The Death of an Irish Lover (21 page)

“D’ya have me beeper?” the little girl asked McGarr.

“I do—and you’ll have it back to you in no time.” Or one very much like it. And to Frakes. “Put your daughter down and turn around. Do you need medical attention?”

“I need something. My arm is useless, like this.”

At the car, McGarr called for an ambulance and backup.

“Where’s Muldoon?” Ward asked.

“Gone,” said Bresnahan, the Bull Pup trained on Donal Frakes who was sitting on the ground. “He used the crash to split.”

Said McGarr, “Call it consideration.”

Ward tapped Manus Frakes on the shoulder. “No need to smile,” he said, snapping Frakes’s picture when he turned around.

“That the last of them?” McGarr asked, as they heard the wail of sirens coming up the street.

“Yup—I’ve got Tallon, Carson, and Mr. Frakes here in this.” Ward pointed to the disposable camera in his hands. “And I’ve also got the pics of Quintan Finn that you removed from his flat and of Burke from his place.”

“You better get going, then.”

“What about me?” Bresnahan asked.

McGarr pretended to have to think. “Well, if the chemist’s daughter is as shy as Hughie reported, you better lend him a hand.”

Or any other little thing, thought Bresnahan.

Several hours later in the special-care room of a nearby hospital, McGarr took Manus Frakes aside while a nurse looked after his daughter.

Frakes’s wrist was in a cast, while his brother, Donal, would be held overnight for observation. A Guard was posted at the door of his room.

“Listen to me closely, Manus—can we agree that the worst part of the situation you’re facing is the loss of your daughter?”

Frakes nodded.

“Benny Carson may be a convicted felon, but he’s a rehabilitated convicted felon with a verifiable source of income and a permanent address.

“And at the very least you’ll be brought up on two counts of grievous bodily assault on Guards, weapons possession, and the destruction of property.” The three cars, McGarr meant—his own and two unmarked Garda vehicles.

“You know how this goes. You cooperate with me, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Frakes nodded again. “You have a smoke?”

“This is a hospital.”

“That’s right. Well—there’s not much to tell. In the morning, Friday morning, I picked up the carpet for the room from a Traveler fella I know and brought it back to the inn.”

“What time was that?”

“Let me think.”

Neither as tall nor as broad as his brother, Manus Frakes was a dark man in his early thirties with a trimmed beard and mustache and longish hair that curled at the nape of his neck. His eyes were hazel.

Wearing a leather bomber jacket and with a gold Celtic cross on a gold chain around his neck, he looked more like a musician or artist than a thug. But thug he was, in trouble with the law since an early age, mainly in the North.

“About one, I’d say. It’s a two-man job, but when I woke up that morning, Donal was still drinking, and I know Tallon—if the carpet didn’t get put down right, I’d not get paid.

“So, I looked for somebody in the bar to help me up with it, and there was Quintan Finn talking to his fookin’ uncle.”

“Benny Carson.”

Frakes nodded.

“Who’s your father-in-law.”

“
Was
my father-in-law, who just wants my child any way he can get her.”

“But at the bar—” McGarr prompted.

“Well, Quin’ was a helpful sort, and he knows…knew something about laying carpet, since he’d put down all of it in his flat. Gertie held the door, and we got it upstairs.”

“She follow you up?”

Frakes nodded. “To get the door in the room for us.”

“She have a key?”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “If there’s a lock, Gertie has a key for it, and I’d hazard she’s been in all of the rooms of the inn and pub more than once.

“Anyhow, she let us in, I thanked her, and she told me I owed her a drink. And we set about the job.”

“Did Gertie go back down to the bar?”

Frakes hunched his thin shoulders. “I imagine so. It’s where she was…you know, working. Unless she had something already set up.

“So we carried on, and I was glad to have Quin’ along, because we finished the entire thing with the edging and everything in a little under two hours, I’d say. Quin’ was a great man with a hammer.”

“What about Tallon—didn’t he inspect the job and pay you?”

Frakes shook his head. “After we finished up, I went down to the bar and phoned him to say I’d finished, rather than walk into the inn dressed for work. He’s very particular about that.”

“What time was that?”

“Oh—I had a pint or two. And I had to wait because Benny was on the phone for the longest time, there in his little office in back of the bar. I had to wait for him to get off. So, I’d say—three-thirty or quarter to four.

“When I finally got hold of him, he said he’d view it later, and not to worry, ‘You’ll get your goddamned money.’ His words.”

“Did you see anybody else up there, while you were laying the carpet?”

Frakes had to ponder some more. “I think I saw a woman out of the corner of my eye when I passed by the door, which we left open for ventilation. You know how new carpet stinks.”

