To be fair, Bresnahan did think about Hughie Ward, her…paramour who was lodged with other resident Parknasilla personnel in a drafty old house behind the hotel. But fleetingly, it must be admitted. She told herself that Ward, who was a physical-fitness fanatic, did not much care for bars, and it took even her whole minutes to “tune in” her ear, as it were, to the local dialect. And there had been a time when she had spoken as “pure Sneem” as they.
Which thought made her not a little wistful, as the Merc powered up the drive, giving off a muffled growl—like some large, angry cat—every time she so much as brushed a toe against its hair-trigger pedal. The car was so quiet she scarcely heard the whoosh of a government limousine, passing in the other direction.
Had she lost something essential in leaving Sneem? And gained only the superficial?
If so—she decided, examining her face in the brilliant display of the lighted vanity mirror on the flip side of the Merc’s visor—it was a stunning superficiality, the full effect of which she would wield with authority for whatever little it was worth.
Like a long-exiled and returning queen, she swung her tangerine legs out of the car and strode toward the pub that she had not set foot in for three years nearly to the day. A day incidentally that she had struggled unsuccessfully to forget.
Tonight would help.
CHAPTER 11
Rot Beneath Heather
STEPPING AWAY FROM the Parknasilla main entrance where he had been standing, McGarr walked toward the dark limo with blackened one-way windows and government plates. He had been waiting now for over an hour, ever since he got the phone call from Commissioner Farrell. “You’re to be at the door. I’ll be by to pick you up directly.”
“Mossie Gladden give you that?” Farrell now asked, when McGarr finally lowered himself into the spacious backseat and the door was closed. Farrell meant the bandages on McGarr’s left hand and the others that could just be seen on his neck above the collar of a turtleneck sweater.
McGarr said nothing. He had spent most of the early evening in the surgery of a Kenmare doctor, getting the wounds cleaned, stitched, and bandaged, and he was trying to forget the…misadventure if he could.
“You should press charges.” And relieve Taosieach O’Duffy of the prospect of Gladden’s press conference on the bridge in Sneem tomorrow, he meant.
“So that Gladden can hold court from a jail cell?” McGarr replied. “How would that look?” For your government, he did not think he had to add.
Farrell blinked. Obviously he had not thought of the possibility. McGarr regarded the man’s liverish complexion and watery eyes, which, framed by tortoiseshell glasses, made him appear puffed up and owlish. His cheeks were full, his forehead wide, his mouth small and pursed. He was wearing a pink blazer over a plum-colored sports shirt and looked as though he had just stepped off a beach.
There was a gold bracelet on one wrist that was balanced by a sizable ruby in a ring on the other hand. The car was Farrell’s own, driver and all, and went with the town house in Dublin and breeding farm in Kildare. McGarr nearly smiled to think that in a time of economic crisis and gross public debt, Farrell had the charity to serve government sometimes at his own personal expense. But then the government—its leaders, policies, and opportunities from which he might profit—had always been an interest of the man. Farrell might be stupid, but he was not dumb.
“Aren’t you interested in where we’re going?”
McGarr returned his gaze to the dark window. He already knew. They were following the river toward Kenmare. The sky was clear, and a waxing moon, three days from full, was stippling the car with achromatic semaphore, whenever they passed under trees. Somewhere out beyond the estuary that looked placid and eternal, like a soft green dreamscape in the moonlight, Taosieach Sean Dermot O’Duffy was waiting to hear the details of what McGarr had learned so far. He had a house in West Cork, McGarr seemed to remember, and otherwise Farrell would have asked for an update.
“Will you be having something?” Farrell opened the front of a small bar.
McGarr ignored the offer. He chose with whom he drank.
The house was unpretentious, a stage set where Sean Dermot O’Duffy was often seen by television audiences as living like one of them. A rambling bungalow, it was distinguished from neighboring structures only by the security squad at the gate, the electronics antennae on the roof, and the half-dozen costly cars in the drive.
