The Death of an Irish Lass Read online

  “What’s his name?”

  “Scannell.”

  “Check that,” McGarr said to Ward. Then he asked Hanly, “What were your immediate plans, say, for today, tomorrow, and the coming week?”

  Hanly began scratching the balding crown of his head. Not once during the interview had he looked directly at McGarr, who had put it down to Hanly’s former brushes with the law and his background in the Dublin slums where anybody interested in an easy living learned early to avoid the police. But now McGarr detected a new attitude. Hanly was gloating—his ears pulled back just slightly, and McGarr could have sworn he flashed a drunken smile—as though he had pulled off a slick caper, and right under the nose of Ireland’s top cop. “Don’t know, Super. I suppose—” He straightened up. “I’ll try to pull meself together and go on with affairs. Got another dance tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Salthill. And then there’s the car. Haven’t had it but a week.”

  McGarr handed him back his wallet. “I wonder how many Irish South Africans return every summer. I’m sure we can find that out.”

  “’T weren’t Irish at all,” said Hanly, staggering toward the stile in the wall. “South Africans pure and simple. Ruggers on tour.”

  “But they paid over a thousand pounds to dance?”

  “And drink. I run that concession too, of course. And all legally.” He nearly fell on the top of the stile. “I followed them through three towns—Wexford, Waterford, and Youghal. They made crowds, which love to dance. Which is my business.”

  “And mine is to ask you to accompany us to the barracks in Lahinch. You want to help the police in the investigation of this murder, don’t you?” said O’Shaughnessy. Under Irish law the police could hold for two days a man who was “helping” them. After that he must be cautioned and arrested or released. Under the Offenses Against the State Act, which deals with terrorist groups like the I.R.A. and lists a schedule of offenses such as the possession of firearms, explosives, and gathering in groups for the purpose of overthrowing the state, the suspect might be held indefinitely.

  “But how long am I going to be held?”

  “Depends on how much and how quickly you help us.”

  “But my dance. It’s my livelihood, my life’s blood! I thought the super…”

  “My title is Chief Inspector of Detectives,” said McGarr. It was a classification that had been made especially for him when he left Interpol to join the Garda Soichana. McGarr’s only superiors were the commissioner of police and the minister of justice, who was an elected official. Unofficially, McGarr was being groomed for the top job. The commissioner was only a few years from retirement. “And I’m just the pretty face in the crowd, Barry. I carry the flask.” McGarr wiggled the little bottle at Hanly. “A few drinks, some pleasant conversation. It’s all in a day’s work.” McGarr looked down at May Quirk. She was still looking out over the far ocean, as she had, he imagined, before she left for America—expectantly, almost hopefully. McGarr wondered what she had found there. He wondered also about the money and the ugly way she had died. “And make sure he’s as clean as a whistle. I’d prefer to have him handy.”

  “But my business, McGarr!”

  “To hell with your business,” said O’Malley. “In my book it’s just trash anyhow, and you’re the dirty bastard what done this thing to poor May. And if I have my way we’ll get it out of you by noon. By the old methods, too. The ones we used on liars.”

  “Don’t you have a partner who can step in for you?” O’Shaughnessy asked. “Or are you too concerned with your profits?”

  Hanly glanced up at the Garda superintendent. “Profit? There’s no way I could keep tabs on anybody else. They’d rob me blind.”

  McGarr said, “But the dance will go on.”

  Hanly hunched his shoulders. “I suppose.”

  O’Shaughnessy said, “Anyhow, you’re agreeing to help the police in our investigation of this murder, aren’t you, Mr. Hanly?”

  “The last time I agreed to that I spent a couple of days in the can and then got arrested on trumped-up charges.”

  “But this time you’re not guilty of anything, or so you’ve said.”

  Hanly said nothing, only allowed himself to be led toward the Rover.

  O’Shaughnessy closed the door.

