The Death of an Irish Lover (10 page)

“Can’t imagine what she sees in those two erstwhile military yokes, unless I’m missing something. Privates Dirty and Dirtier.”

Just that, Ward was moved to say. How often had they seen it in their work before—the slide down into degradation and death. Some fast, others slow. Gertrude McGurk would wake up one morning a toothless addicted or diseased old hag in some slum or doorway.

But he was staring down at the white brassiere spread across Bresnahan’s green cashmere jumper. And a longing that was beyond dreams swept over him—for Bresnahan and what they had been together, the good
young
and innocent times they had spent discovering each other and what their lives could have been together. And could never again be.

Before he was shot and nearly killed. And before whatever genetic mechanism it was kicked in and made him decide that it was procreation that mattered.
The next generation. Life, after all, being short and made up of a concatenation of quick hard choices.

Sensing his mood, Bresnahan tossed the brassiere into the drawer. “Look at these.” From her jacket pocket she removed a number of photographs and spread them across the nightwear. Captioned obviously by a child, they pictured, “
MA AND ME IN HOSPITAL
,” which was an overexposed Polaroid of a wan young woman in a hospital smock holding a newborn baby lovingly in her arms.

The second shot showed the woman, who looked increasingly thin and suddenly gray with a toddler, the next with a young child, and the final photograph pictured the pair back in hospital with roles reversed—the child clasping the mother’s shoulders and bandaged head, which she was kissing. The woman’s eyes were not open. The caption read, “
MA AND ME BEFOR MA WENT TO HEAVEN
.” Each caption was signed, “Cara Frakes.”

“Ma being Manus Frakes’s wife,” Bresnahan said, placing two wedding rings on the final photograph. She turned the underside of the larger one into the light from the window nearby. “Names, wedding date. His wife’s last name was Carson. Nelly Carson.”

“Benny Carson’s…daughter?” Ward asked, picking up the rings and the photographs and closing the top drawer of the armoire. He reached for the handles of the second.

“Could be. Or it could be a coincidence. But if Nelly Carson was Benny Carson’s daughter, it would make Carson this little girl’s grandfather.”

“Whom Manus Frakes—if it was Manus Frakes—tried to kill when he destroyed the Chief’s car.”

“So it would seem.”

“Why? A…falling-out?”

“Obviously.”

“Over what—the eel trade, whatever else they were involved in? The murder?”

“It occurred to me as well.”

Lost in thought, Ward opened the second drawer.

And Bresnahan gasped. “Oh, my—what have we here?”

Ward looked down on a variety of whips, chains, a pair of handcuffs with “NYPD” engraved on the stainless-steel surface of each clasp. And probes of various sorts, some with complicated tenebrae of straps.

“Tools of the trade,” said Ward, reaching toward the packets of condoms that filled the other half of the drawer. There seemed to be every brand and type—ribbed, colored, flavored, tasseled, extended—but of all the brands Thunderbolt was not among them.

“Something there you fancy?” Bresnahan asked. “I wouldn’t think such items interested you any longer, daddy-o.”

Ward ignored the oblique reference to his family situation. “Ever come across Thunderbolt condoms?”

There was a pause during which Bresnahan seemed to have to gather herself. “I assume you’re asking that question in a professional…” she almost said vein, “way, not—you know…”

“Know what?” Ward kept pawing through the inventory. “I’m not following you.”

“Can I say something?”

“Anything you want.”

“Sometimes you’re an incredible…incredibly obtuse.”

“As opposed to acute? Well.” Ward glanced up and rubbed an eyebrow, as though considering the justice of the remark.

Combined with a widow’s peak, his eyebrows, which met in a dark line, were the feature that made his face so differently handsome. And so irresistible for Bresnahan. She would—she now realized with a pang—never love anybody again as totally as she had Hughie Ward. He had been and, she feared, still was her first and only true love.

“I’ll take that. Sometimes, I suspect, I can be a little thick. But then again, we all can.”

“Do you mean me?”

