The Death of an Irish Sinner

by Bartholomew Gill

  “It depends on whose law you’re citing, Father,” McGarr said, cutting him off. “If it’s the law of right and wrong, where murder is wrong and right is discovering who murdered Mary-Jo and Mudd so they can be removed from society, then taking a peek at this will of hers is right, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?

  “Or is there some higher principle at stake here that I’m missing?” Driving at speed, McGarr nearly had them at the front door.

  “I’m not sure it’s purely a matter of black-and-white. If we were—if we are—called into a court of law, and some opposing lawyer were to ask just how you or I knew how Mary-Jo chose to dispose of her estate before the will was actually read, well then, we’d both be in the broth, wouldn’t we?”

  “You, surely. Me, I’d be condemned by some for being overzealous and applauded by others for my…doggedness, which has been said before. But”—McGarr stopped the car and turned to the priest making sure their eyes met, both being skilled in confessional techniques—“you know what’s in it?”

  It was plain Duggan wanted to look away, but that would be tantamount to an admission.

  “You already peeked?”

  The dark eyes still did not shy.

  “Maybe you can tell me, and we’ll avoid your moral dilemma.”

  McGarr studied the large man as he considered the suggestion—his matinee-idol good looks, with the square head, full shock of wavy dark hair, dark eyebrows, chiseled features, and even a dimple in his definite chin. He blinked once. “I’ll agree to continue this conversation only because I believe, since you’ve just told me, that it will help you in your investigation.”

  Priest as casuist, thought McGarr, who slid the gearshift into neutral and switched off the ignition. “Good. Who gets the lion’s share? Opus Dei?”

  Duggan could not help it. As though McGarr had skewered a nerve, his eyes bolted away. “Mary-Jo—you have to understand—was extremely devout.”

  “What percentage?”

  “Well…the bulk of it.”

  “What percentage?”

  “Really, Peter—this conversation—”

  McGarr let his eyes pass down the serpentine facade of the mansion. “What percentage?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t worked it out. Maybe eighty-five or ninety percent.”

  “And who gets the ten percent? How much money are we speaking about here?”

  Duggan shrugged and shook his head. As though following McGarr’s line of sight, he too was now staring up at the graceful structure. “We’ll need a full—and I mean complete—accounting of that, surely, so as not to rely on estimates or speculation. I’m certain she had nowhere near what has been said, the press thriving on inflation and hyperbole as it does.”

  “Your estimate?” Landing the big fish of Mary-Jo Stanton’s estate would certainly enhance Duggan’s stature within Opus Dei, McGarr imagined. And he would know the figure.

  Duggan sighed. “Really, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t say. But”—his hand reached out and touched McGarr’s sleeve—“if I had to estimate, and it’s just a guess, mind, Mary-Jo was probably a…billionaire.” On the last word, the timbre of Duggan’s voice rose.

  “In pounds or dollars?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “How did she come to accumulate such money? Writing books?”

  Duggan shook his head. “Not entirely. She inherited this place and a substantial amount of money for the time. Without question, it was invested shrewdly.”

  “By whom?”

  “Financial planners.”

  “A person? A firm? What are their names? I don’t have two shillings to rub together,” McGarr joked, “but I’ll beg, borrow, and steal whatever I can and put it in their hands.”

  Duggan wagged his head. “Money gets money, we all know that.”

  And some more than others, McGarr thought. “A name. Who?”

  “Well, there were more than one.”

  “The one being Chazz Sweeney.”

  That Duggan did not react noticeably to the name was telling, McGarr judged. He knew about—and he most probably had arranged for—Sweeney’s visit to Ilnacullin earlier in the night.

  “I don’t know who in particular, but Charles Sweeney was a fast friend of Mary-Jo’s.”

  “And Opus Dei’s.”

  Duggan swung his head to McGarr. “That’s not a crime, I hope. In your book.”

  McGarr shook his head. “I have no book, Father. Tell me the names of the others who will share ten percent of a billion pounds or dollars.” McGarr turned to Duggan and made sure their eyes met. “You perhaps?”