  McGarr was saying to Ward, “Autopsy, of course. And a thorough job on that car. I want to know if May Quirk was ever in it. Then the area around this field. I want to know where the shell casing is. Also, get a wire out to New York to see what they know or can learn about her there. Tell them about the money and ask if they can find out where she did her banking and if the funds were her own. I don’t have to tell you to leave no avenue open on him.” McGarr meant Hanly. “Call up Bernie and have him personally look up our contacts in town. I want any rumors he can get on Hanly.”

  “You mean you don’t believe him about the money?”

  “Would you get drunk with that much cash on you if it was your own?”

  Ward wrinkled his forehead.

  “And Hanly, despite his plush appearance, is not your average happy-go-lucky bowsey. You can bet he keeps a tight grip on a thrupenny bit. Early poverty like his must have been is memorable.” McGarr himself was speaking from experience.

  Ward, O’Shaughnessy, and O’Malley drove off with Hanly. McGarr’s own private car was parked out by the road, but he decided he’d wait until the Technical Bureau arrived. And, in a vague way, he wanted to keep May Quirk company.

  He started across the pastures toward the cliffs and the ocean beyond. The mist had begun to lift now. A bright red trawler was lurching in the silver sea. There was a vivid band of sunlight just above the horizon where the clouds began, and the breeze off the water carried the steady knock of the vessel’s diesel shoreward. Clumps of witches’-broom with tiny yellow flowers and the purple blossoms of thistle dotted the fields. A solitary and old cow turned her head to McGarr as he hopped over another wall into her pasture. She followed him with her eyes, her jaw swirling on her cud.

  McGarr felt almost giddy as he approached the edge of the cliff. Below he could see heavy ocean rollers rushing shoreward, the water so deep here that none crested before slamming into the basalt cliffs. Each clapped through the backwash of the preceding wave and broke full on the cliffs, giving off a rumble that seemed to quake the ground beneath McGarr’s feet.

  Having heard about slides off the Cliffs of Moher in which cattle and farmers had plunged to their deaths below, McGarr looked in back of him to make sure the technical crew’s van had not yet arrived and then got down on his hands and knees to belly himself up to the edge of the cliffs. He removed his Panama hat and began edging himself forward.

  McGarr was a small man with a thick build and red hair gone bald on top. His features were regular, but his nose was perhaps a trifle overlong. His eyes were gray. He was forty-nine years old and today wore a short-sleeved white shirt, tan slacks, and dark brown brogues.

  Nearly seven hundred feet below him the surf boiled against the black cliff face. Sea gulls whirled at various levels, none having to flap its wings in the blast that pushed up from the sea and over the land. McGarr knew there were caves below there. During the eighteenth century they had been used as keeps for smugglers who in wood and tarred-canvas curraghs braved surf and rock and perhaps an enraged bull seal within the cave to avoid paying the king his tax.

  Off to McGarr’s right was O’Brien’s Folly. It was a granite turret that the foolish Irish M. P. Corny O’Brien had built in 1835 as a teahouse and observatory. If anything, it marred the clear sweep of the cliffs. McGarr could see tourists struggling against the breeze up the pathway toward the edifice. Others were, as he, crawling over a rock escarpment to peer below.

  That was when he saw the small amber-colored cap snagged in the gorse near his face. Using his handkerchief he picked it up, holding as little of its surface as possible. He held it to his nose—rye whiskey, no doubt about it. The proximity of
this object to the cliff face made him wonder if May Quirk’s killer might have chucked the pitchfork off the cliffs. It seemed the handiest place. If so, it might be recovered, and, if recovered, it might reveal important details. But the project of descending from this eminence and then putting divers into the frigid waters was a tall order and a dangerous task. He’d have to word his request tactfully, pointing up the advantages such a massive undertaking might mean for the Technical Bureau.

  He heard a door slam and, looking behind him, saw that the technical crew had arrived. Easing himself away from the cliff, he stood and walked toward them.

  Chief Superintendent Tom McAnulty himself was in charge of this van. “Just keeping myself in touch with my boys,” he told McGarr. McAnulty headed the Technical Bureau (ballistics, photography, fingerprints, and mapping) and was usually lodged behind a desk at Kilmainham in Dublin.

  “But on Sunday?” McGarr asked.