“Who was she?”

“No idea.”

“Where was she?”

“I think…either in the hall or looking out the door of a room. Or maybe I saw two women. We spent most of the time on our hands and knees, looking down.”

“Did you hear anything that sounded like a shot?”

“Now that you mention it—when I was down in the bar. Some one of the lads actually got up and looked out in the street.”

“Why’d you try to kill Carson?”

Frakes regarded McGarr. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Somebody tried to murder Carson Saturday evening using a high-powered rifle with a nightscope.”

Frakes shook his head. “I haven’t fired our gun like that in…a month of Sundays, nor has Donal to my knowledge. It was something we were trying to sell. You know, at the right price.

“And, look—I don’t like Benny Carson. I never really cared for the man, and he blames me maybe rightly for his daughter’s death. But I didn’t try to kill him.”

“What about Donal?”

“He was with me, right by my side at the mill all night long. He never left.”

“So, who do you think murdered Pascal Burke and later the two Finns?”

Frakes tilted his head and eyed McGarr. “I can’t prove it, and I don’t know why he’s involved. But I’ve thought about this, and I can tell you one thing. Where there’s trouble and Benny Carson is around, he’s behind it in some way or other. And he’s behind this.”

“Could he have got by you when you were laying the carpet?”

“Like I said, sure.”

“Could one of the women who you saw or passed by have been Ellen Finn?”

“Maybe, but Ellen would have stopped in and said hello. The two of them had just been married and were happy as larks.”

“I’m going to share something with you, and maybe you can help me out—right up until this morning we thought it was a woman who murdered Burke. The other murders were certainly orchestrated to cover up the first.

“You know the players. What women were involved with Burke enough to be in bed with him, enough to have a reason to kill him? Also, why would Carson involve himself in a cover-up? What did he have to gain? I’m trying to understand this.”

“I wish we could smoke.”

McGarr gestured with his head, and they walked out of the hospital and sat on the wall by the entrance.

“It could only have been Gertie. She’d do a deal with the devil. Or Carson. Didn’t she bilk poor Tony Moran who—if he fancied anybody—it was Madame Sylvie.”

“Zeebruge?”

Frakes nodded. “The inn lady. They were like brother and sister, the way they got on. But who ended up with all he had? Gertie.”

“Tallon says Tony Moran was gay.”

“What?” Frakes dropped his cigarette and ground it out under foot. “He wasn’t Hulk Hogan, if that’s what Tallon means, but Moran had the other approach—he was nice to them, bought presents, took them places and, I bet, suddenly he had them in bed before they even realized their knickers were off.”

“Like Moira O’Rourke, the greengrocer?”

“Rumor had it a year or two ago that she went to England and aborted Moran’s child. And that’s what broke them up, not Madame Sylvie or Gertie McGurk. Up until then, everybody in Leixleap thought for sure Moran and she would get married.”

“Moran and Moira O’Rourke.”

Frakes nodded and accepted a second cigarette from McGarr.

“But after she came home he wouldn’t even speak to her on the street.”

“How’d he die?”

“Heart attack. Gertie’s a great cook, and she had made him a big meal, but he couldn’t eat it. He went into the next room, sat down, and signed off.

“Sylvie Zeebruge thought Gertie had poisoned him and demanded an autopsy, which was performed.” Frakes shook his head. “Natural causes.”

“A few months ago Pascal Burke had a will drawn up—”

“Don’t tell me—naming Gertie.”

McGarr waited.

Frakes tilted his head back and laughed. “She
worked on that for at least a year, telling Burke that the only way she would ever consider moving in with him was if he put her in his will. But if he did, and he could prove it, she would. In her own way, she’s…like, admirable, don’t you think?”

Or, pernicious, thought McGarr. “What about Burke himself? I have it he was probably bedding Sylvie Zeebruge and certainly Moira O’Rourke. He was paying Gertie McGurk, and Grace O’Rourke tells me she’s carrying his child.”

“Really?” Frakes shook his head. “Now, that’s a shocker. Grace O’Rourke? One thing about Pascal Burke—he was in no way a coward. Grace O’Rourke is bent, you know. She was in and out of the bin, I’m told, before Madame Sylvie gave her the maid job and as much as took her under her wing. Kept her even.

“As for Burke, Gertie and he would have made an excellent pair, birds of a feather. Both schemers and liars, with the difference that Burke never expected anything more than the sex.

“But he’d say and do anything, even spend more than he should to get that. Later, he’d have to deal with the problem of what he said, and I don’t know how many times in the pub he entertained us with a tale of how he wriggled out of a promise to some widow or spinster.

