The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Ten years after the blight, there was only six hundred people on Clare Island. Today”—Rice paused dramatically—“a hundred and forty in a good year with them forty kids who leave the island for school at age twelve, some of them never to return for more than a few weeks on holiday or to get in the hay. Here’s a fact for you—seventy-five percent of the children born into this parish will emigrate sooner or later.”

  Which made the people here indeed severely disadvantaged, McGarr concluded, no matter who had devised the phrase—seoinini from Brussels, Dublin, or Mars.

  The Paul O’Malley house stood on the top of Capnagower, a word meaning “Hill of the Goats” in Irish. It was a tall but flat bluff on the southeast side of Clare Island, surveying Clew Bay, the Mayo coast from Inishturk to Croagh Patrick, and the shoreline as far as Dooega Head.

  Much of Clare Island itself was also visible from there, all the closer—McGarr assumed—when viewed through the lenses of a spotting scope. The instrument sat on a tripod in the middle of the floor and could be rotated to any of the four large windows of the highest room in the building.

  “You’ve heard of houses with widow’s walks,” the young man said from his curious-looking wheelchair. “Well, this is a quad’s quad.” Paul O’Malley was disabled from the neck down because of an accident while scuba diving. Clare Island was noted for the sport, there even being a dive school here, McGarr seemed to remember.

  “Aran Energy sank a new pipeline in Galway Bay, and nobody thought to mark it. I was a commercial diver, and when I went over the side to check out why a boat was hung up…well, here I am.” With a gross compression of vertebrae C4 and C5, the mother had told them while leading McGarr and Rice up the stairs to the top of the house. “It’s a miracle he can even breathe on his own.”

  And yet O’Malley could move about the room in a high-tech wheelchair that he controlled by moving his neck, which was fastened to an electronic collar.

  His light blue eyes met McGarr’s. “After I rang up Clem about the boat, I ate supper, which is a chore that took—” He glanced at his mother, who had remained in the room.

  “An hour at least.” She was a thin, older woman with sunken cheeks and carefully permed hair that looked like baked meringue.

  “Normally, I listen to the sideband”—he pointed to the radio—“and last night was no exception, since there was another odd craft—something like a sportfishing boat—anchored about a mile off Lecknacurra, which is over there.” O’Malley spun the chair so that his feet were pointing a few degrees west of due north. “It was lighted, but fishermen passing her couldn’t see anybody aboard, nor raise them on the blower. Stranger still, she had neither name nor numbers.”

  “Was the Naval Service notified?” McGarr asked. “Or the Coast Guard?”

  O’Malley’s eyes flashed up at him. “Ah, I’m afraid we’re not quick to call the authorities round here. Especially not the fishermen, who’ve got the water bailiffs on their backs, come day go day.” He meant the officials of the Board of Fishery Conservators who enforced the Maritime Law against drift-netting and other fishing abuses. The fishermen complained that the three frigates operating off the Irish coasts usually let foreign boats off with a warning, while confiscating the catch, nets, and sometimes even the boats of Irish captains.

  The water seoinini, McGarr thought.

  “What about yourself?” Rice asked.

  O’Malley rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t want anybody to think I’m up here watching them day after day, just waiting for the chance to grass. Anyhow, it was nigh on dark by the time I looked again, but the twilight factor on this Swarovski is excellent.” Spinning the wheelchair, O’Malley rolled toward the spotting scope in the center of the room. With an elaborate extended eyepiece, it was positioned low on the tripod which, like the chair, bristled with motors and drives. “The focusing is automatic.

  “The mast lights of the schooner were on, and the crew was furling sails and what not.”

  “A crew of how many?” McGarr asked.

  “Four, counting the captain. He was an older man, but the three others were young, say, late twenties, early thirties.”

  It was a different report from the publican, who said only one young man had stopped in there. The three others must have waited outside, careful to keep any possible identifications to a minimum.

  “At one point they switched on a strong searchlight—halogen, I think—and played it over the castle.”

