The Death of Love (33 page)

McKeon handed him a drink and said, “Well now, Chief Super—am I looking at new eyes as well as a new leg?”

Ward only set the drink aside; O’Suilleabhain had appeared before them. “So, Hughie—tell us about your career as a pugilist. What was it like? Was it fun or just, you know, the challenge?”

“Not over yet,” said McKeon. “Hughie’s been known to take shots at yokes bigger than yourself. Last one weighed a couple thousand pounds and was made of steel.”

“Threw
roving
punches that traveled at sixty-five miles an hour,” O’Suilleabhain joked, tossing back his rich tangle of black curls and laughing at the ceiling. Which was
confidence, Ward decided; O’Suilleabhain was acting as if he had already taken title to the property.

Saying he just wanted a word with Bresnahan before having to return to Dublin, Ward excused himself. He found her in the kitchen with an apron on, readying further platters of food.

“Don’t we look domestic.”

She only glanced at him. “I’ve done the same for you, if you’ll remember. On more than a few occasions.”

“Practice for this, the
real
thing.”

Well, it wasn’t as though you ever told me it
was
the real thing between us, Bresnahan thought. With you it was always fun and games, and no more. “I suppose you’re referring to my resignation?”

“Which hasn’t been accepted.”

“It will be, after a while. Somebody from the Commissioner’s Office will come snooping around, wondering why I’m not at work.”

Not if the commissioner is Peter McGarr, thought Ward. “Will you tell me
why?
”

Bresnahan straightened up and wiped her hands on the apron. “I will, sure.” She was angry at somebody or something, but she didn’t exactly know who or what. “There’s no future in it. For me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Ward could see Bresnahan eventually taking command of some high-visibility administrative post. The superintendency of Public Relations or Community Affairs, where being a big, good-looking, well-spoken woman would be a definite plus.

Her eyes met his, and she blinked, coming at least a little to herself. “I mean, obviously there’s a future for you. You’re young, a man, well known in men’s circles. You’re quick, combative and…impervious. Everybody knows
you’re
tough.

“Me? I’m too sensitive.” She shook her head. “To see what you have to go through just to keep yourself from being disgraced.” She sighed and looked back at the platter of food.

“You mean the Chief?”

She nodded. “And O’Duffy and the Harneys and the
note cards. I think I might have gone back before I read them, but now?” Again she shook the bright waves of her orange hair. “The only civility is what you read in the papers. All the lies about how the government runs. The Dial, the judiciary, and the lot. The rest, the
real
part is…mayhem. A kind of jungle and dicey. I wouldn’t even know the rules.”

“I thought that was part of the crack? You know, Bernie’s game. Life as a sudsy, sardonic, upbeat ditty. You play it over enough, you get to know the words.”

Bresnahan canted her head. Only a few days past she had thought the same.

“Life under a rock”—Ward looked out through a doorway into the dining room where the other guests were gathered; there, O’Suilleabhain with full smile and laughing eyes was charming a clutch of older women.
Or in the shadow of one—
“is living a lie.”

Perhaps it was what had happened at the bridge, she thought. The anger she was feeling. But why should she be angry at Ward? He had done everything he could to save as many people as he could.

“Couldn’t you hire in a manager, somebody to run the farm while you’re in town? I read they’re putting in a new airport somewhere out here. You could pop back and forth. The place would make a splendid weekend retreat.”
Without
Rory O’Suilleabhain, he thought; even the self-consciously Irish spelling of O’Suilleabhain’s last name was beginning to bother Ward.

It was possible surely, but, “Without a steady hand this place will never be the same. It will go down day by day. I’ll run it a while and see how it goes.”

“You mean the haying and milking, selling cows and buying calves?” Ward asked. “The barns, the house, the fences.”

Their eyes clashed.

Somehow Ward didn’t see Bresnahan doing much of that. Not now, not after who she had become in Dublin.

“I’ve done it before. And well. And I’ll do it again.”

Ward nodded. “I’m confident you will, but will you enjoy it?”

Bresnahan again looked away. “I’m not sure I want to be discussing this. Not now.”

“What about yer mahn?”

