The Death of an Irish Lover (17 page)

“Says she, ‘Because he’s left-handed.’”

The joke was easily the tenth that Carson had told in the last half hour, and in the two days that McKeon had been listening to him, not one had been repeated.

“You’ve a great memory and a knack for telling a story, Benny,” McKeon said a few minutes later, when Carson moved near. “But, answer me this—how many are your own?”

“
All
of them, of course. Duly copyrighted and lodged in the British Museum.”

“Go on now, you heard most of them in the drum, where there’s little else to do.”

His smile cracking, Carson shot McKeon a sidelong
glance that was anything but pleasant. “Not a one. You know the riff about laughing through your tears? Or, you have to look at the bright side? Or, the glass is half-full not half-empty? Well, it’s all bullshit, which is what the drum teaches. The truth.”

McKeon waited for Carson to continue, not knowing what he was hearing. A strange sort of whining? Self-pity? The common jailhouse theme of, “I am what I am because of what I’ve been through? What you made me”?

“There’s no bright side, no glass—the sharp edge of which could provide you with a solution to your problems—and you wouldn’t dare let yourself shed a tear.”

McKeon let that pass, and when it was apparent that Carson would say no more, he asked, “So—how did you spend your days there? Or was it all wasted?”

“Not a bit of it. When we got a chance to converse, we spoke—as most people do—about what we know best.”

“Which is?”

“Crime.” Carson smiled and reached for the tea that he kept in the Powers bottle. “May I freshen that for you, Bernie?”

McKeon pushed his collection of wet banknotes forward. “As long as it’s not a crime.”

While Maddie was at tea with Ruth Bresnahan and Hugh Ward, Noreen only just managed to nip in the front door of the greengrocer’s shop before Moira O’Rourke locked the door.

“Phew,” she said, nearly out of breath. “I nearly didn’t make it.”

“Pity you did, Mrs. McGarr. Can your husband be far behind?” The O’Rourke woman scanned the street before closing the door and drawing the blind.

“So?” she demanded of Noreen.

Who debated being cagey and asking her about this-and-that before getting to the point. But to what purpose? Moira O’Rourke had already “made” her, Noreen believed the police term for being discovered was, and indirection was now impossible. But not common courtesy, since what she had come to say was nothing that one person should spring on another, no matter the purpose.

Which caused her to decide that she would not have made a good cop, in spite of how much she was attracted to the profession.

“I think I know something that you don’t.”

“Little wonder—you the Dub’ art expert with your well-connected parents and husband, the cop.” Moira O’Rourke had crossed her arms, and the bib apron presented a formidable front. And yet the apron was also belted, which showed her to have a narrow waist and contained hips.

How old could she be? Noreen wondered. No older than thirty-eight or forty. And with a little care to her appearance, she could be a handsome woman whom Pascal Burke might have found attractive, considering how glowingly she had spoken of him.

Question was—had the glow been imparted by Grace O’Rourke’s say-so? Or by Burke himself?

“What is it that you know that I don’t?”

“It’s about Grace, your niece,” Noreen replied, probing to see if she did know.

“What about Grace?”

“About her health.”

“What about her health? Grace is as strong as a horse. I’ve never known her to have a sick day in her life.”

She didn’t know, Noreen decided. And, summoning her courage, she blurted out, “She’s carrying Pascal Burke’s child. By her own admission.”

There was a pause in which Moira O’Rourke seemed to assess the information. Then she bowed her head for a moment, raised it, and presented Noreen with a visage of rage that she had only ever seen onstage.

“You!” she seethed. “You’re out of here!”

Grasping Noreen by the arm, Moira O’Rourke nearly picked her off her feet, and in one smooth and powerful motion had her out the door.

“And never come back!”

As the crow flies, only about a hundred miles separates Leixleap from Newry.

But unfortunately crows did not build the roads in Ireland, and McGarr spent the better part of three hours driving to the Northern Ireland city at the head of the Newry River.

