The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  But the bell in the campanile of the Mangia Tower had begun its solemn tolling, and the crowd quieted until the first marcher had entered the piazza. Then, like a wave that broke across the length of the piazza, the roar of the crowd hit the Palazzo Ricasoli and reverberated around the curve of buildings. The balcony seemed to quake under McGarr’s feet. Suddenly, it was very hot.

  Cummings was standing to McGarr’s left and slightly in front of him. His wife was wearing a light blue dress with a wide skirt. In the direct sunlight her black hair was lustrous. In the heat and noise she seemed sublimely tranquil.

  The procession, which preceded the horse race, had entered the piazza now. Mace bearers, trumpeters, grooms, and standard bearers streamed onto the raceway, all dressed in the colorful medieval costumes of each of the seventeen sections of the city. Some contrade offered bands, others jugglers and acrobats, but the standard bearer of each tossed his bright flag into the air, caught it, and twirled it with consummate skill. Finally, an ornate cart drawn by four white oxen rolled into the piazza. It carried the prize that awaited the contrada of the victorious horse—the Pallium, which was a pennant picture of the Virgin: “What’s the cart called again?” McGarr asked his wife.

  The din was nearly palpable now, and she hadn’t heard him.

  He repeated the question in a louder voice.

  Enna Cummings moved toward them to explain.

  “Il Carròccio,” Noreen said.

  “Ah—so you speak Italian, Signora McGarr?” Mrs. Cummings asked.

  “Ma sì,” said Noreen. And, in Italian she added, “Would it be too much to say it’s the most beautiful of the European languages?” After university in Ireland, she had studied in Perugia and Florence.

  “Perhaps. At least any Frenchman would dispute the contention. But how nice—there are so few English who have bothered to learn Italian.”

  Neither Noreen nor McGarr bothered to remind her that they were not English.

  A waiter was offering a tray of iced gin drinks to the guests on the Ricasoli balcony.

  McGarr had stationed McKeon on one corner of the balcony, Liam O’Shaughnessy on the other. At least a dozen carabinieri were clustered around the guests. In the windows above the balcony other carabinieri and the two British SIS agents scanned the crowd with binoculars.

  The horses were led into the piazza and La Mossa, or the procedure which started the Palio, began. The ten horses and their bareback riders were herded between two thick ropes that spanned the raceway. The horses bucked and wheeled, charged into each other, and even tried to jump the barriers. They were large animals, every one of them, but frightened by the hubbub and lathery in the heat. An atmosphere of near frenzy pervaded the square.

  Suddenly, one rope was dropped; the crowd, as one voice, roared; and the horses charged down the raceway, quickly attaining a pace that was too great for the quick turns of the roughly circular course. At the first turn, an advancing horse lost its footing, fell, and, skidding, knocked the two front runners down. Two of the jockeys did not move after they hit the clay. The other jumped to his feet and scrambled over the barricade not a moment too soon, for another horse and rider slammed into the padding right where he had climbed. The three riderless horses regained their feet and followed the other seven around the track. Medical personnel dragged the injured jockeys off the raceway.

  The crowd was wild, the leading contrada supporters cheering and shouting, those from the fallen horses wailing.

  McGarr sipped from the gin drink and scanned the crowd. Overhead, a jet was passing so high up its vapor trail was brilliant in the afternoon sun. McGarr wondered if anybody aboard could possibly know he was passing over this mad vortex of people and horses, this brief, impassioned bareback scramble through one of the world’s most exquisite architectural monuments. How quintessentially Italian it all was—the pomp of the parade, the beauty of the costumes and setting, the race itself with its possibilities for fortune and honor. And then the most important social unit to the Italians, the family, was present as well, for that was what a contrada was, one great extended family stretching backward in time to the foundation of the city as a Roman military outpost, and forward with all the little children whom McGarr had seen marching in their contrada costumes during the parade. How many of those kids would leave this city after participating in this tradition and growing up in these streets? he wondered. Few, if any, and they’d feel like exiles in Milan or Turin or Stuttgart or New York.