Bresnahan said nothing; she had been waiting for that.

“You and he…got something going?”

Blood rose to her cheeks, and their eyes clashed again. “Not in the way you mean.”

“Please—just look at him. If he isn’t the cat that’s et the big red canary, I don’t know who is.”

She shook her head. “That’s just Rory. He’s full of life, is all.”

“Among other vital substances, Ward thought. “Is he the fella you once told me about? The one you said you fell for as a little girl and he kept snubbing you time after time, year after year?”

Watching O’Suilleabhain working the room, making sure no potential voter escaped without feeling his winning smile, she said, “Yes,” in a small, submissive voice that Ward did not care for at all.

“Why not now?”

Bresnahan paused to consider. “I think because of how I changed.”

Or how Dublin has changed
you, for which Ward himself was in large part responsible. The irony made Ward smile, but his eyes were bright and hard. “So?”

She hunched her broad, angular shoulders and returned her eyes to his. “I don’t know. I’ll just have to see.”

“You know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand how everything could have changed so completely between us. Yes, your father has died. Yes, you’re bereaved. Yes, his nibs has returned to claim his prize. But whatever happened to
us
in all of that?”

“I don’t know myself.”

“
Has
everything changed, or do you just need a”—Ward looked wildly around the large kitchen—“break?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Then let me tell you this, since I’ve got to leave. Look at me.” Ward reached for her hands, which were still wet from her kitchen work; he looked into her gray eyes that were no different from the storm sky that he could see through the windows beyond the sinks. “Nothing’s
changed for me. Or will. I should have told you this before, but I will always love you. No matter what you decide. I understand you must do what makes you happy. Nothing else will work in the long run.” He thought he should kiss her one last time, but he didn’t want to spoil her relationship with O’Suilleabhain, if that’s what she should decide.

“No, wait”—Bresnahan tried to hold on to his hand, but the wetness let it slip away—“can’t you just stay for a day or two? We can walk and talk and—I’ll have some of the women ready a room.”

Fitting on his gloves while staring in at O’Suilleabhain, Ward said, “I don’t know how much more of the lord of the manor I can take. Isn’t there an ounce of sorrow in the son of a—” Ward cleared his throat and tried to calm himself; he couldn’t remember when he had felt so…total.

“It’s different on a farm. Here you see life come and go on a regular basis. It hardens you.”

So you think, thought Ward. “Rather like the Murder Squad.”

Bresnahan tried to smile but couldn’t. “Sure you can’t stay?”

“
Can’t
is the word. I’ve a collar to make.”

She blinked twice, which gave Ward hope. “Really? In the
case?
”

Ward reached for his cane, then turned toward the door. “I’d love to tell you, really I would. But since you’re
resigned
, I’m afraid you’ll have to look for it in the papers. Or on the telly.”

“Hold on, Hughie,” McGarr called from the dining room., “I’ll ride along with you.” He was then heard to say to Bresnahan’s mother, “I’ve got a colleague who’s being released from hospital in the morning. He’ll need somebody to drive him home.”

“I hope he’s well.”

McGarr smiled. “Apart from a bullet in the chest.”

Horror gripped the old woman’s face, and her eyes sought her daughter’s.

“Not to worry,” McGarr went on. “He’s been shot and blown up at least twice that I know of, but—can you believe?—he’s not a cat at all but a dog.”

In the car on the long drive back to Dublin, McGarr issued only one piece of advice. “Paddy Power was right. Women, they’re not like men at all, and there’s no explaining why. Just carry on. Things will work out the way they should, you’ll see.”

“What about Bernie and Liam?”

“There’s been some talk of their retiring and setting up a little agency. Insurance work, missing persons, the odd criminal investigation.”

“And yourself?”

“I might join them.
After—
” he was exonerated of all charges and named commissioner, he meant. “Get myself a little place down in the country,” where he would never again allow himself to become fodder for public chat.

“Take O’Duffy himself,” McGarr went on, as they hurtled up the N-7 in a Garda car with its blue dome light spinning. “Would he have believed, had he been told, that he would be assassinated by the likes of a Mossie Gladden? Would it have stopped him?”

A few miles passed.