He turned to her and noted the glowering brow, the quivering upper lip that was just slightly protrusive and which he had traced with his own lips he couldn’t count the times. “Do you think you’re exempt?”

Maybe an inch or so taller than Ward, she stepped in on him, making sure their eyes locked. “Can I tell you something?”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t know one condom from another, and the only person that I’ve known in my life who did is you. You…slut.”

Ward reached for her hip to pull her into him, to comfort her—he told himself—and she chopped his hand away. “Don’t even think about touching me. Ever.”

Ward raised his palms. “Sorry. I understand.”

“
No!
You don’t understand. You’ll never understand. You only ever think of yourself, and what I don’t understand is how you could have done what you did to…us.” Turning, she moved toward the window.

Ward had known it would be difficult having to work with Bresnahan again, and he had even approached McGarr about somehow avoiding the situation. But McGarr had been intractable—“If you want
to be reassigned, it’s your call. But Ruth has told me she wants to stay, and I won’t reassign her because of your personal life.
Lives
,” he had added pejoratively.

Not finding Thunderbolt condoms among the collection, Ward closed the drawer and opened the last, which contained a number of jumpers, skirts, slacks on one side and a photo album and a packet of tampons on the other. None of the photos had actually been inserted into the plastic sleeves; the brace of, say, three or four dozen had simply been stuffed into the volume.

All pictured Gertrude McGurk standing alongside a different man, who was usually older and shorter and looked a bit embarrassed to have been caught on film with the younger woman. For her part, McGurk—wearing some tawdry outfit, in several, a leatherette miniskirt with high black boots to match—appeared triumphant. One of the only two men taller than she had been Pascal Burke.

In that she was seen with his Shannon Fisheries uniform cap on her head, and she had inserted one hand between the buttons of his shirt, as though rubbing his chest. Without question a pretty woman, she had dropped open her wide mouth and closed her eyes, as though to say, Can you imagine if any one in Dublin saw this? She had raised one long thin leg, so that the brilliant red high-heel shoe was dangling casually from her toes, and the knee was firmly inserted between Burke’s thighs. He looked drunk.

The packet of tampons had been opened, and the lid looked a bit worn. Opening it, Ward found the “works” needed to prepare and inject heroin—stainless-steel spoon, strap, lighter, and five disposable needles.

Ten minutes later they discovered the “stash” of drugs—on a ledge above the door inside the armoire:
five glassine packets that contained heroin as well as a half dozen lids of crystalline cocaine. Four prescription-size vials also held a variety of nonpharmaceutical-grade tablets and pills. A hatbox nearby on the topmost shelf contained a large Ziploc bag of marijuana.

“At least she keeps the goodies out of the reach of children,” Bresnahan observed.

Ward nodded. “All three of them.”

“And notice who controls the goodies.”

“The sign on the door. It’s the only neat and clean room in the house. And that.” Bresnahan pointed to the bed. “Her…throne, so to speak. Where, doubtless, she controls her subjects.”

“They’ll come back for the drugs,” Ward said, “now that their mug shots are circulating. They’ll be afraid to buy in a city.”

“But not with our car parked outside.”

“Know who I worry about?” Bresnahan asked.

Ward nodded. “Cara, the child.”

“Among this”—Bresnahan waved at the collection of drugs—“trinity of unholy shaggers.”

“At best. We better phone this in and find someplace to conceal the car.”

“With ourselves in it.”

When Ward glanced at her, Bresnahan added, “Don’t take that wrong, pops. It’s just that I don’t fancy a stakeout
en plein
air. Not in these conditions.”

Out in the side yard, water was still sluicing toward the Shannon.

Water was rushing through the cobblestone gutters of Leixleap as well, especially in the low area by the riverfront and its shops.

Under a strong sun—made all the brighter by the cover of snow, which was melting—the streams gushed down side streets and merged with other torrents headed toward the river.

It was warm. And the sour odor of melting snow and damp earth was everywhere, Noreen McGarr noted as she tried to step off a curb and across from the chemist shop, where she had bought some needed toothpaste, to the greengrocer where she would purchase an apple. “O’Rourke,” the intaglio sign declared in Celtic script over the door.

