The Death of an Irish Tradition (6 page)

Again Ward was waiting for the proper moment to renew the interview. He stood and walked toward the window, teacup in his hands.

She was an enigma to him too. Countless times over the past several years he had dealt with the survivors of tragedies, but never had he met anybody who had so easily dissociated herself from a loss that was only a day past.

He paused, then turned to her, placing his teacup on the sill.

The sun had broken through the clouds momentarily, and the light was hard and white and made her hair seem no longer black but rather some deep brown color, lustrous and slick with a rainbow sheen.

“Your friend, Mister Murray, goes to Trinity, does he not?”

She raised her cup to her lips and drank. “Yes.” Then she glanced up at him. “Are you always so official?”

Ward smiled, knowing that his white, even teeth would flash, knowing that she was staring at him. “In official circumstances.” He watched her eyes move down his face.

“Do you like piano music?” She still had the teacup in front of her, the saucer balanced on the palm of her left hand.

“If you mean, would I like to hear you play, the answer is yes. Anytime, anywhere, but I’d especially like to hear you play your piano. The Bechstein.”

She looked around for a place to set the cup and saucer, and Ward took it from her. Their hands touched, and did Ward see her blush? He did, he was sure of it.

“You were saying—you practiced and then Mister Murray picked you up to go shopping. You went to—?”

She stood and moved toward him, staring at his chin or his teeth or his lips. She tilted her head to the side and ran a hand under her hair, fluffing it. “Un Coin de Paris.”

“Which is in—?”

“Duke Lane. Number two, I think.”

“Were you there long?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“Did Mister Murray accompany you into the shop?”

“I—I think so. Yes. I shop to…relax. I try not to think about my work and things.” She turned her back to the window and leaned against the sill, the slick black material of the skirt smoothing around her hips. “No—now that I think of it, I was alone for part of the time.

“Ah, yes—” she glanced up at Ward and again her eyes dropped down his face, “—Sean had to take the car around to a garage, a repair shop. He said it had something to do with the clutch. An adjustment or something.

“When he didn’t return I left a message that I’d gone on to the Pia Bang Boutique.”

“What time was that?”

“I have no idea.”

“How long were you at the boutique?”

She only bit her lower lip and shook her head.

“That’s where?”

“Johnston’s Court, it’s off—”

“Grafton Street.”

“And Mister Murray found you there?”

“Well—” she looked away, “—not actually.

“Is all this being recorded?” Only then, it seemed, had she seen the stenographer. She looked from her to O’Shaughnessy, who was pacing in front of an open window, hands in his pockets, his expression grave.

Ward took her by the arm, again surprised by her body. The muscle was long and thin but hard. He led her back to the chairs. “It’s strictly by the book. Procedure.

“You were saying—?”

“Oh, well—I know this man who studies in the National Library. He’s a friend. I stopped up to see him, but he wasn’t there, and walking down Molesworth Street, Sean pulled up.”

“Time?”

“Does time mean so much to you?”

Ward smiled again and looked down at his hands. “No, not time itself, but details. As in a—” he thought for a moment, “—a musical composition or…I should imagine…playing a piece on the piano, it’s the details that matter. Anybody with a little talent can slog through it, but—”

She was smiling again. “Do you have to work all the time?”

“It’s not work, really.”

“You enjoy it that much?”

“Never more than now.”

“You’re very un-Irish.”

“How so?”

“You’re not afraid of me.”

And she herself, Ward concluded, was too; he wondered if she had thought about her mother even once in the last several minutes. “But I am. I’m afraid of your—” he lowered his voice, “—talent and your beauty. You have a bit of a tan on your neck. Have you been out in the sun?”

She flushed. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody like you.” She glanced down at the small area of skin that was exposed near the collar of the dress. “Yes—I’ve been horseback riding of late.”

“Do you ride well?”

“Well enough, I suppose. I love it. I’ve been at it for quite a long time.”

“Do you have a horse?”

She glanced up at him. “Yes. Several. But mostly I ride the Murray horses.”

“The father’s?”

She nodded.

“You must be quite an accomplished rider. I understand his horses are none but the best—spirited and expensive. Jumpers, aren’t they?”

