The Death of an Irish Lover (4 page)

McGarr only nodded and signed the credit slip.

“Is it business or pleasure that brings you to Leixleap?”

“Fair day, in spite of the prediction,” he said, turning toward the door to the courtyard.

“Not for long.”

McGarr saw she was right, the moment he stepped outside.

Granted the day was now declining, but what he thought of as the hard shyness of Atlantic light had cast a kind of foreboding gloom over the riverscape. Usually the strange light—which he had seen only a half dozen times in his life and almost always while fishing—was caused by clouds racing in from the Gulf Stream.

Lighting a cigarette, McGarr glanced up. A leaden sky, frayed here and there with patches of brilliant luminescence, was sweeping to the east. And the pall it was casting had prompted one fisherman out on the river to weigh anchor and stroke toward shore; another was trying to start his outboard engine, as his skiff drifted south on dark, swift water. It would storm soon.

From the edge of the courtyard where the formal garden began, McGarr could see into the town—a
housewife scurrying to fold her wash into a brimming basket; a shopkeeper stepping out of his door to carry a sandwich board inside, while his children—McGarr assumed—rushed out onto the footpath to pull in the goods that the shop had been offering passersby.

The little girl with the beeper, however, was nowhere in sight.

And yet for all its gloom and drama—what his wife, Noreen, called
momentous, immemorial light,
“the light of history and allegory”—the strange luminescence made the edges of things hard and sear.

Like the cobblestones under his feet, the foot-worn limestone steps that led up to the pub entrance, the old figured horse trough that now functioned as a litter bin in which McGarr stubbed out his cigarette, his “break” over.

Glancing up once again, McGarr hoped the dun light presaged nothing but a coming storm, history and allegory being two bogs difficult to traverse in a country that forgot little and forgave less.

He reached for the brass handle of the wide Georgian door that led into the pub. Like the door of the inn, it had an advisement in gilded scroll:

What harm in drinking can there be,

Since punch and life so well agree?

McGarr had no idea who said that. But surely for a publican it was an efficacious thought to put in the minds of patrons stepping into a bar. Which was proved beyond a doubt when McGarr pushed open the door.

A fug of hot air, smoke, talk, the mixed aromas of porter, hot whiskey, and mulled wine, and even music struck him. He stepped in.

Perhaps it was the impending storm. Or the fact that a warm pub of an early-winter Saturday afternoon in a small country town often drew a crowd. It was market day, and there would be little to do back on a farm. And didn’t
punch and life so well agree?

In the hearth a turf fire was glowing, and from some other room McGarr could hear a fiddle and tin whistle weaving a sprightly duet.

Nobody—the barmen in particular—seemed to take much notice of a middle-aged man in a twill cap and overcoat, stranger or no, and McGarr imagined that it was not unusual for guests from the inn next door to frequent the pub. Especially when a storm was threatening and fishing was over for the day.

In fact, he now heard French being spoken in one corner, and German at the end of the bar. But no word of murder in English as he listened, which would have been on every local tongue, had the news been spread.

At length he was asked, “What are you having?”

McGarr ordered a whiskey, and when it was delivered by a young barman, he asked, “Are you Benny Carson?”

Which brought a quick, sharp laugh from the young man. Like the other staff in the pub, he was wearing a light blue vest and white wing collar, as though Tallon drew no distinction between the level of service provided his local trade and the international guests on the tonier side of the building. “Another insult, like that, and—senior citizen or no—I’ll chuck you out.”

Those nearby laughed.

“He’s here,” McGarr insisted.

“Oh aye—he’s the broth of a boy holding forth at the end of the bar.” He pointed to a small thin older barman whom McGarr had noticed while waiting for
his drink. Cigarette in one hand, glass in the other, Carson had been regaling the entire end of the large bar with jokes and banter, a peal of laughter going up now and again from the crowd gathered there.

Hawk-nosed with prominent cheekbones and sunken eyes, Carson’s face was a sallow, liverish color that suggested too much drink or too many cigarettes or too little sleep and less good food. Or all of that. Yet his eyes were clear, and McGarr had known more than a few people—his own father one—who had lived to rare old age without a thought for their health.

Plainly, Carson was less the barman than host and raconteur; McGarr had seen him pour only one drink—his own—while the younger staff carefully milled around him, serving the throng.