Arriving just as darkness was falling, he soon found 8 Canal Lane, named for the eighteenth-century manmade waterway, the banks of which had many fine shops in its old commercial buildings and fashionable private houses nearby.

Gertrude McGurk’s mother’s abode was anything but. An aged brick row house, it had narrow windows and a low door, and there was a slate missing at the peak of the roof.

McGarr did not stop there. Instead, he parked by the nearest pub and went in.

The bar was milling with locals and workers from
the shops that had only just closed, and a short, older man dressed in khakis with a windbreaker and cap to match was scarcely noticed.

It was the costume that Maddie had dubbed his “somebody’s da’” clothes. “Yes, yours,” had been McGarr’s reply. “How can you stand to wear those things? They’re so…out of it.”

When the second drink was placed before McGarr, he motioned the barman closer and showed him one of the photos Ward had taken from the Frakes’s safe house near Leixleap. “Know her?”

“Gertie? Of course.”

“She come in here often?”

“Regular, like—when she’s in town, which is seldom these days. But she was here last night, as a matter of fact.”

“What time would you say she comes in?”

The young man glanced at the clock. “Soon, I’d say. Unless she’s otherwise employed.” Which was accompanied by a slight but telling grin.

McGarr could wait, the chief of the Garda analysis lab in Dublin having assured him that a chemist would remain on duty throughout the night, if necessary—waiting for the three samples of hair that McGarr would deliver.

And it was pleasant just sitting there, musing over several glasses of malt that eased down into his soreness and made him feel almost normal for a while.

About an hour later, Gertrude McGurk made her entrance, carrying her coat so all might view the tight wrap of red spandex that made two buff-colored mounds of her breasts. She was a tall woman with a wide mouth and good teeth that black lipstick made seem all the more brilliant.

Glossy as though wet, it complemented whatever she had done to make her eyes look sunken and deep; she was also wearing knee-high black patent-leather boots and elbow-length black gloves.

The color of corn silk, her hair had been shocked or permed in such a way that it stood straight out from her head like a pale sunburst. In all, she looked wraithlike or, as McGarr suspicioned she preferred, like a fallen angel.

He waited while she greeted this one and that and then had a short animated conversation with a large man to whom she handed an envelope. McGarr asked the barman to get her a drink. Delivering it, the young man lit her cigarette and pointed to McGarr.

Who raised his glass and beckoned her to him. When she hesitated—glancing first at the door and then behind her at the man she had spoken with—McGarr moved his fingers and thumb together in a gesture that said, Let’s chat.

Reluctantly, she began moving toward him, having to pause for a word or a laugh here and there.

“You broke into my room. You read my letters,” she said, sliding onto the stool beside him and forking her fingers through her strange hair in the manner of a film star. “It’s how you found me. I should’ve burnt them fookin’ letters from me fookin’ mother. Imagine her writing shit like that.”

Crossing her legs, she pulled on the cigarette and looked off dramatically.

“Does she know your secret?”

“What secret?”

“The one under those chic gloves.”

She gave McGarr a sidelong glance; in the dark circles, her eyes seemed very blue. “You didn’t come here to talk about my habit.”

“You left a hair on the pillow beside Pascal Burke’s corpse. Tell me the hours you were with him.”

“You’re fookin’ lyin’. I didn’t know Pascal Burke, and I was never with him.”

From his jacket McGarr removed the photograph of her wearing Burke’s uniform jacket and cap. Her arm was around his shoulders, her knee in his crotch.

“We found this in your trophy room. Or is it your morgue? Let’s try again—Burke called you Thursday night from Dublin but you weren’t home. Where and when did he meet up with you in Leixleap?”

She only shook her head and looked down into her drink.

“Where did you spend Thursday night?”

“Can I tell you something?” Her eyes flashed up at him. “I’m not going to say a thing. I’ve been here before with arseholes like you, and it’s none of your fookin’ business where I was or with who. You’ve no jurisdiction here, and there’s the end to it.”

She reached for her jacket, but McGarr put a hand on it. “Listen to me for a moment—one phone call, just one, and I could have you in a jail cell for longer than you could tolerate, given your predilection.

