Bogmail

by Patrick McGinley

  Though he noted every word and every nuance of their conversation, the moment of certainty, the revelation that he craved, continued to escape him. After a fortnight all he had to show for his alertness was his earlier vague suspicion that Potter was the man to watch as well as a growing fear that McGing would call one morning with the dreaded evidence.

  He was capable of bearing fear and uncertainty at least for a while. What was more difficult to endure was the loneliness of suspicion, of a mind forever in doubt, peering at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. It was a pity that it had to be Potter because Potter was potentially a friend. He was an unknown quantity, as mysterious in his ways as the wildlife he watched through his field glasses, and for that reason he would befriend him, extend a hand across the deep ravine of human loneliness that threatened what creature comforts man could muster. He would invite him out for an evening’s fishing in his boat, and perhaps as they talked and joked, out of casual camaraderie mutual trust might take root. Even a single glimpse of Potter’s purpose would set his mind to rest. Furthermore, it would be a farsighted act to make friends with him because, if ever it became necessary to ‘delete’ him, a friend would be last to come under suspicion.

  He turned to Gimp Gillespie, his only customer.

  ‘I hear Potter is courting Nora Hession,’ he said, hoping that Gillespie’s unavailing infatuation with Nora might lead him to divulge his true feelings about his rival.

  ‘So they tell me.’ Gillespie spoke without interrupting his contemplation of his glass.

  ‘He’s a rare man is our Potter.’

  ‘He’s a straight shooter, I’ll say that much for him.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him shoot?’ Though he could see that Gillespie had no taste for the conversation, Roarty still persisted.

  ‘What I meant was that he knows his mind and speaks it.’

  ‘He’s very English. He has no sense of indirection—he comes to the point too quickly.’

  ‘We all have our faults, I suppose.’ Gillespie smiled wanly to himself.

  ‘He’s different from you and me. He’s forever on his guard, even when he laughs, and he never laughs longer than he considers strictly necessary. I once heard him say that laughter interrupts the breathing, that a yawn is better medicine.’

  ‘He said that to take a rise out of Cor Mogaill. He’s too intelligent not to recognise the therapeutic value of a laugh.’

  ‘Have you ever noticed how he speaks?’ Roarty asked hopefully. ‘You could write down everything he says without changing a word, as if he’d thought it all out in advance. No spontaneity, that’s his problem.’

  ‘He speaks as you or I might walk on thin ice, picking his way cautiously between words. It’s a habit I’ve noticed in men who have no natural way with words.’

  ‘It may be an English trait, of course,’ Roarty tried to encourage.

  ‘I don’t see Potter as typical of his class. Potter may be English but he was taught by Jesuits.’

  ‘A potent combination,’ Roarty said thoughtfully. ‘No wonder his conversation is so tortured.’

  ‘As a journalist, I wouldn’t call it “tortured”.’

  ‘I meant tortuous.’

  ‘I don’t find it tortuous either,’ Gillespie said. ‘I find it very much to the point.’

  ‘Well, now you know what hooked Nora Hession.’

  Roarty turned to the window again, thinking that Gillespie was being disingenuous. He was obviously jealous of Potter, yet here he was taking his part. Perhaps Gillespie himself had something to hide. Turning from the window, he found him sunk in the deep, deep introspection of a man with a guilty conscience.

  Canon Loftus, who was coming up the avenue with a load of hay behind the tractor, stopped as Nora Hession emerged from the parochial house. They conferred briefly, while Roarty wondered if the Canon might conceivably be envious of Potter. After all, he was a man with a man’s susceptibilities, and he was closer to Nora than anyone else in the glen. Fascinated by the thought, he watched her jaunty gait as she came up the Ard Rua in flat shoes and a loose dress, the very picture of quiet self-possession on the empty road. A rare girl. A rara avis. Had she at last found the man for whom she’d been waiting? A potent combination, a mystery within an enigma. Perhaps Gillespie really saw him with a forgiving eye. Potter was a chameleon, appearing in different guises and speaking in different tongues to different people. A man to be watched; a man out of the ordinary run of men. He would see him this evening and mention the boat. They might even make a habit of going fishing together. There was nothing more natural on this rough coast than a drowning accident in a small punt.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Roarty.’ He didn’t have to look. He recognised the mockery in the lilt of the voice.

