The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Will you have enough? All that distance won’t strain the thing, I hope. Remember, it’s new. I haven’t really learned to use it myself as yet. My kids who live in America got it in for me. They call at Christmas and Easter and sound as though they’re in the next room. It’s luvelly what they can do now.”

  “Bernie?” McGarr said. “Peter here. I’d like you to send the pathologist’s van down to pick up this corpse and some lab boys to cover the outbuilding carefully once more. Then I want you to dispatch Sinclair to the Air Ministry office to see if they have reports of helicopter movements in the past six days, especially over the western ocean and then from Slea Head eastwards. Maybe radar installations might pick up something like that.”

  “Too low,” said Mallon, who was sipping his tea.

  “Also, I want you to canvass all helicopter owners, pilots, and landing pads in the twenty-six counties. I’m sure I can get U.K. cooperation for the other helicopters in the general area.”

  Gallup nodded and took out a small black notebook and pen.

  “Put as many men as you have to on this. I want to talk to anybody who has flown a helicopter over Kerry in the past week and a half.” A correlation occurred to him at that moment. “Also, which of these persons might have recently purchased the elasticized cargo cord we’ve been investigating.”

  McKeon sighed.

  “Or might soon. I assume whoever owns this helicopter will want to replace what’s missing. The only other thing I can think of is the ketobemidone-base drug that Professor Cole found in Hitchcock’s body. We better check Browne for that, although I’m assuming now the same person or persons who killed Hitchcock killed Browne.”

  “They certainly want it to look that way. Have you called London yet?”

  “Cummings?”

  “I don’t know his name, he won’t give it. But please get a hold of him, Peter. How is a man supposed to get any sleep around here with this horn going off every quarter hour?”

  McGarr chuckled and said, “I’m presently at Dingle three ring seven,” and put down the receiver. He picked it up again and asked the operator to connect him with London operator seventy-eight-H. While he was being connected, he glanced over at the old girl.

  She was worried. McGarr surmised that she was a pensioner and would probably be hard pressed after the spread she had laid before the three policemen, yet being hospitable to the wayfarer was a Celtic tradition that most of the older people in the country honored. And McGarr was sure they had cheered her.

  When the London number answered, he said, “Peter McGarr, Garda Soichana here.”

  “We were wondering when you’d call, McGarr. I had the exchange route all calls through to my home. I haven’t had a chance to relax all evening.” It was Cummings. “What have you discovered?”

  “Gallup will fill you in.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Cummings indignantly. “I thought we were going to cooperate on this matter.”

  “So far,” said McGarr, “it has been all give and no take. Have you gotten the information I asked you for this afternoon?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. But I must say I don’t care for your thinking you have to extort it from me.” In spite of his bluster, Cummings’s tone had changed. In back of it all, McGarr thought he could detect a little fright. If the assassination of SIS C.’s was following a pattern, he was next.

  “Well?” McGarr asked. “This call is costing me money.” They were no longer speaking to each other over lunch at the Proscenium Club and McGarr wanted to make that very plain. Any continuing relationship had to be mutually beneficial.

  “I’ve put together a list of our agents who have been issued the ketobemidone-base drug. We began using it only a year and two months ago so the list is not long.

  “I then cross-referred this list with that of former, disgruntled agents of SIS. I came up with one man who is now an ENI employee. His name is Moses Foster. Do you know that Browne was also working for ENI?”

  “What position?”

  “Security, deputy director and second-in-command after Hitchcock.” Cummings’s tone was becoming self-satisfied once more. “This Foster is quite competent. He spent eleven years in Havana during the Cuban revolution and later through the many purges. Castro sent him to their embassy in Moscow and then Peking. After he narrowly escaped being exposed, we offered him a desk job in London. That galled him. He demanded a large amount of cash, not just his pension, but what he called ‘combat pay for a Cold War hero,’ all of it in one lump sum and immediately. When we told him that was impossible, he ran amok in our offices, put several senior fellows in hospital, nearly killed a policeman.