Stepping out into a cold wind that was gusting from the west, McGarr again glanced up at the moon. It was crystalline in a limpid, starry sky. He would see it again at better times, he decided, but never more clearly, which he hoped was a sign.
A different kind of light greeted them when the door opened. It was warm, yellow, smoky, flatteringly dim, and laden with smells of costly foods, liquors, wines, and cigars. Dinner had evidently just finished; McGarr could hear sounds of water running, plates clacking, and women chattering away gaily from the kitchen at the back of the house. Another voice came to him from behind the sitting-room door. It was low, confidential, and sounded nearly like prayer.
Without knocking, Farrell opened the door, and McGarr stepped into a low, narrow, but long room, at the farther end of which three men were gathered in an inglenook. The younger two were sitting on one bench, Sean Dermot O’Duffy was alone on the other. Like the lumpy cracked eye of a Cyclops, a mound of peat was glowing in the hearth.
O’Duffy raised a hand in greeting to McGarr, but he continued his remarks to Harney and Quinn, his ministers for Justice and Finance respectively. O’Duffy was a pale, bald man with freckled skin and a soft, musical voice that revealed his beginnings here in the hills of West Cork. It was said he had never once been seen to lose his temper, which in Ireland was something of a wonder, and he had negotiated the treacherous fens of the Irish political scene with a buoyancy that had left his opponents in a kind of awe. He had been taosieach on and off for over two decades, and when times were tough, as they were now, his leadership was called for.
Having finished what he had been saying, O’Duffy now turned to McGarr and Farrell. Bloodshot hazel eyes that were pouched in deep folds regarded them, each in his turn. With a raked forehead and a bluff nose, his head had the shape of a medieval battle helmet. Tabs of shiny flesh—under the eyes, along the line of the jaw—glinted like sheered armor plate. There was even a dent along the temple where O’Duffy had been injured at one time or another. He looked ancient and scarred.
“How are you this evening, Peter?”
McGarr nodded a greeting. Ireland was a small country, and he had met O’Duffy on several occasions, mainly social.
“And the wife—”
“Noreen,” McGarr supplied.
“Fitzhugh and Nuala’s daughter.” O’Duffy often saw the Frenches, who were prominent in social and cultural circles.
Again McGarr nodded.
“That’s grand. I assume you know Des Harney and Pat Quinn—” O’Duffy motioned to the other men, who rose slightly, offering their hands.
“Sit you down here now and tell us what you’ve been up to today.” O’Duffy patted the cushioned inglenook bench beside him. “Drink?”
McGarr shook his head; none of the other men had glasses. O’Duffy was smoking a pipe, Quinn a cigar, and Harney—the youngest of the three—had folded his hands across his sweatered chest and was regarding McGarr with pointed interest.
McGarr sat and reached for a cigarette.
“So you’re not mistaken,” O’Duffy began, “let me say that all here are deeply saddened by Paddy’s death. He was unique, a kind of unlikely human being that the world could use more of. He was also my friend with whom I shared what I think of as my ‘Young Turk’ years, and he will be held forever dear in memory.
“On another level and for your ears alone—if Paddy had to die, he could not have picked a better time. For us and for the country, but I believe Shane Frost has already expressed that thought to your subordinate. The handsome young woman.
”
“Detective Inspector Bresnahan,” McGarr supplied.
O’Duffy nodded. “Young Hughie Ward the pugilist’s friend.”
It was indeed a small country, McGarr thought while lighting the cigarette; Ward and Bresnahan had been discreet nearly to a fault, but here their liaison was known to the taosieach.
“Now, then—you’ve had a chance to look things over there at Parknasilla. I understand the postmortem has been completed, and that you’ve even had to grapple with the avatar of all that’s rural and righteous, the fearless Mossie.” O’Duffy flicked a finger at McGarr’s bandaged hand. “What say you—was it murder, as Mossie claims? Or did Paddy die through some misadventure with his medicines? Or—even better for Paddy’s family—did he just die?”
