The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (7 page)

As though wary or frightened, he moved back into the room, drawing the man away from the door. Rice stepped forward to intervene, but McGarr raised a hand. “Sure, if that’s all the gentleman wants, I’ll give him his twenty-two pounds fifty. He’ll get the other half when he takes me back.”

The hazel eyes widened and the ears pulled back. Here it comes, thought McGarr—telegraphed, no, carrier-pigeoned maybe a whole second—before the hands leapt for McGarr’s throat. Sidestepping, McGarr threw a double jab with his left hand. The first blow caught the small ribs—the soft, cartilaginous, easily broken and sensitive ribs just up from the belt. The second landed smartly on an ear, with a twist to make it sting all the more.

When the right hand jumped up in pain, McGarr loaded his weight into a shot thrown straight from his knees that sank so deep into the stomach he thought he felt backbone from the inside. Buckling up, the man sank toward McGarr, who grabbed a fistful of curly hair and spun him toward the door.

“There’s a lesson in this, bucko.
Seoinini
like me? We do this for sport. Or at least it would have been sport, had you been more of a challenge. Like this, it’s just plain old police brutality.” Raising a foot to the rump, McGarr shot him out the door where he stumbled and fell roughly onto the concrete for all to see.

Stepping out of the house, McGarr pulled some money out of his billfold and showed it to Rice. “How much is this, Superintendent?”

“I count forty-five pounds.”

Bending to the man, McGarr said in a low voice, “I’d stick this in your gob, if you didn’t need it to suck all that wind. In the future, put into the dock for your passengers. I might’ve broken my leg. And show some respect for your elders. You never know when they might teach you a lesson.” He shoved the money into a pocket of the oilskin, then straightened up.

“Now, Superintendent—I’ll see the house.”

THE FORD COTTAGE lay some two miles from the harbor overland. But it was a good four by road, much of it along a rough mountain track scarcely wide enough for the ancient Bedford van that Rice had borrowed from the owner of the island’s only pub.

The floor of the vehicle was largely gone, a few sheets of steel having been welded onto the frame for their feet. Looking down, McGarr watched the gravel, rocks, and grass flow past them, like an endless, gray-green watercourse. It reminded him of what he would rather be doing.

Rice, who was driving, explained, “The islanders pick up these junks cheap wherever they can, so long as the engine has a bit of life left. Diesel’s the thing, since it’s cheap and they get the government subsidy.” On fuel used while farming or fishing, he meant. “Road tax? Insurance? Even number plates? Why bother, since the car’s never going off the island.

“You hear these people complain, and some of them have ‘attitudes,’ like yehr mahn with the forty-five pounds. But with eight miles of water between them and the government, they have it made.”

Unless, of course, they were visited in the dead of the night by a raiding party with murder in mind.

The cottage was set off on a high cliff on the western side
of the island with no near neighbors in any direction. The views were spectacular, especially on a clear day such as this.

To the north across Clew Bay were the mountains of Achill Island and North Mayo, layer upon towering layer, with the ocean defining all in a fringe of silver surf.

To the south the steep shoulder of Croaghmore continued to rise. Two narrow paths wound across it, one leading up to its peak and the pristine sky, the other tracing down through a defile to a beach that was probably exposed only at low tide.

To the east lay a long stretch of green commonage and walled fields. And beyond, the harbor with its collection of white houses, the pub, a shop or two, and the castle. But without so much as a tree for perspective, they seemed leagues away.

Finally, to the west and maybe three hundred feet down lay the blue depths of the Atlantic clear to New York. And wind, McGarr discovered, stepping out at the bottom of the drive so as not to destroy any evidence. Gathering at the base of the cliff after thousands of miles of unimpeded sweep, it surged over the edge and pinned him against the side of the van.

McGarr imagined that the place was virtually uninhabitable most days of the year; the storm of the night before, while severe, was not unusual. Now climbing the steep switchback drive, the wind was so strong that both men had to lean back into it and brace their legs to keep from being hurled forward.

How had Ford and his wife—near octogenarians both, Rice had said—ever managed to leave the house? And why had they remained in such an inhospitable place for “How many years did you say they lived here?” McGarr tried to ask, but the gale swept away his words. What was their support? How had they kept themselves from being prisoners of the wind?

It was then, as they turned through the first switchback and began to mount the next incline, that the wind ceased abruptly, nearly tumbling McGarr. Rice staggered, then righted himself. “It’s magic, what? This morning I thought me ears would burst.”

The house had been sited with care in a kind dingle or combe that a stream had cut into the side of Croaghmore.
And although still windy there, the swirling breezes lacked the force of the gusts that were wailing overhead.