  Duggan nodded. “Mary-Jo wished me to live comfortably after her death.”

  “How comfortably? What’s the number? Twenty-five? Fifty?”

  “Well, she left me this house and most of the rest of her estate. But”—Duggan’s hand came down on McGarr’s sleeve—“she knew, because I had told her, that I plan to leave all I have owned in my life, which up until now has been next to nothing, to a charitable foundation that I’ll set up within the Church.”

  “Meaning within Opus Dei.”

  Duggan nodded. “Which is to say, the Church.”

  Not as Dery Parmalee had seen it. “How much of the rest of it?”

  “About one hundred million, I estimate. But everything could be higher, given what’s happening to Ireland and…you know, the boom and all.”

  “Which leaves fifty million going to whom?”

  “Various philanthropies, mainly.”

  “Geraldine Breen inherits how much?”

  “Ten million pounds. She was Mary-Jo’s best female friend.”

  “What about Dery Parmalee?”

  Duggan’s features suddenly glowered. “Lord knows I argued against leaving that…Puck from the Dark Side a farthing. But M. J. said she respected his intelligence, if not his morals, and perhaps if he were to find himself financially secure, he might turn his talents back to spiritual matters. So I’ll see that her wishes are carried out.”

  “And Father Sclavi?”

  “Nada, niente. She had only just met him.”

  “Delia Manahan?”

  Duggan shook his head. “I don’t know why she left her out of the will, since they had been friendly for at least a decade. But again, it was Mary-Jo’s wealth to do with as she liked.”

  “The gardener—Frank Mudd or Manahan?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What about her literary estate, the books and manuscripts, the royalties and so forth?”

  Again Duggan glowered. “I don’t know the whys or wherefores of that decision either, because it seemed to me so…contrary to what Mary-Jo had striven for in her life, which was to illuminate Christianity with the new light of her intense scholarship and great wisdom. But all of that also goes to”—Duggan pulled in a breath and let it out slowly—“Parmalee.”

  “Did Parmalee know about the terms of her will?”

  Duggan shook his head. “At least, short of her or one of her solicitors telling him or his breaking into the safe here in Barbastro—no.”

  “Anybody else apart from yourself and the solicitors?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Right, then.” McGarr pulled back the lever and opened the car door. “Now, I’ll see the document, please.”

  “But…I thought you said you required only a summary.”

  “I’ll see the document.” Closing the door, McGarr stepped past Duggan.

  “Shall I infer from this that you don’t trust me?”

  Infer anything you please, thought McGarr. “The document, please.”

  When Hugh Ward finally regained consciousness just as dawn was breaking, he found himself sprawled facedown on the carpet in the bedroom of Delia Manahan Foley’s house.

  The wrist of his left hand had been shackled to his right ankle with his handcuffs. And the key ring, with its key to the cuffs—he noticed, when scanning the room—was looped tantalizingly over a bedpost.

  With
the use of opposing arm and leg, it took Ward the better part of four hours to crab himself up onto the bed, reach the keys with his free hand, and then—what was the excruciatingly difficult part—insert the small key in the tiny lock and twist the cuffs open.

  By that time, he had a splitting headache, double vision, and he hoped he did not have a concussion, after the several others he had suffered in the ring and while on duty. Ward did not wish to spend his declining years punchy, like other boxers he knew.

  But more troubling still were the whereabouts of his handgun, billfold, and mobile phone. Gone, of course, was Breen, her bag, and her personal items, which had been scattered around the room.

  The phones were dead.

  Outside, the tires of his car had been slashed and the radio disabled.

  “Ah, shit,” he said to the dashboard. His head was throbbing, his vision still impaired. “Shit.”

  PART IV

  ETERNITY

  CHAPTER 15

  NOREEN MCGARR WAS in the kitchen of Ilnacullin early the next morning preparing breakfast when the telephone rang. She answered it quickly, so as not to disturb the rest of the family, who were still sleeping.