  “Got the wife and kids in the car in Lahinch. We were just on the way to the folks’ place in Kilbaha.”

  “On holidays?”

  “Have been for a week.”

  McGarr could tell from the way his men were glancing at McAnulty that he was the last person they had expected to see. McAnulty was also a short man, but he had a thick shock of black hair and a busy manner. He was known for keeping tabs on the slightest move his men made. They respected him for being a gifted professional, but they grumbled whenever he tried to do their jobs for them.

  McGarr showed him the cap, and McAnulty called a sergeant over to take it away. McGarr then posed the question of a search effort below the Cliffs of Moher.

  “Now that’s a challenge,” said McAnulty.

  His men, who had been listening with half an ear as they went about their duties, swapped glances.

  “Plenty of publicity for the Technical Bureau in it, too, I should think.” McAnulty’s small dark eyes were alight now. He liked the idea. “You know, we’ll get Des Moore from the Sunday Independent. Have his cameraman Hogan get some pics of my men rappeling down the side of the cliff. Lovely stuff that is. You know—dramatic.”

  One of the detectives swore. When McAnulty turned, he pretended he had been clearing his throat. McAnulty knew what was best for the Technical Bureau and himself, even if they didn’t.

  When McGarr climbed into his Mini-Cooper, he called the Lahinch Garda barracks and asked Superintendent O’Malley if he would have his men canvass the area, asking local farmers if they were missing a pitchfork.

  “Half of them haven’t looked for one in years, I trust,” said O’Malley. “Hate the sight of them, they do.” He was in a foul mood still. “Hardly more than a dozen of them farm much more than the dole. They put a few cattle out to God and then pray the postman will bring them social insurance from Dublin and the price of a pint from wherever their kids have fled to abroad.”

  “Have you been to see the Quirks yet?”

  “Just going now.”

  “I’m thinking I should be going with you.”

  “Funny they haven’t called me already to report May missing.”

  McGarr now wondered about that too. “I’ll be along shortly. We can go in my car.”

  TWO

  A Pub Morning in a Market Town

  LAHINCH WAS a bright, crossroads market town that Saturday morning. The streets and sidewalks were thronged with shoppers. Not a door was closed. Some shop owners had carried their wares out into bins on the sidewalks, and street vendors had set up stalls in the square. Rubber boots, summer-weight clothes, a van the back of which was loaded with live chickens were offered, as were pyramids of purple cabbage, tomatoes, blond heads of cauliflower, and the sempiternal potato, the mainstay of the Irish diet. These last were new, with fine pinky skins. McGarr could tell they’d taste sweet with unsalted butter or sour cream. He was getting hungry.

  He found an illegal parking place not far from the square, hesitated to pull down the visor with his Dublin Municipal Police pass on it, and finally, at least ten minutes later, parked the Cooper in a safe, regular spot back the way he had come on the road to the Cliffs of Moher.

  Seeing the yellow-and-green kiosk of a public telephone outside the first pub he came to, McGarr stepped into the bar to get some change. It was so dark in there after the sunlit street that the damp, smoky air felt almost cold on McGarr’s bare arms. The place was packed with men who, in spite of the fine weather, were wearing wool coats over their shirts and even, some of them, vests below. Only one other man in the bar was without a soft cloth cap. McGarr had left his Panama in the car.

  McGarr changed two pounds, ordered a large glass of Canadian Club, and took the glass out to the kiosk. The operator said the lines were jammed and he’d call back. McGarr had the luck of finding an open stool at the end of the bar closest to the street and the kiosk. Another man had meant to have that seat, though, and he said to McGarr, “The drink has no goodness in it today, has it, mister? It’s as weak as sow’s milk. The farmer, sure there’s no contentment for him today. Pleasant weather, wouldn’t you say?”

  McGarr smiled and tilted his head. He took a drink of the Canadian Club. He was trying to keep half an ear to the telephone. He had called his wife, Noreen, since he believed he’d be spending at least several more days out here in Clare and wanted her with him.

