St Ernan's Blues: An Inspector Starrett Mystery

by Paul Charles

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Starrett was back in the arms of his adopted family, the Keanes, just in time for Sunday lunch.

  Maggie Keane had also invited Starrett’s parents, Nuala Gibson, and Francis Casey. She made Starrett promise before he left her house (it was always referred to as her house) that very morning, no matter how he was getting on with his interview, he would take a break at lunchtime to return home for a family lunch. Starrett was unconditionally happy to commit to this lunch and was totally prepared to take a break from interviewing Bishop Freeman if he needed to. Luckily the interview had reached its natural (successful to a degree, for Starrett) conclusion just after 12:30. And with Gibson at the controls, the detective even had time to stop off at Whoriskey’s to buy a couple of newspapers and a bunch of flowers for Maggie (she just loved her flowers) and could still be wiping his feet on Maggie’s backdoor mat (literally) just before her clock rang out its one and only daylight chime.

  The lunch was a great success and Starrett even managed to restrain Gibson, Casey, and himself from discussing gardaí business. The only exception being that when Francis Casey arrived, Starrett lavished praise on him for his research into the bishop’s methods for grooming his fodder. It was his research and the information he’d uncovered, Starrett admitted, that had been the catalyst for bringing the bishop to justice. The fact that the bishop hadn’t murdered Father Matthew or, more exactly, where he’d been when the young priest was murdered, was ultimately what would lead to his downfall.

  Was Starrett disappointed that Bishop Freeman wasn’t the murderer? Not in the slightest. Would he have liked to have returned to Tower House to get stuck back into the case? Certainly not. He knew his team had been working flat out since Wednesday, on top of which they’d all been subjected to all the travelling to and from Donegal Town. So, a break would benefit everyone, including himself, and they’d all be back (relatively) fresh on the Monday morning, raring to go. The break would also afford him some quality time with Maggie, Katie, and Moya, and he’d be able to fit in a bit of his favourite leisure time activity of walking on the beach at Rathmullan. However, he reminded himself that he was talking about Donegal, where people made plans and God laughed at them so much, the resultant tears took the form of torrential rain.

  The plan itself was a solid one in principle but then it turned out that Katie had decided she had to go visit her friends in Letterkenny. She was now of an age where hanging out with her select group of friends was much more appealing than quality family time. But she wasn’t yet of an age where she could drive, so her mum would have to deliver her up to Letterkenny and collect her later. Maggie Keane didn’t consider such trips a chore, for she much preferred to be the one in charge of her daughter’s safety while on the roads. Too many times she’d visibly shuddered when the news of yet another car – over-packed with teenagers of Katie’s age, with one older (and sometimes barely old enough) driver fresh from passing their driving test, at the wheel –involved in a horrific and fatal crash. Those worries were years (but in reality, maybe even only several months) away.

  Moya was also disappointed that she had to go to Letterkenny, as Starrett had planned to visit the Major at the same time, and no matter how much Moya protested it, Maggie didn’t want her in the house by herself. The trade-off was Maggie’s promise that they’d go see a movie in Letterkenny while Katie hung out with her friends, and Katie better – ‘No excuses acceptable!’ – be ready to return to Ramelton with her sister and her mother after the movies. Moya scooted off to find out what was on, and the times.

  Moya teased Starrett about him still using ‘bejeepers’ in so many of his sentences. He seriously thought he’d cut down on it but then she patiently explained to him that he wasn’t even aware of just how much he was using the word.

  In a harmless duel over the dinner table, Starrett teased Moya about getting some shopping for him while she was up in Letterkenny.

  ‘What do you need then?’

  ‘Am, let’s see now,’ he started, ‘how many bananas are there in a bunch of grapes?’

  Maggie rolled her eyes but looked on proudly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Moya replied, totally bewildered.

  ‘Well, then you’d be a fine one to send to the green-grocers, wouldn’t you?’ Starrett said and they both fell into a fit of laughing, Moya so much so that tears started to roll down her face.

