The Death of an Irish Lass Page 13

  At the Garda barracks a half hour later, Hughie Ward said to McGarr, “The Schwerrs are in O’Malley’s office waiting for you. No fingerprints on the pitchfork, and Superintendent McA—”

  An interior door opened and McAnulty shuffled in. “Ah, there you are, Peter. Before you talk to his nibs—”

  McGarr raised a palm. “It’s all taken care of. I told him you found the pitchfork, only I didn’t know where. I told the papers that too. It’s another coup for the Technical Bureau if, as planned, you go on holiday to some distant outpost beyond the reach of the commissioner of police.”

  “You’re a wonder,” said McAnulty. “A savior, a saint, and a horrible liar who told that whopper on your own recognizance and without my knowledge.” McAnulty cast his small, black eyes around the office at the Garda constables. “I wonder if I could catch a lift out to—”

  Walking toward O’Malley’s office, McGarr said, “I’m going to Shannon in about an hour, if you wouldn’t mind waiting, Tom.”

  “Don’t know if I should be seen in his company,” McAnulty said to Ward. “A man who can circumlocute the truth without any coconspiracy with his fellow senior officer whatsoever.” But he sat on a bench and dug out his smokes. He and McGarr seldom got the chance to talk, and the automobile ride would be a perfect occasion.

  McGarr had remembered the Schwerrs as being older. Perhaps it was the summer clothes—she in a natural linen dress and a wide-brimmed hat with a black velvet band, he in a light khaki suit and mauve shirt open at the neck—that made the difference, since several years before he had interviewed them in their chilly drawing room in the middle of the winter.

  She was tall, Nordic, and not really blond anymore, yet her face was still handsome, her skin unwrinkled. Her son resembled her closely.

  Herr Schwerr was perhaps seventy, and though as tall as his wife, his body had begun to shrink. Somehow the shoulders of his suit seemed large. His hair was cut short and was very white. His eyes were blue. He suspirated his consonants just a little too much to be mistaken for an Oxbridgian Englishman. “I’d like to say I’m glad to see you, but the occasion doesn’t warrant that, I believe.”

  “Why not? I’m certainly glad to see you. Please have a seat.” McGarr sat behind the desk. He looked at them.

  They were worried. Her face was drawn, her cheekbones obtruding, her jaw set. “I spoiled him. That much is true, Inspector. But Max is a good boy. Maybe he’s got too many—” She paused and glanced out the window into the sunny courtyard of the barracks, “—romantic notions. That’s my fault too. He was our youngest, please understand, and I doted on him. His father always tried to be firm with him, but I—”

  Herr Schwerr broke in. “Does Max need a solicitor, Mr. McGarr?”

  McGarr cocked his head. “That’s always best. Although he hasn’t been charged.”

  “Will he be charged?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  She said, “I realize you deal with affairs like this every day, but I hope you can appreciate—”

  McGarr cut her off. “Have you seen him?”

  They nodded.

  “How is he?”

  “The doctor says the wound is going to heal, but he also has a concussion. It seems,” she looked down, “he hit his head in an altercation.”

  “I hope he has a good doctor.”

  Herr Schwerr said, “Dr. Fleming.”

  “Ah, yes, he’s tip-top,” said McGarr. “What made you select him?”

  “He’s a long-time friend of Max’s.”

  “And of the family,” she added. “They went to school together.”

  “U.C.D.?”

  They nodded.

  “Was your son involved in,” McGarr gestured his hand, “romantic causes there?”

  Schwerr said, “Like most undergraduates, he was against war and the bomb and the United States and,” he added somewhat sheepishly, “capitalism.”

  “What did he tell you about Friday night?”

  They looked at each other.

  McGarr added, “If you believe he told you the truth and he’s not guilty of murdering May Quirk, then there’s no reason for you not to discuss it with me, is there? Obviously, part of the reason you came all the way out here was to put your minds at ease. I’m willing to tell you what I know.”

  Schwerr said, “Well, I don’t think we should tell you certain—”

  “He’s involved with the I.R.A.,” she blurted out.

  “I know that. It doesn’t interest me. If I began arresting every I.R.A. contact in this country, I’d fill the jails in a week.”