McGarr drew on his cigarette. He would not lie, but he wondered how much of the truth he could tell O’Duffy and still remain in charge of the investigation, which he thought of now as essential. He never wanted it said that he had succumbed to political pressure and covered up Paddy Power’s murder. At the same time he wished to finish out his career as a policeman in the Guards, preferably in his present post as chief superintendent of the Serious Crimes Unit, which was the official title of the Murder Squad. He had a young daughter to raise and a family to feed. He also enjoyed the prominence of his position and the respect in which he was held in police circles and by the country as a whole.
Exhaling the smoke, he decided to take it slow and discover what O’Duffy already knew, which might easily be more than he. After all, the man had an entire government at his service, to say nothing of sycophants like Shane Frost and Commissioner Farrell.
“Unfortunately it’s like Dr. Gladden wrote the script in every particular from the physical evidence, through the…situation in which we found Mr. Power’s corpse, to the postmortem report.” McGarr glanced up and noted the disappointment on the faces of the four other men.
“More troubling still,” he went on, “is the fact that Mr. Power’s note cards that he had assembled over the years to write a memoir are missing. They were contained in a large notecase. The clasp was broken, and all cards but those that he had recently written and were evidently on his person at the time of death are gone.
“It could be that the theft was incidental to Mr. Power’s death, but it wasn’t noticed until then, and Dr. Gladden is claiming—and will elaborate in his press conference tomorrow—that the cards are part of the reason that Mr. Power was,” McGarr drew in a breath, “assassinated.”
Several heads went back, but O’Duffy only smiled slightly. “And the other part of his reasoning?”
“That there was need to remove Power from the political scene and to co-opt and control his plan for restructuring the national debt.”
“My need?”
McGarr nodded.
“And my agent of necessity?”
McGarr hunched his shoulders. “Other than Dr. Gladden himself, the only other two people who had access to Mr. Power’s medicine cabinet and who knew enough about his heart condition and his medications to accomplish the deed were Shane Frost and Gretta Osbourne. His ex-wife, Nell Power, did visit Mr. Power’s room sometime that day. She might have had the opportunity to change his medications, but she would have had to have been present at the cocktail reception that Mr. Power threw for the arriving conferees on Sunday afternoon to remove the evidence and replace the proper bottle. If Dr. Gladden’s scenario is accurate.”
O’Duffy shook his head. “Is the man entirely right? I always knew Mossie was a bit cracked, but with this he’s gone round the bend together.”
McGarr pointedly looked down at his bandaged hand. “It would appear so.”
“But your opinion, Peter. It’s that which I called you down here tonight to learn. You’re our expert. I’m interested in what you think.”
As from the cracked red pile of burning peat in the hearth, McGarr could now feel the eyes of the other men upon him, and he imagined that the continuance of his career in public service hinged upon his response.
“If it was murder, then it was a rare and cunning act devised to look like a death by the misadventure of Mr. Power’s having mistaken his medications. But in my experience murderers always try too hard—to provide themselves with alibis, to cover their tracks, to inculpate others.”
“Here with the note cards,” said O’Duffy.
Having come to the most perilous aspect of his report, McGarr nodded. If he admitted he had the note cards, O’Duffy might demand that they be turned in to Farrell before he had a chance to read them. If he did not admit to having them and Nell Power had already told O’Duffy about the photocopies, he might be accused of deceit. McGarr was betting, however, that Nell Power, who had complained of Power’s poor opinion of her and their marriage, only wished to forget them.
“If the note cards hadn’t been stolen,” McGarr went on, “I might suspicion murder, but I wouldn’t have enough cause to pursue it. The door to the suite was locked, all the proper pills, tablets, and ampules were either in their proper bottles or had been at the time Mr. Power was stricken. The digitalis that killed him was taken orally and therefore self-administered. But until we discover who stole the note cards and why, I’m afraid we can’t dismiss Dr. Gladden’s charge out of hand without risking—”
“The further charge of a cover-up,” O’Duffy concluded before drawing on his pipe and exhaling stream after stream of blue aromatic smoke for what seemed to McGarr like an eternity. “It has to be Mossie,” he finally said. “It can’t be anybody but Mossie. Nobody but Mossie is so…daft to dream up such a scenario. But, you know”—the hazel eyes swung to McGarr—“I don’t want it to be Mossie. Or anybody, for that matter. I want Paddy Power to have died of natural causes. For the country. For myself.