  ‘I don’t know which of youse is the silliest,’ Maggie began, reluctantly drawn into the laugher, ‘you for thinking it’s funny, or our Moya for encouraging you!’

  Perhaps Maggie thought he was indulging her daughter but the reality was that Starrett loved the chance to jest as much as Moya. Although, perhaps what she really loved was the fact these jokes were delivered by an adult, and a forty-plus-year-old gardaí inspector at that.

  Starrett bid them goodbye late that afternoon and the house which had been buzzing seconds before was silent in their wake. About thirty minutes later he headed down to the Major’s.

  Just as he was crossing Ray Bridge the rain stopped, the clouds lifted, the sun came out, and so Starrett drove straight past the gate to the Major’s house and on into Rathmullan.

  A few minutes later he was off on a brisk walk along the beach.

  Every time he took to Rathmullan beach he resolved to do so every remaining day of his life. He only lived seven miles away, the views were stunning, in a life-affirming way, the beach was never what you could really call crowded and frequently he was the only soul on the beach, it was free and it was the second most enjoyable thing he did in his life.

  But for some reason or other, things never really worked out that way and there’d always be an excuse to keep him away from the beach; he’d get distracted by work, there’d always be tomorrow to have a walk on the beach. When you’re in the thick of life, he thought, you never really ever accept that tomorrow just might not come. Starrett also reckoned that even as you grow older and you have to accept that your days are numbered, yes, even then you still believed you had the right to a tomorrow. Time passes so quickly, it really does, he thought to himself. Sure, it was a cliché, but clichés only become clichés because they are true, maybe even painfully true.

  He strolled along as the sun was starting to say goodbye for the day, its rays breaking on the fast moving clouds and creating the magnificent beams of light known as God’s torch. It was getting cooler and he realised that it had been over a month since he’d last been on the beach. How quickly that month had flown by.

  He thought of the Major and figured that no matter how quickly the last month had passed for Starrett, it would pale in comparison to the Major’s last month, possibly the last month of his life. Starrett did a complete U-turn on the beach, quickened his pace and headed straight back to the car park at the start of the pier where he’d parked just minutes before.

  * * *

  The Major was indeed in great spirits and, as Maggie Keane had suggested the previous evening, he’d looked and acted like he might be enjoying a remission. He was extremely pleased to see Starrett. He was indeed up and out of bed, but he was wrapped up snugly in his dressing gown and several other throws and blankets. Even though night had fallen outside, he was still sitting out in the conservatory, looking out at the darkness. It seemed to Starrett as if the Major could see beyond the Donegal blackness and the old soldier was studying another version of the views Starrett had just been enjoying down on the beach. It was as though he had X-ray eyes and could see the lapping water, the rich patchwork quilt of autumnal fields, the mighty mountains and the even mightier heavens above. Maybe he was recalling it all from memory.

  He had a chair beside his own, ready and waiting for Starrett.

  As they drank their tea, the Major’s generously laced with poteen, Starrett filled him in on the recent developments of his case. He then told him the story of his own previous run-in with Bishop Cormac Freeman.

  ‘You know, Starrett,’ the Major said, when the dete
ctive had concluded his story, ‘we all have to realise that in this world some people are just downright bad! We have to accept this fact and learn to work with it.’

  ‘But where do people find the right to not only do these things, then think they can get away with it?’

  ‘I remember when I was very young,’ the Major began. ‘My father was also in the army and I remember I asked him why the First World War had started and he studied me as if to consider how much he should tell me. And do you know what he told me?’

  Starrett shook his head to show that he didn’t.

  ‘He said that two strangers met on a pathway, and there wasn't room for both of them to pass on this path at the same time and neither of them would step back and let the other pass, so they physically fought for the right of way.’

  Starrett nodded.

  ‘And that was as simple or as complicated a start to the Great War as I ever heard. One man, feeling he had a God-given right over another. And that is where badness comes from — one man believing he is better than his fellow man.’

  The Major took another sip of his poteen-flavoured tea.