“Remember, it was two cops who were shot, and the cops here—cops anywhere—take that personally. And I bet some of them already think you should be in jail. For your own good.” McGarr took his hand off the coat and pulled his cell phone from a jacket pocket. “Your choice.”

Looking defeated, she glanced over at the man she’d passed the envelope to, then back down at her drink.

“Now—you spent Thursday night in the Leixleap Inn, right?”

She blinked but said nothing.

“And Burke, who arrived Friday morning, got in touch with you there and asked you to come to his room Friday morning.” McGarr was guessing, but she blinked again, which he took as an affirmation.

“And you did.”

She wagged her head. “Let’s get something straight—you’re not here to bust me for drugs.”

“No.”

“Or prostitution.”

He shook his head.

“So, ask yourself this, Mr. Guard, Mr. Policeman—why would I whack a poor harmless sod like Pascal fookin’ Burke, who was going through a mid-life crisis or some fookin’ thing and was tired of the old bags he was shagging in Leixleap and just wanted what I could give him—a bit of young, a bit of talent.

“Where’s my advantage in murdering him? Where’s my edge? Compared to the action I was getting at the inn where not a man-jack among them blinked at a hundred quid a throw or two hundred for the night, Pascal Burke was like a charity case. A mercy hump.

“Twenty quid, thirty quid. Once when he had me meet him on the job by the river, he managed to cough up fifty quid. But once only. And I had to put up with his shite about loving me, marrying me, wanting to leave everything he had to me.

“But”—she turned and looked McGarr in the eyes—“I hadn’t got it on with Pascal Burke in a month.”

“Then how did your hair get on his pillow?”

“You don’t know it’s my hair. You’re just guessing.”

McGarr’s eyes bored into hers, until she wagged her head at her glass. “Around noon, when I was between jobs, like, that I’d already set up in the inn, I went down to pub for a drink and to check my calls back at
the house. And there was Pascal on the machine, begging me to see him. So, I had a quick one or two, and I went up to him.

“
But,
like I said, we didn’t get it on. And even if I’d had the time, I wouldn’t have. Pascal was the type of man to keep putting off, to keep begging. If he could have you anytime he wanted, he lost interest, which is why he dropped so many of the others, after he’d shagged them silly.

“I think”—she picked up her drink and looked down into the ice cubes—“I think it was the mother thing. I think he loved her more than he knew, but, her being his mother, he couldn’t do anything about that.

“So, there he was all the years that she was alive
in
her life, so to speak—seeing her daily, waiting on her hand and foot; a good-looking pleasant woman, I met her—but with no possibility of getting
in
her. Physically, sexually.

“And if he was attracted to you, and you showed him how good you could be, then put him off. Well—” McGurk opened the palm of one of her black gloves, as though to say that’s where she’d had him.

“Rather like Antony Moran,” McGarr suggested.

Her eyes rose to his, and she smiled slightly. “Yah.
Just
like Antony Moran. The very same, although two different types altogether. Antony was an angel.”

Whose relatives were rather different, McGarr mused, and had to be taken to court. “Up in the room with Pascal Friday,” McGarr prompted.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “The door was open and there he was between the sheets, expecting me. I told him to fookin’ forget it, I had a real paying client to attend to, and he’d get no freebees from me.

“But I did lie down with him, teasin’ like, there in the bed but me in my clothes. And I let him kiss me and feel me up and say all the stupid fookin’ things he always said.”

McGarr waited.

“About wanting to marry me, set me up in a house, get me away from hooking which”—she glanced up at McGarr—“you won’t believe I chose. But I did and do, and it’s not the drugs, like you think. It’s the…freedom.”

McGarr held her gaze, not wishing to debate her. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard an addict in deep denial describe a drug habit as freedom. “How long were you with him?”

“Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. When I went into the loo to redo my face, I heard him on the phone, calling somebody else. Beggin’, pleadin’.” McGurk shook her head. “He was a sad case, any way you look at him. But I’m sorry he’s dead, nonetheless. At least he was gentle, and he could be fun.

