The Death of an Irish Sinner

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Talk about timing! Here I’ve been toiling—rather as you do and Mary-Jo did in your respective gardens—for a whole year to learn the ins and outs of Opus Dei. And just as I’m cobbling together the back story, along comes a double-murder cover story at the very locus of my inquiry. I call that downright serendipitous, don’t you?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Ah, shit. I’m in town. You probably want to meet me for a gargle, pick my brain, gain some perspective on the unpleasantness out there in Dunlavin.

  “Well, it can be arranged. What time do you think you can tear yourself away from the crime scene? I can come there, or you here. Makes little difference to me, although I am presently going over the proofs of the back story, as I mentioned. What’s your pleasure?”

  “How did you know about Mudd?”

  “Touts.”

  “Touts where?”

  “Do I yodel the first few bars of ‘Here, There and Everywhere’? Written by John Lennon, another murder victim, as I remember. Christ, it’s worldwide, isn’t it? Sacrificial slaughter.”

  “You’re in the Claddagh Arms, are you?”

  “See—you have your touts too.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  “Granted.”

  McGarr rang off and dialed Hugh Ward at home.

  CHAPTER 13

  FROM HIS LONG career as an amateur boxer, Hugh Ward knew that anger could be dangerous. It blinded you, made you drop your hands and lead with your head. It put what amounted to weights in your shoes.

  And yet you couldn’t prevent anger. You felt what you felt, and there was no escaping that. What you could do, however, was manage your anger, channel it, let the great surge of energy that came with it flow into proper places—the brain, the hands.

  Problem was, the outrage he was feeling was personal outrage, not…professional outrage of the sort he felt on the job when confronted with a particularly ugly crime or heinous criminal. No.

  The sort of anger Ward was feeling was more immediate and visceral. Dery Parmalee, who was holding forth at the end of the bar in the Claddagh Arms, had threatened the happiness of Ward’s wives, as he now thought of Lee and Ruth, and the children he’d fathered with each of them.

  And from what Parmalee knew about their living arrangement and what Ward knew about Parmalee, the man not only could, but one day would, make their lives front-page news. Which would destroy Ruth’s and his careers with the Garda and make the lives of his children most difficult. Of that he was certain.

  For not the first time in the last hour, Ward looked down at his hands, which any barrister worthy of his robe would denounce as lethal weapons in a court of law. All that needed to be mentioned was the fact that he had twice won the All-Euro amateur boxing title in the eighty-kilo weight class, which he had also dominated in Ireland for nearly a decade. Recently, in the gym, he’d had to pull his punches to keep himself from embarrassing the present champ.

  Ward’s dilemma was plain. He could do nothing, sit back, and watch the—scandalmonger was too delicate a term—at the end of the bar ruin their lives in a country where the collective mind forgot nothing the least bit compromising about a person. Especially a public person, as all police were in a direct way.

  Or he could act and effectively give Parmalee additional evidence of his “way-Ward-ness” that would more immediately ruin their lives.

  Ward’s only option, therefore, was to impress upon Parmalee the fact that he was indeed a man who was good with his fists. And that in spite of his boxing background he was not afraid and would use them, regardless of the consequences, were Parmalee to print the slightest allusion to him or his family. He would make Parmalee’s life a world of pain. There wouldn’t be a morning Parmalee got out of bed that he wouldn’t rue the day. If he survived. Ward’s anger was that hot.

  In a mirror, in the dining area of the pub—which was essentially one large room—he’d been watching Parmalee for over an hour. A tall man, at least six feet two or three, he was thin, with shoulders so square the ends seemed to function as mere hanging points for the blue blazer he was wearing.

  Standing at the bar with hands inserted in the slit front pockets of his blue jeans, Parmalee was chatting up two much younger women, every so often throwing back his head to laugh at what appeared to be his own bon mot. The women were mainly listening and drinking, Parmalee every so often signaling the barman to provide further rounds, although he drank little himself.

