The Death of an Irish Tradition (28 page)

But mostly Murray felt physically enervated, drained—he swirled his left shoulder—and as weak as a foal, and he wished he was someplace else.

“She’s next,” his wife said to him.

“Who?”

“The Bechel-Gore woman.” Her tone was icy. She knew how he felt but not how much. And why, but not really why.

Two differences marked the entrance of Grainne Bechel-Gore onto the field of the jumping enclosure: scant applause, mostly from the members’ boxes, and a harmony with the horse that McGarr had not noted in the other riders. She seemed not to have to control the large chestnut mare, and they moved together more easily than the other riders, even though flecks of spittle had gathered at the corners of the horse’s mouth and the animal was lathered from the warm-up period in the exercise ring just prior to their being called.

And when the bell rang, the crowd quieted yet more, so that Flynn, who was sitting below where McGarr was standing in the dark R. T. E. trailer, had to say, “Volume, for chrissakes. What are we, at a funeral?”

Tracing the line of the hedgerow that bordered the field, she and the horse, cantering now, moved back toward the first gate, their movements contained and together, and McGarr found himself having to force his eyes to move to other screens—the exhibition halls, the show rings outside the jumping enclosure, the farriery display that was closing down now, all the competitors trundling off their boxes of tools, their goggles set back on their foreheads and making their blackened faces seem to have two pair of eyes.

But he kept returning to her, from one camera angle or another, the best being those that showed horse and rider from below the fences, clearing them in one fluid motion and alighting gracefully, nothing out of place—not the hands too tight or her position in the saddle too far forward—and, unlike many of the other horses, Kestral seemed neither to be extending herself nor to be making an extra effort to keep her rear hooves from knocking on the rails. All was a flow, gentle and smooth and more like a dance—the high, curling arch—than an athletic endeavor, as they cleared each jump and moved toward the next.

Somebody touched McGarr’s sleeve. “I don’t know what to make of it, Chief, but we’ve got a navvy up on the roof of Anglesea Hall.”

McGarr followed the guard over to the screens he’d been monitoring, and there on the green, corrugated metal roof of the general enclosure was the lone figure of a man dressed in blue R. T. E. coveralls and holding a long mike boom.

McGarr turned to Flynn. “Do you have a sound man up on the roof of the general enclosure, Dermot?”

“What?”

“This sound man. Here. The one with the boom and the mike—is he yours?”

Flynn whipped his head to the screen. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I hope so, we need him.”

“Well, can you focus in on him?”

“Why?”

“Just do it, goddammit.”

“Jesus—what’s the camera number? I’ve got a show to run.”

“Eleven,” said the guard.

“Eleven—in on that man on top of the jumping enclosure.”

But McGarr didn’t wait to see the picture. The man had dropped the boom and reached for the zipper of his coveralls and McGarr pivoted toward the door.

“Clean round,” the voice over the public address system said, “and the best time of the day for Lady Bechel-Gore and Kestral.

“Miss Mairead Caughey is next, riding…”

They were passing each other right there beside the trailer and number board, and, glancing up at the figure on the roof, McGarr saw out of the corner of his eye the women reach out and touch hands.

The man stood and pointed something at the announcing booth, and McGarr drew his Walther but knew he had no chance of hitting him at that range. Still, he might distract—.

Bechel-Gore had stood to watch his two women passing below the booth, and just as O’Shaughnessy reached out to pull him back into the seat, the window seemed to explode, spewing a burst of brilliant, jagged glass around the interior of the booth. O’Shaughnessy and the others threw themselves to the floor. Bechel-Gore crumpled back on top of the superintendent, his hands to his shoulder and his jacket bloody.

The guards with the sniping rifles had been attracted by McGarr’s shots and their fire knocked Keegan back and made his body jump in a wild and spastic dance before he fell and rolled slowly down the slope of the long, green corrugated roof.

But only McGarr and the guards seemed to be watching him.

