The Death of an Irish Sinner Page 2

  “Suddenly she makes a brilliant marriage to the aged Karl Hopf, a wealthy landowner and devout Catholic, who felicitously dies within the year. Apoplexy, the death certificate says, leaving Beatrice Stanton-Hopf his entire estate. You can call that providence, but it was not divinely inspired providence. It was Opus Dei taking care of business.

  “And no fool Beatrice.” Foley gestured with his right hand, in order to get it closer to the desk and lamp. It was the only object close by and heavy enough to do the work.

  “In 1939, just as the war was beginning and the German economy was booming, Beatrice sold out her Leipzig holdings for a premium and came back here to Ireland, where for a song she snapped up what amounted to the western flank of the Wicklow Mountains.

  “How did she know to do that?” Foley asked. “Instinct? Or was it that all along Beatrice and Mary-Jo have had a series of excellent advisers, interested parties who have steered them to one good thing after another. The same advisers who have made Opus Dei by far the richest order in the Catholic world. Why, you even bailed out the Vatican in the 1970s, when the Church was awash in debt. Now you’re the Vatican’s banker.”

  “That’s balderdash! Mary-Jo is a self-made woman. Her books have sold millions. Why, the film rights alone—”

  “Are peanuts,” Foley cut her off, the right hand up again, “compared to what is known about her wealth. But the question is—the question that compelled me to investigate her past, since you asked—is why were she and her mother afforded such advice and protection.”

  A cast had fallen over the woman’s light blue eyes, the very same pall that Foley had observed earlier. “You tell me, but I warn you—make it the truth.”

  “I utter nothing but,” Foley demurred, both hands up now. “It’s because Opus Dei is conflicted.”

  He watched her blink, which he saw as a sign of agreement.

  “On the one hand, you could never let it be said that your founder—that most pious man, to whom God, he’s told us, has spoken, could ever have had knowledge of the flesh.

  “But on the other hand,” Foley also raised his own left hand higher, “if he did, perhaps Opus Dei should continue to protect the flesh of his loins, as he had himself throughout his lifetime.

  “The reason? Because Opus Dei considers itself not merely an institution of the Church but the Ideal Church for the new millennium. The Better Church, if you will. Therefore, he who founded the Better Church—José Maria Escrivá—must have been, like Jesus Christ himself, an incarnation of God here on earth.”

  “That’s cock!” she protested.

  “You said it, not I.”

  “All cock! Which we categorically deny. José Maria Escrivá was just a man, a very good man who devoted his life to God.”

  “Then why did you pay to keep me quiet all these years, and what are you doing here?”

  “Protecting—since you brought up the word—the good name of Mary-Jo Stanton, José Maria Escrivá, and Opus Dei from a scandalmonger, known blackmailer, and probable murderer, like you.”

  Foley’s laugh was hollow, but he had succeeded in disturbing her. Color had risen to her cheeks, and she now lowered the computer to the desk.

  “Don’t give me that,” he continued. “Look who’s lying now? You paid me and you searched me out here for two reasons. One”—with arms still raised, Foley peeled off a finger—“everything I said is true. Two—and this is the delicious irony—nobody in your ruthless sect, which has propounded the deaths of so many innocent others, has got the guts to snuff her and end the problem that she represents.

  “Why? Because if José Maria Escrivá is another and more modern Jesus Christ because he sinned, then the flesh of his loins is holy too. Pity Mary-Jo and Fred, for all their hanky-panky, didn’t toss up a brat or two to carry the wholly unholy dynasty into the new millennium.”

  Just as the woman barked “Enough!” Foley lunged across the desk, one hand grabbing a corner for leverage and the other seizing the neck of the lamp, which he swiped across the side of her face.

  “But I’ve got the guts!” he roared, cocking back the lamp and whipping it down at her head.

  Instead it struck the computer.

  Again and again Foley flailed at her, moving around the desk as she retreated.

  Until he raised himself up on his toes to maximize his leverage, and she buried her foot deep in his groin. As he crumpled up, she slammed the heavy machine down on his head.