  “That’s the Granuaile castle down at the harbor,” the mother explained; it was the Irish way of saying Grace O’Malley’s name.

  “They kept the light on it for a while, and I think I saw a figure in one of the windows.”

  “Clem,” the mother concluded. “Many’s the younger man could not have got himself to the harbor by then. But he had great old go in him all the same. Never mattered the time of day or night. Paul would ring him up, and there Clem’d be, fierce soon altogether.”

  “But I’m not certain it was him, mind, the angle from here being a bit tricky.”

  “And them walls is thick.”

  “And, sure, he never once let on why he wanted me to keep him informed about the boats that arrived,” the young man lamented, a definite note of sorrow in his voice. “Maybe if I hadn’t rung him up, Breege and him and Kevin might still be with us.”

  Guilt. It ruled all in the Ireland that McGarr knew. “What about the boat, the schooner?” he prompted.

  “Well—the four of them come off it in a tender they tied to the jetty wall. Then they moved up toward the pub, where I lost them among the buildings.”

  McGarr stepped to the window that looked south toward the castle, the breakwater and jetty, and the small group of structures gathered about the harbor. Even under a brilliant afternoon sun, they looked tiny and unimposing from such a distance—the gray cube of the castle, the white pub, some stucco walls and slate roofs. Croaghmore lay to the west, rising in a steady gentle slope that went up and up and up and thoroughly dominated the landscape of the island. He let his eyes trace the four miles of road out to the Ford’s; he then tried but failed to find the direct, overland path. “What about later?”

  “That’s the troubling part. I must’ve dozed off, because the radio woke me. Whoever they were, they were using a scrambler. But wouldn’t you know I’ve got a little box here that can decode everything from one-twenty-eight to four-oh-nine-six codes automatically. It’s computerized and darts through the field of possible codes until it comes up with a match.”

  “Paulie’s gadget-mad, don’t you know,” said the mother.

  “But it didn’t help. They were speaking some language I never heard before. And the schooner itself was gone from the harbor, and the only activity I could see on my three directions of the compass was at the boat, the one that bore no name or numbers and was anchored off Lecknacurra. Its running lights were on. To me the exchange sounded like a ship-to-ship transmission, but I could see only the one set of lights.”

  As if the schooner were running without any, thought McGarr.

  “Anyhow, it was dark and stormy, and along about then didn’t another boat charge out of the harbor, passing the light on the jetty, the one that’s on the night long. But no lights on her either, so the moment she hit the dark ocean she was gone from sight.”

  “But in the glimpse you’d say it was Packy’s,” the mother prompted.

  “I would now, since she was all of forty feet with a small cabin, and wasn’t Packy’s boat missing in the morn’?”

  McGarr thought for a moment. “I know you didn’t see the schooner leave, and we don’t know if it was she that linked up with the anchored boat off Lecknacurra, but if it was—how long would it have taken her to get out there?”

  “Her speed under power can’t be much, and it would have taken some time to get the launch back up on the davits and the anchor weighed—forty-five minutes at the very least. Closer to an hour.”

  “Which would have made it?”<
br />
  “Nine forty-five. Or ten. Packy’s boat was closer to eleven.”

  “In what direction was the boat with the running lights headed?”

  “The one off Lecknacurra?”

  McGarr nodded.

  “West. Round the island.”

  “Out to sea?”

  “Well, it might have changed course to follow the coast north. You have to go west to round Achill Head.”

  Which meant there was no way to tell where the boat was headed.

  “A foreign language?”

  “Aye, but one. I never heard, and I hear quite a few on the sideband, now that the world is raidin’ our fishing grounds. At first I thought it Danish or Dutch, but I’m sure it was none of them. But, something like that.”

  “Would you know it if you heard it again?”

  “Whenever I do, I haven’t a clue.”