  Balding, Parmalee kept the steely hair that remained cropped close, and the skin of his pate, face, and hands was well tanned, as though he had recently passed a holiday in some sunny clime.

  But as he rattled on—the octagonal glasses splashing light reflected from the globe lamps on the ceiling, his thin body bobbing as he “courted” the twosome at the bar—Ward decided that Parmalee did not live up to his billing. He was less the irreverent, successful publisher—“a kind of brilliant and restless scarab beetle adept at the most titillating and suspect form of quasi-journalistic coprology,” said an assessment of him in a recent Sunday magazine—than a common barroom gobshite. Every pub had at least one—flap-jaw, motor-mouth, not interested in anybody’s opinion but his own.

  “We can’t do that,” one of the young women now said. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Why not? As I said, I’ll make it worth your while. If you’re superstitious about the number three, there’s always Bo over there.” Parmalee snapped his head toward the largest man in the bar, who had been watching both Parmalee and Ward while nursing a pint of plain. “He’s a man of daunting proportions in every way.” With both hands, Parmalee chopped off fourteen inches of air. “I know for a fact that he could…handle all three of us, no problem, and still stand up and salute.”

  Plainly the two women were struggling to appear blasé, which could lead them down the garden path with Parmalee, Ward knew, having pulled his rap sheet earlier in the evening. A year ago nearly to the date, a woman had filed a complaint against him, alleging that, after meeting him there in the Claddagh Arms, she had accompanied Parmalee and two other men back to his flat. There he had drugged her drink and forced her to engage in group sex.

  All three men, of course, swore they’d never seen her, and when a barman testified that she had left alone—Parmalee and the two others remaining until closing—the charge was thrown out. Outside of court, Parmalee told the assembled media gathered to report the outcome that he had found the entire experience “great craque, the very best advertising, which is free advertising, that Ath Cliath could get. There’s nothing like living in a society protected by the rule of law. Don’t you just love the way it safeguards the innocent?”

  It was at that point that he turned his face directly into the cameras. “Therefore, I urge any other venturesome lasses who might have found my attentions excessive to come forth and file complaints. But this time, please, make it at least sporting. Bring witnesses.”

  Large, with weight-lifter muscles bulging under a blue blazer similar to Parmalee’s that fairly shouted they were a team, Bo (or “Beau”) Driscoll was the publisher’s bodyguard, Ward assumed. And “bottom man,” when needed in a pinch.

  A pug in the super-heavyweight category who had once frequented the gym where Ward worked out, the large man had specialized in baiting smaller fighters to climb in the ring with him. But no boxer, he waited until his opponents’ arms tired, whereupon—usually—he’d flatten them with one punch. After a number of such incidents, the management barred him from the gym.

  Yet Driscoll had never been foolish enough to fight on any level—amateur or professional—that would have paired him against somebody his size or larger. Which made him—what?—just another big, bloated bag of shite and a perfect match for a “brilliant scarab beetle.”

  And not as sure of himself as he had been in the gym. Now climbing off the stool to pass to the jakes, Driscoll fastened the middle button of the blazer while staring over at Ward balefully. Could that slight bulge at t
he back of his spine be what Ward suspected it was?

  Yes, he decided, as the “big fella” with the shaved head and solitary gold hoop in one ear returned to the bar a few minutes later. He had either not told his tailor about the cargo he’d be carrying, or the largest jacket off the rack was one size too small for the addition.

  Ward stood and made his way toward the bar.

  “Ah-sole,” Parmalee said to the women, who turned to Ward as he passed.

  “We have the heat amongst us tonight, ladies. Who will now entertain us mightily with his daring-do. But most probably don’t, methinks.”

  Ward stopped well away from Driscoll. “Get off the stool and place your hands on the bar.”

  Driscoll turned his head slowly and regarded Ward, then turned back to the barman with the red face. “Know him?”

  The barman shook his head.

  “I do. A flyweight fook, he is. No fookin’ balls at all. Boxes with headgear and big puffy gloves. ‘Champ,’ they call him where wee fellas prance and dance. Chump he is. And an arse-lickin’ cunt.”