  ‘Good morning, sergeant. You’re early, it’s only half-past eleven.’ He reached for a pint tumbler.

  ‘No, don’t get me a drink,’ said McGing. ‘I’m here on duty. I want you to come with me to the barracks to make an identification.’

  ‘Of what?’ asked Roarty, his mouth going dry.

  ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you. I hope you don’t mind helping a policeman with his enquiries.’

  ‘If you wait a minute, I’ll get Susan to mind the bar while I’m out.’

  He went straight to the kitchen, cold sweat prickling his forehead. As soon as he had got rid of Susan, he went to the dresser and got out the gin. He poured a quadruple shot into a pint tankard and topped it up with half a pint of Guinness and a good splash of ginger beer. It was an elixir he kept in reserve for catastrophe, and he drank half of it at a draught in case sipping might dissipate the effect. He would go with McGing to the barracks, as if he were keen to do him a good turn. McGing was headstrong; he was not a man to cross without good reason. His treatment of the local tailor last Hallowe’en was typical of a man who must have his way even in the smallest things. The mummers had pinched the tailor’s smoothing irons as a joke, and the tailor, being a serious man, reported the theft to McGing.

  ‘The mummers have stolen me two geese,’ he said.

  ‘How fat were they?’ asked McGing, pulling out his notebook.

  ‘I don’t mean birds, I’m talking about me smoothing irons,’ the tailor said in exasperation.

  ‘You’re talking about gooses then, not geese,’ said McGing.

  ‘No, it’s geese I said and it’s geese I meant.’

  ‘I’ll gladly look into it for you,’ said McGing. ‘If it’s geese you’ve lost, it’s missing birds I’ll investigate. But if it’s gooses, then that’s a different story. Now, which do you think you’ve lost, gooses or geese?’

  ‘Gooses,’ said the tailor in bewildered resignation.

  Roarty had found the incident funny at the time, but thinking about it now no longer amused him. He drained the half-empty tankard and mopped his brow. Fortified, he returned to the bar to find McGing stroking Allegro’s back while Gillespie did his best to get him to reveal more than he should.

  ‘Is there a story in this for me? That’s all I want to know.’

  ‘It could be the biggest story that’s ever broken here. Mark my words, we’ll have the Dublin dailies round our necks before tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I’d better come along with you then,’ said Gillespie.

  ‘Not now,’ McGing said firmly. ‘Duty before journalism is what I always say. But if you come down to the barracks this evening at seven, I’ll give you a statement. You’ll be first with the news, I promise.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Roarty.

  ‘I won’t prejudice you by telling. I want you to see for yourself.’

  Roarty drove to the barracks about a quarter of a mile outside the village while McGing regaled him with snippets of police lore gleaned from long immersion in what he called ‘the classics of criminology’. Roarty listened in uneasy silence, anxious not to say the wrong thing. He kept reminding himself that there was nothing to worry about, that McGing was an ass, every bit
as stupid as Buridan’s.

  When they reached the barracks, McGing led the way into the kitchen and sat down at a bare table in the centre of the room.

  ‘What now?’ asked Roarty.

  ‘Take a look in the fridge.’ McGing pushed back his policeman’s peaked cap from his broad forehead.

  Roarty opened the fridge door but as far as he could see the shelves were bare.

  ‘There’s nothing here.’ He turned to McGing, wondering what on earth he could be up to.

  ‘Look in the icebox.’

  McGing was treating him like a child, and he resented the implication. Still, he opened the icebox, which was empty apart from a white polythene bag. He turned to McGing, who was observing him with an attitude of exaggerated relaxation.

  ‘Open the bag and look at the contents.’

  Roarty had begun to feel foolish, but when he opened the bag he felt positively ill. It contained a frozen human foot, severed three inches above the ankle.

  McGing got to his feet, took the bag from Roarty, and put it back in the icebox. Weak at the knees and with his tongue too dry to speak, Roarty sat at the table and began filling his pipe without first raking out the dottle.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ asked McGing.