“Will you be looking up Nell Power?” McGarr asked.

“Directly.”

“Good lad. Be sure to give her my best.”

Several miles later Ward asked, “Do you think the Eire Bank sale will go through regardless?”

McGarr nodded; there were certain things and people who were larger than life. An institution, like Eire Bank, was one; Harry Harney, who owned 3 percent, and his son, who had just been named taosieach, were two others.

SITTING IN HIS Cooper outside the massive Eire Bank Financial Center in Dublin the next morning, McGarr said, “Don’t be so impatient,” to the young woman who was occupying the passenger seat. “You did me a favor, which I now return.”

“But the main story is the funeral. My editor will be beside himself if I come back with nothing.”

It was the day of the state funeral for Sean Dermot O’Duffy. A national day-of-mourning had been declared; heads of government from the European Community and other countries had arrived, and security precautions had “never been more complete,” the radio had been saying. The American president was flying in. One newspaper even went so far as to claim, “Never in the modern history of Ireland has a man been more mourned than Taosieach O’Duffy, cut down in the prime of his political career as he was leading the nation into the twenty-first century.” Harney’s pages, of course.

“Ah, drink your coffee,” McGarr advised the reporter from the
Times
. “Did I tell you I’ll be named commissioner next week?”

Through thick lenses her hazel eyes regarded McGarr. “And
that
’s the story?”

“No, of course not. That’s next week’s story. You can leak it, if you’re brave.”

“Who shall I say is making you commissioner?”

“Why, Harry Harney, of course. Who else runs this country?”

Glumly she looked out the window of McGarr’s Cooper toward the monumental stone entry of the Eire Bank complex; it looked like something extracted wholly from Mammon or New York.

“Forget about the funeral,” McGarr chortled on, feeling very good indeed for the first time in almost a week. “Every”—he rejected Tom, Dick, and Harry—“Moira, Kathleen, and Fionnualla will be covering the funeral, while you’ll have the scoop on why ever there was a funeral for the late, lamented Taosieach at all.”

“But I
am
Moira, and my name’ll be mud without a word to say about O’Duffy’s burial.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Why not? I’ve got nothing but time while my career slips away.”

“Why was O’Duffy in Sneem?”

“To attend Paddy Power’s funeral.”

“And had he not been in Sneem, would he most probably not be dead?”

She nodded.

“Now, we’ve just mentioned that Paddy Power had been killed
before
O’Duffy. Was there anybody else connected with the whole thing who also died in Sneem
before
O’Duffy?”

“Gretta Osbourne, the Eire Bank executive. But she was a suicide.”

McGarr shook his head. Out of the corner of an eye he had seen Ward step out of the building; Ward then held the door for two other people, a man and a woman. McKeon and O’Shaughnessy were behind them, hands deep in topcoat pockets, their eyes scanning the street.

McGarr pointed toward the group on the expanse of the marble atrium. “Your murderers exactly.”

“Shane Frost and Nell Power?” she asked incredulously.

“Well, Shane Frost. Nell Power is probably only an accessory.”

“Didn’t they just sign the papers to sell Eire Bank to some Japanese consortium?”

“I see you’re up on current events.”

“But—
why?
What reason would Shane Frost have had to have murdered Paddy Power?”

“
And
Gretta Osbourne.”

She nodded.

“Four hundred and twenty-three million pounds of reasons, I’d hazard, though Nell’s motives might have been more complex. Now”—McGarr reached into his jacket and pulled out a tape cassette—“I’m going to play this once and once only. Since it will be evidence in court, you’re not to take notes.” He plucked the pen from her hands. On her pad he wrote
FROST, OSBOURNE, NELL POWER
. “What you hear you can say you learned from a source. It’s real.” And you can launch your career on it, he did not add. And owe one hell of a debt in the Favor Bank for some long time. “Ready?”

McGarr slipped the tape into the player that hung under the dashboard of his Cooper and depressed the Fast Forward button until they heard the cuing beep. He then punched Play. While the voices spoke, he pointed from one name to another, indicating the speakers.