  McGarr’s brow furrowed. “Sorry—I don’t think I understand.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I taped it digitally, like I do whenever there’s a storm, so that there’s an exact record of the time of any transmission. That way, if a boat gets lost, we at least have some idea of its position the last time a signal was sent. The recorder’s over there.” O’Malley pivoted the chair so that his feet pointed at a bank of electronic equipment that had been placed against a wall.

  “Might I have a copy.”

  “Of course,” said the mother. “I’ll make you one now.”

  “It’s only a few words, back and forth, and then a gap and a few more. And a final, like, sign-off. Then not a peep from anybody until four or so, when the other fishermen, going to their boats, found the cart, the car, and Packy’s cottage shot up. Then all hell broke loose.”

  McGarr moved toward the view scope. “May I?”

  The mother answered, “Work away. But you’ll have to squat. I can’t tell you how long it took us to get the thing to the proper height.”

  McGarr hunkered down and stared into the peculiar eyepiece.

  “Clem was always after me to get binos. He said they’d be easier on the eyes, but, as you can see, a scope like this is much more powerful.”

  McGarr peered into the instrument and was suddenly transported to the jetty at the harbor where the Tech Squad was now conducting their part of the investigation. The optics were so crisp and bright that it was almost as though he were standing there conversing with them.

  “Didn’t I see you roust Colm Canning from Packy’s house this morning,” O’Malley went on. “Stormed in there, he did, fists clenched and jaw set. Come out headfirst and legs flying after him.”

  McGarr imagined that between the Swarovski, the sideband, and the telephone, there was little that escaped the shut-in. He straightened up. “What’s something, like this, cost?”

  “I’ve no idea. Clem bought it—” O’Malley managed to say before his mother cut him off.

  “Isn’t it time for your nap, Paulie.”

  “A thousand pounds?” McGarr pressed.

  “For what—the scope or all of it?”

  McGarr nodded encouragingly. “All of it.”

  O’Malley let out a short laugh. “Try tens of thousands. A man came all the way from Indiana just to measure me.”

  “Oh Jesus Christ,” muttered the mother.

  “Clem Ford has money then?”

  There was a pause, and McGarr could almost hear Paul O’Malley realize he had said too much.

  The mother shifted her feet. “Not more than others, but no less. He has his pension. Then, he’s a canny English-style farmer who works every last inch of ground in some way or t’other. And with the two of them stuck out there in their mountain airie, what can they spend?” She paused for thought and breath, before continuing. “It’s just that, at the time before Paulie’s insurance settlement, we didn’t have the bobs for any of this.” Her hand swept the room.

  “And, of course, you paid him back.”

  She nodded vigorously, but her eyes moved off. “Oh aye, we did. We saw him right. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  McGarr looked down at her son in the wheelchair. “What about you, Paul? What is your recollection? Did Clem Ford give you all of this, or did you pay him back?”

  O’Malley only blinked. When climbing the stairs, the mother had told McGarr and Rice that the new house with its observation room had been built and ready for Paul when he came home from the rehabilitation clinic.

  “A generous sort, our Mr. Ford.” McGarr’s and Rice’s eyes met.

  Again at the windows, McGarr gazed northwest toward Mirna Gottschalk’s compound of neat white buildings. It could be seen in its entirety. Not so the Ford cottage. None of it—not even the edge of the dingle—was in view. “Is it possible to see the Ford place from anywhere on the island, apart from the top of the dingle?”

  “Croaghmore,” O’Malley answered without hesitation, as though glad they were no longer speaking of the Fords’ finances. “If you look straight down the north cliff face, you can see the roofs and the haggard. I used to climb some, when I could.”

  “There’s the lighthouse as well,” the mother put in. “Well, it’s not a working lighthouse anymore, but a guesthouse owned by some Belgians. It’s brilliant how they put a room right up in the turret. From there you have a clear view of Mirna’s with Clem and Breege’s cottage beyond. Course, you’d be well served to have one o’ them.” She pointed to the Swarovski.

  Or, say, Ford’s high-power, night-seeing Zeiss binoculars, thought McGarr. “But is it open, this lighthouse—for custom?”

