The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (19 page)

But taking a walk one morning, an Irish archaeologist, who had decided to explore as much of the island as possible, happened upon what he thought was a Bronze Age monument, a
fulachta fiadh
. When he returned with his colleagues, the group immediately found four more.

The same archaeologist was then told by islanders of another site that “might be something.” Hiking to it, their guides brought them past two more
fulachta fiadh
before pointing to a large collection of stones. The archaeologist rushed forward, unable to credit what he was seeing—a Stone Age court tomb or burial vault. It meant that people had inhabited Clare Island for at least fifty-five hundred years. Or perhaps seventy-five hundred. It was difficult to date the site precisely.

Another spectacular find occurred in paleobotany. “Were you present when that core sample was brought up?”

The elderly man nodded. “Not only was I present, but it was at my suggestion that Coxon took the sample where he did. Of course, he’s never acknowledged that.” The man raised his head and surveyed the island that they were fast approaching.

Coxon was Peter Coxon of Trinity College who, in taking
a core sample from a
fulachta fiadh
, came up with a complete, unopened, and glistening hazel nut. It was as fresh as the day it fell from the tree, seven thousand years ago.

Which was the kind of touch with the past that Noreen thought of as mystical. Bending to Maddie, she now said, “You know the ice I told you about?”

“The glacier that was once here?”

“That’s right. After it melted, the first plants to appear in the glacial debris were grasses, docks, and meadowsweet. Then trees appeared, one of which was hazel.”

“Like the nuts?” They were a favorite of Maddie, especially when wrapped in Cadbury milk chocolate.

“Within only two hundred years of its first arriving here, hazel trees covered this island, some of them growing to forty feet. Two hundred years is no time at all in the history of the earth.”

Maddie gazed up at the bald eminence of Croaghmore and its green and treeless flanks. “I don’t see any trees. Aren’t there any left?”

Noreen turned her head to Professor Schweibert and waited; it was her test.

“After hazel, other varieties of trees appeared, until around seven thousand years ago when man began using wood for heat and shelter and perhaps even clearing some land for cultivation. The climate then was a degree or two Celsius warmer and drier than it is now, and it remained so for about two thousand years.”

Curiously, the man’s accent had disappeared; he sounded like an anchor on the evening news.

“But when it changed and became cooler and wetter, the soil could not replace the trees that were taken, as farming techniques improved and the population increased. Blanket bogs and iron pan appeared. Even so, in the sixteenth century, Grace O’Malley describes Clare Island as being partially wooded. In the next century, however, the British cleared Ireland of its trees for various reasons but mainly military, a wood being a place of refuge.

“Now, to answer
your
question, little one.” Schweibert looked down at Maddie. “There are still some hazel trees, an oak or two, some birch willow and holly—all confined to a
small area in the lee of a hill up there in Lassau.” He pointed almost due north, as the boat now entered the harbor. “But they’re mainly dwarfed. There’s too much wind and rain and too few nutrients in the soil.”

Schweibert glanced up at Noreen, his smile thin, his eyes clear and hard.

“DID YOU MANAGE to meet that boatload of young women?” Noreen asked Ruth Bresnahan. She and Maddie had just joined McGarr and his staff at the Bayview Hotel for a working lunch.

From the windows they could survey the harbor. There Garda Superintendent Tom Rice was presently stationed to photograph and interview any celebrants arriving by private boat. McGarr had also asked the “ferry” captains to suspend operations for the noon hour.

“You mean the Amazon in the mango bikini? Moira O’Malley from Howth?”

“Yes, I don’t see her boat anywhere.” Not only was the harbor crowded with private boats, the picturesque lane that traced the shoreline was thronged with strolling O’Malleys in various stages of undress. The balmy weather was holding.

“She mentioned something about diving.”

Said Ward from the sideboard where he was making a plate from the platters of sandwiches and salads that had just been delivered, “After she asked you—well—
out
, I guess you’d call it. What were her words again? ‘Do you swim? Of course you do—you’re
made
for swimming. We must plunge together. I could teach you how to
dive
.’” Bresnahan’s jersey didn’t help.

White, skintight, and sheer, it said “Oh!-Mmm!-Alley-Cat” across the protrusive front; on the back was. “If you tickle me fancy, I’ll purr in your ear.” Beneath the garment could be seen a black strapless bikini. Her shorts also were sheer, exposing her well-tanned, shapely legs and much of her lower-middle anatomy. Unlike Noreen, who freckled, Ruth Bresnahan was a redhead who, with carefully measured exposures, could acquire a nonred color.

“Ah, you’re just jealous she didn’t ask you.”

“She could tell from my lack of diving equipment”—Ward waved a hand at his chest—“I wasn’t her tank of oxygen.”

“Speaking of good air—how’s Bernie doing up at the lighthouse?”

Noreen assumed the question was addressed to her, since her husband was in the next room showing the electronic portraits to the barman and two patrons from McCabe’s. “Great, as far as I know.”