  The blow was telegraphed. Reaching a hand over to touch the shoulder of the other arm, Driscoll lashed out with a backhand chop that would have caught Ward in the side of the neck had he not dropped down. There in the shadow of the bar, he grabbed two legs of Driscoll’s bar stool and jerked up with all he had, sending the large man sprawling across the bar. His pint glass splashed the barman before crashing to the floor.

  The gold hoop came next. With one quick tug Ward ripped it from the ear, causing Driscoll to roar in pain and outrage.

  Pivoting to swing from the man’s blind side as Driscoll pushed himself off the bar, Ward darted a quick sharp punch into his upper stomach and felt the sternum collapse. Then, pivoting again on the ball of one foot, he kicked out at Driscoll’s right knee, which collapsed under the blow.

  As the man fell, Ward followed him down, making sure his bald head dunted squarely on the foot rail. Tugging up the jacket, Ward pulled what could only be a Tokarev from under Driscoll’s belt. It was a large, heavy, Red Army–issue automatic of the sort that had been readily available for the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ward removed the clip, checked the chamber, and laid it on the bar.

  Only then did he notice that Parmalee was gone. “Which way?” he demanded.

  The barman hunched his shoulders.

  “Which way!” he roared at the young women.

  One pointed to the rear of the pub, where a door led into an alley.

  There Ward caught a glimpse of Parmalee rounding a corner at a fast walk and lit out after him. Still quick after years of steady exercise, he caught up to Parmalee just as he was inserting a key into the lock of a tall commercial building.

  “Yes, Inspector? Or is it Superintendent? I seem to remember you were promoted not so long ago. All the farther to fall, don’t you think? Tell me, how is it that I deserve your suspect company?”

  Ward waited until a car passed by before spinning Parmalee around and slamming him up against the door. “Spread ’em.”

  “Gladly. But wouldn’t it be better upstairs?”

  The pat-down yielded a cell phone, a miniaturized tape recorder, a reporter’s notebook, a billfold, an electronic passkey on a spring clip, a ring of keys, and a Biro. The recorder was running. Ward switched it off and removed the tape.

  “Should we call that a crime?”

  Ward spun Parmalee back around. He wanted him to see the blows coming—the first up under the rib cage, the second slightly higher into the pectoral muscle, just to straighten the man back up. And then the other side. And again, both sides.

  Ward knew how short, sharp punches hurt. Parmalee wouldn’t be able to raise his arms for whole weeks without pain. Sleeping would be impossible, and even the very act of drawing breath would be a labor.

  “Do your back for you?” he asked. “‘Big Red’ thought I should. Sent me, don’t you know.” Yet again he spun Parmalee around and worked on his back—left side on the kidneys, and just under the blade of his left shoulder. And likewise the right. Two turns.

  Without the punches to prop him up, Parmalee sagged to his knees.

  “Tut-tut—try to keep the soot off your trousers,” Ward admonished. “People might think you’ve been doing something naughty. And only you and I should know that you didn’t slip and fall. How you had to pay for all these little items being found on your person.”

  From his own pocket Ward pulled a handful of glassine packets that contained two tablets each, stuffing some into Parmalee’s jacket and letting some others fall to the ground. It was methylenedioxymethamphetamine, the euphoriant known as Ecstasy.

  “Shall I ring up my colleagues in Drugs? I spared your face. You’ll look just dandy on the front page of the legitimate newspapers. Think you can manage a smile? Which do you prefer—the Times or the Independent? Or don’t you play favorites?”

  “This is…illegal,” Parmalee managed to say.

  Which spiked Ward’s anger—that Parmalee, who spurned and derided the rule of law at every turn, would seek its protection whenever necessary.

  “Everybody knows…I don’t do drugs.”

  “Do they? Not now. Ath Cliath, where you do your monkey business?” Ward waited until Parmalee opened his eyes. “How silly of you to keep part of your stash there and the other part in your flat. With the laws as they are, why—sure—you’ll lose both.”

