The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf

by Bartholomew Gill

  Later that night before turning in, McGarr used the private telephone box in the lobby of the Bayview Hotel to ring up his wife. After they had spoken of what she and Maddie had done that day, he said, “Look—I’m going to be here for a while, and—”

  “Would we like to join you? On Clare Island? Of course.”

  Fishing holidays were boring for Noreen, who did not fish. And while his daughter was presently learning the sport, she was only six and her patience flagged.

  “Do you know that Clare Island was the subject of an in depth, multidisciplinary study a few years back?” Noreen asked.

  “To compare to the findings to the Royal Irish Study at the turn of the century.”

  There was a pause. “You know about that?” Irish antiquities—in fact, anything that pertained to the culture of the country—Noreen considered her exclusive domain, at least within their family.

  “Chapter and verse.”

  “They discovered a previously unknown megalithic court tomb that’s probably five thousand years old and a number of fulachta fiadh that we probably walked right by without knowing the summer we were there. You can point them out when we arrive.”

  “And just who is Fiadh when he’s at home?”

  “I thought as much. And speaking of superficial knowledge—the details on the evening news were rather sketchy. They mentioned the name of the former guard who got killed, but said only that three other Clare Islanders were missing. I’ll need details, if I’m to be of any help.”

  “We’ll trade information over breakfast, if you can get here that early.”

  “Ah, Peter—we won’t be there until lunch or dinner, and you know it. Why don’t you fill me in now, so I won’t have to waste money on newspapers.” There was nothing Noreen enjoyed more than having some inside knowledge of one of his murder investigations.

  McGarr reached for his glass and took a swallow. “I didn’t see a journalist here the day long. The most they have is what was on the news. My love to you both. I assume she’s asleep by now.”

  “Of course.”

  “Me too.”

  CHAPTER 12

  JUST BEFORE DAWN, Angus Rehm cut the auxiliary engine and slowed the North Sea schooner over what his depth finder told him was a cleft in the continental shelf off Erris Head. It was some one hundred and seventy nautical miles north northeast of Clare Island.

  For the first time in seven hours he switched on an electronic device—the vessel’s differential global positioning system that compared the transmissions of a high-altitude satellite system to low-frequency signals sent from shore-based beacons. The computerized result told him exactly where he was, and was accurate to within five meters anywhere on the earth’s surface.

  Also for the first time in hours, he spoke into the VHF radio that linked him with the smaller sportfishing boat that had been following in his wake. The message—in a language that few in the Northern Hemisphere would understand—informed his daughter, Heather, that they had reached their destination, and she should pull alongside. “Dugald will take your lines.”

  The surviving son was standing close enough to have heard, and he moved to the rail. Having been wearing a Kevlar vest under his orange deck suit, Dugald had only been knocked unconscious by the force of the 9 mm round Clement Ford had fired into his chest. Malcolm had not been so lucky. His corpse was now lashed to the top of the cabin of the schooner.

  Rehm did not wait for Heather to join them. With a stiff prosthetic finger—one of four on his right hand—he began punching the function buttons of the vessel’s cockpit computer. Soon he had the area survey map of Clare Island up on the view screen. While he called up an overlay of a tax map, and compared the two, his surviving son and daughter began transferring all the materiel that they would need from the vessel to the boat. Soon they were finished and joined him at the wheel.

  Rehm adjusted his half glasses and pointed to the screen with the gloved hand. “Unless he buried the contents of that strongbox under some rock, the only possible place he could have taken it is to this group of buildings. There’s nothing else around. What is it, a small village?”

  The daughter bent to the screen and studied the cluster of black squares and rectangles that represented Clare Island. Map reading was one of her specialties. “Could be, but the structures are grouped rather close for individual properties. I’d say it’s a farm of some sort.” She straightened up. “And of course Ford didn’t hide the contents under a rock. A man of his age, he would have figured he had little chance of surviving, and if he buried the information about the investments and the hiding place of the rest—I’m assuming it is—and he died, the entire fortune would be lost.”