Fortunately, Noreen kept a spare pair of Wellies in the boot of her car, since her widest step brought her only to the middle of the torrent; blithely she pushed
on, the water crystalline and clear against the black rubber of her galoshes.

And it struck her—not for the first time that morning—that life in a small country town, like this, could be very good indeed, what with everybody knowing everybody else. There was a level of familiarity in the chat, which she had overheard this morning while prowling the shops, that was unattainable in Dublin.

Granted, in the city she knew nearly all of the other business owners in the immediate vicinity of her own shop. And with the Dail Eireann (the Irish parliament), Trinity College, and corporate and professional offices close by, many of her daily acquaintances were the movers and shakers of the country.

But Dublin was so…raucous and gruff, she decided, reaching for the brass handle of the greengrocer’s door. The gentility that the town had obtained even as recently as her own undergraduate days at Trinity two decades earlier had fled the city. With the recent prosperity, Dublin seemed to have assumed the mantle of other large commercial centers, like London, Paris, and New York.

Well, maybe not New York, she decided, closing the door. New York was another category of urban animal altogether. In recent years, Noreen and her well-off mother had shopped in New York, where everything could be had in greater variety and more cheaply than anywhere in Europe. But she would never consider living there, the most basic urges—for money and power—being all too evident, even on the streets.

“Good morning, missus,” the shopkeeper called out, as Noreen turned to survey the shop that was heaped with fresh produce grown, she assumed, in the hot
houses that now dotted agricultural Ireland and had been paid for through grants from the EU.

“Morning to you,” Noreen replied, cheerily.

“And a fine morning it is, in spite of the snow.” An early middle-aged countrywoman with broad shoulders, the greengrocer was wearing a bib apron over a cardigan sweater and she had a bandana around her head to protect a recent perm, Noreen suspected. With arms folded across her sturdy chest, she continued to speak to another older woman in hushed tones.

It was cool in the shop and damp, the concrete floor having just been hosed out; the aroma of fresh vegetables was like a bracing perfume.

But when a snatch of conversation came over a heaped bin of cabbages—“…bloody hussy coming in here saying, bold as brass, ‘Pascal prefers this,’ and ‘Pascal can’t stomach that,’ to me, mind, knowing how close…and in that accent of hers, as though she was actually going to cook for him, well….” Noreen decided to move closer, ostensibly to reach for a basket.

“Can I help you with anything?” the greengrocer asked.

“No, thank you. I’m here for a little of this and that, whatever catches my eye this morning.”

“Well, then, work away. I’m here if you need me.”

Not moving far, Noreen continued to hear a snippet or two of the gossip. The customer saying, “I know you don’t like hearing this, Moira, but to think that Ellen Finn with her new husband was throwing a leg over him, too, to say nothing of…”

And, “Certainly, Quintan had cause. And how could you fault him, if he did. I mean, I know it’s wrong but…” Also, “…missing now, the uncle is telling
people over at the inn. He’s beside himself, like the parents.”

With the greengrocer saying, “…who else could be capable of such a thing, and her with the background and all. Didn’t the bloody bitch take my Tony’s last pound with trips to Madeira and wherever.”

“And even suing after his death,” the customer put in. “Tony Moran being yours and everybody knowing it.”

“She threatened me, she did,” the greengrocer went on. “Rang me up and said her ‘friends’ would take care of me if I contested her action in court.”

“Do you think that
she
…? How?”

“Key, of course. She’s in the inn more hours than Grace herself, overnighting so to speak.”

“Everybody knows…”

“And how is Grace taking it?”

“Ach—not well at all, the shock…tells me she’s not sure she can go back.”

“Who can blame her? But what will she do for money?”

The greengrocer shrugged. “There’s always the Compensation Board, and I’ll not be tending this place forever.”

She meant the government panel that awarded cash grants to people who had lost their livelihoods through no fault of their own.