  “In what I thought a surprising reversal some months later, Foster then accepted the post Browne—who was C. at the time the man was refused the lump sum payment—offered him with the security team at the ENI operations in Scotland. Browne felt he was the cause of Foster’s problems, since Browne should have known better than to have tried to put Foster behind a desk. Well, Foster took the job about two years ago. When I saw Browne at the club from time to time, he said Foster was working out just fine.”

  McGarr asked, “Is he black?”

  “Why, yes—he’s Jamaican.”

  “About six feet, sixteen or seventeen stone, wide forehead, and close-set eyes?”

  “Right again—how do you know this?”

  “I’m not sure that I do. Are any other of your former agents currently employed by ENI?”

  “I’ve checked that. None.”

  “What sort of operation is ENI running up in Scotland that it needs such high-caliber security?”

  “Oil exploration is a cutthroat business, Mr. McGarr. A man who knows where the oil is well may make his life’s fortune with that information. Hitchcock’s, Browne’s, and Foster’s job was to see that that information stayed in the company. They were being very well paid for their services.”

  “Does Foster now become head of the security operations for ENI?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about a former agent, a man about fifty with lots of curly white hair, a big, black moustache, and a sallow complexion? I should imagine he’s handsome in a Mediterranean way.”

  “Nobody I can recall. I’ll check, however. Any other details on him?”

  “No—he was sitting in a car when I saw him. What about Browne? Was he married? Can we trace his movements before he arrived here in Ireland?”

  “Not likely. He was a bachelor and necessarily rather secretive about his personal affairs. He employed an aged manservant. We’ve questioned him. He says Browne left for Scotland about a week ago, called twice to have certain letters read to him.”

  “Did you get a look at those?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t ask.”

  “Well, could you?”

  “I could but I wouldn’t. The poor man is dead.”

  “That’s precisely the point. The poor man is dead, and we don’t have a clue as to why.”

  “Well—”

  “And then there’s Mrs. Hitchcock. Do you know she stands to benefit from her husband’s death to the tune of one hundred twenty-five thousand pounds? Could you arrange to have me talk to her?”

  “I don’t know, McGarr. Perhaps after a while, but right now she’s—”

  Suddenly McGarr’s temper squalled. “Listen, Cummings—your feelings aren’t important in this matter. Two men have been murdered in my country. All I know about them is that they worked together and at one time occupied your post. They were executed. If I were you, I’d be wondering if, perchance, these murders aren’t following some bizarre pattern.”

  “I’ve thought about that.”

  “Then, can you get me an interview with Mrs. Hitchcock?”

  “Well—not immediately, since her doctor has had to put her under heavy sedation.”

  McGarr doubted that. The woman he had met would require nothing like that.

  “And when you do, I won’t stand for any bull
ying or badgering of her, McGarr.”

  “I’m a slow learner,” said McGarr. “I can remember nothing of the techniques you employed in the dining room of the Proscenium Club this afternoon.” He hung up and asked Mallon for the Shannon Garda office number.

  When it answered, McGarr said, “This is Peter McGarr again, do you remember me from this morning?” He was probably all the patrolmen had talked about since then. Their lieutenant was gone and no explanation, other than McGarr’s altercation with him, could be given.

  “Yessir.”

  “Do any of the rent-a-car franchises there have new, black Morris Marina two-door models for hire?”

  “Yes sir, Ryans.”

  “Could you go over there and impound the one that a large black man was driving today? I think he’s a Jamaican by the name of Moses Foster, although I could be wrong. There was another man with him—white, curly hair, black moustache, sallow complexion. He was wearing a tan coat with a tall fur collar. Both were well dressed.”

  He said to Mallon, “You’d better leave now. Scanlon will pick us up at the Hitchcock house. Find out, if you can, what flight they took. Do you have their descriptions?”

  “Yes, I’ve been listening.” Mallon thanked the old woman and left.

  Gallup already had his coat on and his hat in his hand.