The crowd in the general enclosure, as one, had risen up and begun fleeing, some back toward the pavilion and the exits, but most of the others onto the field, tumbling over the hedgerows, shrieking, dragging their children after them.

McGarr turned and looked for the women, but they had gone, following the direction that their horses had shied in, off through the jumping pocket toward the Simmonscourt Road.

When the shots began, the guards, who had been standing by Frayne and the other men from the farriery competition, had run into the jumping pocket, weapons drawn. With the confusion and the approaching horses and the others, who were panicking all around him, Frayne saw his chance.

But which of them? All that had been told him was that Bechel-Gore or his horse and a woman would be riding, but which one of them?

Frayne pulled up the leather apron and jerked the Skorpion from under his belt. He’d only got half the money, and without the kill—.

He caught the front one as she rode right at him, and Ward saw her fall, cut back off the horse like a toy rider being knocked down by the swipe of a child’s maddened hand.

But the other woman had bolted past Frayne and was gone behind the wall.

He hesitated a moment, crouching, pivoting, and saw the man making for him, tossing people aside with something black in his hand, and Frayne sprinted down the Simmonscourt Road toward the gate and the exit.

Only one other had seen and understood what had happened—Menahan. Throughout the confusion he had kept his field glasses focused on Mairead, and when she fell he shouted, “No! No, you bloody fool!”

Greaves, who was sitting behind him, watched him closely. The priest stepped out of the aisle and rushed down onto the walkway around the jumping enclosure. He took a few steps toward the field, hesitated, and then followed some of the crowd down the narrow lane between the members’ stand and the grandstands, then through the green-and-white striped tents that enshrouded the tea gardens, pushing and shoving people roughly. He pulled open a flap of a tent and stepped through.

Greaves waited before going through himself, but he thought it better not to lose the man.

At the far side of the bandstand, the priest was having trouble getting through the shrubs and the low fence there, and, turning his back to the benches, he saw Greaves.

He straightened up and seemed surprised, but he said, “Don’t just stand there, man. Come help me. I’m a priest and I’ve got to get to the jumping pocket.”

Frayne had lost the cop, the young one with the black hair and the gun in his hand, he was certain. But he waited behind the vans in the arrival and departure area to make sure nobody else had seen him before he stepped toward the one he’d been told was his, the Skorpion back under the apron.

And Frayne was sure he’d gotten at least one of them and maybe the horse too, and he’d make the bastard pay even if—.

He tugged open the bay doors of the van and tried to see into the darkness and knew it was a mistake. There was somebody back there, and his gun was—.

The burst began at his crotch and ran up his chest, face, and forehead, and Frayne dropped back, dead before he hit the ground.

The other man tossed the Skorpion he had used into the straw and opened the side door, stepping out.

There he smoothed back his blond hair, fitted the chauffeur’s cap on, and walked toward the Simmonscourt Road.

MCGARR WAS NOT
the first to get to the girl. Fogarty and his cameraman were standing over her, the latter taking pictures. McGarr pushed through them and bent to her.

She was lying on her back, just as she had fallen, with one leg turned under her at an odd angle. The front of her blouse was covered with blood that also flowed from the corner of her mouth. McGarr opened the jacket and shirt. One wound in the upper chest, but she was having great difficulty breathing and her pulse was hardly there, the merest of threads.

“No—not that horse, goddammit!” McGarr heard a familiar and angry voice shout.

Several men were clustered around the horse, which was writhing on the ground only yards away.

It was Murray, and the men were intending to put the injured animal out of its misery.

Then Lady Bechel-Gore was there, kneeling on the ground by McGarr, stroking the girl’s forehead and making low, keening sounds. Her eyes were wide but tearless, as though she could not believe what she was seeing.

Fogarty’s man attempted to take her picture and McGarr rose up and shoved him away.

“Can’t you see she’s—” Fogarty began to say, but he was grasped by the collar and hauled off. It was O’Shaughnessy.

Chaos still obtained, and only when the doctors and ambulance attendants had arrived did McGarr move away from the girl. All the while he thought furiously of how it had happened and how his planning could have gone so wrong and how he could at least salvage some part of the situation.

