The Death of an Irish Lass Page 23
“Look—here’s what we’ll do: protection for your wife and kids. By that I mean we’ll move them, someplace out here where your wife’s mother is from. A new identity. A house.” McGarr glanced over at Farrell.
He tilted his head, but then nodded.
“Aw, Peter—” Dineen began to say.
“Wait—hear me out. And a job for you.”
Farrell reached over and touched McGarr’s sleeve.
But McGarr continued, “We’ve been thinking of expanding our surveillance of the Provos and other I.R.A. activity. We’ll consider this your first assignment.” That much was true. Farrell and McGarr had gotten the minister of justice to agree to the proposal already. “Now that’s a necessity. Who better to head that team but you, who know about them personally.” McGarr turned to Farrell, who liked the idea only somewhat better.
Farrell said, “We’d have to get that through the minister himself.”
“What rank and pay?” said Dineen. He added, “I’m only saying that for my kids.”
McGarr turned to Farrell, who stood and said, “Let me call the minister. If I can clear the idea with him, then we can talk terms.” He left the room.
Dineen thanked McGarr. “I was worried about what I’d do. Who the hell would think of hiring a one-eyed bandido with special disqualifications in this country, I was asking myself.”
“Only the Garda Soichana,” said McGarr. “What about Fleming?”
“A true believer. He was the one—”
McGarr knew what he was going to say. “Who killed May Quirk, who tried to kill us. What’s he like as a tactician? What can we expect from him at the horse show?”
“Anything. He’s unpredictable. And he’s managed to put together a large band of followers. They’re like he is—total commitment. He’s got a kind of zealot’s charisma. He’s bright, and he’s got money.”
“O’Connor’s?”
“Not just his. Fleming’s got other money. Funny money.”
“From a foreign government?” No wonder they hadn’t hesitated to blow up the packet of money McGarr had delivered to Dineen at the Salthill dance hall.
“I don’t want to be hard about this, Peter. But let’s see what your boss has to say. I’d prefer to have him legitimize my blabbing.”
Twenty minutes later Farrell returned and said he had a carte blanche to quash whatever Fleming had in mind for the horse show and to put him behind bars.
Dineen was given a superintendent’s pay with a written guarantee of a five-year tenure that was renewable. The three men talked until dawn. Then an angry doctor ejected the two policemen. Dineen’s eye was infected and he needed rest.
For the first time in his career, McGarr had taken copious notes.
FIFTEEN
The Bastards What Done It
THE BRAZEN HEAD was Dublin’s oldest public house. To get to the bar, one had to walk through the cobblestone courtyard of the inn. The ceiling was low and a tall man had to stoop.
Out of the corner of his eye McGarr was watching for that. He was seated at a table with his head turned from the door. He was wearing a soft hat with a wide brim.
Fergus Farrell was standing at the end of the bar. There he had a Walther PPK concealed under a newspaper.
Bernie McKeon was seated on a stool on the low dais playing a fiddle with other amateur musicians, who had been recruited from the Garda Soichana as well.
Hughie Ward, dressed in a porter-stained frock, was pulling pints behind the bar.
Out in the courtyard, Harry Greaves was slouched into the corner of a wall. He looked like he was sleeping it off.
Paul Sinclair and Liam O’Shaughnessy were sitting in the back of a van parked outside. It also contained a one-way window, a radio, and three uniformed Gardai.
A similar van stood in the alley behind the Brazen Head.
O’Connor was the first to arrive. He came down the staircase from the guest accommodations upstairs.
McGarr turned his head away from him.
Hughie Ward bent as though to arrange the rows of bottles under the bar.
O’Connor took a seat in the far corner of the room. He kept his back to the wall.
Five minutes later Fleming appeared in the doorway. He looked around.
Ward pulled two pints of black and frothy Guinness for him and cashed a twenty-dollar American travelers check.
Fleming spoke with a Midwestern American twang when talking to him. The bar was too dark for O’Connor to recognize Ward from the distance.
Fleming carried the drinks to a table and sat.
A half hour later, when their pints had dwindled and they obviously had begun to feel comfortable in the room, Ward placed two more pints on the table.
Fleming looked up, surprised. “We didn’t order these.”
“From the gentleman sitting near the door.” Ward withdrew from the table but did not go back to the bar.
O’Connor and Fleming looked around the room. All the other guests had left.
McGarr turned and faced the two young men from Clare. He had May Quirk’s Mauser in his right hand.
The music stopped.
Farrell and Ward had their weapons drawn as well.
McGarr gestured with the gun and O’Connor and Fleming stood with their hands raised. O’Connor’s head was touching the ceiling.
McGarr flicked the barrel of the gun again and they turned and faced the wall. McGarr stood and approached them. “I’d call it a strange setting for two revolutionaries in search of a new social order. But I suppose even Lenin quaffed the odd pint. He was a killer too, but I wonder if he ever stooped to murdering a childhood friend or a lover.”
O’Connor rested his forehead against the wall.
Fleming began to turn his head to McGarr.
“Keep your sly, foul eyes on the wall, Doctor.” McGarr removed a Baretta special from Fleming’s jacket, a large Colt pistol from under O’Connor’s sweater. “I know two pensioners on the Kishanny road who wouldn’t shed a tear if I were to plug two bastards like you.”
A day later the queen arrived. Her daughter and son-in-law performed creditably, but Harvey Smith won the puissance.
About the Author
BARTHOLOMEW GILL was the author of sixteen Peter McGarr mysteries, among them Death in Dublin, The Death of an Irish Sinner, and The Death of an Irish Lover. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Mr. Gill wrote as Mark McGarrity for the Newark Star-Ledger. He passed away in the summer of 2002.
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Resounding praise for
BARTHOLOMEW GILL’s award-winning
PETER McGARR mysteries
“McGarr is as complex and engaging a character as you can hope to meet in contemporary crime fiction…and Gill is a marvelous tour guide.”
Denver Post
“[A] splendid series…Gill shapes wonderful sentences and zestfully evokes the scenery and the spirit of his former homeland. He is also an imaginative portrayer of character.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The beauty of Bartholomew Gill’s Irish police procedurals has as much to do with their internal complexity as with their surface charms and graces.”
New York Times Book Review
“Gill’s descriptive powers paint a vibrant landscape peopled by well-drawn characters…From cover to cover author Bartholomew Gill packs a plot with punch and poignancy.”
Boston Herald
“Gill’s books are both earthy and elegant. The cadence of Dublin life sings in [his] pages, and the wit is ready and true.”
Chicago Sun-Times
Also by Bartholomew Gill
DEATH IN DUBLIN
THE DEATH OF AN IRISH SINNER
THE DEATH OF AN IRISH LOVER
THE DEATH OF AN IRISH TINKER
THE DEATH OF AN IRISH SEA WOLF
THE DEATH OF AN ARDENT BIBLIOPHILE
DEATH ON A COLD, WILD RIVER
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THE DEATH OF LOVE
THE DEATH OF A JOYCE SCHOLAR
MCGARR AND THE LEGACY OF A WOMAN SCORNED
MCGARR AND THE METHOD OF DESCARTES
MCGARR AND THE P.M. BELGRAVE SQUARE
MCGARR AND THE DUBLIN HORSE SHOW
(to be published as The Death of an Irish Tradition)
MCGARR AND THE SIENESE CONSPIRACY
(recently republished as The Death of an Irish Consul)
MCGARR AND THE POLITICIAN’S WIFE
(recently republished as The Death of an Irish Politician)
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE DEATH OF AN IRISH LASS. Copyright © 1978 by Mark McGarrity. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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