The Death of an Irish Tradition (25 page)

He didn’t know and he was tired.

He opened the door, and the pleasant warmth of the turf briquettes that his father kept burning in the stove winter and summer greeted him along with the aroma of coddle, a sausage-and-bacon stew that was peculiar to Dublin and best late at night like this.

McGarr helped himself, ladling the coddle over some spuds that had been simmered in their jackets and which he cut into the bowl. He took off his coat and placed his hat alongside his father’s on top of the fridge and walked down the hall toward the sitting room from where he’d been hearing the voices:

Noreen—cheeks flushed, green eyes sparkling; she had a drink in her hand, not the first. McGarr’s father—his long face, all nose now, it seemed; and another old man. What was his name? Tierney. Jake.

“Ah, Peter—” his father said, having to bend over to stand up, “—we were just talking about you, how a few years ago you would have caught the bugger on the run in them fields—”

“Or plugged him after—” the other man put in.

“Or plugged him after,” his father echoed, nodding to Tierney. “But, as it stands, you didn’t and he did a good job of dirty work for you. Rid the country of a tough and three old bowsies. Good planning, that. Ill luck you had to get a shiner for it, but I’d say it gives his sorry puss a little color, wouldn’t you, Noreen?”

“I’m used to color,” she retorted. “Every other night it’s lipstick.”

“Him?” His father’s walk was more a shuffle now, all on his heels, and for the last few years McGarr was always surprised on seeing him—how it appeared that he was shrinking down, even his bones. He was small, tiny even, compared to his days as a smithy at the C.I.E. (the national transport board) works, three blocks distant. Then he had never looked bullish, but he had been strong. He still had much of his hair, which was gray, and he enjoyed company, something that happened all too seldom.

On the mantel was a stack of Yachtsman cut plug, a holder of old briars, and a newspaper, which he picked up. “After Fogarty’s done with him he’ll not get a peck from a politician, I’ll lay odds.”

The others laughed.

McGarr smiled and nodded to Tierney. He sat near Noreen and spooned up some coddle and potatoes.

“It’s this that brought Jake around,” his father continued in a more serious tone. “He thinks he’s got something for you. Works at the library, he does. The National on Kildare Street.”

McGarr looked up, savoring the porky sweetness of the stew, which his father had labored long to degrease and spice. There was a leek in it, he guessed, and a few sprigs of parsley, and some thyme, and a clove or two of garlic. “Military history, isn’t it, Jake?”

The man turned his head a bit, agreeing. He’d worked as a ticketman on the trams, and later the buses, most of his life, and he had a nickname, “Two-t’rees,” which for a long while had been the minimum fare and much requested. But like many Dubliners his avocation had been the real center of his life, and in retirement he had landed a job cataloguing at the library.

“I saw the piece in the
Times
. It mentioned that this Frayne bloke had been in Paras. I thought it a bit odd that later he’d go over to the other side without some cause, so I got a hold of a friend of mine in London.” Tierney was small and bald and wore thick, octagon eyeglasses with narrow gold bows. “Came in right around supper.” He reached into his jacket for a slip of paper. “It says—”

“Jack B. Frayne, corporal,” said McGarr. “Released from service for insubordination, brawling, and striking an officer. Considered unfit for further service because of psychiatric reasons.”

Tierney looked up surprised and adjusted his glasses.

“We were sent a summary of his British army records too,” McGarr explained.

“But do you know who was his commanding officer for most of his career?”

McGarr thought for a moment. The only principal in the case who had a history of service in the British army was Bechel-Gore. “Why, Sir Roger, right?”

McGarr’s father smiled.

Noreen looked down into her glass.

“You knew?”

“No, just a lucky guess, and I thank you for the tip, Jake. We’ve been trying to make a connection between the two, and there it is.”

“But that’s not all,” said his father. “There’s more.”

“About the library itself?” McGarr asked.

Tierney nodded.

“The girl, is it? Mairead Kehlen Caughey?”

Tierney passed some air between his lips and looked up. “The kid’s smarter than he looks,” he said to McGarr’s father, “and no thanks to you. Let’s see if he can get the second half of it.”

“She has an admirer,” McGarr went on. “An older gentleman friend. He uses the library regularly in the afternoon. His special interest is horses.” McGarr took another spoonful of coddle, thick with sausage and bacon.

His father handed him a mug that had taken two bottles of lager to fill. McGarr drank from it and rejected Bechel-Gore. He had his own library there in Leenane. McGarr had perused some of the volumes and a whole section, it had seemed, had been devoted to horses. Horse periodicals, veterinary magazines, farrier’s journals, and work books were on the long tables.