  ‘Maiming or murder,’ Roary managed to answer. ‘It could be either.’

  ‘Did you recognise the foot?’

  ‘How should I recognise a foot? One looks more or less like another.’

  ‘It’s the foot of a friend–an absent friend, I might add.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Eales,’ said McGing with self-conscious superiority.

  ‘How do you know?’ Roarty enquired, less from curiosity than a desperate desire to keep the conversation flowing.

  ‘There was a luggage label tied round the ankle. It said,

  “Eamon Eales passenger to Hades via Sligo”.’

  ‘A grim humorist,’ said Roarty.

  ‘But a humorist who’s left me with a clue or two to follow.’

  ‘His handwriting?’

  ‘He wrote with a matchstick and in capitals, and with his left hand, I suspect. But he made the mistake of spelling “Eamon” with one “n”, the way Dev used to spell his name.

  Now in Donegal most people would spell it with a double “n” because that’s how it’s spelt in Irish. And which farmer would call hell “Hades”?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Roarty said slowly. ‘The young curate often calls it Hades in his sermons, ever since the bishop ordered priests to stop preaching hellfire.’

  ‘Be gob, you’re right,’ said McGing. ‘Two heads are better than one, even a good one. Now I want you to think carefully. Was there anything distinctive about Eales’s feet?’

  ‘They stank—not to hell but to high heaven. He was a great one for lotions and perfumes but he never did manage to mask the smell of his sweaty feet.’

  ‘And what did they smell of?’ McGing pulled a notebook from the breast pocket of his tunic.

  ‘Overripe gorgonzola on good days and rotten fish after a week without a bath.’

  ‘Would you care to smell the foot in the fridge? After all, identification by smell must be as acceptable in law as identification by sight.’

  ‘Surely there’s a limit to a citizen’s duty in helping the police. I draw the line at smelling dead men’s feet.’

  ‘Very well, then. I must tell you I smelt it myself in the interest of science and found it odourless. What do you say to that?’

  ‘It may not be Eales’s foot after all.’

  ‘You’re on the wrong tack. The reason it doesn’t emit the characteristic odour of putrefaction is that it has been frozen. My guess is that it was sawn off shortly after death and that it’s been in the freezer ever since. Another clue, you see. Not everyone has a fridge around here, and even fewer people have freezers.’

  ‘That limits the list of suspects for a start,’ said Roarty, who didn’t have a freezer and was now beginning to enjoy the flavour of his pipe.

  ‘We can limit it further,’ McGing reasoned. ‘We can limit it to men—and possibly women—who live on their own.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Only a man living on his own could store the foot in the house. What if he had a wife and she found it in the freezer when she went to get out the Sunday joint?’

  ‘A good point.’

  ‘Somehow I feel I’m dealing with a highly sophisticated intelligence, possibly an Irish Moriarty, a man who thinks he can trick me with red herrings like “Sligo”. Yet this subtle humorist cut off a man’s foot. He’s two men in one, civilised but brutal.’

  ‘Just what I’ve been thinking,’ said Roarty, realising that the sergeant in his flat-footed way could have been describing Potter.

  ‘The pity is that he’s sent a foot rather than a hand. A hand, you see, would have been of more interest to a forensic scientist. In the death struggle it could have grasped a button, a few loose hairs, or a few fibres from the attacker’s clothes. A foot by comparison tells fewer tales, but it will tell the pathologist enough to lead us to the murderer. It will tell how long after death the body was so brutally butchered. I know myself, and I’m no scientist, that Eales could not have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘Well, I must be getting back,’ said Roarty. ‘Susan will soon be putting the dinner on the table.’

  ‘You’re not squeamish, are you? You’re a cool customer, and I admire you for it. You’ve just been handling a dead man’s foot and already you’re looking forward to dinner.’

  ‘Will you be going without?’

  ‘First things first. Now I must phone the homicide squad. No doubt they’ll want to talk to you. After all, you’re the last person who saw Eales alive and still in possession of his foot.’