  Two laps were gone and only five riders left. The women of the Wave contrada, whose sign was the dolphin, seemed hysterical as they screamed directly below the Ricasoli balcony. Their horse had a long lead.

  McGarr glanced up from them to look at the plane again and saw Foster.

  He was standing on a roof where the piazza began to curve away from the Palazzo Ricasoli. Not one of the carabinieri could have spotted him from there. He was wearing a yellow dashiki and looked like a clashing, pagan icon on the rooftop. Also, he was pointing something.

  McGarr neither had a chance to move nor did he hear anything but the crowd.

  Cummings merely turned to him. It seemed at first that he had a brilliant red sixpence on his forehead. His eyes seemed to be focused on McGarr. They were the lightest blue, like the shade of his wife’s dress. He opened his mouth as though he would say something.

  His legs collapsed.

  The horse from the Wave contrada blundered across the finish line.

  The jet had disappeared in the blinding sun.

  McGarr had to pull hard to make Enna Cummings release her husband.

  But he was dead.

  McGarr stood and looked up at Foster. He was sitting on top of the roof. The rifle was no longer visible. He was grinning down at the spectacle of the Palio below.

  The carabinieri all had their guns out now. They were confused, didn’t know where to look, and probably wouldn’t have shot at Foster if they had because of the crowd.

  McGarr left the balcony, O’Shaughnessy and McKeon following him.

  From under his cassock, Hughie Ward handed them 9-mm Walther automatics.

  McGarr got a sergeant to direct him to the back of the building. As he had surmised, the rear porches nearly connected with those of the neighboring palazzo. They climbed the stone railing and stepped around the divider. Now, several carabinieri and the two SIS men were following them. The last thing McGarr wanted was a gun fight. He had come to Italy because he had believed Foster would follow Cummings. He did not want to be denied the opportunity of talking to him.

  O’Shaughnessy, using a hand brace, boosted McGarr onto the steep roof that semicircular ceramic tiles covered. None of them was secured to the building, but merely layered, leading edge overlapping the next to the peak of the roof. If McGarr fell or slipped or pushed off on them too rapidly, they might all, like an avalanche, cascade down the roof and over the edge. And McGarr had always feared heights of this magnitude. The building was tall. It was at least fifty meters to the cobblestone courtyard below. He could see Foster up there, silhouetted in the sun. McGarr was having trouble holding the gun and easing himself over the tiles.

  The band of the Wave contrada had begun playing now.

  If Foster chose, he could turn and blow McGarr right off the roof before the chief inspector could steady himself, aim, and fire his hand gun.

  But Foster remained in place.

  McGarr was making a racket too. The tiles clattered on each other. They were almost too hot to touch. McGarr was wringing wet and could hear his heart beating in his ears.

  When he got his hand on the pinnacle, he pointed the Walther at Foster and said, “Drop the rifle behind you and remove that yellow thing slowly.”

  Foster complied. The rifle, a collapsible single shot, the stock of which was merely thin steel tubes ending in a narrow butt, skidded down the tiles, where Liam O’Shaughnessy, reaching up, caught it. Foster’s body was massive and slick, covered with a fine film of perspiration. A small-cal
iber automatic was fitted into a shoulder holster.

  “The same with the pistol. Undo the holster and let it drop in back of you.”

  A brief gust of wind lifted the dashiki off the roof, and it floated, tumbling then catching, down into the Palio crowd on the piazza side of the building.

  When Foster had done this, only then did McGarr allow himself to wonder why he hadn’t tried to escape. Only McGarr had seen him. He could have gotten off the roof, down the stairs, and into the crowd. He had timed the attack to coincide with the end of the race when the noise was loudest. With contacts—and McGarr was sure he had powerful ones—he could have slipped away completely.

  “All right—down we go. You first.”

  Foster turned to him. “You have no jurisdiction here, Irish mon.” His accent was decidedly Jamaican. “I will surrender to the Italian police alone.” His forehead was very wide, eyes narrow and a strange yellow color. One front tooth was gold-capped. He was easily twice McGarr’s girth. The ruby in the pinkie ring on his left hand was the size of a marble.