“Hunters and jumpers, yes.”

“Is that where you went with Mister Murray, after he picked you up on Molesworth Street?”

“Are you prescient too, Inspector Ward?”

Ward smiled. “And after that he took you out for ‘a little bite.’” Ward had tried but failed to keep his tone neutral.

She only glanced at him, her eyes again soft and deep.

“I wouldn’t know myself,” he went on, “but riding horses must be taxing. And everybody has to eat, now and then. Even artists.” He let his eyes drop down her body; it seemed as though she had no stomach at all. “Let me guess where he took you.” Ward frowned in concentration, and resumed. “Mister Murray keeps his horses?”

“In the Agricultural Institute.”

Ward raised an eyebrow. It was a state-owned operation, quite close to the R. D. S. Show Ground and the Caughey apartment, and Ward wondered how Murray had managed to place his horses there even with his political connections.

“Oh—I think he rents the stable. Everything Mr. Murray does is aboveboard. It has to be, because of his position and all.”

Could she be that naive, Ward wondered? “So—after Sean and you finished riding he took you—” where would a young man with a wealthy background and a lemon-yellow convertible take a girl like her? he asked himself: dozens of expensive places, “—to Lamb Doyles,” he said. It was a wild guess.

She laughed. “Sometimes prescient, but fallible. The Tandoori Rooms.”

O’Shaughnessy stood. He had kept the Murrays waiting long enough.

On the way to the door he heard Ward ask, “That’s such a lovely dress. Rayon, isn’t it?”

“Silk, Mr. Ward.”

“I hope you’ll understand the intent of this question—I don’t want to remind you of the situation—but do you wear it often?”

O’Shaughnessy didn’t have to see her smile diminish. “Sometimes. When I’m performing,” she said in a small voice.

He eased the door shut.

McGarr hadn’t turned down the fashionable and quiet cul de sac on which the Caughey apartment was located, but instead had driven past and swung into the laneway that led to a bank of garages. What was it Ward’s report had stated? The fourth garage on the left, facing.

Like the houses they served, the garages were built of brick that glossy ivy now covered and the doors were wooden, heavy and solid and painted brown. Inside, McGarr knew, it would be hot with the sun beating down on the black asphalt roof, and he doffed his tan suitcoat and draped it over the seat of the Cooper, making sure he had his ring of keys in his right front pocket and his pocket torch in the other.

The padlock was old, but somebody had taken pains to cover the keyhole with a square-cut section of inner tube, and fiddling a pick through the mechanism, McGarr quickly had it open. And oiled too. McGarr wondered if the old woman, the victim, had cut the patch and oiled the lock. The apartment had been well cared for, but that was woman’s work.

Having to put his shoulder to the doors, he opened first one side and then the other, and turned, hands on hips, to examine the automobile.

It was some light green color that looked turquoise in the direct sunlight and chartreuse in the shadows, but what struck McGarr was how shiny it all seemed, as though somebody had taken a chamois to it and recently. And it was a lovely thing—four-door, postwar, just; probably a ’49 or a ’50, he guessed—built when cars were still roomy and had a sturdy look to them, as though the manufacturers had been loath to turn away from tank design.

And perhaps it was that thought which caused McGarr to stop as he advanced on the car. He took out the torch and, keeping well away, moved into the garage, shining the light down at the dirt floor where he noticed a pattern, as though somebody had dragged something over it. Squatting, he peered under the car, and the narrow beam of the light glinted on the yellow plastic handle of a screwdriver, one with a Phillips head. Near it was a small length of electrical wire.

McGarr stood and examined the garage: the dark corners, the insides of two old wooden barrels, and up above where the roof beams met the brick walls of the building. There, over the door, he saw what he was looking for—a rag, part of an old army shirt. With the staff of a flagpole he tapped it down, turning his head away from the dust that fell with it.

The rag was very dusty and looked like it had been used to wipe down the car. He wondered if whoever had cleaned the car had also oiled the lock to make it look as though the old woman had kept the garage and car…but why? She herself owned the car, didn’t she? McGarr could and would check and right there.