  ‘And that’s where we come in, Starrett. People have to be held to account for their actions. Yes, of course, the people who feel they are better than their neighbours are always someone’s father, someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s wife. Sadly, all these people become secondary casualties. But the criminals clearly weren’t too worried about those relationships when they were committing their crimes or, as of late, when they were caught raiding the country’s larder and banks. This man, Freeman – is he the reason you’ve lost your faith in God?’

  ‘God? Bejeepers, now there’s a big concept,’ Starrett mused, not entirely comfortable with the direction of the conversation but at the same time happy to avoid the subject of the Major’s health and its consequences. ‘If such a concept really existed, then surely there would be no need whatsoever for the likes of Freeman because all our lives would be better if we all lived in harmony with the world and man - and womankind - rather than in constant conflict with it?’

  ‘Too simplistic a concept for mankind.’

  Starrett accepted, of course, that his was a very simplistic view, but, nonetheless, he believed it a valid one.

  ‘The main problem I have with Freeman’s type is the fact that they bring out only the worst in their fellow men,’ Starrett added. ‘They make their fellow men, to a certain degree, want and need vengeance, if only to redress the balance of the badness they have created.’

  ‘Because bad men have the power to make good men bad?’ the Major mused.

  ‘Perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, that’s a very simplistic view,’ the Major repeated, ‘but valid, nonetheless, due the purity of its genesis.’

  Starrett hoped that was that subject parked; he never felt any use came from these types of thoughts.

  ‘Sometimes I used to think that we, as in the gardaí, we were chipping away at Mount Errigal with a toothpick,’ the Major said, offering Starrett a new topic, perhaps realising that the detective wasn’t entirely comfortable with the first. ‘Yes, while at the mountain-face we felt we were doing something, but when we stepped back and looked at the big picture we realised, on consideration, our work was useless.’

  Starrett went to protest.

  ‘But then,’ the Major grandstanded, ‘when you’re in the family homes of those wronged and you look into their eyes and you see the hope therein, the desperate hope of what they need you to do for them, if only to validate the importance of the lives of their recently departed loved ones, that’s when you realise just how important our work is, how important your work is.’

  Starrett tutted his agreement.

  ‘Starrett, I wanted to talk to you about this. You know when I’m gone things will change.’

  ‘Yep,’ the detective agreed because he was long since resigned to this fact.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘You know, Major, I think I just might retire. I’ve got Maggie and the kids now and’

  ‘Balderdash,’ the Major wheezed, ‘absolute balderdash. Do you really think a woman such as Maggie Keane is going to stand to have you under her feet all day long?’

  ‘It won’t be like that, I’ve lots of things I can do when I retire.’

  ‘Retirement,’ the Major grunted, ‘aye, that was what I thought might be on your mind. Can I just tell you that the biggest misapprehension of mankind is that when we retire our days will be longer. WRONG! Oh so wrong. If anything, they go quicker. The biggest secret in life is that retirement is not all we were promised. Believe you me, Starrett, and I’ve witnessed this around all my cronies, the retirement years are not the Golden Years.’

  ‘Major,’ Starrett started off slowly, ‘are you scared?’

  He really hadn’t wanted to ask the question but he felt this might be something the Major wanted to discuss. It might have been the reason the Major had sent the message via Maggie that he needed to talk to Starrett. What with all of the Major’s old cronies having passed away, he wouldn’t have anyone he could discuss this with.

  Without looking at the detective, the Major put his hand across to grab Starrett’s hand.

  Starrett thought that might just be the sum total of their shared moment, so he squeezed the Major’s frail hand back.

  ‘In our younger years, we will fear a new ailment or illness when we suffer from it for the first time. But that fear only lasts until we master the art of surviving it,’ the Major said, still staring ahead of him out of his cosy conservatory window into the blackness. ‘The next time that same illness comes along, experience tells us that we’re going to be okay. We know we’re going to beat it. Experience convinces us that it’s not going to kill us, because we are now fully equipped to deal with it.’

  The Major clearly wasn’t finished so Starrett continued to yield the floor to his superior.

