The Death of an Irish Tradition (4 page)

“Hell, the fun hasn’t even started yet. The bastard’s still in the saddle.” Flynn’s eyes were small and hard; Bechel-Gore had few friends in the Irish Republic.

But the rider was now off the horse, almost—his left foot and boot caught in the stirrup—and when the horse reared up again, Bechel-Gore kicked out and disengaged himself from it, but Kestral was at the apogee of her twisting leap and Bechel-Gore seemed to fall out of the linden tree, back over and down through the heavy white fence that snapped under him.

He landed on his neck. Even then his legs came down heavy and lifeless and limp.

The horse reared up once again, reeled, tripped over the fallen fence, and toppled toward the crowd.

“There too,” said McGarr.

The small man had twisted around to look down at Kestral, then, turning quickly, had snatched at and caught the bridle, pulled her to her feet and out into the ring.

Other riders, judges, and stewards appeared on the screen and the man moved away.

But there he was again when the camera was turned to Bechel-Gore. He was beyond him in the crowd, leading a donkey toward the Angelsea entrance. It was an ancient animal with wicker panniers and red-and-white check ribbons tied through the braids in its mane. Its gait was stiff and arthritic.

“And there too. Especially there.”

“Don’t want much, do you?” Flynn raised an arm and the lights went on. The tape was over.

“How ’bout yourself?” McGarr went to reach for his flask once more, but Flynn stayed him.

“How many times does this make it?”

“Make what?”

“That you’ve seen this thing.”

“I don’t know. A couple. Three.”

Flynn closed his eyes and shook his head. “Six.”

“Well.” McGarr stood up. “I don’t think you’d deny that it’s a work of art.”

“I’d be the last. The last. But I smell a rat.”

“You mean you’ve got smell on that thing along with voice? Next thing I know you’ll be telling me it’s got touch and I can go to the ‘feelies’ anytime I choose. You’ll make matrimony passé.”

Flynn only looked down into his cup and shook his head. “Now you really do owe me one.

“You know, the last man to watch this thing had to pay for it.”

McGarr only stared at him, his gray eyes clear and unblinking.

“Bechel-Gore paid us to make a copy of the tape.”

“When?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“He say why?”

“Something about wanting to correct his style in the saddle. Caught me by surprise—didn’t think a character like him would have a sense of humor.”

Already McGarr was out in the hall of the modern building, moving quickly toward the door. “Shall I wait for the tape or do you want to send it to me?”

“Wait, wait. Jesus! I’ll get it for you myself.”

Moments later, McGarr was pushing through the glass doors that opened on the parking lot, Flynn right behind him.

A gust of wind, hot and wet, struck them. On the eastern horizon a bank of clouds, a storm front, had passed in front of the sun and shone like hot, burnished silver. The light in the parking lot was yellow and filmy. In a way, McGarr wished it would rain.

“So you believe all his nonsense about the horse being spooked?”

“I always did.”

“Point is—can you prove it?”

McGarr only canted his head. The whole thing—having again seen Keegan’s face in the photo at the apartment of his murdered sister—could be a mere coincidence, but he didn’t think so.

“Still—it hasn’t stopped him much.”

“Who?”

“Bechel-Gore.”

McGarr placed the canister on the passenger seat of the Cooper and straightened up. The rear of the small car was filled with hat-boxes. “How do you mean?”

“He’s got a horse in the internationals this year.”

“For Ireland?”

Flynn nodded.

“Isn’t that a switch?”

“It could be, but then again the horse is Kestral.”

McGarr turned to Flynn. “Is he cracked?”

“Maybe, but surely his rider is.”

Once more McGarr only stared at Flynn.

“His wife, Grainne.” He tapped his forehead. “She’s beautiful, there’s no denying that, but a sad case.”

McGarr blinked. “But can she ride the horse?”

“So it would seem. She’s been winning with the mare right along. Came away with the whole bit at the Royal Windsor—puissance
and
the time trials. Don’t you read the papers, Inspector, or—” he eyed him, “—watch the news on TV?

“Will you keep me in the picture?”

“About what?”

“You’re onto something here, I can tell.”

“How?” McGarr turned the switch and the small, powerful engine of the Cooper sprang to life.

“You tell me what you’re doing here the morning after a murder, messing about with a case that’s at least a year old.”