The others waited.

McGarr lowered his glass, dipped his spoon into the stew, and raised it once more. He looked at Tierney. “Michael Edward Murray, T. D., our old and mutual friend from down the street.”

“Bingo!” his father crowed, but put in a Dublin denial. “That Trayne fellow must have slapped some sense into him.”

Tierney looked deflated.

“But tell me this, Jake. Does he actually go into the reading room?”

“Him? Hell, no. There’s too much of him for that. He cuddles up in the librarian’s anteroom.”

“Alone?”

“Mostly—but that son and the girlfriend stop by, and more her than him.”

McGarr smiled and took another spoonful of stew.

Noreen said the telephone at their house in Rathmines had been ringing since six. It had been the same at the Castle—reporters, Farrell, the family of one of the slain men—, but there were cars parked in front of the house too. A newsman had asked her if she thought her husband was going to get the sack.

“And who would they put in his place?” she had countered.

“There must be hundreds of capable men who could fill his shoes.”

“Then give us a name and not Fogarty.”

They spent the night at the flat and his father was delighted.

THE WESTERING SUN
seemed to follow Sinclaire’s plane up across Europe in a perpetual sunrise that became full only as the plane banked over Dublin and swung back into the blinding yellow-gold beams.

As the plane landed and taxied toward the terminus, Sinclaire checked his watch, a massive, eighteen-karat-gold Rolex oyster shell that a jeweler friend in Sydney had lent him as part of the guise: 7:30
A.M
., Irish time. He had expected that somebody would be sent to meet him, but not in the Mercedes limousine that had been pulled up in front of the debarking stairs.

Sinclaire stood and allowed the stewardess to help him with the gray seersucker suitcoat, a Savile Row item, and he smoothed back the sweep of his dark hair before fitting on the Cavanaugh hat. Good job he had thought to bring them along on his holiday in Australia. His wife and kids would be taking another flight later in the day. For the present he would be known as Holohan, a scion of a wealthy Australian cattle-raising family. He wondered how McGarr had arranged the identity on such short notice.

He had been the only passenger in first class after the London stopover, and he tipped the stewardess, a brunette with curves and nice legs.

“Thank you, Mister Holohan. I hope you enjoy your stay in Ireland. To the Horse Show, is it?”

“Yes, but only for a day or two. I’m here for a purpose.”

“Are you in horses?”

“Well—let’s say I’d like to be. I’ve come to buy, if your animals suit me.”

At the foot of the stairs a large man with a red face and silver-gray hair was waiting for him.

“Bechel-Gore?” Sinclaire asked, having cabled the Bechel-Gore Farms from Australia saying he was coming and interested in purchasing several horses.

“Not on a bet. Holohan, isn’t it? I’m Mick Murray.” He even came up a few steps with his hand out. “Thought I’d drive you in myself.” He pumped Sinclaire’s hand enthusiastically. “And this is my son, Sean.”

McGarr had filled Sinclaire in by phone, and he knew the reason for the sunglasses.

“Political privileges,” Murray went on, explaining the reason for the limousine being allowed to meet him at the plane. “In addition to our horse farms and my other businesses, I’m a T. D., you see—a member of the Irish parliament.”

Once they were seated in the expanse of the rear seat of the limousine and safely off, speeding through the still empty streets of Swords, Sinclaire asked, “I hope my credit has come through. I wonder if
Bord na
—” he pretended not to be able to pronounce the Irish.

“Yes, of course.
Bord na gCapall
received it, I’m told, and you’re quite a good risk, I must say.

“What is your business, Holohan?”

Sinclaire frowned. “I’m not really in business,” he made it sound like a dirty word, “per se. At least I want to keep away from it, if I can.

“I’m glad the credits have come through, but I’m curious about how you came to meet me here, Murray. When you didn’t return my calls I rang up your competitor.”

“You called me, personally?”

“Yes, on Friday last. Several times throughout the afternoon.”

Murray’s son turned and looked at him.

“Perhaps you didn’t try the right number. I’ve got—”

“Well—” Sinclaire took out his pocket secretary, “—I tried your concerns in Dublin—Hibernian Building Supplies and your office. Then the Blackrock number. I even rang your home. I wonder, did you get my messages?”

Murray bit his bottom lip and shook his head. “No—I must say I did not, and that makes me damn mad. Only this came.” He showed him a copy of the telex message that Sinclaire, on McGarr’s orders, had sent to Bechel-Gore alone. The only difference was the address, which named Murray’s bloodstock firm in Ballsbridge.