  “Noreen, luv. How’s by you?” intoned the deep masculine voice on the other end. “Have you a fair day there, or is it pissing? Here, it’s simply pissing, pissing all over my holiday.”

  Which was immanent justice, thought Noreen, who despised the practice of people phoning without the courtesy of announcing themselves. Sublimely egocentric or, on the other hand, needy of validation, they assumed even casual acquaintances would recognize their voices on first hearing. If not, you loved them not, and immediately—even before any conversation was begun—you were guilty of a social faux pas.

  “Who is this, please, who believes he can ring up this number at”—she glanced up at the clock—“seven blessed ten in the morning and appropriate my first name so blithely?”

  There was a pause, then: “Ooops. Noreen, it’s Chazz Sweeney. Is your man about?”

  “Yes, Mr. Sweeney. He is about sleep, which is where he shall remain until breakfast. Would you like to phone back at, say, half past nine? I’m sure he’ll be able to speak with you then. Or perchance you might provide me with your phone number, and he, my mahn,” Noreen pronounced broadly, as Sweeney had,

  “will get back to you.”

  “Noreen, perhaps you didn’t hear me. It’s Chazz Sweeney.”

  There you have it, she thought. Mr. Control himself.

  “I’m in Greece, and the time difference completely slipped my mind.”

  Was there a time difference? Noreen wondered. “May I take a message?”

  “No. I simply must speak to him. It’s imperative.”

  “That’s not possible. Peter was up quite late last night and, in fact, for two nights running now, and he needs his sleep.”

  “Listen to me—I must speak with him.”

  Suddenly, Noreen was nettled, and she fought against the feeling, considering who Sweeney was—the “fixer” of Irish politics. Unfortunately, the Irish police were politicized at the very top of their administration, which inevitably filtered down through the ranks.

  McGarr had weathered several changes in government, but so too had Sweeney, whose connections were reputedly potent, in spite of his checkered past. Or perhaps because of it. If Noreen had learned one thing from her well-connected father, it was that political insiders respected—no, they revered—survivors, hoping that they too could overcome their own indiscretions and illegalities.

  Sweeney had done that in spades, it was said. But being no politician, Noreen did not have to honor that. “I’m sorry, sir. If you leave your—”

  “You’re not understanding me, Mrs. McGarr. It’s imperative that I speak with him. Now!” he roared.

  Noreen removed the phone from her ear and looked down at it.

  “Do you care for your lives as presently lived?” Sweeney went on. “Do you value your husband’s position? Or are you simply an ignorant cunt!”

  Noreen slammed the receiver into its yoke. After Sweeney attempted several other calls, she disconnected the line, which served the house from the kitchen and rang otherwise only in the front hall.

  An hour later she plugged the phone back in, and it rang almost immediately. “Don’t you dare hang up on me. Get that bastard on the line immediately.”

  Noreen placed the receiver on the counter, poured a cup of black coffee and a wee eye-opener into a snifter, and carried the two vessels up to her husband in their bedroom. There she woke McGarr and explained about Sweeney.

  “Don’t hang up, but don’t say anything further to him either.” Slowly, McGarr roused himself, drank part of each libation, then shaved and showered. After changing into fresh clothes, including shirt and tie, since inevitably the media would be snapping his picture or filming him coming and going, he went down to the kitchen.

  There, too, he greeted his daughter and parents-in-law before picking up the phone. “If you ever dare speak to my wife like that again, I’ll beat you bloody,” he said into the phone. “And if you call here again today I’ll file a formal complaint against you for harassment. Now, what is it you want?”

  “Ah, shit—let’s not stub our toe on this, Peter. I was only after wondering how you’re coming on the investigation and if you’ve announced that the Mudd fella murdered poor Mary-Jo before killing himself.”

  “Remember my warning about phoning this number again,” McGarr said, before ringing off.

  Turning around, he found all eyes on him. “Now, shall we have breakfast?”