They heard Frost say, “Yes? This is Shane Frost. Who’s this?” as though answering a phone. There was a pause, then, “Ah, yes—” Frost then tried twice to pronounce some Japanese name. “…Anaki’s secretary.” Another pause. “Can you speak more slowly, please?” Yet another. “Yes, both Gretta Osbourne and Nell Power are here. Yes, they will corroborate what we discussed this afternoon.” With his hand obviously over the phone, Frost said, “You first, Nell. These bloody Japs need everything signed in blood in triplicate. They probably won’t sleep until they have every certificate back in Kyoto.”

Said Nell Power in her deep, postmenopausal voice, “Hello—this is Nell Power. Acting as spokesperson for my family, I agree to the terms that you worked out with Shane this afternoon.”

The receiver was evidently then reached to Gretta Osbourne. In speech that was already slurred she said, “But I tol’ you, Shay’—I can’t bring myself to divest so soon af’er—I mean, I—” They heard a crash, like a telephone falling.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Nell Power. “She’s faded off again.”

Frost took the phone. “It’s late and Ms. Osbourne is tired. Could she call you back in the morning?

“Thank you, and my best to Anaki.”

They then heard Nell Power ask, “How much has she had?”

“Enough to kill a cow.”

“Overdoing things again, Shane?” McGarr pointed the nib of the pen to indicate that it was Nell Power’s voice. “Like with Paddy’s pills. Perhaps if the overdose hadn’t been so much—”

“Enough of that. Jesus—who knows who might be listening? You can hear voices through the door. Put on your clothes now and help me get her back to her room.”

“It won’t be easy. She’s passed out.”

“Has she a pulse?” Frost asked.

“Just, but dead slow. Look at the way she’s sweating.”

“Right. I’ll get her back now. A little stroll, a few shakes, and she’ll let me out. What about yourself?”

“I’ve stayed here enough to know how to get in and out.”

“Unseen.”

“Count on it.”

McGarr switched off the tape. “But, of course, you can’t count on human beings. Life is full of improbabilities. A man named Michael, the late-night porter at Parknasilla, happened to feel a draft in a hallway where he had delivered a bag. Checking the door, which was partially opened, he looked out and saw Nell Power—distinctly; he grew up with her—leaving the hotel down an avenue in the willows which surround the place. Hearing him push open the door, she turned, and the light fell across her face. ‘Evening, Michael,’ she said with aplomb. Michael asked her if she was coming in. No, she said, she was just leaving. “Superintendent Ward also has on record Kieran Coyne, a solicitor in Sneem, saying that when Paddy Power’s note cards were dropped off at his office in Sneem, he looked outside the window to see who might have left them. He saw Shane Frost walking away. Later, after Coyne understood how central the cards were in the murder of Power, he approached Frost, who paid him to keep quiet.”

“Blackmail,” said the reporter.

McGarr nodded. “Superintendent Bernard Q. McKeon—do you know him?”

“By reputation only,” she said, widening the large orbs of her eyes.

“McKeon interviewed Solicitor Coyne in Sneem only last night. This is Coyne’s signed statement, which, again, I’ll only let you read.”

Through the thick glasses McGarr watched her eyes move down the page in a kind of long blink. When she looked up, she said, “How can I ever thank you?”

“We’ll come to that, one of these days. Now—d’you care to ask Frost a few questions?”

She snatched away her pen and was out the door before McGarr could even reach for the handle. By the time he got to the group of six people, the young reporter was in full spate, asking pointed question that Frost found distressing.

“
You
,” he said to McGarr. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

“Me? How can it be me? Didn’t you get me suspended?”

“I’ll see you in court for slander, libel, and defamation.”

McGarr turned to Nell Power. “I’d slap him, were I you. While you’ve got the chance.”

Evening found McGarr ensconced in a large wing-back chair in the sitting room of his father-in-law’s country retreat in Kildare, some thirty miles southwest of the city. In one hand was a snifter of ancient cognac, in the other a Cuban cigar. In front of him was a crackling wood fire. Madeleine was playing on the plush of an Oriental carpet before his feet. Noreen was reading the papers at one end of an expanse of sectional sofa that formed a spacious L in front of the hearth. Her parents were seated in the middle, her mother creweling, her father staring into the fire.