  ‘You start to worry,’ the Major eventually offered, ‘only when the death, which was always the enemy of your youth, gradually becomes your friend.’

  ‘Are you prepared, Major?’ Starrett whispered, because he really wanted to know, he really needed to know.

  ‘Starrett,’ Major Newton Cunningham said, pausing to look around at the detective as if to see if he was ready for the answer, ‘we spend our lives trying to learn the rules of life. And then don’t we only go and discover that there really are no rules to life and we start to realise that when you think you have it sussed, that’s really when you’re proving you haven’t.’

  Starrett felt disappointed. It wasn’t that he’d been expecting the Major to reveal the secrets of alchemy or how to get a number one album, but finding out you think you’ve got it sussed only to realise that you haven’t; surely that’s nothing more than small cheese.

  But then the Major smacked Starrett straight between the eyes with, ‘We’ve got to get a hook on the end and realise that it’s not a relief, it’s not for the better – it’s not even for the worse – it’s not part of the journey, it’s not us passing over to something greater.’

  Again the Major looked at Starrett and studied him for a few seconds.

  ‘But you’ve never believed in more anyway have you, Starrett?’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing, Major. Years ago, when I found myself thinking a lot more on this subject and I started to consider the concept of Heaven, you know, the place where we all get to go, but only if we’re good?’

  ‘I’ve heard of such a place.’

  ‘Well, when I was young and my grandmother died I asked my mum if I’d meet up with my grandmother someday in Heaven. And like all good mothers she replied, "Of course you will." Then my friends would say that they were also going to meet not only their grandparents but, bejeepers, if they didn’t think they were also going to meet up with some of their dead pets up there, as well. Then I started to think of all the people and pets who had once walked this Earth since the beginning of time. I started to realise
that this place called Heaven was going to be so fecking crowded it was going to look more like my personal definition of Hell.’

  ‘Aye, Starrett, the priesthood’s loss was most definitely An Garda Síochána’s gain,’ the Major said, looking anything but depressed. ‘We don’t pass to the other side. Even if we should find the secret of how to pass over to the other side, there is nothing there. It’s the end of the journey. It’s not just the end of the journey, mind you, it’s just the end and you know what, Starrett? I take a lot more comfort from accepting that than I do from thinking about this place called Heaven.’

  ‘Then why are we here, Major?’ Starrett asked, in clear frustration.

  ‘Only to ensure, for our children’s sake, that we leave the world in a better state than we found it.’

  ‘That’s really all there is?’

  ‘Bejeepers, Starrett,’ the Major offered, with a smile so large it nearly drained all his reserves, ‘that’s the sum total of what our duty is. But never think of it as only “all”, it’s not an insignificant task Starrett. That’s why I need you to promise me you’ll continue our work.’

  ‘Chipping away at Mount Errigal with our toothpick?’

  ‘Aye Starrett, that’s all I need you to do.’

  ‘I’ve one question before I commit,’ Starrett said, while of course realising that it didn’t matter what the Major said or did. Once he was gone, the bureaucrats would make all the changes they'd been trying to enforce the Major into for the last seven years.

  ‘And your question?’ the Major wheezed as he studied his protégé hopefully.

  ‘Can you tell me, will we have a wooden toothpick or one of your fancy silver ones?’

  The Major just chuckled and dozed off again.

  They sat in that conservatory, talking on into the night, between the Major’s cat-naps, until the Major needed his morphine and physical assistance to get back to his bedroom.’

  When Starrett and Annette Cunningham had helped the old warrior back to his bed and she’d administered his medication, it wasn’t long before he fell into a troubled asleep. As he stood at the back of the bedroom and watched his superior, his breathing laboured – laboured in that it appeared to rattle his cranium – Starrett wondered why the Major had to come through the wars, mainly his 1950s tour of duty with The Royal Ulster Rifles in Cyprus, with all his valour and medals, only to be caught in the cross-hairs of the sniper known as the Big C. Although still alive, his body was totally destroyed and the havoc created and the damage done was way, way beyond what the old enemy had ever attempted to do, even at its very worst.