“Other than that, Mr. Policeman, the only other mention I heard of Pascal that afternoon was when I was moving on to my second appointment, I heard the owner at the end of the hall near the stairs giving out to some other woman and Pascal’s name was mentioned.”

“By the owner, you mean Tallon?”

“No—his hag, the French woman.”

“Sylvie Zeebruge? She’s Belgian.”

“Whatever. They were into it, they were, and loud.”

“Who was the other woman?”

“I couldn’t see that far. My eyes aren’t all that good, and glasses in my profession…” McGurk shook her head.

“Then, how did you know it was Madame Sylvie?”

“Her shape—it’s one big droop. And her voice with the accent and all.”

“What time did you get through with your work there?”

She hunched her shoulders. “It was quick. A little after one, I’d say.”

“And then where’d you go?”

“To the pub for another drink.”

“Which way—through the arch or…”

“Or. How could I get through the arch? It’s locked.”

“But you have a key.”

“Me? Christ—don’t be stupid. How would I get a key?”

It was McGarr’s turn to hunch his shoulders.

“Well, I don’t. And that’s the truth.”

“If it is, then you won’t mind my taking a hair from your head.”

“What?”

“The hair on the pillow next to Burke? If it matches your hair and also matches the DNA on the condom Burke was wearing when he got shot, then you’re likely his murderer.”

She had to think for a moment, stubbing out the cigarette and reaching for her drink. “What if it doesn’t?”

“Then, you’re not.”

She lowered her head toward him. “Be gentle, now. Maybe you’d like a real hair, one I could charge you for. Ever get the yen for some young yourself, Chief Superintendent? I could make you very happy.”

Which McGarr rather doubted. “I already bought you a drink.”

“Well, now you can buy me another.”

McGarr plucked a hair and then another that seemed more lifelike.

“Ow—that’s two.”

“We’ll make it a double, if you tell me something else.”

“I’ll do anything for a double.”

“Yous okay over here?” the barman asked. The other man was now only a step away.

“Are those yours, or are they enhanced?” McGarr pointed to her breasts.

“Kinky wanker,” she said to the barman, raising her chin to mean McGarr. “Has a hair fetish. Takes them down to Dublin and sticks them on the wall.” She slid off the barstool.

“And, of course, they’re mine. Bought and paid for with a lifetime guarantee. Those who know don’t mind, and those who don’t keep coming back.

“You through with me, or…were you asking for yourself?”

McGarr smiled. “One last thing—what about the Frakes? Where do they fit?”

“The questions he asks,” she said to the barman and the man who was now standing behind McGarr. “They
were
my buddies down there. Friends. Associates. But you saw them yourself—they’re really just boys, when what every working girl needs is a strong man. At least one.”

Meaning a pimp. “Where are they now?”

“What—me tell you? I’m not that low, yet.” Glass in hand, she turned and walked away.

But before McGarr could settle up and leave, her pimp eased into the bar beside him—a powerfully built man maybe thirty-five with a scarred face and a string of diamond studs running up the edge of one ear. “Who are you?”

McGarr took a card from his billfold and slid it toward him.

“
The
McGarr?”

Who finished his drink and wished he could stay for another.

“Who’re you looking for?”

“Manus and Donal Frakes—know where they are?”

“What will it buy me?”

McGarr glanced at McGurk. “A bottom woman, I should imagine. And then, maybe you venture south from time to time. Who knows when you might need a favor.”

“You won’t forget?”

McGarr shook his head. “How far would I have got if I did?”

The pimp flipped over the card and wrote down an address in Bray, south of Dublin. “It’s a scrap yard in front, with living quarters in an old cottage out back. At night there’s a dog. But during the day people come and go.”

McGarr slipped the card back in his pocket. “Why are you doing this?”

“Payback.” He pointed to his scarred face. “With any luck, you’ll take no prisoners. If they’re dying—and only if they’re dying—tell them that Dessie from Newry sent you. The one who got the acid in the face.”

The forty-mile run to Dublin was quick along the N-1.