And there was something familiar about Benny Carson. McGarr had seen his face or heard his name before, he was convinced, the closer he drew near. The man had a definite northern accent, with his voice running up in question at the end of a sentence. Down, he had pronounced, “dine”; around was “arind.”

“…sure, you heard of the young duffer who was out on the links, and didn’t he hit a mighty shot so deep it sailed into the wood,” Carson was saying. Like a seasoned performer, he paused to draw on his cigarette.

Yet proprietorially he was also scanning the rest of the bar and the pub, the staff, and the cash drawer. His eyes now fell upon McGarr, who was pushing through the crowd.

“And searching for the ball he found it had nailed”—Carson thumped his forehead with a finger—“the pate of a little creature. A pukka. Who, when he came to, said, ‘So, you caught me fair and square, and what, pray tell, are your three wishes.’”

“‘Ah, go ’way,’ says the young duffer, ‘I’m nary a superstitious man nor one who could accept gifts from the little people. I’m only sorry to have troubled you, and I wish you and yours the very best of the day.’ With that the duffer departed.”

Now McGarr was standing directly in front of Carson, whose eyes shied from his gaze in a way that said he, at least, had placed McGarr. If not vice versa.

Sipping from his glass, Carson continued, “Said the pukka to himself, says he, ‘A thoroughly decent chap, that young duffer, and, like it or not, I must do something for him. I’ll give him what all young fellas need and want—a first-class golf game, money galore, and a vibrant sex life.’”

Some of the bar crowd now began chuckling.

But Carson glanced up at McGarr, “Help you?”

“I need a room.”

“Ach—you’ll have to come back. Can’t you see I’ve got me hands filled?” He raised the cigarette and then the glass.

Which broke up the bar crowd, who were prepared to laugh. Some howled, others slapped the bar.

Said a woman standing next to McGarr, “Don’t take it personally. Benny’s a gas character altogether. He’s just pokin’ a bit of fun.”

McGarr smiled as well, having no option, but he also presented Carson his Garda calling card.

Dousing his cigarette in the water of a sink, Carson shot the butt behind his back and it landed perfectly in a bin a yard or two distant, which was met with more approval from the crowd.

Accepting McGarr’s card with his free hand, the older man glanced down at it and then up at McGarr,
his smile suddenly brittle. And yet he continued with his story.

“So, a year goes by, and the young duffer is back out on the same course. And doesn’t a long drive skip off a rock in the middle of the fairway and bounce into the very same wood.

“And there, when he goes to look for it”—Carson slipped the card into a slit pocket of his light blue vest, then reached below the bar and produced what looked like a leather-bound guest register—“who’s there but the pukka?”

Carson placed the book on the bar and added a pen from his shirt pocket.

“‘Now, me young fella, tell me—how’s t’ings,’ said the Pukka. ‘Grand actually,’ replied the young man. ‘Brilliant, if the truth be told.’

“‘And the golf game?’” Carson watched McGarr as he pushed into the bar and opened the register. “‘How’s that?’”

“‘Couldn’t be better. Every ball straight down the fairway, every hole below par, I’m presently the club champ.’

“‘You don’t say,’ said the Pukka. ‘That’s grand. And money—what about that?’”

The night before, the night of the murder—McGarr saw at a glance—seven of the eight rooms had been occupied, six by foreigners: two Dutch couples from the same city who were probably traveling together, two German, a Frenchman, and an American.

“‘It’s magic,’ said the duffer. ‘Every time I put me hand in me pocket, I pull out a hundred-quid note. I’ve been able to help many a poor person with that, I’ll tell you. It’s done a great deal of good.’

“‘That’s you. That’s you, all right,’ the pukka
cheered. ‘Don’t I know you’re a good man. The kindest and most generous.’”

McGarr thumbed back through the register, aware that Carson’s eyes were now on him, in spite of the continuing joke.

“‘And what about the other bit. The sex. How’s that going?’

“‘Glorious. Fantastic. Couldn’t be better,’ said the young fella. There was a bit of a pause, since the pukka, like all wee folk”—Carson raised his free hand to the top of his head to indicate that he considered himself diminutive as well—“are a manky lot, forever panting and always on the nob. I mean, job.”