  Foley fell to his knees.

  She struck him again.

  Foley toppled over on the carpet.

  Holding the CPU over her head, she whipped her body and crashed the tower into his face, before turning to the mirror behind the desk.

  The sharp bottom of the lamp had gouged her cheek, which was now bleeding profusely. She’d have a long scar if she didn’t get it stitched soon.

  But there was much work still to do, both here and at Foley’s home on Killiney Bay, as well as in the mistress’s flat in Dun Laoghaire. No trace of Mary-Jo could be allowed to remain.

  Now that he was dead and would be missed, the files here in the office would have to be removed quickly and destroyed. But safely, in a manner that would leave no trace.

  It now occurred to her where—a building on the quays that was owned by a friend who, in fact, might find some of the information in the files useful. She would enlist his aid.

  But she fervently hoped Foley hadn’t told either his young wife or his stylish mistress about Mary-Jo. It would be a pity if there were any evidence that he had.

  PART II

  MORTIFYING THE FLESH

  CHAPTER 2

  Dublin, Spring 2000

  LITTLE COULD CHIEF Superintendent Peter McGarr have known that the investigation into the unsolved murder of Francis Xavier Foley—solicitor and blackmailer—would resume over a decade later with another killing on the evening of the first fine day in spring.

  Winter had been desperate altogether, with torrential, wind-blown rains and coastal flooding in many parts of the country. Early spring proved little better.

  Then, one Friday night in the middle of April, the winds ceased with an abruptness that was startling. Stepping out of the headquarters of the Serious Crimes Unit in Dublin, McGarr noticed a change in the air that had to do more with texture than temperature.

  A gentle yet steady breeze was blowing in from the southwest, and now and again through thinning clouds he could see stars overhead. The climate had finally relented, and the morrow would be fair.

  Pouring himself a drink in the pantry of his house in Rathmines, McGarr took a sip and glanced up at his reflection in the glass cabinets that ringed the small room.

  In his mid-fifties now, McGarr had a long face, clear gray eyes, and an aquiline nose that had been broken more than a few times and now angled slightly off to one side.

  He was balding, but the hair that remained was curly and a rich red color that had only begun to gray at the tips. But it was the contrast between his still-vibrant hair and the pallor of his skin that disturbed McGarr. He looked pasty, winter-worn, and gray.

  Although an avid fisherman and gardener, he asked himself when he had last spent a full day out of doors. Sure, there was the weather to blame, and the caseload of the “Murder Squad”—as the press had dubbed his agency—had never been more onerous.

  But how many more truly active springs did he have? In the last few years McGarr had found himself going to funeral after funeral, with not all of the deceased older than he.

  Topping up his drink, he called out to his wife, Noreen, saying that it was time to take their annual spring pilgrimage to her parents’ country house in Dunlavin.

  “You mean it’s that day again?” she said from the Aga, where she had been readying dinner—a piquant osso bucco, McGarr could tell from the aroma. While they had been at work, it had bubbled in the least-hot oven of the ornate stove that dominated one wall of their kitchen.

  “I’ve already spoken to Bernie about
the truck,” McGarr continued, carrying his drink out into the kitchen.

  “You two can take the car.”

  Turning from the cutting board where she was slicing greens, Noreen pointed her chef’s knife at him. “This year, I want you to remember—none of that stuff comes into this house in any way, shape, or form, no matter the excuse.

  “Everything from your boots to that coverall thing you wear—hat, gloves, the works—gets left in the shed at the end of the garden. I won’t have Maddie and me sneezing for months because of your…preoccupation.” She turned back to the cutting board.

  A trim woman nearly twenty years younger than McGarr, Noreen had removed her skirt—so as not to spot it while cooking, he assumed—and had donned a bib apron over her slip. From the back, like this, the angular flow of her body with her good shoulders and legs but narrow waist appealed to McGarr in a way that was beyond words. Her stockings were turquoise in color, her hair a tangle of copper-colored curls.

