Stacks of note cards had been stuffed into the rubber boot. He pulled a bunch out and saw the now-familiar neat, crabbed hand. He carried them over to the light; it was Paddy Power’s writing.

  They were Power’s note cards, the originals. McGarr lifted them out and fanned through some, his eyes falling on the subheadings, “Political Roots,” “Political Debts,” “Economic Policy,” “Favors Owed,” “Election Financing,” “Dirty Tricks” the same categories that he had seen in the photocopies he had taken from Nell Power’s suite at the Waterville Lake Hotel a few hours earlier.

  The card material was slick, and in trying to group them, McGarr kept dropping one here and another there. Bending to gather them up, he saw a shadow dart across the front of the haggard, and before he could look up, a deep, enraged voice cried, “So—it’s you, O’Duffy’s man, messing about where you don’t belong! Won’t I give you a toompin’ you’ll never forget.”