  “The place is lousy with them. See for yourself.”

  Foster turned to look behind him. His neck was a knot of sinew and hard muscle.

  A carabiniere had trained a riot gun on him, the sort that shot a slug that would rip a man in two.

  “In any case, you killed Hitchcock and Browne. We’ll have you back in Ireland soon.”

  The Jamaican only smiled at McGarr and, agile as a cat, scrambled down the tiles before McGarr could even begin to ease himself off the pinnacle of the roof. By the time McGarr had reached the back porch of the building, the carabinieri had whisked Foster away.

  McGarr was wringing wet.

  McKeon was shaking his head. “Jesus—I never thought of looking up there.”

  “You would have broken your neck if you had tried,” said McGarr.

  “But Christ—the poor bugger. Did you get a look at his wife?”

  McGarr wrapped his arm around McKeon’s shoulder. “Let me tell you something, Bernie: I saw Foster, I saw him aim the gun and pull the trigger. It all happened so fast nobody could have stopped him. Foster is a professional. There’s really no way of protecting somebody from a man like that. He wasn’t sitting on the top of that roof. You saw yourself how he managed to scramble down it without dislodging a tile. He waited until the race was at its most interesting stage, then popped up, and squeezed off a round.”

  “Well, how did you see him?”

  “I was day-dreaming. Gin-induced.”

  McGarr led his men back into the Palazzo Ricasoli.

  None of the policemen would talk to each other. They all felt like failures. In particular, the British SIS men didn’t know what to do with themselves.

  McGarr invited them over to the Excelsior for a drink. Both promptly got very drunk. One wrote out his resignation on hotel stationery. McGarr said he’d mail it for him in the morning, then ripped it up.

  He could hardly fall asleep himself, however, wondering about Foster. Twice he called carabinieri headquarters to try to observe their interrogation of Foster, but couldn’t get through to Carlo Falchi, the commandant, an old acquaintance of his.

  Noreen was still shocked and ashen. McGarr could tell she was reassessing the idea of accompanying him on his police business. He wondered if she knew that they had seen Foster earlier in the day and had decided not to tell any of the other police agencies.

  McGarr called Dublin. Dick Delaney had nothing new to report on the helicopter aspect of the investigation.

  A cool breeze was blowing off the hills beyond the city, and McGarr thought for a moment he could smell the vineyards and olive groves and the cypress trees along the roadsides on the hilltops. But mostly, he believed he could smell the red Tuscan earth, a clay soil that the plow blade turned over in thick ribbons.

  SIX

  CARLO FALCHI was wroth. The carabinieri commandant was sitting behind his desk, taking successive quick sips from a large cup of espresso.

  In McGarr’s cup the pungent, black liquid was far too hot for him to drink.

  The aroma of hot caffè nero, into which sugar had been stirred, pervaded the office, as did the delicate odor of hot brioche, a half-dozen of which lay on a caddy to McGarr’s right. He broke one open. Its light brown crust yielded moist dough, butter-rich. McGarr wondered briefly how Sienese pastry compared with Parisian. The latter city prepared more complicated sweets, that much was certain, but the Sienese did some things incomparably well. Their dolces, like this brioche, were sublime. McGarr reached for another.

  “To think of their attitude, that’s what galls me most,” said Falchi. “What do they think we do up here all the time, sleep? Romans!” Falchi had finished his espresso. He set the cup down on his desk with a crack and pressed a button several times.

  McGarr could hear it ringing in an outer office.

  Hours after Cummings’s death, some big shots in the carabinieri, accompanied by the Minister for Justice, had arrived and relieved Falchi of the investigation.

  “They ought to draw an international border at Arezzo and demand passports to be shown so that we can monitor this invasion of cretini from the south.” Falchi could see out into the parking lot of the Duomo. The cathedral was crowded with tourists.

  A large bus began off-loading some sightseers, many of whom were blond. The back of the bus had a white, circular disk on which had been painted the letters D K. Falchi got out of his seat and stared at the young blond girls who were shielding their eyes with their hands to see the facade of the church. A few of them were snapping pictures. All were very pale.