  “You don’t seem to mind what my preoccupation yields,” he complained.

  “That’s different. I love the vegetables. But can you tell me one other gardener in the entire city who has to resort to such a vile substance to make his garden grow? Dermot across the square seems to do just fine with whatever he can find at the garden shop.”

  Ach, Dermot D’Arcy’s vegetables couldn’t hold a candle to the plump juicy tomatoes or big glossy eggplants that McGarr grew yearly in a climate that was usually inhospitable to such species, he thought, taking a sip of malt. All the aptly named D’Arse-y could raise were spring lettuce, radishes, and ground vegetables. Turnips were his specialty, and in a sunny year he might come up with the odd zucchini courgettes.

  Yet McGarr held his tongue, knowing that it was wiser to engage his young wife in debate only after she had eaten.

  Also, she had a point about the “vile substance” that would be the object of McGarr’s quest on the morrow—rare, aged chicken manure mined from a former commercial poultry farm that Noreen’s father had purchased and appended to his country estate.

  Having deteriorated to a near powder, the chicken droppings were so ammoniacal that McGarr was forced to wear a breathing mask when shoveling it out of the former chicken coops. Even so, the very odor of the stuff stung his eyes and burned his lungs.

  But there was a payoff to his madness. Combined in the proportion one part manure to two parts of composted earth, the stuff was magic—the very secret to his garden—and proved such a fillip to growth that his garden flourished like none other in the neighborhood. Or perhaps even the city.

  As for gardening itself, McGarr had dismissed all the standard explanations for digging in the earth, from reestablishing touch with his ecology to taking a direct part in the cycle of birth, growth, harvest, and rebirth. McGarr believed—and he would insist, if asked—that he gardened for simple pleasure.

  Everything, from tomorrow’s yearly trip down to Kildare for the magic chicken droppings to enjoying the snappy crunch of fresh vegetables and herbs in all seasons regaled him in a way that was beyond words.

  He did it because he did it, he once told Noreen, for whom all urges required some explanation, and he couldn’t think of anything else that would provide him with such pleasure. There was no other word for it.

  “I think I’ll go look at the plants,” he said, moving toward the door to the cellar.

  “Can I come too?” asked Maddie, who had heard his voice and now joined them.

  “Of course. Let’s see if the chervil has sprouted.”

  “Don’t get distracted now. Your tea will be ready in a jiff,” Noreen said, reaching for a pot on the speed rack above the cutting board in a way that spread the apron and firmed her lower back.

  Mindful of urges and distractions, McGarr opened the door and allowed Maddie to precede him.

  Down below in the darkness they could see the purple glow of the growing lights. “Wait.” He put a hand on Maddie’s shoulder, stopping her. “Smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “Just breathe in.”

  “Right—and what?”

  “Can’t you smell it? The oxygen? Plants take in carbon dioxide and give off—”

  “I know, I know—don’t you think we study that at school?” Now a confident eleven and a miniature version of her mother, she switched on the lights and tripped down the stairs. “The only thing I can smell is that stuff in your glass. How can you?”

  McGarr glanced down at the brimming glass of malt and wondered the same.

  But not why.

  CHAPTER 3

  SO, IT CAME TO PASS that spring arrived with the dawn of the next day in the form of a high sky and a hot sun.

  Instead of taking the quick route along the dual carriageway southeast to Naas and then on to Dunlavin, the McGarr caravan of a battered old pickup and Noreen’s Rover sedan journeyed due south, climbing to the tops of the treeless Wicklow Mountains, “Where we’ll gain perspective on spring,” McGarr enthused.

  The air was so clear and the sun so bright that they caught glimpses of the dark blue and spangled waters of the Irish Sea in one direction and the rocky crags of Mullaghcleevaun in the other.

  Even the usually bleak mountain moorlands were changing the dun colors of winter for the new green of spring, seemingly right before their eyes. McGarr opened the pitted window of the old pickup, the better to see, and was rewarded with the call of a cuckoo overhead and the sight of a pair of red grouse pecking at the edges of a mountain bog.

