The Death of an Irish Tradition (21 page)

But still, Ward’s report that young Murray had the capability of entering the Caughey apartment at will disturbed him, but he remembered that the murdered woman had taken off her apron. Would she have done that for young Murray? McGarr didn’t think so, given the daughter’s statement that they hadn’t gotten on. She probably wouldn’t have let him in, if she could have helped it. “Was there a burglary reported in the immediate neighborhood at the time of the murder?”

“No—not that’s been put into the computer, leastwise.”

O’Shaughnessy caught McGarr’s eye. His expression was questioning.

“Ah—not yet, Liam. And release Doyle without any fuss. See what he does. What we have is circumstantial, and even then it’s not much. I don’t think young Murray is…ambitious enough to have begun with the raid on Keegan, then the murder and the sniping. And if he’s having to steal himself, where would he get the money for the others or for…contingencies or supplies?” He reached in his pocket and pulled out one of the cartridge casings. “This stuff isn’t available in the West, and it costs, especially the way it was used up in Drogheda.”

“Could it have something to do with the I. R. A.?” McKeon asked. “Some internal struggle?”

Could be, but again McGarr didn’t think so. “I can check on that.” McGarr thought of his father’s call.

“Or maybe his old man and him are together in it.”

McGarr couldn’t see Michael Edward Murray trusting in any person with his son’s problem.

Said O’Shaughnessey, “It could be that none of the violence is related.”

McGarr again thought of the note from Keegan to the dead woman, his sister. “I’m going to assume that it is, Liam, for the moment.”

“So, everybody stays put,” McKeon said.

“For the moment.”

“Read the papers?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

“All the time.”

“Get much out of them?”

McGarr shook his head. “Nothing ever seems to happen anymore, and the writing—it’s inflated.”

Before Bresnahan could leave, McGarr asked if he could have a word with her.

“When’s Sinclaire due back?”

He could see the anxiety his question caused. She had been led to believe her services would be required only for the duration of Sinclaire’s holiday. It was McGarr’s way of softening the blow, if she should prove unsuitable.

“Tomorrow, sorr.”

“Australia, is it?”

“Yes, sorr. If you remember the postcards he—”

“Flying back?”

“I should imagine so, sorr. The trip—”

“I wonder if he could have left yet?”

“I don’t know, sorr, but I could check.”

“Better, Ruthie—see if you can get him on the line for me. We have his wife’s family’s number down there, don’t we?”

“Yes, sorr.” She turned to go, but he reached for her elbow.

“And you’re doing a fine job for us here, do you know that?” He walked her toward the door.

She glanced at him, not knowing if he was putting her on. And she could only see his eye, the one that was swollen.

“Everybody’s entitled to a few mistakes, and I like the way you dealt with the evidence we’ve gathered here. It was deft and inspiring to the lot of us, I hope.

“Did you find the computer course difficult?”

“Oh, no sorr. It’s a snap. You can just breeze—”

“For some,” McGarr said, easing her out of the cubicle, “for some as bright as you. Are your studies finished?”

“No, sorr, in fact I’ve been thinking about sitting for the examination for a degree.”

“Here in Dublin?”

She nodded.

“Nights?”

“Yes, sorr.”

“I’d do it, if I were you.”

She waited, expecting him to say more. Finally, she asked, “Does that mean you’re going to keep me on?”

McGarr remembered the problems she’d had with McKeon. “That’s up to Sergeant McKeon. As far as I’m concerned you’re a big plus, but, of course, it’s he who must work with you.” He turned to her. “You wouldn’t happen to be going for coffee, would you now?”

Color had again risen to her cheeks, but her expression was joyful. “Straight away, sorr. Oh—” she turned back, “—would you mind if I called my mother? She’s been waiting to hear.”

“You’d better clear that with your boss.”

McKeon was reaching for his hat on the pegs near the door, and Bresnahan made straight for him.

Back inside the cubicle, McGarr picked up the phone and carried it to the window. There he dialed Dermot Flynn at R. T. E. and asked him if he was interested in a scoop.

“Something to do with the murder?”

“That’s right.”

“Will we—I mean, I—will I be getting an exclusive?”

“It’s a promise.”

Another pause. “What do you want from me?”