  McGarr had returned to his jam jar of poteen.

  “Hadn’t we better…?” said Gallup.

  The phone began ringing.

  Kathleen shambled over to it, saying, “Ah, there now you warmed it up for me and it’s working. I wonder who that could be.” She lifted off her glasses, put the receiver to her ear, and listened. “Where’d ye say? London? Then, ’tisn’t for me, this call. I know no one there.”

  Already Gallup was rushing toward her with his hand out, “I’m from London, ma’am. Perhaps it’s for me.”

  But it wasn’t.

  It was Hugh Madigan for McGarr. “Your man, McKeon, gave me this number, Peter.”

  “And you’re at the Carlton, Hugh. Forgive me. We had to leave on a matter of some urgency.”

  “No problem. The reason I’m calling is that I happened to bump into an oil industry contact of mine here. Over dinner, for which I plan to charge you, he told me about a disputed oil claim in the Scottish offshore oil fields. It seems that a small, newly formed outfit called Tartan Oil Limited bought the exploration rights to a sliver of property which, because of inaccurate surveying by ENI engineers, is located between two of their big claims. Tartan immediately erected a derrick and began pumping. ENI claims Tartan has canted its well holes down into the ENI pools, since the geological configurations pretty much prove that there could not be any oil directly under the sliver of property. The matter is before the courts now, but if the determination goes against Tartan, they’ll have to indemnify ENI for every barrel they’ve pumped so far. Tartan is an around-the-clock operation. The rig itself cost nearly five million pounds. If Tartan wins the fight, however, they can put up more rigs. The Tartan principals then would become very wealthy men indeed.” Madigan seemed to think this story was fraught with significance. He had been drinking a good deal, McGarr could tell.

  “But, I don’t understand,” said McGarr. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Didn’t I mention that Hitchcock was a co-founder of this concern along with a chap named C. B. H. Browne?”

  That knocked McGarr back. “No—no you didn’t. Tell me, Hugh, did a fellow named Moses Foster work for them as well? He’s a big black man, former SIS too. Pretty much of a rough customer.”

  “I wouldn’t have the vaguest, but if you’ll hold on—” Suddenly, McGarr could only hear the sounds of a bar crowd, a small band, and a chanteuse wailing a sultry nightclub number in decidedly American dialect. At least five minutes later, somebody demanded, “Is this McGarrity?”

  “McGarr. Who’s this?”

  “Rod Drake of Exxon.” He too was quite drunk. “How ’bout that nigger of yours—he pack a punch?” Drake had a heavy Texan drawl.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then, he works for ENI. Damn near handed me my head three weeks ago.”

  “Why so?”

  “Got in an argument with him in a bar. Not much to do out there in Scotland but drink and fight and—” The bar crowd drowned out the last word. “He’s got a thing about Cuba. Says it’s a form of necessary totalitarianism.”

  “He does?” McGarr was surprised that this line of conversation could have come from a man like Foster who had spent years as a covert agent in several Communist countries including Cuba. Perhaps his recent troubles with SIS, McGarr thought, had changed his approach.

  “Some happy horse manure about the citizen-worker. I asked him to step outside. That sidewinder grabbed me by the craw and chucked me down the gulch out back. Told me if he saw me again he’d break my back. He ain’t seen me again.”

  Madigan came back on the line. “Isn’t there a dandy little conflict of interest here, Peter? I say—working for one outfit’s security section while your own company is pumping its reserves dry. We both know Hitchcock could have used the money.”

  “Could you do the same sort of background investigation of Browne too, Hugh? And Foster, if that’s possible. And Tartan itself. Would you mind?”

  “Now—no. I’m interested in this whole messy business, and I’m beginning to think I’m over in the States.” When McGarr didn’t say anything, Madigan completed the thought. “All the money I’ve spent today is green.”