  Drifting slowly down out of the mountains, they could see Dunlavin in the valley below them—a neat village at the junction of several country roads where the Wicklow hill country meets the rich limestone plain of Kildare. Unlike the treeless mountain barren, the land was rich here, and tall oaks and beeches—their boughs fringed with the chartreuse of new leaves—girded the hamlet.

  As did a number of tall walls, built as make-work projects during the Famine. Some ran for miles on both sides of narrow country roads, ringing estates that were once the country manses of Dublin’s Anglo-Irish elite. In most cases the holdings had passed on to those who could afford not only the purchase price but also the yearly expense of maintaining the walls, the acres, the stables and other outbuildings, and finally, the large main house. Some of those dwellings were truly stately, others merely substantial.

  Noreen’s parents’ place—Ilnacullin, or “Island of the Holly”—mediated between the two conditions. No mansion, it was instead a large Georgian country house of three stories with a graceful facade that featured rounded corners and tall, arched windows. A complex of other structures, also constructed of white limestone, flanked one end of the house, and a wide patio leading down a hill into a formal garden complemented the other side. The brook with its island of holly lay in the distance.

  Fitzhugh Frenche—Noreen’s father—had made his fortune, it was said, mainly by being a clever man who had well-placed friends. He was also pleasant company, a good listener, wise when it came to advice, and utterly discreet. In some Irish circles, a timely tip over brandy and cigars was the currency of friendship.

  A man well into his seventies, with an imposing paunch and rosy complexion, Fitz—as he was known to his many friends—accompanied McGarr to the former chicken farm mainly to get out of the house, McGarr judged. His father-in-law was at that stage in life where—after having given up his Dublin presence—he now missed the hurly-burly of daily life in town.

  McGarr had noticed the same…itchiness, as he thought of it, in some colleagues who had said they couldn’t wait to retire, only to show up in the dayroom every now and again, “Just to say hello.” Or at crime scenes. Or they’d ring up McGarr with a tip or an invitation to lunch, where any scrap of gossip or inside information was coveted like a prize.

  Packing a pipe, Fitz looked on as McGarr shoveled the precious powdered droppings out of the dilapidated chicken coop into a wheelbarrow and then to the back of the truck. “Janie—whatever are y’doing thi
s for, carting it up to Dublin when there’s perfectly good ground for a garden right here in Dunlavin? And plenty of it.” Whenever the older man spoke privately with McGarr, he lapsed into the Dublin argot that was common to them both.

  “How would I tend such a garden down here, and when?” McGarr asked, without stopping his work.

  “Well—that’s another matter altogether,” his father-in-law huffed. “Nuala and me won’t live forever, and the house is getting too big for us. Why don’t the three of yiz move down here, where you belong, and leave the city to all them mots and bowsies from who knows where. You have enough of that in your work as it is.”

  During a recent visit to McGarr’s house in Rathmines, Fitz had been shocked by how many of McGarr’s neighbors were nonwhite—mainly students at Dublin’s several universities. But others were political refugees or people with skills and talents needed by the new high-tech economy.

  “Sure, it’s no place to bring up a child,” the old man went on, lighting the pipe.”

  On the contrary, McGarr had thought, Dublin was undoubtedly the place to bring up a child, since diversity would continue to mark the country and the rest of the world if free trade and the electronic revolution continued.

  McGarr had only to think of the stultifying provinciality of his own upbringing in an overwhelmingly Catholic and working-class part of the city. There, Protestants had been looked upon with fear and scorn, like aliens from some unknowable and inconsiderable universe.

  But McGarr said nothing, understanding it was pointless to debate the man, given his age and the fact that Fitz had been a child during the most insular decades of the country’s history.

  “You know—this place will be yours soon.”

  “No, it won’t. Not soon and not mine. Noreen and Maddie’s perhaps. I have me own digs up in Rathmines.” McGarr closed the tailgate of the truck and began securing a tarp over his pungent cargo.