“On a few occasions, women actually came in looking for him to have it out, like.” Frakes again bent back his head and laughed. “He’d say, ‘I know, dear. I’m wrong, darling. I’ve been so distracted, lately. Let me do thus and so. Here, have a drink. How can I make this up to you?’

“Then something like, ‘Can’t we go out to your car or up to my room and discuss it? This is no place for…intimacy.’ All the while nodding or winking to
us at the bar. Once, when the woman consented to go up to his room, we applauded the moment the door was closed.”

McGarr considered that for a moment—Burke who had lived with his widowed mother all his life and without a doubt understood the needs, wants, fears, and fantasies of the middle-aged women he preyed upon.

“So, let me get this straight. In your scenario, Gertie does Burke for Carson, and Carson covers it up with the murder of the Finns to make it look like a double murder by an enraged husband, followed by his suicide?”

“Something like that.”

“What does Gertie get?”

“What does the will say?”

“Twenty something thousand pounds, the flat in Dublin, and a cottage in West Cork.”

“I’d say that’s a decent pay packet for a millisecond of work.”

“Yes, but what does Carson get?”

“Beyond my daughter?” Frakes shrugged.

“Do you think the Chief knows?” Bresnahan asked Ward, as they were leaving the Garda motor pool, where they picked up another car.

“Knows what?”

“Knows that we’re back together.”

Sitting in the passenger’s seat, Ward’s head swung to the window. “Rut’ie—I want you, I need you, I think I love you, but how can we possibly get back together? You know, permanently. I have a family.”

“What about tonight? Tonight you don’t have a family.” As yet, she kept herself from adding, while feeling very much the part of a Jezebel.

“Ah, Rut’ie—it’s wrong, and you know it, too.”

“I know, I know”—she reached over and patted his thigh—“but you’re weak.” Which is why you’re in this…pickle. “And you can’t resist me.” Which is why you’ll have a family with me, too. And why we’ll be yoked for life in the same way that you’re yoked to
the other woman, now being a
family
man. “And you shouldn’t try.

“So, sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.”

And the look of…was it, acceptance? Or terror. Was cheering. He even seemed to nod a bit, as Bresnahan swung out onto the N-4 and put the pedal to the metal.

McGarr also had to pick up another car, and it was dark by the time he pulled the Cortina through the archway that separated the two halves of Tim Tallon and Sylvie Zeebruge’s business.

The Leixleap Inn and Pub, half of which would soon be owned by Benny Carson.

And it occurred to McGarr that he did not know enough about their relationship in that regard. Who owned what?

Perhaps the information was contained in Tallon’s safe, which Tallon had shut—out of habit, he had explained—when McGarr had entered Tallon’s office the day before.

The public rooms of the inn were crowded with diners, and even the small bar was ringed by an angling party who were speaking animatedly about a large pike that one of them had landed.

And there Tim Tallon stood among them. “No, no—there’s no question about the catch whatsoever,” he was saying in a voice that carried out into the reception area. “It was a ‘gaf,’” meaning a guide-assisted-fish. “And I want it mounted right there.” Tallon pointed to a spot over the bar.

“What are y’talkin’ about, man?” an obviously Scottish fisherman said back. “Ye were nowhere to be seen, when we pulled that leviathan into our boat ourselves.”

“Yes, but who told you to fish there, and who told you what to fish with, and who came through with the net, I ask you.”

McGarr stopped at the reception desk. “My wife and child come down yet?”

“Hours ago. They’ve eaten and returned to your rooms. And you’d better hurry yourself. Full dinner service closes in a half hour.”

But McGarr didn’t feel like a big meal; in fact, he wasn’t hungry at all, which was unusual for him in the evening. It was the case, of course, that was throwing him off his feed. He was missing the key element, what would put the tangled picture of Burke’s relationships and motive for the three deaths together.

And so instead of going up to his rooms to see Noreen and Maddie, he got a drink at the bar—nodding to Tallon, who was still holding forth—and took it back to a seat in the foyer where he could see the stairwell up to the guest rooms and, in the other direction, down to the basement.

There he waited for a while, nursing the large drink and listening to the sounds coming to him from the dining and game rooms, the bar and reception area.

And it struck him that the rooms of the inn were much more accessible than the rooms of the pub, since anybody with a passkey could come and go at will and not be seen. The key could be had for the price of a room, and, like all keys, it was duplicable.

But once the pub was closed at—what? Officially at half eleven—but actually probably closer to 1:00
A.M
. after cleanup and the totaling of receipts—then any guests, McGarr assumed, were out of luck. Nobody in his right mind would hand out keys to the front door of a pub. Not in Ireland.

