The Revenge of Liam McGrew: A Dermot Sparhawk Mystery

by Tom MacDonald

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.” Sparhawk extended open hands as a sign of condolence. “You’ve been loyal to Liam your whole life.”

  The two men sat quietly. Tourists checked in, tourists checked out, and the staff hustled to serve them. There were bursts of laughter and hugs of joy and reunions of distant families. Sparhawk and O’Byrne didn’t belong there. They didn’t fit in. O’Byrne clutched Kathleen’s necklace again.

  “Jesus had Judas Iscariot, the colonists had Benedict Arnold, and I have Liam McGrew. I feel the fool for not seeing it sooner.” O’Byrne sniffled. “Before you leave, I’ll be needing a few things from you.”

  “Name it,” Sparhawk said.

  “I’ll be needing the name and address of Mr. H.” O’Byrne cleared his throat. “Can you give me that, Dermot?”

  Sparhawk wrote the information on hotel stationery and handed it to O’Byrne. He asked O’Byrne what else he needed.

  “I’d like the men’s belongings from Tullyverry,” O’Byrne said. “And I’d like to keep Kathleen’s scapulars.”

  Sparhawk pushed the items across the table to O’Byrne.

  O’Byrne said, “Go home to Boston, Dermot. Let me deal with Liam. Everything will go better if you go home. Will you do that for me?”

  Sparhawk hemmed and hawed, as the Americans like to say. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Belfast until he settled the matter with Liam, and he told O’Byrne so. O’Byrne assured Sparhawk that he didn’t have to worry about Liam any longer, and that he was going to take care of everything. He guaranteed it.

  O’Byrne then said, “If you hadn’t noticed, I have a score to settle with Liam myself. He killed my wife. This is my territory, my people. Please go home.”

  “Okay, I’ll go,” said Sparhawk.

  IX.

  I stepped outside the Maryville House after O’Byrne left the lobby and breathed in the misty air. Once my head cleared, I called Cam O’Hanlon, who was staying in the room next to mine. He answered right away. I asked him to meet me in the lobby when he got the chance. Cam told me to turn around, and when I did, I saw him standing ten feet away from me. We went into the lobby and sat in club chairs.

  “I wanted to keep an eye on you and O’Byrne,” he said. “I know you trust him, but you never know. I noticed that he got pretty upset.”

  “He sure did,” I said. “I showed him a necklace that belonged to his murdered wife. The memory of it hit him hard.”

  “What’s the next move?” Cam asked.

  “O’Byrne wants me to go home to Boston,” I said. “He told me that he could handle everything from here on in. He has a plan.”

  Cam and I stopped talking until a couple of tourists walked past us. The woman carried a folded map. The man had a hundred-dollar bill in his hand. Neither of them spoke with a brogue. They stood in front of the hotel, and a taxi pulled over to pick them up. It must be nice to be a tourist in Belfast, and not a hunted man.

  “What about Liam McGrew?” Cam asked. “He still wants to kill you.”

  “O’Byrne’s plan covers Liam,” I said. “He guaranteed my safety.”

  “Are you okay with that?” Cam asked. “You’re placing a lot of faith in a man you barely know.”

  “I know I am,” I said. “But for some reason I trust him.”

  “You’re a good judge of character.” Cam kicked out his legs and slumped in the chair. “You said that O’Byrne wants you to leave Belfast.”

  “He does.” I thought about the conversation with O’Byrne and felt pretty good about it. “For once in my life, I’m going to take someone’s advice. We’re out of here, Cam. I’ll book a flight for tomorrow.”

  “Smart move,” Cam said.

  “I sure hope so.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I.

  O’Byrne drank flat stout from a thick mug inside the Valhalla House, an ancient Belfast taproom located across the street from Slattery’s Pub. He sat on a high stool at a wavy window and watched the afternoon traffic go by. The parade of cars put him in a hypnotic state. A car slowed to a stop in front of Slattery’s, breaking O’Byrne’s trance. Two tweed-capped men got out and glanced up and down the street. One of the men was IRA Army Council member Salty McBrine. With his lips hardly moving, he whispered into the other man’s ear. The man shielded his mouth, pretending to be rubbing his nose, and whispered something back. They went into the pub. O’Byrne left the Valhalla House to join them.