  Again Ward waited. Parmalee’s gaunt but handsome face was a study in pain; his eyes were closed, his brow was knitted. Each labored breath was accompanied by what sounded like a whimper.

  “Have I made my point?”

  When he could, Parmalee nodded.

  “And one other thing, you who know so much—who murdered Mary-Jo Stanton and Frank Mudd?”

  “Gerry Breen,” he managed in a small voice.

  “Why?”

  “Carrying out orders.”

  “From whom?”

  “Duggan and Opus Dei.”

  “Why?”

  “The biography.”

  “Which is?”

  “Heresy. They just couldn’t allow it to be published, because of Mary-Jo’s…credibility.”

  “That he had fathered her?”

  Parmalee nodded.

  “Why Geraldine Breen?”

  Again Parmalee paused to gather himself. “It’s what she’s been for Opus Dei over the years—an enforcer. Security. Muscle.”

  “Where is she now?”

  He shook his head slightly. “You might try Delia Manahan’s house in Killiney, the one she lived in before remarrying the Church. The two of them use it as a pied-à-terre.”

  “Why? What’s Breen to Manahan?”

  Parmalee tried to hunch his shoulders. “Maybe God doesn’t answer all their needs?”

  “You suggesting they’re gay?”

  “You’ve seen them—Butch and Biddy.”

  “You know that?”

  Still leaning against the door, Parmalee raised himself up and opened his eyes. “Ah, go fuck yourself. You made your bloody point. Now piss off before I take both of us down.”

  A quick shot to the upper stomach buckled Parmalee up, and another between the shoulders slammed him onto the footpath.

  Reaching up, Ward twisted the key and opened the door. By the collar of Parmalee’s blazer and the belt of his trousers, Ward ran him into the darkness of a hallway and dumped him there.

  Stepping back out, he closed and locked the door. But kept the key.

  It was fully night by the time Noreen and Peter McGarr arrived back at Ilnacullin. As usual there would be guests for dinner—they could tell from the array of house lights that winked at them through the avenue of beeches that lined the drive.

  “Do you think my mother and father could ever live even a week without the company of others?”

  “Sure, they’ll have an eternity of that soon enough,” McGarr blurted out, insensitively.

  But he was tired, still sore an
d troubled by the events of the day—the death of Frank Mudd, or Manahan, the tape that seemed to show Mudd removing the water bottle, and finally, the way that information had been presented to him in such a…considered, no, such an orchestrated form by the two Opus Dei priests, Duggan and Sclavi.

  More immediately, McGarr was hungry and in need of a drink.

  “You believe that?”

  He switched off the ignition and opened the door. The rich yellow house lights and the smell of burning peat beckoned.

  “That in death we’ll be alone?” she continued, climbing out. “And that my parents, God bless and keep them from all harm, are going to your oblivion sometime soon?”

  McGarr could tell from the tone of the remark that she was as hungry and tired as he. “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “Ah, but you did in so many words. I hope you’re not…not wishing them gone?”

  “You know better than that.” But the truth was—they’d all be gone in what amounted to, and would be perceived as, a wee time.

  It was as though, leaving school at eighteen, McGarr had blinked, and there he was, a fully middle-aged man, who was bald, running to fat, presently confused and out of sorts. Were he to blink again—well, he might never open his eyes.

  “I don’t know how I ever got involved with anybody with so little hope or vision” were her last words as they passed through the door into the brightly lit foyer.

  Beyond, in the house, they could hear voices and laughter, and Maddie was coming down the stairs. “Well, it’s about time,” she scolded, one hand on a hip and her eyes narrowed, as her mother’s would have been were the tables turned. “Nuala’s been holding dinner for”—she glanced at her wristwatch—“twenty minutes at least.”

  Which was nothing in a house where entertaining was frequent and relaxed. McGarr could remember dinner being held for hours, when the conversation was lively or the guests had some pressing business.