The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  In the tiny toilet under the stairs fifteen minutes later McGarr stared at himself appraisingly in the long mirror on the back of the door. He did not like what he saw: a stocky, bald, middle-aged man with a long face, morning-murky gray eyes, and an aquiline nose that had been knocked off-center more than once and now looked a bit flattened. The want of a shave made his shadowed chins look doubled or trebled, and the sorriest truth was that his formerly well-muscled body was running to fat. He looked…beaten wasn’t quite the term, but battered sprang immediately to mind. His throat would be the death of him yet, so it would.

  Or could it be mainly his posture, he hoped. Throwing back his shoulders, he snapped up his muscles into a strong-man pose. With his body tensed like that, he looked not half-bad, and he wondered if somehow he could initiate a course of bodybuilding—weights, Nautiluses, tensioners, and the like—someplace out-of-the-way where nobody at Dublin Castle, where he worked, would know. A bit of a tan would also help to convey a younger image. Perhaps with sunlamps and ointments and so forth he could coax some color into his pale flesh and give out the story it was from gardening.

  But cautiously, gradually, discreetly over time, for McGarr was nothing if not a private man, and it would not do to have anybody in the Garda Siochana thinking he was worried about his age or fitness. McGarr was two posts from commissioner—a political appointment that before Madeleine’s birth he had decided he did not want—but that he could now see himself “retiring” from to some consultancy or private security firm with the enhancement of a commissioner’s pension. One could serve the public only so long without becoming jaded, which he sometimes suspected was the cause of his long periods of silence. Plainly he had seen too much.

  It also occurred to him that he could cut back on what—or at least how much—he ate, drank, and smoked, but at that moment he heard the kettle piping, and he wondered if hunger alone could have prompted this dire assessment of himself. He had worked late the night before and not had his tea, and from the light aroma that still lingered in the kitchen he could tell Noreen had baked scones last evening for the morning’s breakfast.

  He would look into a regimen of moderate exercise, he decided. Some fine Saturday morning when he was out with Madeleine, he would wheel her down to the public library on Rathmines Road and investigate what they had in the way of fitness books, you know: presses, sit-ups, exercises that could be practiced over the winter in the privacy of one’s cellar. He might even buy himself a set of weights to throw around down there. Noreen herself had a video that she played through the telly to help her tone up after the delivery.

  In the meantime—he opened the oven—there were the scones, which would toast up nicely under the gas ring while he fetched butter from the press and the jar of gooseberry preserves an uncle had sent from the hills of Monaghan. He would sit himself down at the kitchen table and rouse his sorry heap of past-prime flesh with a caffeine-rich pot of dark-roast coffee and look out at his back garden, which was his hobby. Now, in early October, the raised beds were fuzzed with the new green of winter “wheat.” All else in the way of work had been retired until early spring.

  McGarr had always enjoyed the crisp days of fall, especially when they were bright, like now, and the weather was holding. He had burned anthracite in the Aga for three nights running, and its pleasant, quiet heat pervaded the kitchen. With cup in hand while waiting for the scones, he glanced over the eaves of his neighbor’s house at the dawning sky.

  Lit by a pale sun, it was an oval of old blue porcelain that was greening at the edges and chipped here and there with hyphens of coded cloud. He had opened the window a bit, and his nose now caught a slight sour stench from the canals, the rivers, and Dublin Bay, which were purging in the cool autumn air. Tomorrow it would storm without fail; winter was a day away.

  The phone rang, startling him, and he rushed to pick it up, lest the sound wake the baby.

  “Up early, McGarr?” It was Fergus Farrell, the commissioner of the Garda Siochana.

  “I am that, given my present…er, predicament.”

  “That’s right. How is Madeleine?”

  Hearing some movement in the hall behind him, McGarr turned to find Noreen holding the still-sleepy child, who raised her arm to him in praetorian salute. “Just fine, presently. Quiet and, I should imagine, hungry.” He pointed to the scones and mouthed “hot” to Noreen.

