Anglo-Irish Murders

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘Wyn’s in her bedroom. Gardiner’s wandering around the castle miserably and Pascal and Wallace are in the bar. I’m surprised you’re not with them.’

  ‘Robert, I may be a heavy drinker by English standards, but I know when I’m beaten. I have no aspirations to compete with a lush of such epic stature as Pascal O’Shea. Wallace, maybe, on a good day, but I’ve had enough good days for now. I’m off to my room with Maria and we will probably have tea.’

  ‘Even Pascal’s proposing an afternoon nap.’

  ‘No one’s proposing a walk?’

  ‘In this? Are you kidding? McNulty says he’s having real difficulties in keeping up his chaps’ morale. I should think they’d probably fail to notice a convoy of armed terrorists if they were to brave the downpour.’

  ‘That’s comforting. See you later.’

  ***

  ‘OK, Rollo,’ said McNulty. ‘I’ve talked to your boss again and he agreed I can keep you quiet for a while longer. There wouldn’t be much more trouble if they found out later than if I told them now. Anyway, I have you on the list of people completely ruled out, so the Special Branch shouldn’t pay you any attention.

  ‘Now, there’s no need to process anything. Okinawa’s going to give me all his tapes and you can watch them on the sly in your bedroom. We’ve got a video recorder for you.

  ‘It’ll be embarrassing if anyone finds out, but if you’ll take the risk, I’ll take the risk. And if you find anything out, I’ll take the credit. Now let’s get on with the rest of them.’

  ***

  Pooley tracked Amiss down around six o’clock and gave him a run-down on the day’s events. ‘And then there was Liam, who was very mulish in the beginning, until McNulty brought home to him that to be uncooperative might imply he was complicit in her death. Like Laochraí two days ago, he eventually grudgingly admitted that he wanted the murderer caught and offered what assistance he could give, which turned out essentially to be virtually nothing.’

  ‘McNulty was very forthright with him and annoyed him by accusing him of being a dissident. Liam pointed out forcefully that he was so committed to the mainstream that he had been prepared to split his family on the issue. He made much of what we knew already—that he has nothing to do with his brother and that his father refuses to speak to him. There was no arguing his point that all this would have been avoided if he’d just dropped out of republican politics. “Violence is not just behind me,” he said. “I’m making great personal sacrifices to try to make sure it’s behind everyone.” And he couldn’t be faulted on his assertion that Laochraí and he had been friends and comrades for years and that her death was a grievous personal blow.’

  ‘So that was that?’

  ‘Not quite. He was quite emphatic about who had committed the murder.’

  ‘Really? Do tell.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Judging by your tone, I suppose he fingered me or you.’

  ‘No. Jack.’

  ‘Why should Jack give a stuff about Laochraí?’

  ‘Oh you know. The usual. She’s M15 or M16.’

  Amiss groaned. ‘One of the things that bewilders me these days is that on one level you hear everyone complaining about the government being hell-bent on appeasing terrorists, while the next minute you’re supposed to believe that very same government, through its security agencies, is trying to rub out the very self-same terrorists.’

  ‘It’s a safe enough allegation. Rogue elements. All that sort of thing.’

  ‘While I can see Jack as a rogue element in anything, I think Liam is overdoing it a bit this time.’

  ‘McNulty saw him off pretty straightforwardly on that one by pointing out that since—fortunately mistakenly—they had decided that Jack was the prime target, she’s been discreetly followed by a plain clothes garda at all times. Indeed she has one stationed outside her door all night. Ever since the IRA blew up Lord Mountbatten, they seem particularly frightened of losing another peer. So she would have had no opportunity to plant the grenade in Laochraí’s wardrobe.’

  ‘If I were Liam I would have suggested she had spotted the police and at some stage climbed out her window and across the ivy to Laochraí’s room.’

  ‘A highly likely scenario, especially in the driving rain. Anyway, it’s fake ivy and wouldn’t bear her weight.’

  ‘What a pity. I cherish the image.’

  ‘Did McNulty interview Kelly-Mae?’