“Oh,
Friday
afternoon. Yes—now I recall. I slipped out to the library. I like to think of myself as a—” he turned to Sinclaire and flourished his hand, “—literary man. I’m just a dabbler. Irish, it is. The language, God rest her soul.” He winked at Sinclaire ingratiatingly and reached for the console at the back of the seat. In it was a small bar.

“Holohan. That’s Irish itself, is it not?”

“Yes, but the record is dim, I fear. So many came out to Australia wanting to forget the past, and I’ve been content to respect the original Holohan’s wishes.”

Murray chuckled and poured two drinks, but his son was staring at him, smiling, and the smile was nasty, no question about it.

Murray’s hand was unsteady on the decanter and he fumbled with the stopper. After handing a glass to Sinclaire, he turned on the son. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything’s just marvey, Father. Super. Far-out.” He waited a while, watching Murray drink from the tumbler, the last finger of his right hand, fat and hairy, raised like a salute.

Then he said, “The library was closed on Friday afternoon.” His voice was almost too low for Sinclaire to hear. “All afternoon. Repairs.”

“What damn bit of difference does that make! I was out, all right?” Murray turned to Sinclaire. “You don’t always need a library to study in. In fact, the damn place gives me the chills sometimes.” He shuddered and drank from the glass, finishing it.

The son leaned across the father to speak to Sinclaire. “Do you know that my father is musically inclined, Mr. Holohan?”

Sinclaire cocked his head. The boy’s expression intrigued him. With the protrusive lower lip, the bent nose, and the sweep of black glasses he looked maniacal. And his features seemed swollen and rounded, like those Sinclaire had noticed in cadavers. The lip jumped toward the nose once, in a sort of tic, before he spoke.

“All we Irish are, of course, but my father, being wealthy, is enamored of young performers, people whom he can help get started. He likes them especially if they’re young, sleek, dark, and female.”

Murray turned to Sinclaire. “Sounds like a good prescription for horses,” he said easily, reaching for the decanter again.

The young man said something under his breath and looked out the window, and Murray left him in the car when they went into a hotel near the Show Ground for breakfast.

Frayne awoke in a bed upstairs in the hotel. Next to him was a German woman he’d met in the bar the night before. In spite of the years he’d spent with the British Army of the Rhine, he hardly knew two words of German, but she had been drunk and no other Irishman seemed to be taking an interest in her.

And she had told him that too—it was her first time in the country and she’d read the literature and it was, “So hard on the Irish man. He just can’t be that bad—” she had glanced up at him, “—in bed.”

She was getting old, but she was pretty in a scrawny way, and Frayne had bent her under him, like a barrel stave, until she said, “Enough, please. You’re hurting me,” and slept.

He got up before she did, showered, dressed, and left her without a word, although he knew she was awake and only pretending to sleep.

Waiting for the elevator with a bunch of other people, he asked himself if he’d thought of killing her. He had, sure, while he was showering, but only if it seemed she knew. And it made him feel good, sure that the garbage in the papers, what Bechel-Gore, the bastard, had put down about him being a misfit and needing the shrink was wrong. If only he hadn’t missed when he had him in his sights. Why had he turned the gun away? Orders. And then the other one, Paddy, the fool, he’d kept himself between them. And the cop. He should have plugged him too.

No—he was a soldier, pure and simple, and a good one—the best, goddammit—and he felt a kind of thrill that he was standing up for nobody but himself now: one person, a country all by himself.

Walking out through the foyer he glanced in the long mirrors that covered one wall. A shame the bleeder hadn’t been a bit bigger, he thought, noting the way the puffy cap sat on the top of his head and the loose jacket—some modern Continental design in a kind of shiny stuff, like vinyl—pinched his shoulders.

But the pass into the Show Ground wasn’t questioned, and the DAF with the Dutch plates was parked where he had left it, the horseshoeing equipment—the leather bib apron, the goggles—were still there alongside the body that Frayne barely glanced at.

“I’m here to observe the farriery competition,” the young man had said in precise English.

“Farriery?” Frayne had asked, hardly able to pronounce the word himself and hating the sonofabitch, the way he had hated the Germans, for being able to speak his language better than he did.

“Horseshoeing, you know. The hammer, the anvil.” He had laughed, a bit drunk, like the woman.

“In Holland?”

“Sure—we’re backward in Holland, just like you. We’ve got all sorts of horses there.”

“Where’s the competition take place?”