  “Well, mister,” the man continued, “g’ luck.” He raised his pint, which was nearly full, and the black, frothy liquid seemed to slip down his throat with nary a swallow. Under his cap the man had the face of a bony steer, all nose and chin. His eyes were brown, soft, and gentle.

  McGarr finished his whiskey and placed the glass on the bar.

  The man said, “I’ve got that,” and laid a fiver on the bar.

  This was, McGarr well knew, extraordinary behavior for a West-country man. Although in recent years Lahinch had become something of a resort town, with a fine golf course and a long, sandy beach, McGarr supposed that the gesture and all the convivial talk he could hear in the tight-packed barroom were remnants of the summer feeling that used to suffuse country society when relatives returned to bring in the hay or cut turf, or fish for lobster and mackerel. Few emigrees returned now, but McGarr knew the bonhomie sometimes surfaced. For a few weeks in the summer the men spoke to strangers like McGarr. They even sang songs, and the very brave might buy a foreign woman a drink and flirt with her a bit.

  “Thank you kindly. You’re a good man. My name is McGarr. Peter McGarr.”

  “Michael Daly is mine.” The man’s hand engulfed McGarr’s. “Stranger here?”

  McGarr nodded and reached into his shirt pocket for his smokes.

  Daly tried to beat him to it, though, and, in pulling his packet of cigarettes from his jacket, opened the top, and they spilled all over McGarr and the wet top of the bar. “Jesus, I’m an oaf,” he said.

  McGarr started picking them out of his lap.

  Daly bent for the others that were on the floor. “Well, have one anyhow.” When he straightened up, he said, “Have two.”

  The bartender was picking the others off the bar. He chucked them into the bin in back and gave Daly a reproving look.

  McGarr said, “I can only smoke one at a time.”

  “Take two,” Daly insisted. “Go ahead.”

  “But I’ve got my own.” McGarr slapped his shirt pocket.

  “No—I insist. Take another.” He pushed his large hand at McGarr. It was bristling with cigarettes.

  McGarr smiled and said, “All right.” He placed the second cigarette behind his ear where the man could see it.

  The man stuffed the other cigarettes in his coat pocket and struggled to pull out a box of matches.

  McGarr already had a match lit.

  As did the bartender, who held the light to the end of McGarr’s cigarette. Again he gave Daly an admonitory glance.

  “Where’s yours?” McGarr asked before he put out his match.

  “Oh—I don’t really smoke myself. I found them in the booth.” H
e jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Last night. Just before closing.” To conceal his embarrassment, he asked, “Are you married?”

  That made McGarr remember he should be listening for the telephone.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of proposing, Michael,” the bartender said, and several of the men close by laughed.

  Daly turned red.

  McGarr smiled and considered Daly closely. Only then did he realize that he and the man were roughly the same age. If anything, Daly was younger, but given his dress and manner he might well have been mistaken for a pensioner. The battered cap, the dark woolen jacket, the vest below, and the wide pants and brogans made him seem like a nineteenth-century man stranded in the twentieth. The society that had sustained the simplicity of good men like the Michael Dalys of the past had now vanished. “Yes, I’m married. And you?”

  Daly shook his head. He was now looking into the foamy head of his pint of porter. “Any nippers?”

  “Not yet. We’ve only been married a few years.”

  “Keep trying,” said Daly. “You’ve got to work at it.”

  The bartender had had enough of him. “And how would you know, Mick? The most you’ve ever seen of a woman was the scabby legs of a tinker wench on a wagon.”

  Again the other men laughed.

  Daly reddened.

  The phone was ringing outside in the kiosk. McGarr said, “That’s the missus now,” and rushed out to answer it.

  “What’s up?” asked Noreen, in a voice so faint and squawky McGarr could barely hear her.

  “You sound like you’re halfway around the world.”

  “What? I didn’t catch that.” The connection was bad at the Dublin end too.

  “Can you come out here?”

  “What?”

  “Can you come out here?” He had to shout.

  “Where are you? What happened?”

  McGarr didn’t want to explain his presence in Lahinch there where half the people on the street might hear. “Lahinch. The weather is beautiful. You can meet me at the usual place.” He meant the Garda barracks.