“Has she filed a claim already?”

“No, of course not. She’s too upset…”

The other woman turned toward the door and had to speak louder. “And deserved, too. Imagine—opening the door and coming upon that with no warning. It would be enough to put me in my grave.”

“And nearly did Grace, I tell you.”

“I’m off, Moira.”

“Cheerio, Breege.”

When the door of the shop closed, the greengrocer turned to Noreen. “How are you coming along?”

“Dandy—I think I’ve got what I need.”

“Can I interest you in some fresh organic claytonia? Have you ever tried it? It’s—”

Noreen begged off and paid the woman, saying, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying, when I first entered the shop. Could I ask who was the woman who was cooking for Pascal Burke?”

Without responding, the greengrocer handed Noreen her change and stepped back. “Are you the police?”

“I don’t work for the police.”

“Then, who? The press?”

“I’m a shopkeeper, like yourself.”

“In Dublin, from your accent.”

Noreen nodded.

“Then—may I ask your interest?”

“I’m staying in the inn, and, of course, I heard.”

“You have, have you?” The woman turned to straighten up the baskets near the register. “Well—you’ll not be hearing from me beyond my saying, she could have been one of any number of women in this town.

“Pascal Burke may have been a bit of a rogue. But he was a thoroughly charming rogue, who never harmed a soul. And he had the best intentions, I’m sure. He brought joy into the lives of some who would never have known otherwise. He’ll be missed.” When she glanced at Noreen, there were tears in her eyes.

By you or by Grace O’Rourke, Noreen was tempted to ask. Perhaps forty, she was a pretty woman in a big
way, with an expanse of bosom and a broad back. “You’re Grace’s mother?”

“Aunt.”

“Would it be possible to speak with Grace for a moment?”

“I thought you said you weren’t with the police or press.”

“I’m not.”

“Then—good day to you, my good woman. And I thank you for your custom.”

Out in the street, Noreen looked for the person named Breege who’d been speaking to Moira O’Rourke. But she was nowhere in sight.

Not far away in the Leixleap Inn, Detective Superintendent Bernie McKeon was ensconced at the end of the pub bar. Benny Carson was standing across from him, reminiscing about old times in Monaghan Town, where they had grown up together.

They had already been over who of the many they knew had done what in the past and was doing what now. Who had passed away. And who had simply “dropped off the scope,” as Carson had put it, so many of the “kids” they’d grown up with in the fifties and early sixties having emigrated, leaving little knowledge of their progress in the world once their parents died.

The two had also already discussed their own lives and the curious paths that had brought them to be sharing a drink in the small river town on the Shannon, Carson mentioning his sister, Honora, who was Quintan Finn’s mother and exactly McKeon’s age.

“The prettiest girl by far in all Monaghan Town,” McKeon enthused. “And it pains me to know what she passed me up for.”

“Fertilizer,” Carson put in. And they both laughed.

In the nonce, McKeon had quaffed more pints of porter than he cared to remember, and Carson had kept pace with what appeared to be whiskey and water. And the afternoon had worn on, such that—when McKeon turned to glance at the street door that kept opening now, as farmers began to appear for a wet before their tea—he saw that the day was declining.

It was time to get down to business. “So,” he asked. “What went on here?”

“You’re the pro, you tell me.”

McKeon sipped from his pint. “You first. You know the turf and the players. Then I’ll tell you what we know so far. I wouldn’t want to influence your opinion, which I value.”

“Fair play.” Carson reached for the bottle of Powers he was drinking from. Always wiry, he had kept himself trim, McKeon had noticed, and appeared to be in good health in spite of the constant glass and the cigarette. “Like I told your chief, McGraw”—

“McGarr.”

“That’s him.” Carson splashed a tot of the amber-colored liquid into his glass and replaced the cork. The spectacles he had donned at lunch, when ringing out tabs, made Carson appear owlish and wise, given his beaked nose and deeply set eyes, which were ringed with dark skin.