  Schwerr said, “Well, it bothers me. It’s not legal.”

  “And it’s dangerous!” she added.

  “And stupid.” He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. “To think a man so well educated would involve himself with those thugs.”

  She said, “He told us he was coming out here to ask May Quirk to marry him. Did he tell you that?”

  McGarr nodded.

  “But he didn’t tell us what else he was doing. About the I.R.A. money. You know about that?”

  McGarr nodded again.

  “He said he asked her to marry him and she refused. But she told him she was pregnant.” Her lower lip shuddered. Her eyes were watery now. She began digging into her handbag. “She said she preferred to terminate the pregnancy artificially. Over in America. And that she didn’t think she and Max could make a match, that she had her career. Do you know the rest?”

  “I’d prefer to have you tell me, if it’s not too trying.”

  Schwerr spoke. “They were in the field where she was found. Another car pulled up alongside Max’s. She began walking toward it as though she was going to leave in it. Max thought it was the O’Connor fellow. He was a rival for her affections. He tried to stop her and she shot him. Eventually, he staggered to his car and left.”

  McGarr had to force himself to pause before asking, “Did he get a look at the second car?”

  Schwerr said, “He told me he can’t remember its being there when he got into his own car. I asked him if he didn’t imagine the second car, or if it might not have been just some lost car wandering up the laneway between the pastures. He said no. They both turned when the lights went on them, and she started for them right away. Maybe shock prevented him from noticing the car as he left.”

  McGarr was thinking of the bruise on the left side of Hanly’s face. “Did he say anything about the driver of the car?”

  They looked at each other.

  “Did he mention a man named Hanly?”

  Schwerr said, “No.”

  McGarr said, “I’m going to be honest with you, too. Your son never told me about this second car. It could be he didn’t remember at the time, or that he didn’t want to incriminate Hanly, who also has I.R.A. connections. It could be, however, that this isn’t the only bit of information he’s withholding from me. Perhaps you’d be well advised to get him a solicitor or else tell him that when I talk to him next he’d better have the whole story for me. That’s if he’s innocent of killing May Quirk.”

  What he had said seemed to make the Schwerrs feel ashamed.

  McGarr waited a bit before he asked, “What was your opinion of May Quirk?”

  The Schwerrs exchanged glances again. He stood. “Perhaps we had better take your advice, Inspector, before we say anything else.”

  “Suit yourself.” McGarr stood. He then opened the door for them. They thanked him and left.

  McGarr waited by the window, watching the Schwerrs leave the barracks. When they had first begun to talk to him, McGarr was almost positive their son had not murdered May Quirk. Now he wasn’t so sure. If May Quirk had shot him just as Hanly had arrived, then perhaps he might not have had an altercation with Hanly that resulted in Hanly’s bruised face. But then, when he came to, why hadn’t he been able to find her? She had been jabbed or at least had finally come to rest against the wall quite close to the stile that Schwerr in his injured
condition would have had to use to get over the wall. The sky had been clear that night, the moon in the third quarter. That must have made the meadow very bright, since the sky in Ireland, cleared by winds off the Gulf Stream, is as limpid as any.

  McGarr craned back his head and hollered, “Hanly! Where the hell is Hanly!”

  The door to O’Malley’s office burst open. “Sir?” asked a young guard dressed in a tight blue uniform with silver buttons.

  “Hanly!” McGarr roared, and pushed by the guard into the outer office. “Where the hell is Hanly, that miserable, sniveling meld of some bloody bastard’s spawn! Hanly! Hanly!” He began opening all the doors in the office, the closets, the cloakroom, the firearms room, kicking each one, fumbling with the handles, wrenching them open, then banging them shut, shouting “Hanly!” over and over again until his face grew red. Twice he passed right by the dayroom door without stopping.

  The young constable kept touching McGarr’s sleeve, trying to tell him Hanly was there.

  Superintendent McAnulty, sitting in the corner, was smiling broadly: for once he was going to be treated to a performance from McGarr. McAnulty waited until McGarr had made himself red from shouting, then walked over to the dayroom door, opened it, and stood aside.