  ‘Indeed he did. She was hysterical and went on a lot about the securocrats, but mostly she claimed that the British government was secretly committed to the destruction of the peace process and the murders had been ordered directly by the prime minister. McNulty’s attempts to extract information from her about her own links with republicans got nowhere. Was he asking her to be an informer? Never, never, never. There was nothing worse than being an informer: if it hadn’t been for informers Ireland would have been free centuries ago. Anyway, she knew nobody. She had attended the Orange parade solely as a concerned American citizen. She knew nothing of the people involved. She followed Irish politics sufficiently to know about the evil oppression practised by the British occupying forces but she had nothing much else to contribute. As for evidence, there was nothing.’

  ‘What’s next?’

  ‘You’re to get everyone to the seminar room for seven to listen to McNulty.’

  ***

  There was a full turn-out. ‘I had hoped I might have some news for you about when you could go home,’ said McNulty. ‘But I’m sorry to tell you I haven’t. However, there will be more news after dinner. Superintendent Maloney of Special Branch has arrived, he is reviewing the evidence as we speak and will bring you up to date as best he can.’

  ***

  Maloney was tall, silver-haired, pleasant-looking and in his early fifties. He shook hands with everyone first. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to meet you all in such tragic circumstances. Inspector McNulty has told me how forbearing you’ve all been and how helpful and courageous at this terrible time when I know you’re grieving for your companions. And I know too that quite understandably some of you are feeling afraid that harm might come to you too.

  ‘Now, I can reassure you that there is absolutely no reason for any of you to feel there is any danger. Only the guilty need feel any fear and I do not believe that any of you are guilty.

  ‘I have spent several hours with Inspector McNulty sifting through all your statements and all the other evidence and I’m very clear in my own mind that what we’re dealing with here is dreadful coincidence. We have had two accidents and one murder.

  ‘Billy Pratt did a foolish thing and paid a very heavy price for it. Whatever way you look at it, accident is the only sensible interpretation of what happened to him. Let’s go through it step by step.

  ‘Mr Pratt wanted to put up a flag because he thought it would help him in his election campaign. There was no one at this conference whom he would have told about this. The whole idea was the surprise element. He had his press statement in his pocket ready to release as soon as the flag was up.’

  He smiled knowingly. ‘For Mr Pratt to have been murdered, we would have to believe that he confided his plans to someone, and that he chose the very person who would take advantage of that confidence to sabotage the flagpole. We would also have to believe that this confidante knew enough about flagpoles to know they had bolts and guessed that Billy knew so little about them that he didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t find either of those propositions difficult to believe,’ said the baroness.

  ‘If I may continue,’ said Maloney, glaring at her and going back to his notes. ‘Suicide, I think we can rule out. So we’re left with accident.

  ‘I know we’re suggesting a failure on the part of the maintenance staff, but I don’t think we need take that too seriously. If there was a failure, it’s an oversight by whoever paints those flagpoles, but who cannot be thought to be culpable in any way, since normally anyone who wa
s putting up a flag on the pole would check the bolts anyway.

  ‘Now to Father O’Flynn and the bottles. In the name of God, how can this be murder? First of all, someone had to know that he’d get up in the middle of the night. Second this would-be murderer had to be equipped with a dodgy lightbulb.

  ‘You may say “But how did the bottles get there innocently?” I’ll tell you how they got there innocently. The poor priest himself. I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead and I’m not speaking ill of the dead when I say that the good Father liked a drink—and which of us doesn’t?—and because rightly he didn’t want to give scandal he brought the supplies with him in his own luggage.’

  ‘Were his fingerprints on them?’ asked the baroness.

  ‘No, and nor were anyone else’s. He’d obviously washed and dried them. But what with the police being around because of Billy’s sad death and the possibility that his room might be searched, he didn’t want to put the empties in his luggage. He didn’t want to be the cause of talk. So he decided to get rid of them in the night and put them in some wastepaper basket away from his room. So, before he leaves his room to visit Miss de Búrca, he put them outside where he wouldn’t forget them when he returned.’