“All I know is what I saw from here. The bar. And I have three witnesses to prove that the only time I left this room was to water the trough, which makes it a—” He glanced at McKeon.

“A cast-iron alibi.”

“Ah, there now—that’s communication for you. Spot on.”

“So?”

“So, I think it was a classic love triangle gone wrong.”

Carson raised the glass to his lips and drank. “Quintan, the new hubby”—he had to wait for his voice to return—“was browned off that the marriage hadn’t put an end to the affair that his wife had been carrying on with Burke since…well, now, that I think of it, since pretty close to day one of her joining the eel police. Burke, you see, having the knack with women.” Carson dipped his head to McKeon and winked over the top of his glasses.

“And I can remember him chatting her up right there where you sit, Bernie, and then the two of them—a bit lit, don’t you know—slipping upstairs. Him with the Cheshire cat look and her with the big bright eyes and slight smile, knowing that a skin-adventure was in the making. If you’re in this business long enough, you can always tell.”

“How did Finn, the hubby, get upstairs then?”

“The day it was done?”

McKeon nodded.

“With Manus Frakes and the delivery of the rug, of course. They had it all set up, the two of them.”

“Why would Frakes go along with something like that? Money? You think he was paid?”

Carson canted his head, as though considering. “Could be, Manus forever on the trot for quid. But it could also be a recruitment thing.”

“For what? The army?” McKeon asked, meaning the IRA.

“Not the real thing. Manus got drummed out of that long ago.”

Again McKeon waited; he’d let the other man talk
unprompted the night long, if necessary. His decades of interrogating people, like Carson, told him that something was coming. The barman and former terrorist had something new to say.

“For being a whack-job, I think the saying is these days. Undisciplined, undependable. A loose cannon. Do any damn thing he pleased. And he’s the sane one. The brother, Donal, is from outer space. He was called ‘the Quark.’

“And I think Quintan admires that, coming from the steady background that he does. Father being the fertilizer mogul in these parts with the big house and all. And I suppose Manus is a…you know, romantic figure. Maybe Quintan wanted to emulate him, prove that he’d take no bullshit, like a philandering wife.”

Carson paused to sip from the glass and draw on the cigarette.

And then, “I hate to conjecture this about me own nephew, mind. But the facts are the facts—he was on the scene upstairs, he had Manus with him, and then there’s the note that McGarr, your chief, and I discovered when I took him to Finn’s flat. What more do you want? To a mere mortal, such as I, it looks open-and-shut. Case closed.”

“One shot through her head and his heart.”

“That’s what I saw.”

“What if I were to tell you that there were two shots three hours apart?”

Carson’s eyes appeared over the rim of his glasses. “Go ’way, now.”

“The first through his heart at close range, probably fired by whatever woman he’d had sex with, since there’s evidence that he did have sex. The second through her head.”

McKeon raised a hand and formed the likeness of a gun with forefinger and the thumb, then “shot” himself through the temple. “After she came to the room and been incapacitated in some way, then stripped and arranged on top of your man. And finally shot.

“The other unlikely possibility is that she was shot someplace else, then put on top of him and shot again—to make it appear that it was one shot. As you say. As you said.” McKeon reached for his own glass, regarding Carson all the while.

Who drew on his cigarette. “Given that, want my guess who did Burke?”

McKeon nodded.

“The bloody bitch, the Frakes’s bitch—Gertie McGurk.”

“Was she on the premises, too?”

“Didn’t she hold the door for Manus and Quintan, when they were carrying up the carpet? And I know for fact Burke was mad for her, wanted her to quit the business and move in with him, she told me.”

“Business?” McKeon asked.

“Well, let me amend that—I shouldn’t slag the woman—
profession
, if you catch me drift. She’s young and quite the looker, and I think that mattered to Burke.”

“Did you see her go up with them?”

“No. It was quiet then, and from time to time, I actually do a bit of work around here—go over the tabs, check the stock, make sure the inevitable larceny is kept to a minimum. I work in the cubby office over there behind the far end of the bar. She could have gone up while I was in there.”