The Death of an Irish Tradition (20 page)

But then the cartridge casings—the 9mm short rounds he’d picked up out in the stable yard—hadn’t matched those found at Keegan’s place in Drogheda. They had been fired from the same type of weapon, a Skorpion, but from none of the three that Bechel-Gore had owned and were now impounded. The tire tracks of the Land Rover, however, and the bootprints left on the hillside matched those found in the soft earth near the kennels. But if Bechel-Gore had commissioned that attack or even taken part in it himself, would he have wanted McGarr to know about the Skorpions?

McGarr didn’t know and he was getting far afield. “No, Bernie. We don’t want to scare either Frayne or Keegan off, if there’s a connection between them. It’s Frayne we want, and there’s more than the murder at stake here. Just have them stay on Keegan and close. I’ll be out there myself, later.”

McKeon spoke into the phone and rang off. “Like I was saying, Chief,” he went on, consulting his notebook, “Boland, his name is. Same background as Keegan—patriots,” he raised his eyes to the ceiling, “in and out of the drum, here and on the other side. Two phone calls and from the way he dialed them—Dublin area.

“While they were away from the horse lorry last night, we went through it. No weapons, unless they’re packing them themselves. Put a nice, fat bug in the bunk space. And—let me see, oh yeah—Delaney reported that the father stopped round about nine-ish last night, carrying a packet about so big.” He indicated a small carton, about the size of a shoebox.

“Menahan?”

McKeon nodded.

“A
Bible
, I bet.”

“Nope. Drugs for the wound and two hundred quid. They talked about the dead woman. Usual stuff that’s said about them that’s gone, but Keegan’s convinced it was Bechel-Gore who killed her.”

“He say why?”

McKeon shook his head. “Delaney says your man was watching what he said. Later, when the priest left, him and Boland yakked a good couple of hours, old times mostly, but at one point Keegan wondered if it’d been Menahan who’d tipped off Bechel-Gore. It seems he knew, or at least Keegan thinks he knew. Interesting, what?”

McGarr thought about the discrepancy he’d noted between what the girl said about studying in London in the transcript of her interview with Ward and what Menahan had told McGarr: the girl—that the mother had to convince the priest that studying in London would be a good thing for her; the priest—that he was for it, but the mother was not. “Let’s see what we can dig up on Menahan’s finances. He seems to be able to throw around a good bit of cash. But discreetly.”

McKeon glanced at Bresnahan, who noted it down. He sat.

“Liam?” McGarr asked.

O’Shaughnessy removed his hat and placed it on the knee that was crossed over the other leg. “I’ll begin with Menahan, since there’s a tie-in. Showed up at Murray’s about ten forty-five.”

“Murray’s…where?” McGarr asked, easing the chair down.

“The house. It’s in his parish, don’t you know, but I’ve been wondering what could have prompted the visit. I called the rectory, got the pastor—”

“Monsignor Kelly.”

O’Shaughnessy nodded. “The man. He said he didn’t know where the hell—his very words—Menahan was, and was he going to be arrested? I asked him why, and he went sour. Rang off right after.

“Now, with Murray himself I’ve got another tie-in.”

“Father or son?”

“Father. Doyle—he’s the garage mechanic we’ve been sweating—he’s stuck to the story about often working on several cars at once, and, checking it, I’ve found it’s pretty much so. Only the service shops of the big garages turn a profit from their custom. The others have to fiddle.

“All well and good, but—” O’Shaughnessy’s temper suddenly squalled and his lips turned white. Through them, he said, “—that little gobshite is a lying son of a—” He glanced at Ban Gharda Bresnahan. “Beggin’ your pardon, young lady.”

“I think I’ve got something on that,” she said, brightening and perusing her notes.

But O’Shaughnessy raised a large hand. “You’ll get your turn, girl.

“In and out of the shovel, this Doyle. Six kids, the missus due again. I figured he had to have been paid a smart sum or…well, we did some checking, and who should turn up as the principal owner of Ballsbridge Motors Limited? Our Mister M. E. Murray, T. D.”

McGarr, who was leaning back in the seat, began rocking slightly.

“And there’s a solicitor waiting for me in the dayroom with a court order to remand Doyle into his custody.”

“Murray himself?”

O’Shaughnessy shook his head. “Junior partner. Free of charge, he had me tell Doyle, who didn’t want him. At first.”