“Many’s the time I wondered how man or beast could live in a place like this, seeing it from down there.” Rice pointed toward the ocean. “I fish a bit with the brother-in-law. Now I know.”

McGarr stopped and looked behind him down the declivity to the beachlike area and the ocean. “Go through the chronology again for me.”

“Like I mentioned on the phone, Chief—the call came to the barracks in Louisburgh around four in the morning. The two men who fish with Packy O’Malley went to roust him out, since he’s a bit of a character and usually closes the pub. And they found the boat gone and his kip all shot up. That’s when they noticed O’Grady’s car with the doors open and blood everywhere. One of them thought to look in the boot.

“I got to the harbor around seven, the brother-in-law bringing me out. Word, of course, had spread, and even at that hour the jetty was packed.

“Says the publican to me, says he, ‘You should speak to Paul O’Malley, he’s got something to tell you.’ ‘Who’s Paul O’Malley,’ says I? ‘A crippled fella who lives on Capnagower.’ That’s another of the hills to the east of the island. ‘Paul can do little else each day but monitor local waters with binoculars and sideband.’ It’s him that told me about the schooner and how Clem Ford would always want to be informed the moment any new boat put in.

“But, sure, by that time I’d already heard from Jacinta O’Grady, saying that Ford had rung up her husband, asking him to come and sit with the wife while he stepped out for a moment. And to come armed. O’Grady thought it a bit daft, but he left his tea nevertheless, worried, like, about the two old-timers.”

“And he took along a gun?”

Rice nodded. “So the wife said. A handgun.”

“Did Ford mention why he wanted O’Grady to come here?”

“No—he said he’d explain it all later.”

“Or where he was stepping out to?”

Rice shook his head.

“Do we have any idea of any later times?”

“Jacinta said she began to get worried when, by midnight, O’Grady hadn’t come home or phoned her. It was then she began ringing him here, but the line was busy or off the hook. Also, the publican said Packy O’Malley stayed as usual ’til closing, which was half ten last night, no later. He also says he saw Packy’s boat in the harbor when he put out the bottles and locked the back door of the pub fifteen minutes later.”

So, if they could assume that O’Malley’s boat was gone because he was on it, then he left sometime after 10:45. “What’s the connection—O’Malley to the Fords?”

“She—the wife, Breege—is an O’Malley too, and they’re probably related somehow. But the publican says Ford and Packy got on famously and often had jars together. But other than that—” Again Rice shook his head, then pointed to the drive that was speckled with the same brass 7.62 mm bullet jackets that had littered the jetty at the harbor. “’Tis here that the shell casings begin.”

And also what McGarr thought of as the “mess” that marked the scene of almost every murder, victims seldom being taken completely unawares. The soft clay-and-gravel drive was pocked with footprints, as was the even softer earth of a small cabbage garden that had been planted between the two legs of the switchback drive. Somebody—evidently whoever had been wielding the automatic weapon—had sprinted across the drive near the cubby entrance to the house and then plunged down through the garden, firing all the while.

“Hard to figure it though—them’s small prints for a man or even a boy. Could it have been a woman?”

There was no way of knowing, and at the moment McGarr was merely observing, taking in everything he could. But whoever it had been, he or she had not been afraid of the steep slope through the garden and had leapt four or five feet at a bound, firing all the while. The shell cases looked like bright brass seeds that had been strewn over the earth, which was dark from the rain of the night before.

But there were other prints too, most notably those of a size as large as McGarr had ever seen.

“Ford himself,” Rice opined, pointing. “There, there, and
there. Huge man. As tall and broad as we’ve got in these parts, and Mayo has some big men.”

And
there
carrying something heavy from the house to the car, most of the weight on the heels. The impressions were filled with clayey rainwater the color of milky tea. But they did not lead to where the boot of the car must have been, given the tire tracks, but rather to the backseat that had contained so much blood.

There were also prints of a smaller man leading to the back door on the passenger side, and the prints of yet another even smaller man to the driver’s door. Two of those had been partially stepped on by Ford, who appeared to have been in a great hurry getting behind the wheel. One of his immense shoes had slid a half yard before digging deep into the drive as he pushed off.

Stooping, McGarr picked up one of the several, smaller shell casings. Nine mm. Probably fired from the Webley automatic that the car had run over and was partially buried in the drive. It had to be an antique, since to McGarr’s knowledge Webleys of that type had not been produced since the Second World War.

And what was that on its grip? McGarr stepped closer. It was an anchor that had been cast in intaglio along with the words “PROPERTY OF THE ROYAL NAVY.” Patent and registration numbers were on the barrel.

“These here are the palm prints I told you about.”