But first he held the rag to his nose and breathed in—dust, lots of it, and something like car polish but something else too. He opened the rag out and sniffed at different parts of it—oil and then something sweet and sawdusty, almost pleasant, like the inside of a cedar chest or lemon oil on old wood. And around the smears a chemical odor—potassium nitrate.

What was wired, he wondered, the door latch, accelerator, or gearshift? Or the choke? He couldn’t know, but he bet it wasn’t a complex device. The dropped screwdriver and length of wire ruled that out. The rigging had taken place on the spot, using cheap materials that couldn’t be traced. And in a hurry too.

Bending to examine the front-door handle, passenger side—a shiny chrome lever that had to be twisted down—McGarr played the torch over the surface and found that it had been wiped clean. The material of the oily shirt had left streaks. Using his handkerchief so he wouldn’t cause the Technical Bureau any undue trouble, he glanced up, said a small prayer, and gently prised it down. Locked.

Selecting another device from his key ring, he jimmied the lock and carefully swung the door open. He noted the tax number and then opened the glove compartment.

Outside, beyond the hedgerow and spiked iron fence that bordered the laneway, he could hear the cries of children at play.

The interior of the car was stuffy, and the battery was weak, the map lamp only a dull yellow glow.

The tax book read, “Matthews, Dr. Malachy S., D.V.M., Slane Road, Drogheda, Co. Louth.”

McGarr placed the triple fold of brown, official paper back in the glove compartment but did not close the lid. He slid out of the car and left that door open too.

Out at the Cooper he called the Castle and the dispatcher put him through first to the Bomb Squad, then to the Technical Bureau, and finally to Garda Soichana headquarters at Phoenix Park. The neighborhood would have to be evacuated and that required manpower.

Only while waiting for the others to arrive did McGarr realize that caution had become second nature to him, but that worried him. Sure—it had kept him from climbing behind the wooden wheel of the car, even though it had especially attracted him, but McGarr wanted always to be thinking caution, to have it consciously in his mind. What if he had grasped the wheel, had pretended he was taking it out for a spin on a sunny, summer Saturday morning, had depressed the clutch, and stepped on the gas? No more car, no more garage, no more McGarr. It was when things became routine that tragedy struck.

Up the alley he saw several small heads peeking around the edge of a wooden fence. One of the children pushed another out into the alley, where he fell in the dust. The others squealed in delight. The child picked himself up and dashed back among them.

Otherwise it was quiet, a lovely green sunlit alley with potted plants in the open windows that McGarr could see from the car. Through the spiked iron fence closest to him he caught a glimpse of a large black dog gamboling with a stick in its mouth, easily eluding a toddler who shambled after it through deep green grass. Arms outstretched, the infant was delighted but turned back every once in a while to make sure Mammy was close by and watching.

The dog’s collar was red, a bit brighter than its tongue. It dropped the stick and rolled its neck on it, as it would on a trophy. The child fell on the dog’s chest and spilled off into the grass, laughing.

A bomb. Here. And a murder. McGarr wondered what it meant

O’Shaughnessy had not glanced at either of the Murrays upon entering the room. He had only nodded to the stenographer, who had been busying herself with some paperwork, and then walked to the window, where he clasped his hands behind his back and looked out into the courtyard.

He thought of the hot, blue haze and how, on such a day, it would lay over the sea and make the swells heavy and slick, like quicksilver or fine gray oil. Sea gulls, diving for bits of jetsam or chum, would drag their bills through it, cutting wakes, and the rap of the lobster boat’s diesel would carry far over the water and sound pleasant and soft, like a sewing machine, to those on shore.

Well—he’d be on holiday himself come the first of September and he needed the rest. He was nearly sixty now and getting tired, especially of people like Murray, who—he turned his steely blue eyes on the fat politician—insisted with every word and gesture that he was special, one of God’s elect, when in fact the man’s very presence offended the eyes.

In a glance O’Shaughnessy noted the man’s red-veined nose, the eyes that were shifty and quick and streaked—again the booze—the way he was sweating and breathing heavily even here in the cool lower room, uncomfortable, impatient and squirming in the chair, his body bulging in the expensive, pin-striped suit. O’Shaughnessy would treat the man fairly, but he did not have to like him. Many years ago he had realized it was perhaps the only prerogative granted a policeman and he guarded it jealously.