  “But what if he did it just out of spite,” Dugald put in. “You know—if he couldn’t have it, nobody else would. Especially us.” He glanced at his brother’s corpse on the cabin top. “And are we forgetting that he did survive?”

  “No! Nobody’s forgetting that!” Heather barked. “Nobody will ever forget that, especially not me.”

  She tugged her hair free from the nape of her life vest, and the blondish mane lifted in the breeze. She was a tall woman and strongly built with wide shoulders and large breasts; her waist was thin, her stomach flat. She had a deep tan. “And answer me this—if he intended to bury it, why didn’t he take the strongbox too? It’s wet on that island, you saw so yourself. Anything unprotected would get soaked and ruined in no time. Bank notes, legal documents, maps.”

  “If he can be believed—what he told us there in the sitting room.”

  She snapped her head to her brother, who, while wide and powerfully built, was an inch or two shorter than she. “You think he was lying?”

  “You thought he was. You said so.”

  “At first, after the way we saw how he lived. Meanly, poorly, coveting every shekel like some…peasant. But—think about it—that’s just how he’d act to keep us from finding him on the one hand, and, on the other, to move the hoard in some anonymous way. Like he said, he had time to do all that—half a bloody century!—and he probably transferred a set amount each year—”

  “Enough,” Rehm cut in. “I know the man and how he thinks. I lived with him, I studied with him. He told us the truth for one reason and one reason only. Because it was the truth and would sound like the truth. Anything less would have taken him away from his wife and the pistol he had concealed under her.” Rehm raised his head to the corpse that was lashed to the cabin top. In a hushed voice he intoned. “Malcolm—we loved ye’, laddie.”

  After a while he continued, “The straight o’ it is we failed. There was the darkness and the poor road, and who could have guessed he would live where he did. But—excuses aside—we weren’t quick enough. He succeeded in passing off the secret before we arrived, and when he returned to the cottage, he had one purpose in mind and one on’y.”

  “To kill as many of us as possible.”

  “And nearly did,” said Dugald. “Or, at least, another of us.”

  Rehm rounded on his second son, the gloved hand smacking his arm. “What am I hearin’, Dugald. Have ye’ no stomach for the fray? Does yehr brother’s body, lyin’ there afore ye’ mean nothing? This is war, mahn. The stakes are muckle high. Yeh take losses. Nobody is sorrier for Malcolm, nobody’ll grieve him more than I, his father. Nobody. But what would ye’ now have us do? Give up the fight altogether? Roll over and surrender? Whimper and take ourselves off into some dark place to pine?

  “Nae, boy. Nae, nae—I say ’tis better to die here, like Malcolm, than to die slowly from the memory of defeat. Ye’ do na’ know what that’s like, son, but I do.”

  It took Dugald a few moments to reply. Again his eyes swept the cabin top and his sister, before meeting his father’s gaze. It’s not my war, he wanted to say, and it’s not people who died but Malcolm, whose opinion could no longer be sought.

  But he also knew that his father was right. Collectively, they understood defeat—specifically, the defeat fifty
years ago—having been reminded almost daily, as it had wrankled in Rehm’s soul. He viewed his three children more as agents of his ego, there to satisfy his principal needs, than as independent personae. Which had led to this debacle.

  On the other hand, Dugald supposed that with Malcolm’s death it was now his own defeat too. Older by only a year, Malcolm had been like his twin, and they had been inseparable even in their work. “I couldn’t live with myself thinking we came all this way, Malcolm died, and we left empty-handed.”

  “Good lad, brave lad. We’ll acquit ourselves well, I promise ye’.”

  From the start Dugald had thought the second plan of attack—the anonymous flanking approach—better. It had been their father—backed by Heather—who had insisted upon a direct frontal assault, since both of them had something to prove: Angus to the man who had bested him so many years ago; Heather to herself.

  Rehm turned to the daughter. “Ye’ think yeh winged him?”

  “I don’t think, I know I did. He took it right here.” She indicated her upper right arm.