There were several. It looked like somebody had fallen and scrambled through the wet gravel and clay with one rather small hand fully opened and the other cupped.

From his jacket McGarr pulled out a box of cigarettes and turned toward the house where, maybe, he could find a windless corner and light up. At his wife’s insistence, he’d been trying to quit now for…oh, ten years off and on. But mainly off. The overconsidered cigarette wasn’t worth smoking, and he decided he liked the guilt.

He displayed the packet to Rice, who shook his head and tapped the uniform pocket over his heart. While lighting up, McGarr noticed a pair of high-tech binoculars hanging from a peg. Zeiss, which were high-quality and—could they be?—of the night-seeing variety. They were bulky with a large
dome between the lenses. He wondered what something like that cost; doubtless a pretty penny. Whatever the raiding party had come for, it had not been for a simple theft. Turning, he stepped into the house.

Blood. Rice had said there would be blood, and he had not lied. Somebody had died in the narrow hallway, probably O’Grady from the pieces of sandy-colored scalp and whitish gore that McGarr caught sight of. A gush of vital matter covered the array of framed photographs and paintings on the wall; in fact, Ford with his huge footprints had trod through the coagulating blood and then stopped six or so feet from where the corpse had lain. There was an outline of shoulders where the blood had pooled.

Said Rice, “These here are my tracks, Chief, when I came in this morning.”

But McGarr was distracted. Something had caught his eye. Turning his head, he again scanned the wall. A picture, one of the black-and-white photographs near where Ford had stopped. In it was a beautiful young woman with raven hair and light eyes.

Smiling into the camera, she had a rose in her hair, and her gracefully formed hands were grouped near her neck. On one finger was the ring that he had seen in the Granada at the harbor, the one with the “diamond” of unlikely size and the surround of “sapphire” stones. Blood had spattered the picture, and somebody with two large fingers had touched the bloodied glass covering it. The fingerprints were definite and now dry.

But the footprints in the hall were worthless, McGarr judged. After O’Grady had died in the hall, his murderers had tossed the place completely, walking back and forth, searching every nook and cranny. Not one drawer or cabinet had been spared, the contents dumped in piles in the center of the rooms.

Correspondence was everywhere. Letters had been ripped open, scanned, and the sheets tossed down. Only one stack of paper was still in some order on a table by a lamp that was lit. Each page had “Clem and Breege Ford, Clare Island, Co. Mayo” printed in fancy script at the top. But the handwriting was so eccentric as to be nearly illegible, with back
ward-slanting characters that looked almost Gothic. McGarr could make out only a word or two.

Framed photographs—mostly of children and young adults—were also scattered on the hearth, the glass broken. McGarr counted them—eighteen. “Did Ford have that many children or grandchildren?”

“Far as I know he had none. But, like I said, he was a friendly sort.”

In other rooms chairs had been overturned and gutted, floorboards ripped up. The hatch to the low attic was still open and a heap of old trunks and cases lay smashed beneath it. The phone was off the hook. Yet the small light on the answering machine was lit, saying there were 0 recorded messages.

With the butt of his pen, McGarr depressed the button to hear the outgoing message. A deep and sonorous male voice said, “You have reached the home of Breege and Clement Ford. We are unable to come to the phone at the moment, but if you would kindly leave a message, we will ring you back at the earliest possible opportunity. Please wait for the tone.” The English was precise but neutral, the consonants suspirated crisply but without affectation. In all Ford sounded like somebody from a privileged background.

The kitchen table was still laid with dinner for two, although only one had been eaten; some sort of chowder, lamb chops, brussels sprouts, and boiled potatoes. The other plate had been filled, but the serving remained untouched.

There was no other sign of life or death. The house had been sacked and its occupants were now missing. Pushing open the back door, McGarr stepped out into another but much larger glassed-in cubby that was filled with rows of potted plants. It was hot in there, and the door to the yard was bolted. McGarr opened it and stepped out.

A large, well-tended garden ran up most of the length of the dingle. Because the house blocked the blast, it was nearly windless there. A haggard with a row of outbuildings occupied one side of the cleft, and the mountain stream that had formed the dingle ran down the other, passing well beyond the house. Today it was a sparkling torrent, in full spate with the storm water pouring off the mountain.

Opening one of the sheds McGarr was surprised by geese that bolted past him in a flutter of white feathers and raucous complaint. He found a cow, which he also let out into a grazing yard, and some chickens, but nothing else.

Crossing the garden again, he moved toward the stream and a well-worn path along its higher bank. So—he mused, reaching for another cigarette—a large white sailing vessel arrived in the harbor at sundown, and Paul O’Malley, a shut-in who monitored such events, phoned Clement Ford.