McGarr looked up, over the cubicle wall to the ceiling, which needed paint. “Amn’t I right in thinking Murray has an I. R. A. connection?”

“You are, but a safe one that, of course. All mouth it is. His riding spills over into Irishtown and Ringsend. He makes the trip to Bordenstown. The second wave, he’s in.”

The first two places were Dublin working-class districts in which several factions of the I. R. A. found some support. The last was the site of Wolfe Tone’s tomb where on his birthday, once a year, officials of the Republic place wreaths to honor the man who founded the United Irishmen, the forerunner of all the later Home Rule organizations.

In the afternoon, however, another army—and perhaps more the one Tone had envisioned—assembles and to the wailing of bagpipes places other wreaths on the grave.

McGarr often found himself posed against that guerrilla army, but he respected its goal—a united Ireland—and for Murray to march with them was shameless and cheap. Doubtless he contributed to their cause, but, after what others had given and continued to risk, money was not enough.

And McGarr remembered the way Murray had looked getting out of the limousine—bloated, flushed, sweating, harried. “I wonder how M. E. Murray, T. D., is doing on the whole. Can we check that?”

“We can.” O’Shaughnessy’s light-blue eyes were avid.

McGarr glanced around at the others. Bresnahan brightened and looked down at her notes, but he said, “Hughie?”

The young man stood away from the wall and buttoned his khaki blazer, which was obviously new, across his chest. He was also wearing dark slacks, a buff-colored shirt, and a paisley ascot. “The priest showed up at the Caughey place about midnight. Popped his head in, saw me, and left. I got there about eight. Sean Murray had let himself in. Mairead had said in her statement that he didn’t have a key to the place, so either he had one made or he’s adept at picking locks.”

Bresnahan again opened her mouth, but McGarr stayed her.

There was a third possibility, of course—that the girl had lied.

“Murray was loaded. I took the ashes with me. McAnulty’s chemist says it’s marijuana laced with an animal tranquilizer. Powerful and dangerous stuff. There’s the story of the kid who took it over in America. He got lifted and next morning they found him in the cell with his eyeballs in his hands.”

“His what?” Bresnahan asked.

“Eyeballs,” Ward said tonelessly. “Dug them out with his fingernails, he did.”

Her hand went to her mouth and she blanched. Given her great size, the gesture seemed comical to McGarr, like an elephant being frightened by a mouse.

“Impressions?” McGarr asked Ward, who nodded. “Well—” Ward turned and moved toward the window, “—Murray, the son—he’s unpredictable and in trouble with…himself, if nobody else. I don’t know what he was like before, but now he says whatever comes to mind, it seems. Right off the top of his head. Mairead doesn’t respect him, that’s plain, treats him like a…convenience, I suppose—when it suits her, she lets him take her here and there. Shopping, the horses.”

“Does he know that?”

“She makes it obvious. Chucked him right out when we got there. Sort of cocked her body like she was going to throw a right cross.

“Now, Mairead—she’s a curious woman. She’s not a woman, really, although looking at her—the clothes, the way she moves—you’d think so. In many ways she’s…childlike and…simple even. But she’s not simple, she’s…complex.”

“‘Mairead’?” McKeon asked McGarr. “And at midnight, no less. The witching hour. The mot’s turned the poor boy’s head, I think. It’s as simple or as complex as that.”

“No, really—” Ward complained.

“
Really
,” McKeon insisted. Bresnahan handed him the notebook. “We’ve got you coming out of the apartment at two thirty-seven this morning, dabbing at your lips with a hanky. Was it a little gargle you were after having or a few crubbeens?” They were a variety of pig’s trotters, and Greaves, who was just slightly older than Ward, began to laugh.

“Whatever it was,” O’Shaughnessy chimed in, “he’s well prepared for it this morning with that napkin tucked into his shirt.”

McKeon howled.

When they had quieted—watching Ward, who with his body turned to the window had taken a fat cigarette from a blue packet and lighted it—Bresnahan said, “If we can proceed now, Chief Inspector. I’ve reports coming in and work to do, and frankly I can see no great smack in a murther, the shooting of a poor, harmless ass…”

McKeon began chuckling again.

“…an attempted assassination and a savage attack on an officer of the law.” There was a self-righteous purse to her mouth, and she waited for McGarr to react.

He moved forward in the seat and cut himself another slice of Danish. “Bewley’s?” he asked, meaning the cafe and carry-away bakery on Grafton Street.