“Is she alive?” somebody asked him. Bechel-Gore had a hand underneath his jacket and a uniformed guard was supporting him.

“Just barely, but I’m no doctor.” McGarr stepped squarely in front of the larger man. “Now, you answer me this and answer me straight—those dossiers you were sent, that wasn’t the first knowledge you had of your daughter’s whereabouts, was it?”

Menahan was trying to push in close to the girl, but other guards were keeping him away. “But I’m a priest! She requires my office!”

Bechel-Gore’s eyes moved to his daughter.

“Quick, quick!” a doctor was saying. “Out of the way! Get out of the way!” The ambulance was being backed toward them.

A shot sounded, people cringed and looked toward the horse, a leg of which twitched and then was still.

“No—I knew earlier.”

“How much earlier?”

“Six months ago at least.”

“But you didn’t tell your wife.”

“I was waiting until after, after the—”

Show, McGarr thought, the Show yet again.

“Because you had to pay for the information, and on top of all your other payments and having been injured you really aren’t doing well financially, in spite of all the recent wins.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut and the claxon sounded as it moved away rapidly.

Only then did Bechel-Gore turn his eyes to McGarr’s. “I don’t think I’ll manage it, really. Not now. And frankly I don’t know if I care.”

McGarr did, however; he cared very much. “How much did you pay?”

Another doctor now moved toward them with two attendants carrying a litter.

“About twenty thousand pounds. I thought it would put the matter to rest.”

McGarr wondered about the timing of Menahan’s recent affluence and Bechel-Gore’s payment. Between the two there was probably a great measure of—again the word—congruity.

“But still you continued the other payments—to Keegan and—”

“Of course, she’s my…daughter.” He turned to the attendants, who were trying to ease him onto the litter. “I can walk.”

“Then this way,” said the doctor.

McGarr swung around and found O’Shaughnessy, who had been observing the exchange. He nodded, and O’Shaughnessy moved toward Murray.

Ward pushed though the cordon of guards. “He’s in a horse van that’s parked in the departures area.

“Dead, dammit.”

“How’s—?”

The other police made way for McGarr. “Not very good.”

Ward looked away.

Five hours later McGarr was pacing in front of a window in the dayroom at his offices in the Castle. Sitting in a chair was Murray, the father, the front of his shirt open and showing a large white bandage on his chest.

O’Shaughnessy was standing in the shadows, leaning against a wall.

McKeon was in a chair by the door, a hand to his mouth. All his lower teeth were now quite loose and they hurt.

Said Murray, “Listen, Peter, and it’s the God’s honest truth—I just thought I’d throw a scare into him.”

“Is that an admission of guilt, Mister Murray? Who’s ‘he?’” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“Christ,” Murray looked away. “Can’t we talk about this alone, McGarr?”

It depended upon what he had to tell him, but McGarr knew Murray was too crafty and experienced to admit to any crime and wise enough to know they had nothing on him.

“How did you get the bullet wound, Mister Murray?” O’Shaughnessy continued, but in a quiet, low voice. He’d keep at him for hours and days, if he had to.

“For Jesus’ sake the last time, you culchie bastard—I shot myself while I was cleaning a handgun.” Murray’s face was the color of fresh liver, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was sweating; but without solid evidence they’d have to free him in forty-eight hours, that or impose the provisions of the Offenses Against the State Act and there too a judge would demand definite proof. And Murray had friends, journalist friends.

“And you were treated where and by whom?”

“Are you as thick as you look? I pulled it out with me teeth and spat it in the can.”

“And did you…”

No—McGarr continued pacing—. Frayne was dead and with him had died the possibility of making the connection between him and whoever had hired him. And then the second Skorpion—rather the fifth—had been dropped into the straw on the floor of the horse van: that was the new connection.

There was a rap on the door and through the frosted glass McGarr could see the massive shape of Ban Gharda Bresnahan.