“Well, seeing you asked…”

Frayne looked down at the toilet sink and wondered what the hell he was going to do about that. The stain was black from the dye he’d put in his hair and indelible, it seemed; streaks had seeped into the porous areas where years of steady dripping had worn away the enamel.

He’d been a fool to take a room in the kip, but O’Rourke knew the place and assured him the old “army” men would keep their mouths shut. But a good job it was that he couldn’t sleep and had gotten up early—the dye, the clothes, only a whim had made him buy
all
the papers, and thank God for that. He’d only been trying to make a few quid on the side—Christ, the others had jobs, the most of them—but he knew what they’d say. No orders had been given, and when they found out who he’d been working for and why, he was as good as dead.

What to do? He didn’t know. There were just too many possibilities, and Frayne had never been much for planning.

He leaned against the wall and felt for the Skorpion in the sling under the new tan suitcoat. “It’s too big for you, sir. I’m telling you that, sir.” Jesus, he’d felt like blasting the bitch, her making a stink right there on the floor of Clery’s with everybody carrying a paper under their arms. But, forget it—Christ, he had to think.

He looked down at the stain again. If they shopped him—no, they wouldn’t, it wasn’t their way. Could he be sure of that? He could. A kneecapping—he flexed his legs—a bullet in the back of the head, but knowing who he was they’d probably take him any way they could. Yes. Could he count on that? He could.

But could they justify it, here in the kip? He kept his eyes on the stain. They could. It was in all the papers, wasn’t it? The old man could say he saw the papers and came up to ask a few questions, taking a gun along just to be safe. The police, of course, would know he was lying, that he’d been sent to—but he’d get off with excessive force, if they gave him that.

But Frayne didn’t get that sinking feeling he’d known when he’d gotten into tight situations with the others. He was alone here, and he didn’t have to worry about bumblers. The bastard had money and he’d squeeze him, so he would. Frayne had never cared for orders, and the little money he’d seen from all he’d done for them up in the North had been pissed away on expenses. And the way they had handed it out to him in dribs and drabs, like he was a beggar boy—.

And it stank, the dye—sulfurous and chemical—and the color it made his hair was wrong, some blue-black tint, phony and wiglike.

He stepped to the mirror, which was cracked and spattered. The whole place was filthy, smelling like the city, ages of dust and exhaust and industrial fumes. My God—he had shadows all around where he’d tried to brush it on his eyebrows. It wouldn’t come off his skin completely, no matter how hard he’d scrubbed, and his hands—he looked down at them—had outlines around the nails of the first three fingers of his right hand. Frayne felt the wrath rise in him. Dirt. He hated dirt and filth and—.

He turned away from the mirror and the image of his face—dishlike, the nose long and thin cheeks hollow; a face that was not uncommon, though, and that was something—and took a cautious step into the bedroom.

O’Rourke, he’d been gone too long.

He stopped. They’d send O’Rourke first, not the old man. And O’Rourke could get back with them that way.

Frayne looked around the low bedroom, the floor that heaved toward the one window, wide but looking right out on the street, and he wondered if he had left anything and if it would matter. No—not now.

And he heard the floor creak.

“Jack?” a voice called out.

O’Rourke.

Frayne’s hand moved inside his coat and came up with the machine pistol. Silencer? It didn’t matter much either, but he had three floors, and the others had probably been tipped off. He fitted the sleeve on the muzzle and tightened it down.

“Jack?”

Had he forgotten anything? he again asked himself, a sort of calm coming to him, now that he had decided. He’d squeeze him, sure. He’d squeeze him good or kill him. There was always England and the drug racket, if he couldn’t come up with anything in the trade. He put in a stroke or two that way before. There was money in drugs, and the scum—.

Not in the hall. O’Rourke was cautious. He’d have somebody backing him up out there, or on the stairs. How many could they have gotten together on such short notice? The old man. The barman too; Frayne had seen him around before when they’d taken a shipment. And that other bloke, the one from the kitchen. Four, tops. He had to take at least one of them there in the room.

Frayne moved around the bed so his back was to the window and knelt, placing the gun flat on the bed where his left arm would conceal it, his right hand still on the grip and the trigger.

“Jack, for chrissakes, you’ve got a phone call.”

“Who is it?” he asked the door.

“It’s him, I think. Says it’s urgent.”

“Tell him I’ll call back. I’m busy.”

“You know he doesn’t want that.”