She nodded.

“Quite good. I must tell the missus about it.”

“Thank you, sorr. I’m glad you like it.” She waited a while longer while McGarr broke off a piece and put it in his mouth.

“May I proceed?”

“Tally-ho, Ruthie.” A bit of bun fell on his lapel and he batted it away.

“Fuhrst things fuhrst,” she said officiously, folding out the notebook. “Your requests of the day past: You asked for Doyle’s record. Three counts, all the same—accused, tried, and convicted of violations of the ‘Offenses Against the State Act,’ in particular, importing weapons for use by an illegal organization. Total time in prison, six years seven months.”

“Which prison?”

Her eyes flashed at McGarr. “I was getting to that, sorr. Kilmainham and Portaloise.”

“Do we know what drums this fellow Frayne has rattled?” Speaking the name again reminded McGarr of the release of that bit of information, which he would have preferred kept quiet. Somehow Fogarty had got hold of it and without clearing the matter with Phoenix Park had put it in the
Times
.

“It should be in the dossier the R. U. C. sent us, sorr.”

“Would you—” McGarr discarded the word ferret; she was anything but a ferret, “—dig that out for us, Ruthie?”

She nodded. “Presently, sorr. Now—the ashes from the bedroom of the house in Drogheda were the product of a cigar produced by the firm of Blodgett and Zinn, London. A list of customers is being mailed to us.

“Blood type on the towel found in the bathroom, type O. Mister Keegan’s is type AB. Sir Roger Bechel-Gore’s is O, but negative, or so says the Coombe Hospital where he was taken last year after the accident.”

McGarr raised an eyebrow. She had made that inquiry on her own initiative, without being asked.

“Lastly, the photographs of the man at the Horse Show have arrived. It’s Keegan, all right. They’re the stack to the left side of my desk. To the right is the artist’s rendering of the man who attacked you, Chief Inspector.”

McGarr colored a bit. It was not an apt choice of words. The R. U. C. mugshots of Frayne had been taken when he was still a juvenile, and the British army photos were dim.

“Now then, yesterday—Sunday—without the usual distractions I consulted the records, specifically those stored on the computer.” She glanced at McGarr. Her knowledge of computer science had been the reason McGarr had consented to McKeon’s adding her to the staff. Nobody else knew anything about them and didn’t seem to want to learn, although Ward was taking a course, and a good showing on the machines would allow McGarr to turn a blind eye to her other foibles.

“I ran much of the hard information we’ve culled so far in this investigation through the system, but unfortunately,” she paused dramatically, her dark-brown eyes surveying the group under the red eyebrows, “I could find but two correlations.

“First, the license plate eight, haitch, oh, bee, t’ree, zed, which is the number of a certain yellow Morris Garage roadster belonging to one Sean Murray of Herbert Park, Ballsbridge, was ticketed for illegal parking on Sandymount Avenue at four ten
P.M
. Friday.”

McGarr placed both elbows on the desk and folded his hands. On them he placed his chin and watched her.

“I then tried a number of other tacks and came up with this detail. Property loss entries—especially those due to burglaries—have been numerous in the Ballsbridge area of late. I asked the computer if the times listed on the Murray tickets correlated with the times of the break-ins and the places. Well, they did and they didn’t. The times were roughly the same, and the places were always a block or two apart.

“So I dug further, into the reports themselves. One complainant reported having surprised a young man in her flat and foolishly she gave chase.”

McGarr shook his head slightly, not knowing quite how to interpret that.

“She followed him until he entered a yellow roadster. She only caught sight of the final three figures on the plate.” Again she waited. “Bee, t’ree, zed,” she intoned. “And your father called.”

“What?” McGarr was putting it together—the drugs, a habit, the need for ready cash and more than his father allowed him.

“Your father called, sir. I didn’t know whether to say if you were available or not.”

“When?”

“A half hour ago, when you first came in.”

“I’m always available to my father,” he said absently, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back.

“Well, well, well—” said McKeon, crossing his arms and beaming at Bresnahan, “—a kettle of fish, the Murrays, the Doyles, Ballsbridge Motors. The whole bloody bunch. Pounds to pence Frayne’s in there somewheres with them.”

“We don’t know that really,” McGarr said. All it proved was that young Murray was in the neighborhood at the time of the murder, that he’d lied to them, that his father was sufficiently knowledgeable of his son’s problems that he would choose to sponsor the lie.