  Driving into Dublin, McGarr switched on the radio, and the news on every station led with Mary-Jo Stanton’s and Frank Mudd’s deaths, along with speculation that they were a murder and suicide.

  Radio Telfis Eireann—the country’s state-funded outlet—even featured an interview with a former Garda commissioner who wondered why no announcement had been made declaring the case “what it obviously is,” and when that would happen.

  Two other stations, which did not possess news-gathering staffs and borrowed stories from the newspapers, mentioned that print media were running the story on page one, and Ath Cliath had come out with a special “blowout” edition “splashing” the story.

  Commentary included Parmalee’s allegations regarding Opus Dei’s pillería—all their supposed “dirty tricks” in Latin America and with the Vatican Bank—an excoriation of José Maria Escrivá, a capsule of Mary-Jo’s biography of Escrivá, and a rather accurate summary of her will. McGarr wondered how long Parmalee had been eavesdropping on Barbastro from the flat in Dunlavin.

  At his cramped headquarters in an old former British Army barracks within the gates of Dublin Castle, McGarr found a copy of Ath Cliath in the hands of most staffers and one on the desk in his cubicle.

  Skimming it before the morning briefing, he wondered if Chazz Sweeney had been in contact with Parmalee before publication and what that conversation might have entailed.

  If nothing else could be said about the man, Sweeney had his ear to the ground. He had to have known about Parmalee’s planned exposé of Opus Dei and claim that its beatified founder was Mary-Jo Stanton’s father. What threats had Sweeney uttered to Parmalee? Or what inducements not to publish?

  Bernie McKeon entered the cubicle to take a seat by the side of McGarr’s desk, where he would act as interlocutor between the morning-taciturn chief superintendent and the rest of the staff. They now filtered in, taking positions around the periphery of the desk.

  McKeon glanced over at McGarr before shaking out the reports on his lap. “Now then, ladies and gents, the first matter of concern, obliviously, is the situation in Dunlavin that is unfolding on the streets of Dublin’s fair city as I speak. You’ve all read the papers, scanned the reports, speculated unprofessionally about same without waiting for the facts that would help make your puerile observations more accurate and less Ath Cliath–like.”

  “Just give us the facts
, man,” said Bresnahan across the lip of her teacup.

  “Nothing but the facts,” another added.

  “And less of your Ass-Cliath verbiage,” she added.

  McGarr cleared his throat volubly and reached for the cup before him.

  “First, we have the complete postmortem report. It says factually that the ‘silly-sea-oh’ was applied to the poor woman’s neck before she died of a massive dose of digitalis that she had drunk sometime earlier. Which opens the question of—”

  “Why a murderer who had already administered a fatal dose to his victim would then apply an instrument to her neck that could also have caused her death,” mused Bresnahan. She was wearing a puce tank top and sweats that fit her snugly. The stone of the brooch that hung on a silver chain around her neck was the smoky color of her eyes.

  “Maybe he just wanted to make sure she was dead,” said Swords, who was seated on a table along with two others. Given the size of the cubicle and the nearly dozen staffers, the meeting resembled a scrum. “Murderers, as we know, always try too hard.”

  “Then why didn’t he just throttle her with his hands?” said another.

  Said Ward, “Because the murderer was sending a message, and that message was religious.”

  Maybe Parmalee, thought McGarr, attempting to inculpate Opus Dei with the help of Frank Mudd. How else could he have installed listening devices in Barbastro and Mudd’s cottage? Hadn’t Mudd said he was banned from the house? McGarr would have to ask his sister, Delia Manahan.

  “We can only assume that it was Mudd who removed the water bottle that—we also assume—delivered the digitalis. Said water bottle had the logo and name of G. Bass Outfitters stenciled on the front. A white plastic bottle with a black seal cap and drink nipple.”

  McKeon sipped his coffee. “As for the jacket with the Stafford label that was placed over the video camera, we only have the word of Father Fred Duggan that it was Mudd’s, bought him by his ‘sister’—and I use that designation provisionally—Delia Manahan.”