  Passing him, she muttered, “Predicament, eh? It better be good.” She meant the reason for such an early morning phone call.

  But it wasn’t in any way. “I hate to disturb you at such an early hour, Peter, but we’ve had some bad news. Paddy B. “Buck” Power has died.”

  McGarr’s head went back. Paddy Power was an important person in Irish public life whose career had been followed closely by the Irish press. Power had advised successive Irish governments on finance, founded his own commercial bank, which prospered, and then moved on to New York, where he seemed to profit from every vicissitude in world markets. But mostly Paddy was a philanthropist.

  Monthly, it seemed, Power’s odd face, beaming an impish, off-center smile, had appeared in Irish publications, photographed with bigwigs at some prestigious event. To McGarr’s way of thinking, he was one of the handful of Irish emigrés who, having achieved celebrity status in world circles, had become necessary bragging points for a country that, because of her checkered history and present sorry state of affairs, wished at least to be loved.

  Two, maybe three, years ago, McGarr now remembered, Power had returned to Ireland, and through his Paddy Power Fund had engaged in a broad range of philanthropic activities. Rumor had it that Power was about to enter the political arena and had even been mentioned as a candidate for president, which under the Irish Constitution was a largely ceremonial but high-visibility post.

  “And now you’re calling me?” McGarr asked.

  There was a pause before Farrell said, “Well—I’m not certain I should. It appears to have been a natural death, some sort of heart seizure. But another man is crying foul, and we wouldn’t want anybody to think we’re not on the job.”

  We, McGarr thought. As far as he was concerned, Farrell was never on the job. He was a political animal (as was now said), who spent most of his time nosing about with politicians and party hacks. And how was it that a claim of wrongful death had been phoned to him and not to the Murder Squad? According to procedure, McGarr’s staff should have been called first, and he would have known of it immediately.

  “Dr. Maurice J. Gladden.”

  “Mossie Gladden?” McGarr asked. “The politician?”

  Out in the kitchen Noreen straightened up from the range and turned to him. Although a backbencher for his entire career in the Dail, Gladden had been a character and was well known to most Irish voters.

  “Former politician, I seem to remember. He was Paddy’s doctor and, you know, friend.” Farrell paused, as though dwelling on the last word. “It was common knowledge Paddy had a heart condition, which Gladden himself had treated him for. But now he’s claiming it was murder, and working himself up into a…state.”

  Common knowledge to whom? McGarr wondered. Certainly not to him, and he had followed “Buck” Power’s brilliant career with no little interest.

  “Paddy and Mossie grew up together there in Kerry. As luck would have it, Mossie answered the emergency call. Now he’s ranting and raving, threatening to go to the press if the murderer is not apprehended immediately.”

  McGarr waited. They had come to the important part—what Farrell thought he could ask of him.

  “I want you to go down there, Peter, and find out what you can. If Paddy was murdered, as Gladden claims. I want you to do your duty as you have lo these many years. If he wasn’t, all the better. But, Peter”—again McGarr listened to the buzz of the phone line, while Farrell chose his words—“I’ve phoned you this morning because over the years you’ve exercised rare discretion in situations that might have become inflated.

  “I d
on’t know what your politics are, nor do I care. But given all the problems the country has now—the debt, unemployment, emigration, the lot—we don’t need any more bad news. If an investigation is warranted, so be it, but I want you to proceed, at least for the moment, on the assumption that he died by the natural cause of heart failure.”

  McGarr looked away, his eyes suddenly wary. Farrell might be commissioner, but he was not a pathologist, who was the only expert qualified to determine the cause of Paddy Power’s death. Finally there was the rhetorical we again, which McGarr liked least of all.

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Parknasilla.”

  “The hotel?”

  “In Sneem in Kerry.”

  “Wasn’t that where Power lived?”

  “Well—born and raised. Since his divorce I don’t think he maintained a house there. Or anywhere else that I know of.”

  McGarr blinked. He had read that Power preferred hotel living, but it was rather late in the season for Parknasilla, which was a resort that Noreen’s parents frequented. McGarr could remember them saying that it closed at the end of September.