  “Ah—biondine! Not your common Roman bottle blonds, mind you, but real Nordic fair women. Right now, I could leave all my cares with such a woman.” Falchi was a thickset man with gruff good looks. None of his features was regular, but taken together his aspect was pleasing. And he was an inveterate womanizer. When they were both working in Rome for Interpol, he had once told McGarr that he was a big man who had so much love in him that it was his duty to spread it around, that the moment he believed he was stinting his wife of her just share of his love, he would stop his philandering immediately.

  A carabiniere entered the room, picked up Falchi’s empty saucer and cup, and reached for the tray of brioches as though he would remove that too.

  McGarr showed him his palm. “Con vostro permesso, per favore.”

  Falchi spun around. His moustache looked like a straight black bar across his upper lip. The chest of his white summer uniform was a mélange of ribbons and medals. McGarr had heard they were handed out yearly to officers of a certain rank regardless of their performance. “Ah—forget those things. How can you think of eating at a time like this, Peter? Take a walk with me. I’ll buy you a hundred, a thousand brioches.” Falchi grabbed his hat.

  McGarr stood and placed three brioches in his left hand. This was insurance against the histrionic element which he knew to be present in Falchi’s personality.

  Walking across the parking lot to the Duomo, McGarr asked, “Do you think there’s a chance they’ll let me talk to Foster?”

  Falchi shook his head and muttered, “Bastardi!”

  The morning was again too glorious and presaged a sultry afternoon.

  “First turn of the race, the horse of my contrada falls on his ass. Then the ambassador I’m supposed to protect, one meek little man, gets shot in the head in the midst of twenty-five of my best, hand-picked men. So—I make a spectacular arrest”—McGarr nearly choked on the brioche—“get the suspect back to the office, search his room, find certain evidence incriminating another——”

  “Who?” McGarr asked. His mouth was filled with brioche.

  “What?” Falchi looked down at McGarr. “Ugh—I knew you liked those things so I ordered them, but I forgot you’d have to eat them in front of me.”

  Now they were on the steps of the cathedral. Two gypsy children with rings in their ears came running up to them with their hands outstretched.
>
  McGarr caught a glimpse of their father stepping behind a pillar. He had not yet taught them to recognize and avoid certain uniforms.

  “Beat it, you little brats, or I’ll run you in.” Falchi was in a foul mood.

  “Who?” McGarr insisted.

  Falchi stopped. He turned to McGarr. “What—do you want me to make a second fatal blunder in as many days?”

  “How so?”

  Falchi began walking again. They were inside the cathedral. Compared with outside, it was dark and almost cold.

  “I tell you and suddenly the news is all over Europe. And then that Roman riffraff will have me investigating a leak in my own office. No—they’ll probably insist on handling the investigation themselves. At least that way I’ll never be found out.” And then, as though realizing that McGarr was probably tiring of his mood, he asked, “Do you know Enrico Rattei?”

  McGarr nodded.

  “He was arrested last night. Of course, bail was set and he’s out now, but, nevertheless, with his arrest this case takes on the utmost importance. It’s one thing to slay a British ambassador. It’s quite another to arrest a condottiere d’industria of Rattei’s magnitude.”

  They were walking toward the cathedral pulpit, around which the Danish girls were grouped while a Sienese guide struggled to explain the history of Nicola Pisano’s masterpiece to them in English.

  “Foster had a telegram in his possession from Rattei. It said, ‘Luck, B-nine, one, eight, nine, seven, M. P. S.,’ which turned out to be a Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank account somebody—and a teller swears it was Rattei himself; he’s identified him twice—set up for Foster.”

  McGarr stopped. The whole affair—this information, Foster’s not escaping into the Palio crowd, and all the facts McGarr had gathered in the other two murder investigations—seemed too obvious. And if Rattei were being framed, whoever was doing it could afford to waste twenty-five thousand pounds, a handy sum by any yardstick. “Has Foster made a statement yet?”