  McGarr groaned and placed the receiver in its yoke. He took thirty pounds from his wallet and fitted the bills under the mat on the table. He had decided on the amount previously, thinking it enough to cover the food, drink, and phone calls. Now he wasn’t quite sure and added ten more to be safe.

  Gallup handed him his hat and coat. “Let’s get up to the house and look around, then get me back to Shannon.”

  “Don’t you want to call Cummings?”

  “Not until I look around up there at the house. You know how he is—sticky on details.”

  “Perhaps I better tell you a few things as well,” said McGarr, “but first—” McGarr turned back to the old woman. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Thank you for the very fine dinner, as tasty—tastier—than I remember my mother’s as being. I put a few quid under the mat there. Buy yourself something special with what’s left.”

  “Isn’t that nice of you, lad. What did you say your name was again?”

  “McGarr, Peter McGarr.”

  “And I could tell from your conversation that you’re a policeman.”

  “That I am.”

  “It shames me to think I asked you to commit a crime.”

  “It isn’t the first time a pretty woman has.”

  “Nor, I hope for your sake, the last,” said the old woman.

  As they tramped down the road toward Hitchcock’s vacation house, McGarr told Gallup what he had learned on the phone:

  —that Browne, like Hitchcock, had worked for ENI.

  —that the two former C.’s of SIS had hired a certain Jamaican, named Moses Foster, who had had access to SIS ketobemidone and was disgruntled with that agency. Because of Hitchcock’s and Browne’s deaths, Foster would become the security chief of the Scottish operation, a very well paying position.

  —that Hitchcock and Browne had been involved in Tartan Limited, a company that was exploiting a discrepancy in the mapping of the ENI oil fields, information to which the two of them would have been privy.

  —that McGarr may have seen Foster both at a Shannon inn two days ago and at the Shannon airport earlier in the day. Both times Foster had been with the same Latin-looking man.

  It was this last bit of information that disturbed McGarr. “If, say, both Hitchcock and Browne had been ferried in by helicopter and Foster was involved in their deaths, then what was he doing in that car? Who is the other man?” McGarr noted the slight tang of salt spray and ozone off the wet rocks below th
e cliff. The sky overhead was cloudless, and the air, purified by winds of the Gulf Stream, was as clear as any he had ever breathed. Consequently, stars, layers deep, and the merest crescent of a moon lit their path.

  At the house, the other policemen were clustered around the car.

  McGarr looked at O’Shaughnessy, who shook his head. The others had found nothing. They all looked tired.

  McGarr and Gallup walked to the end of the kitchen yard and climbed over a stile in the rock wall. Taking a pocket torch from his raincoat, McGarr searched two adjacent fields until, in a third, he found the grass flattened in a whorl and the tracks of helicopter landing bars in the soft earth. Also, he discovered very good impressions of two pairs of shoes, each person having debouched from sides of the craft. One set, he assumed, had been Browne’s. They were huge. The feet of the other man were tiny, size seven or perhaps eight at most.

  Staring down at the dark earth and dew glistening in the beam of the torch, Gallup said, “They probably needed that Foster fellow for muscle. Whoever owns feet that size is a near midget. He’d have trouble handling Browne even trussed.”

  McGarr asked Scanlon to take casts and ship a set to Dublin.

  Far different from the afternoon was McGarr’s reception now at the Shannon Garda office. Mallon was waiting at the counter with a sheaf of reports, and his two assistants were at their desks, heads bent over their work.

  Mallon handed McGarr a sheet of paper and a carbon copy to Assistant Commissioner Gallup. He explained. “The black man rented the car under the name of Ignacio Garcia, when he arrived here a week ago from London. He used a British passport for identification. I’ve since checked it with the British. It’s false.

  “Since the other man didn’t have to identify himself, I couldn’t find his name, so I sent the Ignacio Garcia name to Detective Sergeant McKeon, who then conducted a computer search for the passenger lists of planes, ships, trains, and border crossings that the Garcia name might have appeared on. I figured that, unless he entered the country illegally, his name would have been logged and placed in the memory bank of the computer.”