“The note cards, Peter. What’s in them? What do they contain?”
Again McGarr shrugged. “I haven’t read them. Dr. Gladden claims—and Gretta Osbourne has corroborated—that they deal with all aspects of Power’s life, that they’re particular as to detail and”—he paused, as though trying to choose the proper word—“revelatory.”
“But have they told you what those revelations are in the particular?”
McGarr shook his head. “I brought along these, however, which were found by the corpse. I thought you might like to read them.” From a pocket he removed the seven cards and passed them to O’Duffy. “I was hoping to discover some clue to the whole business, especially in this one that was grasped in Mr. Power’s hand. But”—McGarr shook his head—“it’s just the description of his last few days, some maunderings about Ireland, and his hopes for the conference. If somebody could take a photocopy of the lot, I’d appreciate it. I’ll need them back.”
O’Duffy held the cards toward the fire but obviously could not read Power’s crabbed hand in the dim light. “Dessie—would you be good enough to make a copy, as the chief superintendent suggests. And enlarge it, if you can.”
“Might I have one as well?” McGarr put in. “My eyes aren’t what they once were.”
“Why not,” said Harney, a smooth young man whose developer father had contributed mightily to the coffers of O’Duffy’s party and now controlled a new, successful newspaper in Dublin. “Anything to further the cause of justice.”
Quinn too was now on his feet. “Drinks,” he explained. “All around?”
“That would be grand,” said O’Duffy. “And bring Peter a tot too, Pat. It’s dry work, all this cloak-and-dagger.”
Said Farrell, “I’ll give you a hand,” and suddenly McGarr found himself alone with the taosieach, who tapped his knee.
“Listen to me now, Peter, and harken to what I say,” he said in the same confidential tone that he had been using with his two cohorts before McGarr had entered the room. “I would never ask you to do anything wrong, but I wish simply for you to keep me in mind as you perform your duty.
“Governing this country is like living in a small town in the West. Sneem itself
, say. There behind closed doors a person can be anything he wants. He can gather powerful people from all over the world and plan and scheme and work for evil or—in the case of Paddy Power and this government—for good, so long as he breathes not a word of his intentions and presents a picture of rectitude.
“The cardinal rule, however, must be observed. Never reveal the confusion of the decision-making process or any disunity in the ranks. In politics, quick, sure strokes count for everything.”
O’Duffy’s fiery eyes regarded McGarr, who only held his gaze.
“Once you become fodder for public chat, once the populace is allowed to chew the honeyed cud of your indecision or, as in this case, to suspicion that you might be divided as to fact, your cause is lost. I’m at a crisis here, and how you handle this sad situation will as surely shape my future as any of the good things I’ve done in the past. I have confidence in you. I trust you. Don’t do me wrong.”
But the drinks now arrived, and Harney returned with the sheets on which the seven note cards had been photocopied.
“How long did it take you to make this page?” McGarr asked.
“Longer than you’d think. The first few times I put down the lid, the force of the air blew them off.”
The cards were this way and that, whereas the photocopies of the cards that McGarr had found in Nell Power’s room had been perfect, every last page of the thick sheaf.
“They’re still a bit disarranged,” Harney went on jocularly, “but then I hope I’m never forced to be a secretary.”
So did McGarr, who might soon be looking for any work he could find.
Politics was a vast, unchartable moorland, McGarr mused as Farrell’s limousine stole through the moonlit darkness a half hour later. For those who could smell rot beneath heather, he imagined it was a heady, bracing, and often profitable adventure; but for those many others who saw only bright flower and green petal, it was a dark, dangerous bog best avoided whenever possible.
The Death of Love Page 14