“Not grousing yet?”

At the sideboard, Noreen began fixing Maddie a plate. “Peter said he was surprised there’ve been no complaints.”

Bresnahan eyed Ward. “But wouldn’t he be better placed here at the hotel?”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know—considering how he fancies chat and all. I’m sure he’d be on a first-name basis with half the O’Malleys in one short session.”

It occurred to Noreen what was afoot, having glanced at a brochure in the Roonagh Ferry of the new guest accommodation at the lighthouse. “The Last Temptation” was surely
the
temptation to succumb to, when on Clare Island: a big bed in a turret on a four-hundred-foot cliff overlooking the wild Atlantic; Continental cuisine prepared by a master chef; long restorative walks in the brisk air with all those marvelous views of Clew Bay, Achill Island, and Grand Turk to the south. All on the Garda Siochana and so far from Dublin that no police snoop would cop on, as it were. “You could ring him up, see how he’s faring.”

“Splendid idea. I’m glad you thought of it. After all, four eyes are better than two.” Bresnahan reached for the phone.

Unless, of course, they were locked into each other.

“Bernie! Bucko! How’s every little thing up in your ivory tower?” There was a pause, and then, “What do you mean, who’s calling? It’s your colleague and sometime acolyte in matters of the spirit—whoever did you think it was?”

As Bresnahan paced the carpet by the phone, Noreen decided not for the first time that Ruthie was without a doubt the most beautiful, big woman that she knew. She had at once voluptuous size, shapeliness, and color. Add to that definite spirit, not just a little bit of Dublin wit, and a goodly measure of Kerry country craft, and you had a rather spectacular human being. Little wonder that she had corralled, so to say, the wandering Ward.

“Speaking of higher callings,” Ruth continued, “where do you think I’m phoning from? I won’t make you guess, which is cruel. Why, the bar of the Bayview Hotel.” Ruth winked at Noreen. “It’s a brilliant place. Great
craic
with O’Malley-this and O’Malley-that splashing out gobs of money. This round is from the cousins in New York, that one from Sydney. It’s like a bidding war in an auction room with everybody on a first-name basis.”

She listened for a moment. “So—the bar at the Bayview doesn’t have a phone. Call it…poetic licensed premises. You seem a bit glum, chum. Tell me, now—has solitary assignment made you a little gah-gah? Or goo-goo? You know, the one white wall that surrounds you. Or, could one be the loneliest number that you’ll ever know?”

There was no response, and Bresnahan could only assume that McKeon—Dubliner that he was—had never been forced to listen to country and western music, as everybody who switched on a radio in the West did. “Hang on, Bernie, the chief is passing the cabinet. Excuse me, Chief—as long as you’re up, I’ll have that other glass.”

Again she listened. “What do you mean, what do I want? Do I have to want something? I was just checkin’ in—one gumshoe to another—to find out if you’ve grown feathers yet and can fly without flappin’ your wings. Know what Hughie and I have been given?”

Bresnahan waited, but there was only silence on the other end of the line. Usually McKeon would have a rapier-like
comeback. “The bleedin’ hotel is what, and I hate to say—since we’re working and all—but it’s
party time
.”

Still she waited. Finally she decided to come out with it. “Want to make a swap?”

The others in the room watched as Bresnahan’s eyes widened. “Of course Peter is here. He’s in the bar.” There was a pause. “I
am
in the bar. Like I said, it’s packed, and—” Bresnahan lowered the receiver and stared down at it.

McKeon had rung off. After all, his specialty was interrogations.

Behind the door to the other room, the barman from McCabe’s could be heard saying, “I dunno. It’s hard to say. Wasn’t the bar dark and him in the orange deck suit and all. Looked like a navvy off one of them Spanish factory ships. Beard. I don’t think he’d shaved in a week.”

Said one of the patrons from that night, “He kept a billed cap on, like the kids wear these days.”

McGarr clicked the screen back four faces. “Like that?”

He nodded.

“Baseball.”

All three men stared at him, none probably knowing a baseball from a softball. The transom of the
Mah Jong
said she was from New Orleans, Louisiana. No such boat was documented or licensed in Louisiana; of the seventeen boats named
Mah Jong
worldwide, none was a schooner. McGarr had pulled out every stop he could think of, but he was worried that time was running out. In a matter of hours the island would be teeming with more people than could be monitored or tracked, and he would have to take steps to protect Mirna Gottschalk and her son, Karl, who was still staying with her.

If only he knew more about the raiders, then perhaps they might narrow the focus. Hating the thought of diminishing his numbers on Clare Island even by one, McGarr decided nevertheless to send Ward back to Dublin. He was young enough to know computers, E-mail, and so forth that were necessary to extract information from other sources worldwide, and yet he was veteran enough to have more usual connections.

“And another thing,” said the barman. “He kept his hand up to his face, like leaning on an elbow.”

“The bigger problem is the pictures, if I can say so, Superintendent—”

“You can say anything you want.”