McGarr sighed and slid the shift into first. “You should have been a detective, Dermot.”

“I hope you’ll remember that when I get the sack.”

McGarr waved and let out the clutch.

Ward didn’t see McGarr pull the Cooper around the lemon-yellow convertible that was stopped at the guardhouse, waiting for a parking pass to be issued. He was concentrating on the car and the girl in the front seat.

There was another car behind the MG, a long black limousine with an official plate, a Mercedes.

“T. D.?” O’Shaughnessy asked. He was farther back in the shadows of the entry door, leaning against the cool wall.

The light in the courtyard, the first of two that the buildings of Dublin Castle formed, was hazy and blue, and Ward had to squint.

He nodded. “Cigarette?”

O’Shaughnessy only looked down at the package of Disc Bleus. “When d’you take that up?”

Ward shrugged. Nicely, he thought, the fat white cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the jacket over his shoulders.

“And that suit.” O’Shaughnessy glanced up and away, over the slate roofs of the buildings.

“What about the suit?”

O’Shaughnessy, whether in uniform or civilian clothes, was always nattily attired, but as in everything else his taste was conservative. He only shook his head.

“Well?” Ward demanded, taking in the other man’s light-gray homburg and two-button suit made of—was it linen?—the darker gray tie and the black, woven-leather shoes.

The limousine pulled up to the entry. The chauffeur got out to open the rear door.

“Murray,” said O’Shaughnessy, squaring his shoulders and clasping his hands behind his back.

“No, no—what
about
the suit, Liam? I’m interested.”

Out of the corner of his eye Ward saw the Caughey girl getting out of the little car, and he turned his attention to her: thin legs, white and birdlike, a black-gloved hand on the yellow enamel, then a flounced hat, black as well. She was taller than Murray but taller than Ward too, and her gait was rangy and…was it athletic? Yes. She used her shoulders, twisting them a bit forward with each step. And her face was masked, it seemed, in the first movement of a smile, as though she had practiced the expression in a mirror and decided it was best and would get her through the day. But she hadn’t been able to conceal the crying. Her eyes were ringed and she looked tired.

“Well—since you asked—it isn’t fit for a pimp, much less for a policeman. And if you’ve got hair on your chest…” O’Shaughnessy was staring down at the Mercedes, the door of which was open. Inside a fat, older man with a florid complexion and a bulbous nose was speaking into a telephone, haranguing whoever it was on the other end. His hair was a mass of silver waves that flowed to curls at the back of his head. He was wearing a pin-striped suit. “…that’s your business,” O’Shaughnessy continued, “and should be kept to yourself.”

“Well, I’ll be…” Ward exhaled a puff of blue smoke.

McGarr had appeared in the entryway.

“…flogged. Where the hell have you been all your life, Liam—Galway?” O’Shaughnessy was in fact from Galway. “Times have changed.”

“They have?”

McGarr stood there, regarding them, a thin package under his arm.

Ward didn’t see O’Shaughnessy wink to McGarr as the tall man turned to him. “You mean—dirt is in? You’ve got egg on your lapel, Inspector.”

When Ward glanced down, O’Shaughnessy snatched the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it out on the stone floor. He then placed his massive hands on Ward’s shoulders and turned him around, pulling the jacket off. “Now stick your arms in this and keep your mouth shut. Be yourself. She’ll like you a lot more for it.”

He turned Ward back around and reached for the lowest open button on the shirt, which he fastened. He then put his hand inside the jacket and pulled out the packet of cigarettes. “Smoking is a dirty habit. Once you start it you can’t stop, and there’s no satisfying the devil in your throat. Ask him.” He meant McGarr, to whom he handed the smokes.

“But you smoke yourself.”

“And I wish I didn’t.” O’Shaughnessy stepped past him, out into the sunlight of the entry.

“Jesus, I should’ve joined the army,” he said to McGarr, who was laughing. “Or the priesthood.”

“Are you a solicitor or a politician this morning?” O’Shaughnessy asked Murray from the doorway.

McGarr, who had begun to climb the first flight of stairs to his offices on the second floor, turned and saw Murray slide his bulk out of the limousine. Suddenly Murray’s face was suffused with his most practiced smile. “A solicitor and a friend…Liam, isn’t it?”