“In Simmonscourt Hall, same place as the horse auctions. It’s right next to the jumping enclosure. To tell you the truth—” the man had looked around the parking lot, “—I couldn’t give a damn about the competition. It’s the horses I’ve come to see.”

“You mean, they won’t make you compete?” Frayne had glanced around the dark car park. They had been looking at a gold-plated horseshoe that Vanderhoof—his name—would present to the grand champion from the Dutch Horse Board, in hopes he would come to Holland and give a demonstration.

“Oh—” he had looked away, the blue eyes trusting and kind and seeming even weaker behind the heavy shaded lenses of his foreign-looking glasses that Frayne thought were just right, “—they might ask me to show the winner a thing or two,” he said jokingly, “but I’ll refuse. I’m on holiday. A few drinks, a few of your Irish girls maybe, this trifle, but I’ve come mainly for the horses.”

There was nobody around, and Frayne judged that the cover was good. If he’d only not dyed his hair and the man had been a bit taller, it would have been perfect.

“But it’s got a chip in it, the shoe itself.”

“Where?” Vanderhoof bent toward it, where it was lying in a velvet-lined case on top of the tools in the box.

Frayne had done it before: grasping the jaw in one hand, the back of the head in the other, and laying his knee into the small of the man’s back. A quick twist, the heavy snap he felt right through his leg, and that was all. He released the body, shoving it forward with his knee, and it fell into the space beside the box. He removed the man’s passport, glasses, watch, and the cap. He found the coat among the other clothes in the rear seat. The wallet contained travelers’ checks and a small amount of Irish money, which came in handy. The identity and money he’d arranged for earlier in the day hadn’t yet reached him. In short, a smart job of work.

Now Frayne climbed back into the car, the windows fogged with morning mist that glared in the bright sun. No sense showing up too early and taking a useless chance. Later, when the crowds got thick, he’d get something to eat. But it had to be today, he decided. The longer he stayed the greater the risk, and he’d been assured he could get out tomorrow or the next day at the latest.

Over the steering wheel he folded out the map of the Show Ground, and on the front seat the map he’d bought of Dublin.

O’Shaughnessy was standing in a long and cavernous trailer that was parked near the number board of the jumping enclosure. In front of him were three banks of television screens, the cameras of which were focused on more than thirty different areas of the sprawling Show Ground, and only in the enclosure itself were horses not to be seen.

Everywhere else, it seemed, in Rings 1 and 2, where the judging of medium and lightweight hunters had begun, in the practice rings, the Simmonscourt Pavilion where hacks, cobs, and ponies were being put through their paces, ridden mostly by children this early in the day, in the stables and yards and outside the bloodstock sales concerns—horses were pictured, their coats glistening in the full, early morning sun.

Horses. O’Shaughnessy’s own father had been killed on one, trying to jump the front gate of their farm late at night after having taken a drop, and to O’Shaughnessy they were as familiar a sight as rocks in a pasture. But here they were special, not only the best the country had to offer, but a type of art—their care and training—to be revered and encouraged, and anything that would mar the course of the remaining six days would be to him anathema.

But there were other events and exhibitions too, and several cameras were working over the trade stands in Main, East, and Industries halls and the farriery competition that had begun a half hour earlier; the men and boys with goggles and bib aprons and gloves on, hammering away at the white-hot metal that was scarcely visible on the color screens; an apprentice keeping the forge fires hot; grooms watching, holding the horses to be shoed. In bleacher seats a large crowd for such an early hour was looking on.

“I don’t see how this can help him much,” said Dermot Flynn, rubbing at his bushy hair. “He hung his arse in a sling and now he’s as much as hung mine.” It was hot in the caravan and he tugged at the turtleneck collar of his jersey, his movements quick and nervous. “If I can’t justify the cost someway, I’ll—” He glanced up at O’Shaughnessy, who was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, unperturbed. “Aren’t you hot? The way you’re dressed you’d think you were going to a funeral.”

He looked back at the screens. “Half the bloody cameras have been assigned to other departments.”

“Didn’t you clear it with the director?” O’Shaughnessy asked, his eyes flicking over the screens, concentrating on one whenever it focused on the faces in the crowd, trying to establish in his mind where exactly in the Show Ground each was located. Clustered on stools around him were two squads of eight uniformed Gardai, each of whom had been assigned two screens to watch, after having been given photographs and artists’ renderings and all the information they had on Frayne to peruse.

“Like hell I did. He’d’ve taken the thing over for himself, sure he would. This is my show,” he thumped his chest, “here.”

Flynn turned back to the cameras, rocking from foot to foot. “But, Jesus, how do we know he’s here? And did you see the papers?”