  “Is he in there?” McGarr demanded. “Is that little lying bastard, that drunken lump of Liffey shit, that sniveling, measly, sonofabitch of a liar in there? Nothing browns me off like a liar!” McGarr started for the open dayroom door. His face was crimson now, his eyes bulging. He was sweating. He had his fists curled into tight yellow balls.

  Hanly was sitting on the edge of a chair in the middle of the room, trying to see around Superintendent O’Shaughnessy, who was standing in front of him.

  His face was haggard. He hadn’t shaved, and his heavy beard shadowed the furrows between his chins. The sacks beneath his eyes seemed to have collapsed and were dark, almost blue. His forehead was greasy with old sweat. Accordion folds creased the sleeves of his blue blazer, and a tail of his shirt stuck from the waist of his gray slacks. His expensive loafers lay askew nearby, where he had kicked them off during the night. The room stank of cigarettes, tea, and Hanly’s feet.

  “There he is!” McGarr roared.

  McAnulty followed him into the room, then stepped out of the way.

  McGarr reached behind him and slammed the door shut.

  “Don’t,” said O’Shaughnessy. “Don’t do it, Peter. The likes of him isn’t worth it. He’ll get himself a lawyer who’ll plaster it all over the papers.”

  “Hanly!” McGarr roared, and tried to rush around O’Shaughnessy, who was six feet eight inches tall and solid. “You lied to me. Not once—oh no, not once!—but six! Count ’em! Six goddamn times, which is six goddamn times too much, you dirty little bastard!” He tried the other side of O’Shaughnessy.

  Again the Galwayman restrained McGarr.

  “Nobody lies to me! Not Phil Dineen, not anybody!”

  Hanly blinked several times at McGarr’s mention of Dineen’s name. Hanly was breathing through his mouth now. He wiped the sweat from his right eyebrow.

  “Calm yourself, Peter.” O’Shaughnessy had his arm around McGarr’s chest now. “Calm yourself.”

  “Why? Has he been lying to you too?”

  “All night. All night long. But don’t let it bother you.” O’Shaughnessy’s voice was soft, soothing, so low Hanly had to strain to hear him. “You don’t want what happened to Bates to happen to him too, now do you? We could cover that up back in Dublin, but here? Never. We’ll clap him in the cooler sooner or later. What did Dineen say?”

  McGarr took his eyes off Hanly and looked up at O’Shaughnessy. McGarr blinked and relaxed his muscles. He stepped back and tucked in his shirt. “Hanly’s on his own. He’ll get no help from that quarter. He had a thing about Schwerr, thought the kraut was going to take over his job. And he was right. They were easing him out, so he knocked off Schwerr’s girl and tried to frame Schwerr for it, after—get this: after!—” McGarr shouted again, “he extorted twenty-seven thousand dollars from her.”

  Hanly was shaking his head. His forehead was furrowed.

  “What?” McGarr asked in a voice that was tight with anger. “What did you say?”

  “Nuttin’. I didn’t say nuttin’, I just shook me head.”

  McGarr went to step around O’Shaughnessy. This time he let McGarr pass. “That’s good,” said McGarr. “That’s very good. I don’t want to hear you open your lying mouth to me, jocko. Get me? You don’t speak until you’re spoken to. Try it! I’ll pound that piece of flab you call your face into pudding. Understand?” he roared.

  Hanly nodded. The fear in his small yellow eyes was unmistakable.

  “Now then.” McGarr fixed him with his gaze. “We’ll take it lie by lie. I want you to tell them to me again, loud and clear.

  “First, the bit about your car. How’d the left rear bumper get crushed?”

  O’Shaughnessy had his note pad out now, pencil in hand.

  Hanly wrenched his eyes from McGarr’s. “Aw—I don’t rightly know, I guess.”

  McGarr didn’t say a word. He waited until Hanly got tired of looking at his shoes, the floor, the sides of the walls he could see with his head down like that. When Hanly finally chanced a peek at McGarr’s face, McGarr again fixed him. “Where did it happen?”

  “Didn’t I tell ya? I dunno.” When McGarr’s eyes didn’t move, Hanly added, “And that’s the truth. Honest to Jesus, Super, it is. But,” he looked down again, “I guess it didn’t happen out there.” When McGarr still didn’t say anything, Hanly continued. “It happened a few hours before, I guess. Back in Ennis.”