But access to the rooms over the pub could be had through the archway. And both Sylvie Zeebruge and Grace O’Rourke had official keys, while Moira O’Rourke and Gertie McGurk had provided themselves with duplicates, the latter working the building as she did, with Tallon’s acquiescence.

As for motives, for McGurk there was Burke’s will, if she had known about it. For Grace O’Rourke it might have been pique that she was pregnant with his child yet he had just bedded her aunt and had been bedding—she knew from her position as maid—a raft of other women.

Moira O’Rourke, on the other hand, admitted to being on the scene and was desperate to land a husband, that much was plain. Could Burke have told her that he had no intention of marrying her and instead planned to move in with the younger McGurk?

And finally there was Sylvie Zeebruge, who—like Moira O’Rourke—had already lost a probable lover, Antony Moran, to McGurk. McGarr was willing to bet that Burke had bedded her, too; and during his interview with her, she had seemed truly saddened and dismissive of her “husband,” Tallon. And who could blame her? Imagine being yoked to that piece of work, McGarr thought with a shudder. Tallon, he could see, was now at a table in the dining room, testing the patience of some other guests.

But McGarr did not think any one of the four women could have achieved the attempted cover-up of Burke’s murder alone. Whoever had slain Burke had to have had help.

When the phone rang and the receptionist stepped into the dining room to fetch a guest, McGarr stood and moved to the stairwell, as though finally going up
to his rooms. Instead, he stole down the stairs to the cellar.

It was almost hot there with the boilers and water heaters perking away, now that night had fallen. And, after jimmying the door to Tallon’s office, McGarr switched on the lights and removed his jacket, before placing his ear against the cold cast iron of the old safe.

Perhaps twenty minutes later, the last of the tumblers clicked over, and McGarr, wrenching down the handle, swung the heavy door open.

In it, he found a raft of computer-generated data about the business: “Profits from Operating Revenues,” “Profits Before Taxes,” “Profits After Taxes,” “Net Profits” all having separate accounting sheets that were stored neatly on shelves within the safe, Tallon being—to McGarr’s surprise—very much the bean counter.

So much for local lore that had him a do-nothing gobshite while the wife ran the inn and Carson the pub. All the while Tallon had kept his eye on profits.

There were two strongboxes, the first of which took another few minutes to open. In it, McGarr found the several food-and-beverage licenses necessary to run both inn and pub, and each had been made out to, “S. Zeebruge, owner and permittee,” six years earlier, as was the deed of the year before. Meaning Tallon, like Carson, had merely been a kind of manager.

And yet, when McGarr examined the back of the deed, there were two assignees named: “Benjamin J. Carson and Timothy P.J. Tallon in equal shares, for the consideration of 1,000,000 pounds.” And the date of the assignment, was two—no, now three—days earlier, the date of the first two and possibly the third murder.

A contract, which was in the same folder as the
deed, said that the payment of the sum, “owing to Sylvie Zeebruge in the amounts of 500,000 Irish pound apiece for Benjamin J. Carson and Timothy P.J. Tallon, will be paid as later arranged.”

Sylvie Zeebruge had also signed that document, and McGarr checked the signature against her handwriting on the earlier licenses. They matched. None of the other documents had any bearing on the murders.

Replacing the documents, McGarr picked up the first of the two strongboxes in order to lock it again, when he felt something on the bottom. He turned it over and found a flat key secured by a length of strapping tape. A label on the flange said, “Gun case.”

McGarr was about to peel the tape off, when he heard, “You! Get out of that, I tell you!” And two strong hands fell upon his throat and wrenched him to his feet.

McGarr dropped the box and tried to peel the fingers away. But the hands were large and the grip strong, and he was driven, stumbling, into the desk, the chairs, the worktable with all its documents, lamps, and fax machine. The computer crashed to the floor, before McGarr—managing to gain his feet—doubled over and pulled his attacker onto his back.

Kicking a foot straight up with all he had, McGarr sank a heel deep into the man’s groin, and with only the other foot holding both their weights, they began to fall.

Twisting his body as they tumbled forward, McGarr brought the force of his weight onto the other man’s back, knocking the wind out of him. Suddenly, the hands were gone, and with everything he had, McGarr threw back an elbow, catching the side of the face and slamming the head into the floor.

Rolling over, McGarr got to his feet. It was Tallon.

“I’ll have your job for this,” Tallon managed to say, still sprawled by the overturned table.

McGarr’s first attempt at speech failed. But finally in a hoarse whisper, he managed, “Not before you show me your gun case.”