  “Then we should get right back before he has a chance to return or whoever this is”—he tapped the computer screen—“decides to leave the island.” Rehm exited the program, switched off the machine, and stepped back so they could take it away.

  Only a few minutes later when all three were aboard the smaller boat and a safe distance away, Rehm pointed an electronic remote device at the schooner, saying, “I only wish we could set it alight. The only reason we’ve gone to this trouble is to give Malcolm a decent burial. But that might attract a passing vessel.”

  “Like a Viking burial. The warrior sailing to Valhalla,” Heather said with almost a thrill in her voice.

  Dugald looked away.

  “And yehr thoughts, son? D’ye have ony last wish for my son and yehr brother?”

  Dugald nodded. “Och, aye,” he said in a burr as broad as his father’s. “I wish that Malcolm were alive, make no mistake. And tha’ he di’na’ die for sweet heady bullshit, Father.”

  Rehm’s head went back. “So, is tha’ what ye’ think still, even after glammin’ the ring on the woman’s finger and what the man said?”

  Dugald nodded. “Said. There’s been too much said—by you, by him”—he turned and looked his sister directly in the eye—“by everybody. Now it’s time to get what we came for,” or join Malcolm, he did not add. For him it had come to that.

  “And we will, I assure ye’. It’s not like we di’na’ prepare.” Rehm pressed the button of the remote device, and the image of the schooner blurred for a moment. Next they felt the concussion of subsurface charges; they had been secured in her hold some months earlier for just such a contingency.

  The report of the simultaneous explosions, however, was little more than a muffled thump, before the vessel, gutted of its keel, sank swiftly in one clean piece. It was as if a hand had reached up and pulled her down into the deep.

  Before leaving the area, Dugald went below into the cabin of the sportfisher and undid the six spring clamps that had kept the entire cabin trunk and flying bridge attached to the hull. With his sister’s help, he soon had the lightweight aluminum shell off, revealing a narrow control console protected by a canvas doghouse. Their father was nowhere to be seen, having retired to the cabin in the foredeck to sleep.

  Now they removed the black paint or, rather, the opaque Mylar film that covered the white paint below. Once cut into, it came away in broad ribbons that were carried away on the breeze. In less than a half hour, the pair had stripped the exterior down to the waterline. They then added Irish registration numbers on either side of the bow.

  Finally, a nameboard was dropped into slots on the transom: Grainne Uaile, it said—a variant spelling of the infamous pirate queen’s name.

  At the wheel, Dugald hit the sticks and directed the powerful craft east, in the direction of the breaking day and the Irish mainland.

  PART III

  Temptation

  CHAPTER 13

  WHEN DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT Hugh Ward opened his eyes the next morning, he did not know which arms or legs were his and which belonged to Detective Inspector Ruth Bresnahan. They had become tangled during the night. Even now after several years together it was not unusual. Theirs was a torrid relationship.

  The trick now was to determine what parts were his and to extricate himself without waking her. While still very much in love with his “colleague” (her term), Ward savored a few moments to himself in the quiet of early morning.

  The trouble was, Bresnahan treated Ward just like a Teddy bear, hugging him to her and not wanting to let go. The second problem this morning was that they were rather more completely joined than he had first imagined. Hugh’s initial attempt brought an immediate visceral reaction from the somnolent one who locked his head farther between her not insignificant breasts.

  Like that, he imagined, he would, albeit pleasurably, soon smother. And so he did the only thing he could, which occupied the next quarter of an hour and left him feeling rather piqued. He had achieved his purpose, however, and was now blissfully free from her collegial embrace.

  After he MIC’ed a cup of tea in the kitchen, Ward phoned Murder Squad headquarters and learned that orders from McGarr had arrived. He was to pay a visit to a certain firm of solicitors and then take a ring, which had also been sent, to a certain jeweler. The stones had proved to be real, and Bresnahan and he were to try to flog it.