  “How?”

  “Backed into an alley. It was dark. I hit the wall.”

  “Trying to keep Schwerr from seeing you?”

  Hanly’s head jerked at the sound of the German’s name, but he kept it lowered. He nodded.

  “Why did you lie to me about that?”

  “Cripes, I had to.” He held his fat palms out. His eyes were bulging; he looked hurt. “If I started blabbering every time I got lifted, I wouldn’t be much of a man, would I?”

  McGarr let the silence prevail until Hanly lowered his hands. Then he said, “Not blabbering is one thing, lying quite another. You lied to us about that dent, you lied to us about the bottle of Canadian Club, you lied to us about the bank in Dublin, you lied to us about knowing May Quirk, and, Mr. Hanly, you lied to us about not seeing another car when you got up to that murder scene on the cliffs, and finally, you lied about how those scratches got on your car. They were made with a pitchfork, the very same one that you used to kill May Quirk and the one you then stuffed in the trunk of Max Schwerr’s Mercedes. That’s what you really wanted, wasn’t it? To get rid of Schwerr, your rival, the fellow who was going to take over your job. You saw her shoot him, you saw your opportunity to hang a murder charge on him. That’s the long and short of it, and I’ve got enough on you right now to put your neck in the noose. Not a jury in this country would deliver any other verdict.”

  Hanly looked from McGarr to O’Shaughnessy to McAnulty, who was standing in the shadows of a corner, and back to McGarr. “What do you mean I lied about the bank in Dublin? Didn’t you get ahold of Scannell? It’s the Royal Provincial Bank headquarters right there on Pearse Street, across from the college. They call it the United Bank now.” When McGarr still didn’t say anything, he again glanced around the room. He was panicky now. It was one thing for the police to accuse him of a capital crime, quite another for the I.R.A. to cut him off. Knowing as much about I.R.A. operators as did Hanly, he knew they couldn’t allow him, a man with a weakness for liquor, to stay on the loose for long. He had worked for them for over twenty years. He knew too much.

  Hanly looked down at his hands. He then touched the bandage on the side of his face. He shook his head and said, “Now that you reminded me of it, Super—I did see another car up there on the bluff. And two people, him and her. They turned when my li
ghts flashed on them. I’d lost Schwerr in Lahinch. His car was faster or the booze was getting the better of me or something. Anyhow, he got the jump, and that area is all raths and glens. I knew I’d blown it when they saw the lights. They both knew my car. She’d interviewed me already once. Schwerr and I—” He looked up at O’Shaughnessy, who was noting everything in shorthand, then hunched his shoulders and continued. “We’d never gotten along. I knew from day one he was the bloke who’d put me out. I even tried to stop drinking, ordered lemon soda every time I went into a bar. I’m only telling you all this because I really didn’t kill her, honest I didn’t. I’m only telling the truth because I’m innocent. Jesus, Super, give me a break. I’m on my own here, you know so yourself.”

  McGarr said, “I’ll be the judge of both your honesty and your innocence. Where’d you park the car?”

  “In front of his.”

  “Why in front?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I was jarred, like I told you. I thought maybe I’d just buzz right by them, let them see it was me, that the guys like Dineen had me—Hanly, who Schwerr thought was washed up—following them. But the laneway was blind. Once I got my car beyond his, I saw that. And I knew I’d never get it back onto the access road without scraping up one or the other of them. Not in my condition. That was when I heard the shot.

  “I couldn’t see what had happened, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really care.”

  “You mean to tell me the twenty-seven thousand dollars didn’t interest you?” McGarr asked.

  Hanly looked down into his fat hands again. “That was just a little sweetener. I thought somebody should squeeze her a bit for all the information she was getting. After all, if she did a job on us in the press in the States, then that would hurt us bad. The money wouldn’t begin to make up, but at least it would be something.”

  “In your pocket.”

  “No, honest. Everybody knew about it.”

  “Not Dineen.”

  “You’ve got him?”

  McGarr nodded. “And we’ve got you. For murder. You were saying you heard a shot.”