  The baroness exploded. ‘What do you mean so he wouldn’t forget them? Why didn’t he leave them on his bed?’

  ‘Now, your ladyship, it’s easy from where you stand to make sweeping statements like that. And maybe in his position that’s what you’d do.’

  Amiss savoured the expression produced as the baroness tried to imagine herself hiding empty bottles from puritans. ‘But we all have our little ways of going about things. And what was more sensible for the Father than to put them outside his bedroom where he’d be sure to see them when he got back early in the morning and would be able to deal with them?’

  ‘Why didn’t he get rid of them on his way to her bedroom?’ she asked.

  Maloney winced. ‘In case he ran into people. ’Twasn’t that late. ’Twas only around two and there might have been people still up. This is Ireland. And indeed there were people still up, from all I hear. Including yourself, my lady. So, wasn’t he right?

  ‘Now, the Father leaves them there to make sure he doesn’t forget them, but then he has the bad luck with the bulb. It’s dark, he’s tired and he’s forgotten about the bottles and we know the rest of the sad story.’

  ‘Surely if he fell over them, it meant he had left them lying on their sides,’ said Amiss. ‘Which would be strange.’

  Maloney shot him an angry look. ‘If you’re going to be picky, you can find fault with everything. All this is the most natural thing in the world. Poor Father O’Flynn is blundering up there in the dark, he’s half-asleep, he puts his foot over the step where the bottles are, kicks the top of one, they fall over like skittles, he steps on one, loses his footing entirely, and that’s it. What can be plainer than that?

  ‘And I’m sure Inspector McNulty would have seen that instantly if it hadn’t been for the confusion over the unfortunate flagpole occurrence.’

  The baroness opened her mouth. ‘Not now, Jack,’ hissed Amiss. ‘It’ll do no good. Wait till later.’

  ‘So that should take away any fear ye might have of each other,’ added Maloney.

  ‘The business of poor Miss de Búrca is, of course, completely different. I have no hesitation whatsoever in pronouncing this to be murder.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t suicide?’ blurted out the baroness. ‘Maybe she decided on suttee, and thought blowing herself up was next best thing to climbing on the priest’s funeral pyre.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lady Troutbeck, and I don’t think this is an appropriate occasion for making jokes. In Ireland, we take death seriously.

  ‘This was a very tragic murder of a fine woman who’s been in the forefront of the struggle for peace and human rights for many a long day. And I know I speak for us all or at least for all right-thinking people when I say that the Irish nation is united in grief at this ultimate abuse of the human rights of Laochraí de Búrca. We cannot be certain yet who’s done it, but there’s very little reason not to take the loyalist claim at its face value.

  ‘Tragically, because of mischievous elements in the media, these people had believed that Billy Pratt had been murdered—which is a lesson to us all about the dangers of ill-informed speculation—and they used this as an excuse to exact vengeance.

  ‘Now before anyone asks any hasty questions, there is no forensic evidence from anywhere that any one of you has been handling explosives. We know that a phone-call was made to the hotel to find out Miss de Búrca’s room number—which is good clear evidence that there was no collusion with anybody present…’

  ‘Or that someone was planting a red herring,’ put in Amiss.

  Maloney ignored him. ‘I’m emphasizing that point in a very serious way in case anyone’s speculating that Mr Hughes here might be involved in any way at all. Mr Hughes too, like Mr Pratt and Miss de Búrca, is a selfless worker for peace. And it does no good for peace and harmony on this island to be maligning people like this or questioning their motives or making wild accusations that can do only harm.’

  He turned to his right, where McNulty was sitting gazing at the ceiling. ‘It is no criticism of Inspector McNulty here to say that while the operation was as tight as anyone could make it, there were times when the cordon slackened and it had to slacken because of the demands on it made by the weather, journalists and so on.

  ‘Now, we know that that bomb—or rather, as it turns out, that grenade—was in Miss de Búrca’s wardrobe, so there seems no doubt that it was placed there the afternoon before she was murdered. Some fella bided his time and sadly got his chance.