  Once inside Slattery’s, O’Byrne nodded to Salty, who barely nodded back. O’Byrne recognized the other man as Chuck Race, an IRA soldier and fellow inmate at the Maze, a man O’Byrne had bonded with during the hunger strikes and the dirty protests. Chuck’s hair was still mostly blond.

  “He’s out back,” O’Byrne said.

  O’Byrne led Salty and Chuck to the back room. And there in the bleakness sat Liam McGrew. He occupied his customary chair and drank his customary drink, his red blotch looking pale, his oxygen tank churning air. Liam swallowed some Irish whiskey and invited the men to have a seat. He offered them Jameson and they accepted his offer. He poured three generous glassfuls. “No sense skimping,” Liam said to his guests, and he handed one to Salty, one to O’Byrne, and one to Chuck. After a nasty belch, Liam commenced his oration.

  “I thank ye all for joining me on this, shall we say, most inauspicious occasion. I asked you here today to clear the air, to set the record straight on some gross misunderstandings, and I might add, to refute some ugly rumors that are circling my head like ravenous buzzards.”

  “What needs to be refuted?” Salty asked.

  Liam McGrew nodded grimly with the face of a man wrongly accused, a man forced to restore his honor and reputation.

  “First, there is the issue of money,” Liam said. “A whopping opportunity came our way, a chance to reap millions, but I had to be careful. This particular opportunity had to be handled with the utmost delicacy, lest we squander the moment and lose the commission. Discretion! I had to be smart.” Liam upped the tank pressure and gulped his drink. “I was dealing with an important man, a partner from the States who is sympathetic to our cause. Everything had to be hush-hush.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Salty said, now leaning forward.

  Was Salty buying into this heap of shite, O’Byrne wondered.

  “We were hired to pull off a heist,” Liam started. “Thanks to my lifelong comrade, O’Byrne, the heist went without a hiccup, not a hitch to be had. We were paid two million American dollars for services rendered, but alas, I was struck down with illness and hospitalized at Musgrave.” After another swallow he added, “I nearly died, I did. Thus I never paid tribute to the larger cause—the fight for freedom!”

  Salty McBrine looked at Chuck and O’Byrne, and then he turned back to Liam McGrew. “Are you ready to make payment now, Liam?”

  “Aye, indeed I am,” he said. “I am hale and hearty and prepared to pay my allotment. That is one of the reasons I asked for this meeting today, to feather the nest of the Irish cause with an influx of much-needed cash, cash I shall gladly furnish.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” Salty said. He looked around the table to the other men. “Do you have concerns on this matter, Chuckie? How about you, O’Byrne? Any questions for Liam?”

  O’Byrne said, “What about the money from the museum job twenty years ago? What happened to that money? And what happened to the paintings?”

  “Ah, the museum job, what a fine piece of work that was. You were brilliant on that job, O’Byrne, brilliant, I say! Never has a man performed so valiantly.”

  “What happened to the money and the paintings?” O’Byrne persisted.

  “The money and paintings were worth a hefty fortune,” he said. “Obviously, I paid tribute to the council. I gave a portion and a handsome portion it was.”

  “Is that true, Salty?” O
’Byrne asked. “Did Liam pay tribute on the museum job?”

  “Salty wouldn’t know.” Liam interrupted. “Salty wasn’t on the Army Council at that time. I gave the money to McCoy.”

  “McCoy?” O’Byrne said. “McCoy is dead.”

  “Indeed, he is,” Liam said. “I was greatly saddened by McCoy’s passing. His funeral was a dreadful affair. I barely got through the reading the family asked me to do.”

  Salty McBrine drank Jameson. “Any other questions?” He waited. “I find Liam’s explanation on the money matter plausible, well within the realm of reason. After all, he was sick in the hospital. As for the museum matter, McCoy is no longer with us, so I’ll be taking Liam at his word that he made payment. What else is on your plate, Liam?”

  Liam bowed his head like a sinner confessing a wrong.

  “I ordered an execution,” he said, as his shoulders sagged lower.