  “Family was grown and gone. And you know Paddy—”

  McGarr wished he had.

  “Billionaire monk,” Farrell concluded sourly.

  He meant that Power had lived simply, preferring to devote his time and money to the less fortunate. AIDS and drug-addicted babies, the homeless, alcoholics, the crippled and blind, had benefited from Power’s largess, as had hospitals, libraries, schools, colleges, and universities. Quite a part from his prestige at being a self-made man, Power had enjoyed enormous moral authority, which in Ireland could easily have turned into political clout.

  “The man to see down there is Shane Frost. He was Paddy’s partner in Eire Bank, and they go way back. Both were born there in Sneem and came to Dublin together. You know, years ago.”

  Along with Mossie Gladden, McGarr thought. Three men from one village who had gone on to become national and—in Power’s case—international figures.

  “Be sure to look him up first thing.”

  If he saw him, McGarr thought. If not, all the better. He did not need instruction from a banker on how to conduct the investigation of a death. “What was Power doing at Parknasilla at this time of year?”

  “Some sort of conference, I believe.”

  “About what?”

  “No idea.”

  “Who are the other guests?”

  “Nor that either.”

  Too fast. Farrell knew, but he wasn’t telling. Why?

  “What about the”—McGarr rejected the word “crime”—“scene? Has it been…?”

  “I understand he’s just as he was found. The Guards there are waiting for you. Nobody has left the hotel. Nobody else knows.”

  “And the press?” It would be the biggest story of the year, especially if Power had been murdered.

  “None yet. The officer in command, one—”

  McGarr heard a paper rattle.

  “—Superintendent Butler of the Kenmare Barracks has secured the area and cut off communications with the outside. The point is to minimize all the…speculation before it can get out of hand, which is why I’m calling.”

  And now for the question: “Why you and not my office?”

  “McGarr,” Farrell said in a tone of petulant exasperation. “Let’s just say a ‘source,’ and leave it at that. I’m just trying to prepare you for what might possibly be a major investigation. As far as we’re concerned, this conversation never took place. Your office is probably trying to get on to you as we speak.

  “Be sure to check in with me the moment you get there. I want to be kept informed, hour by hour if necessary.”

  Then why not take over the investigation yourself, McGarr was about to suggest when Farrell hung up. McGarr had no sooner placed the receiver in its yoke than the phone began ringing again. It was his office with nothing new to add.

  Noreen came next.

  “Ah, no—not Paddy Power?” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. She sat at the kitchen table, Madeleine in her lap. After a while she went on, “He was so special. He radiated so much…hope, which, Lord knows, we need now.”

  McGarr supposed she meant the continuing economic slump. With unemployment over 20 percent, young people—especially graduates from Ireland’s several, fine universities—had to emigrate to find work. Over thirty thousand had left in the last year.

  “But murdered?”

  McGarr told her what Farrell had said, then went upstairs to dress. When he got back down to the door, she was in the sitting room with both a radio and the television on. “Nothing yet.”

  At least that was something.

  She shook her head. “You know, Paddy Power was a crony of my father’s.”

  McGarr stopped in the process of patting his pockets, making sure he had everything necessary for a day or two. He had also packed a small bag.

  “They met years ago, way back when Paddy was in government, before Eire Bank and New York and all his success. But they kept in touch. I can remember later, when I was in university, Paddy spending a Christmas with us, and he was so alive and irrepressible and brilliant. He had”—she thought for a moment—“wit without malice, obviously a keen intelligence, and he loved the small, fine details that make life interesting. You know, the sort of person you could point to with pride and say, Now he’s Irish.”

  McGarr leaned against the jamb. He had no idea that her parents had been close to Power, but then, with a large town house in Fitzwilliam Square and a horse farm in the country, her parents as much as inhabited another world—one of money, privilege, and leisure.