  ‘I don’t think I can be of much help, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘You’ve helped me without knowing it. You helped to clear my mind. This could be the making of me, Roarty. I’ve got the nose. Now at last I’ve got the spoor. I can smell the murderer in the air. All I need do is to trace the features of his face.’

  McGing raised his head and sniffed the air between himself and Roarty.

  ‘Incidentally, how did you come on the foot?’

  ‘I was wondering when you’d ask. After all, it’s the obvious question. It was hanging there from the door knocker when I got up this morning.’ McGing, who had accompanied him into the hallway, grabbed him by the sleeve as he reached for the latch.

  ‘You’ve seen the foot. Now tell me, was it a right or a left.’

  ‘A right, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Tim. Eales, wherever he is, is no longer a left footer. And now a final question: if you’d killed a man, where would you bury his body?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Think. The success of this murder hunt may well depend on your answer.’

  ‘Murderers on the whole are not very intelligent. In murder they show their failure to solve their personal problems by use of reason. Whoever did it is not a thinking man. He probably went no further than his back garden.’

  ‘We’ll start with your back garden, then.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sergeant.’

  ‘No offence. We’ll search every garden in the village, and every garden in the glen if necessary.’

  ‘Feel free to begin with mine.’ Roarty got into his car.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone about anything you’ve seen or heard. I promised Gimp Gillespie he’d be first with the news but only after I’d informed the homicide squad.’

  So far, so good, thought Roarty, relieved the ordeal was over. Saying the right foot rather than the left was a brilliant stroke. Looking forward to dinner after handling Eales’s foot was another. He had played it cool, he had given nothing away. However, the real test was still to come: the investigation, the inevitable suspicion, and the endless round of questions.

  He p
arked the car outside the pub and waited for Doalty O’Donnell, who was coming down the street, late yet again with the post. He handed him a tatty brown envelope stuck with sellotape, which Roarty took upstairs to his bedroom. With mounting nausea, he read the letter, which had been written in capitals with a matchstick on a crumpled page from a cheap jotter:

  Dear Roarty,

  The trotter is just an antipasto. If you wish to be spared the agony of the entrée, pay £50 a week (note the higher tariff) in banknotes into Acc. No. 31929, The Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin 2, by 1st September. Otherwise I will arrange for McGing to discover a severed head (just the thing for brawn) in your garden. Your far from sleeping partner in devilry,

  Bogmailer.

  He made straight for the bathroom and, bending over the washbasin, retched in dry but painful spasms with tears of stress in his eyes. At last he felt able to return to his bedroom and wait till the wave of nausea had passed.

  Judged on internal evidence, the letter was even more of a conundrum than the previous one. A local man would surely have said ‘crubeen’ for ‘trotter’, and neither would he have said ‘antipasto’. Both ‘trotter’ and ‘antipasto’ pointed to Potter, but not ‘brawn’ which was more likely to come from a rustic than a bon vivant from the London suburbs. On balance then, it was Potter; but whoever it was must be stopped immediately. The only way to keep him quiet till all the fuss died down was to stump up. He would put the first £50 in the post tomorrow, thereby purchasing the time he needed to extirpate the eagle now tearing at his liver.

  He lay on the bed with his eyes closed and for the first time in years thought of Dusty Miller, a student he knew as a young man in London. He was working in a pub in Fitzrovia at the time, and the student used to come in at weekends to help in the saloon bar. He and Roarty were the same age. Soon they were the best of friends. They would go to continental films together, and Miller would turn up at Roarty’s bedsit, waving a bottle of cheap wine. They would sit up drinking and talking into the small hours while the student told story after story and Roarty marvelled at such a treasure-trove of human experience in a man so young. Perhaps because he himself, having come straight from the seminary, was still unformed, he soon began to think like the student, sensing the dark ambiguities of a life he had yet to live. And whenever Miller, laughing with devilish glee, reminded him that Dante conceived the idea of Beatrice in a moment of cunnilingus with a slut, he would not know whether to be horrified or overawed by the student’s emancipated intellectual world, so capacious and all-accepting compared with the Jansenist narrowness of his own.