O’Rourke was very near the door, and Frayne knew he wouldn’t try to kill him while he was at his prayers. O’Rourke was religious. Weak. And Frayne suddenly hated him for that weakness. He’d shopped him, hadn’t he? And yesterday—he could have waited. He had a weapon in the Rover. He could have—.

The knob turned and Frayne lowered his head, still able to see the door out of the corner of his eye.

It swung wide. “Jack?”

Ah, he was right. O’Rourke had one hand behind his back. “Can’t you see I’m busy, Billy? Give us a moment’s peace, for God’s sake.”

O’Rourke took one cautious step into the room. He was a short man, young and stout with a full black beard that made his face seem stolid and imposing, and his eyes—some hazel shade, like a pig’s—were agog, unnatural, frightened. The coward, Frayne thought, even dressed as he was, as a priest, a guise nobody would question, and him without his description in the papers.

Frayne didn’t have to look up. He jerked up his right hand and squeezed. The pistol popped thrice, each time higher—the chest, the throat, the upper lip to the side of the nose. Like those jewels Frayne had seen Indian women in London wearing on the side of their nostrils, but this one snapped O’Rourke’s head back and splattered the wallpaper above the door, and he fell forward onto his face, his fat body coming down hard and dead and sliding over the slope of the floor. Dust from the filthy carpet puffed up from under him.

Frayne opened the folded butt, a brace that was made of aluminum tubing and fit over the barrel and the sleeve of the silencer. He had seven rounds left in the ten-round clip, but he pulled it out and inserted a twenty-round magazine.

That was one thing about the bastard. He wasn’t cheap and he knew guns. The Skorpion was a blow-back weapon with a high rate of fire, but there was an inertial mechanism in the grip that delayed the bolt and reduced the rate of fire to a controllable cycle. Weighing only three and a half well-balanced pounds, it was an ideal weapon for a situation like this. Frayne wondered how he’d gotten them. Jesus, with a couple thousand of these—.

Frayne wasn’t nervous or jittery, he wasn’t even thinking of the others that he knew were there, the fact that he was three floors from the street, that if they had heard the shots and knew O’Rourke had taken some they’d send up maybe more than he could handle, and he’d heard another footfall on the stairs and then in the hall. Whoever it was, he stopped.

There was quiet for a while there inside the kip. Out on the street he could hear cars, lorries, and Frayne wondered if those other people could know that here was where it was happening, the news, what they’d be reading about in the papers tonight and tomorrow, and really how much it differed—what he’d read, for instance, about himself and the cop in Galway—from the way he felt going through it, what he saw. And did it matter? Yes and no. Yes, that he had savored every word, every letter; but no, he preferred it the way it was, like this, in a quiet and calm that made it all seem like a special kind of child’s play, but dangerous and bloody.

But Frayne was good at what he did, and he knew it.

“Billy-boy?” He heard the old man’s voice on the stairs. “Somethin’ happen up there? We heard a clump like the ceiling fallin’ in.

“Jack?”

Frayne said nothing and remained where he was, kneeling at the side of the bed. He thought of the dusty carpet and how it might smudge the knees of his new tan trousers, and he was filled with loathing for the kip and the old man who owned it and those other old roustabouts who could live—.

He heard the board creak again, the one out in the hall, and again. Two of them, one to decoy, the other to fire. Frayne had seen it used before, but not by him.

He again laid the Skorpion alongside his left arm and bent his head.

“Billy?” the old man asked again, his voice heavy with fear. “Jack?”

Frayne then saw him in the doorway, nothing in his hands but a bulge to the side of the tattered cardigan he wore, and in this weather. His eyes, like O’Rourke’s had been, were bugged and fearful and false. “What happened to Billy-boy, Jack?”

Frayne kept his head down, waiting for the old man to step away from the door and for the other one to appear with the—.

The old man’s eyes shied to the left, and he stumbled as he stepped back, so that Frayne, snapping up the Skorpion with both hands, caught the other man as he walked into the fire.

The burst drove him—bloated and fat, like O’Rourke, a barstool warrior full of all sorts of tripe about the Troubles—back into the hall, nailing him against the wall, a cluster that tore bright red pennies in the white smock and seemed to hang him there for a moment, his eyes bulging, his mouth with only a few teeth as yellow as that donkey’s in Drogheda gaping.