  “An execution?” Salty growled. “You need permission for an execution. You ignored Army protocol. This is an egregious offense.”

  “If the hit were here in Ireland, I would have asked your permission, Salty. But it wasn’t in Ireland. It was in the States, and there were extenuating circumstances.”

  “What extenuating circumstances?”

  “My grandson was murdered in Boston by a man named Dermot Sparhawk.” Liam answered. “I was enraged by the murder and ordered a hit on Sparhawk. I ordered it because Sparhawk killed my Alroy.”

  “I see.” Salty’s tone softened.

  Liam seized on the shift in Salty’s demeanor and continued. “I acted on emotion when I learned of Alroy’s death. I lost my composure and lashed out on my own, never seeking your permission.”

  “I am sorry to hear about Alroy,” Salty said.

  “I hope you can forgive my recklessness. I have never done anything like this before, acting without Army approval.”

  Salty paused for another swig of whiskey and placed the glass on the table.

  “I understand your wanting revenge, but why didn’t you come to us?”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight, Salty.” Liam spoke sheepishly, playing the mourning grandfather. “I jumped the gun.”

  “We have serious problems with splinter groups killing people in our name,” Salty said, but not with much force. “You know of the problems we’ve had.”

  “Aye, I do indeed, but nobody in Boston knows that Alroy was with us. No one there knows he was in the IRA,” Liam said.

  “Is that true, O’Byrne?” asked Salty.

  “No one in Boston knows Alroy’s identity, let alone his link to the IRA.”

  Liam grabbed the momentum.

  “Oh, this Sparhawk fellow is a sneaky cad, a twister of facts, a charlatan of the first order.” Liam shook his head and snorted. “He filled O’Byrne’s head with lies about me, but I don’t blame O’Byrne for believing him, for Sparhawk is a master of deception. His parlor tricks would fool the devil himself.”

  “Do you know this man Sparhawk?” Salty asked O’Byrne.

  “Aye, I know him.”

  Salty said, “Go on, Liam.”

  “After Sparhawk hunted down and murdered my Alroy, I ordered William McAfee to kill him.” Liam wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeves. “And then Sparhawk went and killed McAfee, too, shot him to death in a filthy car lot in Boston.”

  “Mac is dead?” Salty said. “Why didn’t you tell me this? McAfee is my wife’s cousin’s son. He’s family. Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you, Salty.” Liam sniffled. “On top of that, I felt it was my fault. If only I had planned better. If only Sparhawk hadn’t proved to be such a formidable foe. It was my fault, all of it.”

  “Easy now, Liam, you lost your grandson.”

  “What about Phillip Webb?” O’Byrne interjected. “Tell us about him.”

  “Who is Phillip Webb?” Salty asked.

  “Thank you for bringing him up, O’Byrne.” Liam adjusted the tube and inhaled air. “I would now like to address the matter of Phillip Webb if I may.”

  “I’m listening,” Salty said.

  “Phillip Webb is a British Army Intelligence officer, a man I’ve been cultivating for many years. He provided crucial intelligence that saved Irish lives.” Liam paused. “Of course, handling a man like Webb is a ticklish undertaking, but I always kept a step ahead of him, for he is a crafty sort. You’d expect that from a Brit.”

  O’Byrne said, “You mean he was a crafty sort. Phillip Webb is dead. Sparhawk killed him in Boston.”

  “Three men dead in Boston?” Salty put his drink to the side. “You hired a Brit to do our bidding?”

  “He was on our side.” Liam filled his glass and drank. “Espionage is a cunning game, as you well know. I played Webb, played him like a Donegal fiddle, and then I used him to get information to advance the cause.”

  “Like Tullyverry?” O’Byrne said.

  “What about Tullyverry?” asked Salty, who turned to face O’Byrne. “What the feck are you talking about?”

  “Liam set us up at Tullyverry,” O’Byrne said. “He told Phillip Webb about the gun shipments. He told Webb the time and place.”

  “I saved lives at Tullyverry!” Liam reached for a stick that was no longer there. “I alerted you, O’Byrne. You’d be dead if not for me.”

  “You wanted me alive so I could keep robbing for you,” O’Byrne said. “It had nothing to do with the cause.”