  There was also an identity search for one Angus Rehm, to say nothing of the countless details of the dozens of other cases that were still being actively investigated. With McGarr away, Ward was in charge. Of what? Given the sheer volume of capital crime and the present paltry staffing levels—of chaos. The most they could do was to give any one murder a couple of intense days’ scrutiny, hoping the perpetrator would be found and a book of evidence built, before moving on to the next.

  Ringing off, Ward turned round to find his freshly made cup of tea gone; the door to the shower was closed and the water running. Of course, there was nothing preventing the small, dark, well-made man from slipping off his bathrobe and heading into the steamy confines of that quarter.

  But if Ward, who was a noted amateur pugilist, had learned anything in the boxing ring, it was never to spar in a tight ring with a younger, taller, perhaps even stronger opponent (after the debilitating exercises of the night before). Also, there was something to be said for maintaining one’s emphasis—to say nothing of reputation—with her who mattered most.

  But soon Bresnahan was out of the shower and back into her clothes of the night before, so she could drive to her mews apartment in Ballsbridge and change for the day. Some appearance of singularity had to be maintained. “Fraternizing” was strictly prohibited among Garda personnel, and were their “collegiality” made known to the Commissioner, one of them would have to leave the Murder Squad. She—who was less senior—knew who it would be. The “fraternizer.”

  When Bresnahan reappeared, ready to leave, Ward said, “Today I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “You’re going to take me to ‘Break for the Border’ for lunch.” It was a new “theme bistro” that featured a cowboy-and-Indian motif and Tex-Mex chow which Ward had refused to go near.

  “No I’m going to give you a ring.”

  Turning to him in a way that made her angularity conspicuous, she fluffed her damp mane of auburn hair, “How do you mean?”

  Ward pointed to the third finger of his left hand.

  “No—really?” She seemed to have to think for a moment, and Ward panicked. Of course he’d been joking.

  “Do we want to do something, like that?”

  He was relieved, even though he hated when she told him what we wanted, which had been occurring more of late. “Knock your eye out by all reports. The size of a pigeon’s egg, says Swords.”

  She closed her smoky gray eyes and breathed out. “Phew! You mean, the bloody ring from Clare Island.” She too had read McGarr’s pre
liminary reports from the day before. “You had me going for a moment.” She opened the door and stepped out.

  Feeling rejected—even if for all the right reasons—Ward said, “You’re to dress accordingly. We’ll be visiting those solicitors and the jewelers to see if we can sell it.” Making for the shower, he cast a longing eye at the now empty bed.

  “Oh, Mother of Mercy—I can’t wear that,” said Bresnahan, turning the ring this way and that, the many facets of the diamond winking at her. “What if I lost it?”

  She was sitting with Ward in her BMW which she had bought a year or so ago after her father had died and left her a substantial bequest along with the largest farm in the South Kerry Mountains.

  “It’ll be safer on your hand than in me pocket,” said Ward, “and it goes with the rig.” He meant the car and how she was dressed. Wearing a designer suit of chrome yellow Quantril that fit her like second skin, black pumps, a black pillbox hat and veil, and with her hair in a tight bun, she looked like a caution sign in motion.

  And to think—Ward thought proudly, possessively, yea sleazily—no more than two hours earlier, he had had enough of that. Or, rather, that glorious creature. He must be off his feed. There had been a time, not so many years ago, that Ward pursued women first, then tried to fit the other activities of life around that regime. The only reason he had joined the Murder Squad or fought in the ring was because their cachet rather enhanced his success in the chase.

  Watching the supple flexing of her calf as she climbed the granite steps of the Georgian townhouse where Monck & Neary kept their office, Ward wondered—did the penis rule all men the way it ruled him? Or was he, you know, simply a surd?

  Now opening the heavy paneled door, Ward breathed in her fragrance as she brushed by—some heady melange of soap, shampoo, emollient, and scent that had probably cost her more than her weekly pay packet. She spared nothing on her appearance, which was always more than enough to make Ward…well, “putty in her hands” was not an apt phrase.