McKeon had stood, but McGarr moved toward her himself.

“Peter—for the love of God, don’t leave me with these gobshites.”

McGarr closed the door and took the sheaf of reports from Bresnahan.

She’d found a break-in report that had been added to the computer’s memory unit only that morning. A pensioner in Ballsbridge had complained of a burglary that had occurred at the same time as the Caughey murder and three blocks away. The man had gone out for groceries and had returned to surprise the burglar. He described young Murray right down to the tan suit, the long, wavy hair, and the slightly bent nose. Fingerprints had been taken. All that remained was for the guards to lift Murray and lay the charges.

McGarr thought for a moment—he didn’t know where young Murray had been during the Horse Show, but he didn’t think that the boy was violent, and whoever was the connection had had contact with either Bechel-Gore or Menahan.

The next report cleared that up.

Paddy O’Meara, Bechel-Gore’s chauffeur, had dropped out of sight. Bresnahan had called Coombe Memorial Hospital. Bechel-Gore had confirmed that O’Meara had taken the postal delivery of the returned tack from the Czech army horse purchase. It had been in those cartons that the six automatic weapons had been sent him.

McGarr signed the request of the detective who was investigating the Ballsbridge burglaries, and appended a note about young Murray’s supposed drug addiction.

“All points on O’Meara. Tall, blond, in his late thirties.”

“Already done, sir.”

McGarr glanced up at Bresnahan. “Charge?”

“Murther.”

“The English authorities?”

“Put in that request first. Armed and dangerous.”

McGarr nodded once.

Armed. The Skorpions. Five of six recovered and McGarr was willing to bet the last was the one Murray and whoever had been with him had used at Keegan’s place in Drogheda. They’d never find it, of course, but he again thought of the connection between Murray and Frayne, whose boot prints had been found there in Drogheda; and between Paddy O’Meara and Menahan, who had as much as admitted having told others about Bechel-Gore’s child, some of the locals out in Leenane. Menahan would know O’Meara and well, their being roughly the same age.

—The third report said Menahan, after having left the hospital, had returned to the Caughey apartment where Monsignor Kelly had been waiting for him on the doorstep. They had had a loud argument and Kelly had left. Later piano playing could be heard above.

Menahan. The piano. McGarr remembered Friday night and the way the twilight sun had made the gold letters seem as though they were lit from within and the photographs and the two women who’d been talking below in the back gardens. Missus Brady and—what was the other one’s name? Harmon. No. Herman. No.

McGarr reached for his smokes. Some sort of a bird. Walking toward his cubicle, he remembered. Herron.

She was at home, and after he’d identified himself, he asked her if she might know where Missus Brady’s husband drank, which she did, of course.

Back in his offices at the Castle, McGarr removed Murray from O’Shaughnessy’s clutches and saw to it his shirt was buttoned and his tie in place.

On their way down the stairs they met Fergus Farrell, the Commissioner.

“Back so soon. Short holiday, what?” said McGarr, moving past him.

“Where’re you going?”

In the doorway McGarr could see several guards who were keeping the reporters back. The voices of many rose to them and curses and shouts.

“Mick and I thought we’d pop out for a sup. Hot up there.”

Farrell, who knew Murray, nodded to him. “But don’t you think—”

“Not me. Had enough of that for the day. I think we’ll unstring the bow and that class of thing, eh, Mick?”

Murray didn’t know how to reply and he was watching McGarr closely. He didn’t care for his tone and the playful cast to his eye.

Farrell liked it much less.

McGarr paused on the top step. When the reporters had quieted, he said. “You know what happened today, but not why. Fogarty can tell you that. I’ll have the rest for you tomorrow, and that’s a promise.”

“Will there be an arrest, Chief?”

“Yes.”

“Is Murray the man?”

McGarr glanced at him. “I don’t know.”

When McGarr slid into the Cooper, the others turned on Fogarty, who said, “He’s lying. I don’t know a goddamned thing.”

“‘Truer words…’” thought McGarr.