  “Just, Monday last their season began. It’s the finest place on Clare Island. You should stay there yourself, if you’re long here.”

  There was a question in that, which McGarr ignored.

  “So—what happened at the cottage and on the jetty?”

  Paul O’Malley only shook his head; the mother looked away.

  “The Fords have any enemies?”

  “Not that anyone knows of,” said the mother. “’Tis a mystery what happened, coming right out of the blue, like that.”

  “Why did Ford ask you to keep an eye on the boats?” he asked the son. “How long ago was that?”

  “Just ten years come August, right after I got back here. ’Twas a sailor himself, said he, and he liked the look of a boat’s lines.”

  “Years ago Clem had others watching the harbor for him, but he always said Paulie’s the best.”

  “So, Ford’s interest in boats dates from when?”

  The mother hunched her shoulder. “From whenever he came here, as far as I know. Since I was a little girl. Since”—her eyes flashed at McGarr, who was just about her age—“just after the war. He’d buy you a box of Smarties, like, if you could tell him the type of boat. You know, ketch or lobster boat or trawler or dragger. We used to get one of the lads that knew to tell us the type, then he’d buy the lot of us sweets.”

  “An Englishman.”

  She nodded. “Spoke just like a king, he did. You know, precise. Educated.”

  “He came here when?”

  She only shook her head.

  “What brought him here?”

  Again. “Breege?”

  “The wife. She have money?”

  The mother’s head went back in patent disdain. “Not a dickey bird. She was sent here as a wee blind thing, and Peig took her in. A by-blow—some say—of one of Peig’s sisters in England, though others had it she was Peig’s own.

  “But Peig was a big, strong, heavy woman who did not need and never pined after men. Nor for anybody, living most of the year out there in that gulch where only wild asses had grazed even during famine times. It’s Clem what made it bloom.”

  “Clem the Englishman,” McGarr prompted.

  “He’d tell English tourists, who inquired, that he was from Harwich.”

  “Norwich,” the son corrected.

  “Say what you will, I know for fact it’s Harwich. One time when Clem was gone Breege told me he was in Harwich to sett
le his mother’s estate. Sell the house and all.” She brightened. “Maybe that’s where he got the readies.”

  Out at the Rover, she went on, “Look at that now—Mirna’s after giving you the use of her fine new van. Wouldn’t you say that’s rare generous of the woman? She has an islander’s heart all the same.”

  McGarr inclined his head, as though for an explanation.

  “Gottschalk—the name says it all.”

  “Says what?” Tom Rice asked in a quiet voice.

  “Says she’s one o’ them. You know, a Jew.”

  McGarr only stared.

  The mother raised her chin and her eyes narrowed. “There’s some who predicted this, who said she’d bring trouble down on us sooner or later. And him too—Clem himself. Wasn’t he a bloody Brit all along?”

  The same Clem Ford who had equipped her son with the Swarovski scope, the high-tech robotics tripod, and perhaps even financed the house in some way. “Who, for instance?”

  Her eyes held McGarr’s gaze; she had something to tell him. “Fergal O’Grady, for one. Kevin’s father and a senachie. Time out of mind now, he predicted that no good would come from blow-ins like them. And here now hasn’t Fergal’s words fallen on Fergal himself? You might speak to him, if you have the chance.”

  Why? thought McGarr. He twisted the ignition key, and the engine cranked over.

  “I think you’ll find the people of Clare Island very helpful, sir.”

  Some more than others, McGarr suspected, pulling away.

  In silence the two men drove back toward the harbor, one in a contemplative mood, the latter plainly embarrassed.

  After a while, McGarr asked, “Is there any other harbor but the one?”

  Rice shook his head. “There’s a second that serves the salmon farm not far south of the lighthouse, and the remains of a third in Portnakilly, which is close to the abbey and the Grace O’Malley tomb. I’ll show you on a map when we get back to the harbor.