“—them photos there, they’re in color. But bars, now, bars is different. Bars is in black and white, like. In bars yeh don’t think this color, that color—hat, coat, shoes. In bars, everything is…gray, since ye’ve got yehr pint and chat to take care of.”

McGarr could credit the notion, especially round closing time which it had been.

“And there’s only so much starin’ you want to do at a stranger, never knowin’ where they’re from or what they might do,” put in the barman.

“There’s nary a word of lie in that.”

Amen, thought McGarr. He began clicking through the women on the off chance they might have seen any of them before. There was the evidence of the small man or large woman’s footprint in the soft ground around the Ford cottage. To say nothing of Paul O’Malley’s sighting through his Swarovski scope.

Out in the other room, the phone rang. Bresnahan snatched it up, hoping that McKeon had changed his mind. But a decidedly feminine voice said, “May I speak to Garda Superintendent Hugh Ward of the Serious Crimes Unit, please.”

It took Bresnahan only a heartbeat—literally—to know who it was. The admiring tone was unmistakable, along with the distinctive Dublin brogue. “One moment. Please hold.” She cupped the phone to a hip, saying to Ward, “It’s for you. I think it might be personal.”

Ward frowned; he’d had no personal life since becoming involved with herself. “Who is it?”

Bresnahan arched an auburn eyebrow and shook her head. “I have an idea it’s an admirer.”

Noreen was all ears, wondering if she was about to be party to some revelation of Ward’s infidelity. It was rather expected, given his past and storied romantic history.

“Ward here.”

“Hughie—it’s Leah Sigal from Sigal and Sons.”

“Yes, Leah.”

Bresnahan nodded, having been right; but she did not move away from the phone. As it was, they were practically shoulder to shoulder, she being the taller party. Ward—dressed in a blue buttoned-down, Oxford-cloth shirt, blue jeans, and penny loafers—looked like one of the younger American O’Malley revelers, and certainly nowhere near his thirty-six years.

“I phoned your office, and yehr mahn, Swords, put me through.” It was said in the best Dublin voice. “I have a confirmation on the ring.”

Ward’s head went back.

“It is—as I thought—part of a parure. In fact, it’s part of a famous set of diamonds and sapphires that had been given by the enormously wealthy Count Cyril Kraczkiewicz to his betrothed—I’m reading from the report I requested—on the occasion of their marriage in Gda
sk in 1934. Kraczkiewicz, a noted collector of gemstones and jewelry, disappeared in East Prussia with his wife in late 1944, and were never seen or heard from again, victims—it is supposed—of either the Nazis or the advancing Russians.

“The value of the ring? I should think my estimate was low both as a single piece or as part of the parure. My fax hasn’t had a moment’s rest since I sent out the request. I’m being besieged with offers to buy. The service must have a leak.”

Free enterprise being even freer on an anonymous fax line, thought Ward.

“Hughie”—there was a huffy pause, as though the woman was summoning the courage to continue—“it was good to see you again, and I hope what I found out has helped. My son, Lou? He’s going through his grandfather’s records of any Clare Island or Clement Ford dealings.

“But, well—what I want to say to explain why I acted so odd when you called at the shop is…” She paused to gather breath. “It was because…well, because I was dismayed that you didn’t recognize me. Have I changed that much? Hughie, are you there?”

Ward grunted and tried to turn himself and the phone away
from Bresnahan, sensing that more was coming.

“Hughie—I’m Lee Stone, your history reader the year you were at University College.”

In a stunning flashback that, he knew, was revealed on his face, it all came back to Ward.

“What’s wrong?” Bresnahan asked.

During that spring—how many? Fourteen years ago—Lee Stone and he had had a torrid affair. Only a few years older than he at the time, she had been a research student who assisted the professor who lectured the course. Although she had been married at the time, it had been like love at first sight. Her office, her car, his flat, Phoenix Park—they had been unable to keep themselves apart. Ward had even grown anxious that he was not devoting enough time to his studies and might fail his exams.

But then his father had died, and he had gone home to Waterford to bury him. After that, she had come down once to visit him and tell him that she was going to divorce her husband, whose name was Stone. Ward had either never asked her maiden name or, if he had, he had forgotten it. As he had her until now.

And then it occurred to him that her son was just about fourteen…. Ward drew in an anxious breath of his own. “What about your son?” His dark brow knitted. “Lou.”

“He doesn’t know, I didn’t tell him. As far as he’s concerned, my ex-husband is his father, though he’s never seen the man. He emigrated to Israel before Lou was born. I’ve encouraged him to know something about you without letting on, though there was oft and many a time I thought I should. But divil the bit of courage could I muster to pick up the phone and disturb your life because of a decision I had made so many years ago.”

But now the boy should be told, Ward decided without having to debate the issue, at the same time wondering if there were any possibility that the child was not his. No—he shook his head—he had met the boy, seen the similarity in their dark looks. There was no possibility that he wasn’t.