Taking the cell phone from his jacket, McGarr punched in Dublin and asked them to connect him to McKeon. “You with Carson?”

“Of course. He’s standing right here on the other side of the bar.”

“Meet me at Tallon’s quarters on the fourth floor of the inn and bring Carson along.”

McGarr had scarcely rung off, when the phone bleated. It was Ward, who had something to tell him.

The chemist shop had just closed, when Ward and Bresnahan arrived. And they had to walk around to the living quarters in the rear.

Again, the Guptas were at tea, and, although invited to take seats at a large kitchen table where sat the family of five, they declined, Bresnahan saying, “Thank you, no—we’d just like to have Shila look at these pictures. Perhaps she could step outside with us for a moment.”

Her father came, too, and in the light over the back door Bresnahan showed the girl first the photograph of Pascal Burke, then Quintan Finn, Manus and Donal Frakes, Benny Carson, and finally Tim Tallon.

“That’s the man,” said the girl.

“This could be very important. You’re sure?”

“He has a belt with a large blue stone in it. Turquoise. The biggest stone of that sort I’ve ever seen.”

“Shila has an interest in petrology,” her father explained.

“And this woman,” Ward showed the father a picture of Ellen Finn. “Do you recognize her? Has she ever been in your shop?”

The father shook his head; so, too, the daughter.

“What about this other woman?” Ward showed the father the picture of Gertie McGurk with Pascal Burke, the one where she had Burke’s uniform cap on her head.

“No,” said Gupta, smiling. “And I’d remember her, I’m sure.”

The daughter had never seen McGurk either.

“Don’t think this will go unreported,” Tallon said at the door of his attic apartment on the fourth floor of the inn.

“I want all here to note that I’m opening this door only under duress. Only after I was beaten by this man.”

“Stuff the blather, Tallon, and open the door,” said Carson. “I’d like to see what these yokes have on you that’s so important they’ve called me away from my tea.”

But when Tallon inserted the key in the lock, he found that the door was open. “Ah, so—you’ve been in here, too, I take it, and bringing me here is just a ruse. Your way of covering another illegal entry.”

The top drawer on one side of the large double-fronted gun case had been opened as well, and a stainless-steel rod that had been inserted through the trigger guards of the near dozen handguns stored there had been drawn back. A small key was still in its lock.

“Anything missing?” McGarr asked.

“You should know, because ’twas you who took it—a SIG-Sauer 225.”

Which was a costly lightweight 9mm handgun.

“How many illegal searches did it take to find
that
key?” Tallon pointed to the key in the gun lock.

McGarr ignored him, pushing shut the top drawer and unlocking and searching the successive drawers on both sides of the case. In the bottom of the last, he found what he was looking for—a short-barrel target rifle equipped with a nightscope.

“It’s Remington National Match,” said McKeon, who had been a firearms instructor for part of his stint with the Irish Army. “A fine weapon that you can fit in the boot of your car. It must have set you back a few bob, Tallon.”

Bending, McKeon picked up the rifle, holding it by the barrel and the very end of the butt. He sniffed the area around the bolt. “And fired recently, as well.”

“Why do you need me for this foolishness?” Carson asked. “I’ve got a crowded bar downstairs.”

“Who will miss you over the next few decades, I’m sure,” said McGarr.

The small man only laughed slightly, his eyes bright. “You’ve got nothing on me.”

McGarr pointed at the target rifle. “Of course, you know your
partner
here”—he swung his finger to Tallon—“tried to kill you the other night. It wasn’t Frakes, was it, Tallon? It was you.”

“Don’t be absurd. I fired that gun at targets the other day out at the range in Athlone and just haven’t had a chance to clean it, is all.

“And why ever would I want to shoot at Benny?”

“Because you’re greedy, and you weren’t satisfied with the half of this business that you and Carson ex
torted from your wife.
After
Carson bailed her and you out of the problem that would have lost your soft spot here as chief mouth and bull thrower.”

The sparkle had gone from Carson’s eyes, and he was now regarding Tallon with a look of assessment.

“And brilliantly, I must say,” McGarr went on. “Since Carson’s cover-up—had it been successful—would have put you two in the catbird’s seat, and turned the tables for you, Tallon, with the ‘wife’ here at the inn.

“From cuckold and gobshite ‘manager’ to owner with a hold over your ‘wife’ that she wouldn’t dare break.”

Carson drew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “I’m paying five hundred thousand quid for my half of the business, and I have a contract to prove it.”

“I saw it—to be paid ‘as later arranged.’ But there would be no arrangement, unless it was you arranging to turn her in if she demanded so much as a penny for the place.”