Yet more laughter greeted that.

McGarr found Pascal Burke’s signature of the day before. And he noticed, turning back farther still, that a stay of a fortnight’s duration had been usual for the dead eel policeman.

“‘Details, man,’ the pukka insisted. ‘Details!’

“‘Oh,’ said your man, tallying up his scores in his head. ‘At least once or twice a month.’

“‘What? You’re jokin’ me,’ said the pukka, incredulous and hoping his powers weren’t waning. ‘Surely you must mean once or twice a
week?
’

“‘No, a month,’ replied your man. ‘Which isn’t half-bad for’”—Carson paused to sip from the glass, his eyes twinkling as he surveyed the largely silent bar crowd—“‘a priest with a small parish.’”

The joke was an old chestnut that McGarr had heard countless times before. But the crowd was in a roaring mood, and Carson’s delivery was practiced and skilled.

When they quieted, Carson turned to McGarr. “What about you, sir? Will you put up with this racket? Or do you prefer quieter accommodations? I can rec
ommend the inn on the other side of this building where you can hear a pin drop and Tim Tallon will provide you with everything you want.”

“And more,” said one of the crowd.

“Like his company,” said another.

“And a tab for two hundred quid,” yet another added, which brought nods of the head and more laughter.

But most eyes were on McGarr. “I’ll see a room first. Here.”

Histrionically, Carson placed his glass on the bar and wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. “You’ll…
what?
”

“A room, I’ll see it,” which by law a prospective guest could view before agreeing to stay over. But McGarr understood he had become a part of Carson’s continuing shtick.

“What’s there to see, man? There’s a door, some carpet, a light, two windows, a toilet, and, of course, a bed. That’s it. End of story.”

Which was humorous only in the way Carson said it and yielded more laughs.

“Benny’s on today,” somebody said.

“You’d be better off to drink your drink and go over to the other side, mister,” another said to McGarr behind a hand. “Before you’re roasted and served on a plate.”

But McGarr only waited until the others had quieted and all eyes were on him, anticipating some angry response. He then raised a hand, pointed his fingers at Carson, and snapped them brusquely into his palm.

It was a universal cop gesture, and one which, like Carson’s antics, had to be practiced; it said no more dallying, come with me. Or else.

Carson glanced at the crowd, who were now watching him, and shrugged. “Sure, he must be from Dublin. That’s how they say hello.”

Which was an acceptable exit line and brought further approval from the crowd.

Carson turned and reached for a key in one of eight pigeonholes that had been built into the back bar. “Liam—will you buzz us through?” he asked one of the other barmen as he moved toward the hinged flap of the bar. There was a door just beyond.

As McGarr moved toward it, an obviously drunken older man in a cloth cap and tattered jacket turned to him. “I hope Benny and his mates breaks yehr fookin’ legs fer yeh, yeh city cunt.”

When another man whispered something, trying to shut him up, he roared, “I don’t give a shite who he is—Nelligan himself—he’s a city fook, and Benny and Manus will chuck his arse in the river where it belongs. They’re just the b’ys to do it.”

After Independence in the early twenties one Brian Nelligan had headed up the notoriously brutal Special Branch of the Garda Siochana that had focused on rooting out the even-then-outlawed IRA.

But the statement jarred McGarr’s memory, causing him to remember who Benny Carson was or, at least, had been: an IRA section chief who had spent a record number of years in solitary confinement in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison.

McGarr tried to recall Carson’s story that had been much covered in the press. Something to the effect that he was the child of a mixed marriage, which had been highly controversial in the Ulster of Carson’s youth, and he had sided with his Catholic mother’s family after his Protestant father had abandoned them.

It was thought that, given his name, Carson believed he had to prove himself more completely than others in that organization, even after he had been arrested for…could it be? Murdering two Royal Ulster Constabulary policemen in the North. McGarr would have to check, but he thought so.

Later—after his release from prison on a legal technicality, McGarr now also remembered—Carson had gone on to become one of the IRA’s chief tacticians. But that, too, was years ago. And here he was now decades later in charge of a busy bar in the Midlands of the Republic. Why? Or, rather, how? McGarr thought of Tallon, who had to have known of the man’s past when he hired him. Or could their connection be more complicated still?