“It is, it is that, sir. Representing?” O’Shaughnessy took the portly man’s hand in his own and steered him to the side, as the girl and the younger Murray entered the building.

“My son. I thought I’d just come along for the ride.” He began to chuckle. “Miss Caughey doesn’t believe she requires counsel,” he said in an undertone. “Poor girl.”

O’Shaughnessy tipped his hat to her. “Then you won’t mind waiting down here, I trust.”

Ward opened a door and O’Shaughnessy ushered father and son into a room.

“You—” Murray Sr. glanced at the long, battered table and the several hard-back chairs, “—you won’t be long?”

The tall Garda superintendent shook his head. “We’ll try to hurry. For you, sir. But it could be a while.” He closed the door.

McGarr smiled and continued up the second flight of stairs, from the landing to the offices.

He heard Ward saying, “Do you smoke? You may smoke if you like. Tea, coffee. I’d like to offer you something stronger but it’s prohibited, of course.”

“Tea. I’d love a cup of tea. With lemon.”

McGarr shook his head. They’d have to send somebody out for a lemon.

“Of course. We’ll get somebody right on it.”

“I was hoping you’d be here,” she said in a strange nearly disembodied voice, her words measured, her tone soft and musical. “Yesterday you were so kind and understanding. I thank you, Inspector…. It’s curious but I can’t remember your last name. Isn’t that strange? Hugh is your first, is that not so? My father’s name, but that’s not why I remembered it.”

McGarr leaned over the rail. He saw Ward turn his face to hers and peer into those large black eyes.

“Ward. Hughie Ward. My people are from the West, like yours.”

O’Shaughnessy had looked away. At the crack in the wall that followed the stairs to the landing.

McGarr did not sit at the desk in his cubicle, only placed the boxed canister of video tape to the right and then skimmed the sheaf of memos that Ban Gharda Bresnahan, McKeon’s new assistant, had placed there for him.

Only three sets of prints had been found in the house: the victim’s, the daughter’s, and some others around the piano that belonged to a male. The victim’s larynx had indeed been damaged. Neither theft nor forcible entry had been noted, although both front and back doors had always been kept locked and the old woman had been a cautious sort. And finally no Garda official, uniformed or otherwise, could be placed at the scene of the crime or even in the immediate neighborhood at about a quarter past four, the estimated time of the murder.

McGarr turned and stepped to the window, which he opened. Somewhere down in Dame Street a jackhammer was blatting away at concrete, and he could see men up in the girders of a new office building, slapping red-hot rivets into sockets and flattening them home with pneumatic tamps. Higher still, through the orange structure of the tall building, McGarr could see a patch of azure sky, covered only by a thin veil of cirrus clouds. Muggy summer weather with neither sun nor rain, just a damp, hot, nettling flux, but—he glanced up once again—a hope, a promise of relief.

What did he know about the Caughey murder? Little, as yet. But the murderer had been known to the victim, that much was plain. She had either let him in or he’d had a key. And the murderer had been strong—no, no; that was wrong: the murderer had had strong hands. McGarr remembered the rug he had examined and the swirls in the nap where her feet had come to rest. And her odd, slumped position in the chair—no attempt had been made to arrange her in it—made it plain that the killer had strangled her right in front of the old Morris chair and had then eased her down into the cushions.

And then there was the business of the report of a policeman having stopped by, just at the time of the murder. Tony Brady, the little boy. That would have to be checked into.

What else? The victim’s brother, James Joseph Keegan, had been present at the scene of the crippling of Sir Roger Bechel-Gore. Keegan, so his niece had said, was from Leenane, the very area of barren but beautiful hills in which Bechel-Gore had chosen to raise his horses, having bought large holdings there in…McGarr couldn’t remember; it was just something else he’d have to find out.

And what did all that mean? Nothing really. It could all be mere coincidence, but he didn’t think so, having just viewed the TV tape for the sixth time. Bechel-Gore was not the sort of man who was mistaken about anything. He was bluff, peremptory, but accurate. He wondered if he was vindictive and revengeful too, and why he had paid to have R. T. E. make him a copy of the tape.

McGarr needed to know more—about the victim especially, but also about Keegan. Maybe he could kill two—no, not kill—
solve
two cases at once. Maybe the crippling and the death were related.