  “Falsehoods!” Liam heaved for oxygen. “Canards!”

  Salty said, “The Brits killed my brother at Tullyverry.”

  “And many more would have died if I hadn’t intervened.” Liam shook his fist. “O’Byrne is lying. Sparhawk corrupted him.”

  Salty said, “I’ve never known O’Byrne to lie about Army matters.”

  “Don’t you see what’s happening?” Liam implored. “It’s Sparhawk.”

  Salty asked O’Byrne, “Can you prove that Liam betrayed us at Tullyverry?”

  “I talked to our friend in Boston, the man in the armaments business,” O’Byrne said. “I asked him about Tullyverry. I asked him if the British navy chased after him at Tullyverry. The Brits captured two ships that night.”

  “And sank another, and gunned down our soldiers on the coast, including my brother,” Salty said. “What did our friend say?”

  “He said that Liam had warned him about Tullyverry a week in advance,” O’Byrne said. “An entire feckin’ week before the raid. Our friend never bothered to load his ship he got such early warning. Call him. He’ll tell you himself.”

  Salty said to Chuck, “You know our friend in Boston. Check it out.”

  Chuck left the room.

  O’Byrne kept it going. “Liam had to throw Webb a bone, something important that Webb could give to his commanders. Liam gave him Tullyverry.”

  “You bounder!” Liam gasped.

  “Tullyverry was Webb’s greatest triumph,” O’Byrne said. “The Queen honored him with a medal. He became a national hero, albeit under the radar.”

  “Smears, treacheries!” Liam groaned. “Don’t believe him.”

  Chuck returned. “Our friend in Boston corroborated O’Byrne’s story. He had a week’s notice on Tullyverry, and he got the notice from Liam McGrew.”

  O’Byrne said, “Phillip Webb collected souvenirs from the people he killed.”

  “What?” Salty exclaimed.

  “Webb had souvenirs from Tullyverry.” O’Byrne laid what was left of the identification cards on the round table. “I just got my hands on these death pelts. They were in Phillip Webb’s flat in Mayfair.”

  “What are they?” Salty picked one up. “Wait a goddamn minute. This is my brother’s ID. And identifications from the other casualties at Tullyverry.” Salty stood up and cracked Liam in the face with a backhander, knocking off
the oxygen tube. “You murdered my brother! You feckin’ traitor!”

  “He also murdered my wife.” O’Byrne dangled the bloody scapulars in the air. “Webb’s souvenir from Kathleen’s murder.”

  Liam scrambled for the tube and put it back in his nose. “No, no.” Blood dripped from his mouth. Fighting for air, he said, “It’s not true.”

  Chuck Race held a gun to Liam’s head and took Liam’s weapon away from him and put it in his pocket.

  Salty said, “Tell me the rest of it, O’Byrne.”

  “Liam and Webb were partners in crime. Why would a decorated British Army officer fly to Boston to kill Dermot Sparhawk? To avenge the death of Alroy McGrew? Nay! Webb wouldn’t give a damn about Alroy. To advance the Irish fight for freedom in the North? Not a chance. Webb went to Boston because Liam bribed him to go to Boston. He promised Webb a share of the $100,000 bills.”

  “What $100,000 bills?” Salty asked.

  Liam twisted the knob and sucked air but couldn’t speak.

  Salty said, “Go on, O’Byrne.”

  O’Byrne told him about the World’s Fair of Money, and Mr. H, and the killings of Alroy, Mac, and Webb.

  Salty said, “It seems that Sparhawk took care of Webb for us, so I won’t be needing to concern myself with that situation. What about the man who hired Liam in the first place, the American? This Mr. H.”

  “You’d be talking about Halloran,” O’Byrne said. “He lives outside of Boston.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  O’Byrne gave Salty the address.

  “Liam the traitor,” Salty said, as Liam sat gagging for air. “A feckin’ tout.”

  O’Byrne said, “’Tis better to have fifty enemies outside the house than one within.”

  Salty’s pupils dilated, growing as big and as black as eight balls. He pulled out a Luger and shot Liam in the head. He fired a second round into his heart, not that it was still pumping. The gunshots were lovely and loud, gunshots of revenge.