  “There was some talk of Paddy having problems with his marriage, and, of course, he had no place to stay in Dublin but some hotel. So out of the blue he just rang Daddy up, and there he was—one of the world’s richest and most successful men—with us for Christmas. And with no limousine or servants or profusion of gifts. Just Paddy stepping out of a cab with a single bag and the rumpled suit he had flown in with. It was the first time I heard that odd definition of a snob”—she turned to McGarr, and he saw that her face was streaming with tears—“you know, a person who is at home everywhere, but has no home of his own.

  “One night when we had some people in, he regaled us with one delightful story after another about New York and London. He was able to appropriate dialects flawlessly, and he included all the quirks and curiosities of the Americans and Brits, whom my parents’ circle of friends look down upon as only partially civilized yahoos on the one hand and”—she hunched her shoulders—“uncivilizable, inhuman elitists on the other.

  “It’s jealousy, I know—” Noreen paused to blow her nose.

  That those two peoples, whose shortcomings were reported daily in the Irish press, perpetually seemed to enjoy a disproportionate share of the world’s goods and resources, McGarr concluded.

  “But what good is it being Irish, if you can’t make fun of the little you allow yourself to know of the rest of the world.”

  McGarr almost smiled; it had been his thought exactly. Noreen and he were like two halves of the same brain.

  “When somebody asked Paddy where he planned to live when he ‘grew up,’ he said Ireland, of course—‘Who else would have me?’ He also said that he planned to go into ‘public service,’ were his words. And now this…before he even got going.” Again she stanched her tears. “I wonder, is it the sort of thing a country ever gets over?”

  The death of a potential leader? McGarr didn’t know if the question was rhetorical or if he should try to frame an answer. Instead he glanced at his watch.

  “I’m thinking of Larkin and Collins here, or King and the Kennedys in America.”

  It was his turn to hunch his shoulders. Hadn’t America survived its assassinations? And who was saying Power’s death was that, though it was what some people would think.

  “Peter”—she waited until his eyes met hers—“one wa
y or the other, there’ll be a hell of a stink when this gets out. Just watch yourself, please. Farrell, O’Duffy, and that crowd are a slippery lot, and will sacrifice anybody who gets in their way.”

  “Speaking of money—do you have any? After the weekend, I’m out.”

  “Try my purse, but I think you’ll have to stop at the bank. I spent my readies on the pram.”

  The Irish were among the most heavily taxed people in the world, and with their combined income currently taxed at 70 percent, the McGarrs were always short of cash. He found two crumpled punt notes and a handful of change, which made seven-odd quid for the pocket of a senior civil servant. Not much in case of an emergency. But at least down in Parknasilla he’d be on the government’s tab and would get back some pittance of the enormity that was relieved form his pay packet every month.

  There was no time for a kiss. “Toodle-oo,” he said.

  “Toodle-ah.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Noreen reach down and draw Maddie to her, saying, “Darlin’ girl, I love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you.”

  Nor did McGarr. To either or both of them.

  CHAPTER 2

  On Casting a Cold Eye

  SMALL, WIDE, AND quick, like himself, McGarr’s private car was a forest-green Mini-Cooper. Now nearly thirty years old, it was a much-pampered antique that clung tenaciously to any surface but was at its best dodging through Dublin traffic and on the narrow back roads of Ireland. On straightaways, like the N-7 down which McGarr now plunged on a southwest slant to Kerry, it also cruised handily, if not comfortably; and except while jinking through major Midlands cities like Naas, Portlaoighise, Nenagh, and Limerick, McGarr kept the needle above 100 mph.

  Three-and-a-half hours later, he arrived at Parknasilla, which means “Field of Willows” in Irish and enjoys the distinction of being one of the few houses in Ireland to appear on maps. McGarr had never seen the resort and was surprised when an avenue of trees, leading from stone gates to the hotel, parted suddenly and presented a dramatic view of the Kenmare River, a long, deep marine bay dotted here and there with small, uninhabited islands. Caught in shafts of brilliant afternoon sunlight, they looked wind-racked and besieged in a brimming turquoise sea. Farther still lay the dark, perilous Atlantic, brooding after some ocean storm.