It was a large room with molded ceilings and tall, arched windows that filled the tasteful interior with golden evening light. And it was just the type of setting, McGarr imagined, that every Irishman would covet but few could afford. Out one of the windows he could see rolling emerald fields dotted with thoroughbred horses and a long av
enue of beeches, their yellow leaves shimmering in the winter twilight. Out the others loomed the bluish conical peaks of the Wicklow Mountains.

But then Fitzhugh Frenche had gotten in on the explosion of property values that had accompanied the development boom of the seventies. Ground (zero) floor, as it were. While not a politician himself, he was a man of undoubtable taste, who was a pleasant companion and scrupulously avoided judging his peers. Thus his company had been courted by the likes of Paddy Power and Sean Dermot O’Duffy.

Now he sighed and asked, “Do you suppose that Mossie Gladden had planned to murder Sean Dermot all along?”

“Not consciously,” said Noreen. “He was a man on the edge. Psychologically. He’d been firing at those
Sean
targets for some time, perhaps in an attempt to relieve his hatred of O’Duffy. And when Peter deprived him of the note cards, he just went to bits.”

“A pity not privately,” her father remarked into his cup. “He’d been a crank and a mossback all his public life, but who could have expected this.”

Who exactly, thought McGarr.

“Are you having another, Peter?” Frenche stood, a tall, thin man dressed in twill and tweed. He wore riding boots on his feet and a cravat in a quiet Paisley pattern around his neck.

McGarr handed him his glass.

Returning it, Frenche said, “But I suppose the madness began with Shane Frost. Did I ever tell you that he approached me about investing in Eire Bank, back when it began? Painted a rosy picture. Said we’d make millions overnight.”

Even his wife, Nuala, looked up from her stitching.

“I went to Paddy to make sure that what Shane was telling me was the truth, and when Paddy revealed that Shane would be manager of operations, he called it, whenever he was away, I decided to have none of it. Shane was even then too”—he paused, as though having to think for a moment—“nakedly avaricious for my money, and I let the opportunity pass.”

As though to say, What insight but what a loss, Nuala’s
eyes widened before she returned her attention to her work. The Frenches had made themselves a very nice life on their wits.

“I can see him capable of anything with all those millions in the balance. What was the figure again?”

Said Noreen, “Four-hundred and twenty-three million pounds.”

“My God, that’s a lot of money,” Nuala remarked.

“Not worth a farthing if you lose your good name,” Frenche replied almost smugly. Resting an elbow on the mantel, he shook his head once. “Without that, you have nothing. No,” he continued, “Paddy and Sean Dermot had the proper touch. When they were together in those early governments, they were an unbeatable combination.”

In the quiet theft of billions, not mere millions, McGarr had read in Power’s note cards. But he said nothing. Who was he to judge a man such as his father-in-law, who had made his fortune knowing men like Power and O’Duffy and had still preserved his good name, to say nothing of his life.

“Later, Paddy became a bit of a monk, I think, with his blather about two classes and who was to pay back the debt. All well and good with him sitting on his riches.” He paused, and then: “Did I mention we received an invitation in the mail this morning?” Frenche waited until McGarr raised his eyes to him. “To a little party Harney’s giving on the election eve. It’s at the Shelbourne. All the proper
new
people will be there to celebrate his son’s triumph.”

McGarr blinked. Harney could not invite McGarr, but he could certainly invite his socially prominent in-laws. It was like a signal sent to say he would back the rehabilitation of McGarr’s good name. “Are you going?”

“I’m wondering if I should.” Fitzhugh Frenche was now a man in his middle seventies, but he was still wily in the ways of the political world. He was asking McGarr’s permission.

“Of course we’re going,” said Nuala. “Somebody has to represent the family, and we wouldn’t want anybody to think we’re too good to influence such a man. Who knows what sway a quiet word might have with somebody like
that? Perhaps all he’s been seeking is approbation all along.”

McGarr wondered exactly which family she had meant and, after their undoubted triumph at the polls, exactly whose approbation the Harneys would need.

But then it was a world that McGarr knew little about, although he was learning.