  ‘I know you all want to go home. And I’m very sympathetic. You’ll be glad to hear you can all go in the morning.’

  ‘I wanna get out of here right this minute,’ shouted Kelly-Mae.

  ‘Where would you go, mam, at this time of night?’

  ‘Anywhere.’ She turned to MacPhrait. ‘Liam, couldn’t I go stay with your friends? Just for tonight?’

  ‘Better wait till the morning,’ he said. ‘You’ll be safe here. We all will be. I’ll take you to the airport in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you feel reassured now.’ And before anyone had a chance to say anything more, Maloney had gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ said the baroness.

  Gibson shrugged. ‘What do you expect? The politicians are taking charge. I’ve already been given a very clear message that no awkward questions are to be asked since it is politically helpful that this should be two accidents and a murder by persons unknown. Maloney is compliant. He wants promotion, and in the Irish Republic, that comes from politicians. It’s that simple. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone-call.’

  ***

  ‘I don’t believe a fucking word produced by Maloney’s lying tongue,’ said the baroness. ‘But you have to admit, his line is convenient. For the governments, for us, the police…’

  ‘And for the murderer,’ said Pooley. ‘It’s outrageous. Absolutely outrageous and corrupt.’

  ‘Of course it’s corrupt. Politicians have become involved. Questions of principle are inevitably going to take a back seat to issues of pragmatism.’

  ‘But what about truth?’

  The baroness gazed at him pityingly. ‘I do like you, Ellis. You’re so endearingly naive.’

  ‘But they’re going to let someone get away with three murders.’

  ‘I don’t suppose for one minute,’ asked Amiss hesitantly, ‘that you think there’s anything at all in the Maloney thesis.’

  ‘No, and I don’t believe in fairies either.’

  ‘Who do you think did it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Ellis? Have you a candidate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that is…’

&
nbsp; ‘Don’t want to say yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If I told you why not, you’d know who it was.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said the baroness. ‘Cue for Ellis to be found with a knife in his back gurgling “It was…aaargh.” After which no doubt Maloney would tell us he’d committed suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ said Pooley. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t expect that to happen if I’m right about who did this.’

  ‘Or these?’ asked Amiss.

  ‘These.’

  The baroness scratched her head. ‘Is it someone who would kill only proles?’

  ‘I don’t think Jesuits can be classified as proles, however much Father Cormac would have liked it.’

  ‘Irish people only?’

  ‘Billy thought he was British,’ pointed out Amiss.

  ‘Inhabitants of the island of Ireland only?’

  ‘With paramilitary links,’ added Amiss.

  ‘I hope Liam and Willie are watching out,’ said the baroness. ‘Or maybe I don’t. Are we warm, Ellis?’

  Pooley smiled. ‘It’s much more straightforward than that. This person would never kill a red-head.’

  ‘Ah, so you and the tinkers are safe, are you?’

  She paused and smote her brow. ‘Stap me. How come we’ve avoided having a representative of tinker culture?’

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Amiss. ‘It’s just that she’s dead.’

  ‘Lucrezia was a tinker?’

  ‘No, no. But she regarded herself inter alia as a spokesman. Of course you missed that row the other night when Pascal described some group as having as much culture as a coach-load of tinkers and Laochraí, backed up enthusiastically by Kelly-Mae, denounced him for racism. This heated up when Pascal asked if they’d ever had an encampment of tinkers move in beside them in Belfast or the Bronx, which of course they hadn’t. “It’s easy for ye to be sentimental,” he concluded, “when ye don’t have the tyres fecked off your car or the handbag off your wife.” I had to do a great deal of soothing to get everyone to simmer down.’

  ‘Wish I’d been there,’ said the baroness. ‘I’d have confused them all by waxing eloquent about my gipsy heritage. However, enough of this. Ellis, will you do something sensible like writing the name on a piece of paper, sending it to your bank and notifying everyone—particularly your putative murderer—that you’ve done this?’