The Death of an Irish Tradition (22 page)

The first one, the owner, had fallen and he scrambled up and tried to flee down the dark hallway, but the doors were locked.

In that same great calm Frayne watched him for a while, as he clawed at the doors, then fished in his pocket for a ring of keys that he dropped at his feet, looking with horror over his shoulder at Frayne. Then he left off and turned around, his hand moving inside the cardigan. But he stopped. “Ah, Jack-boy,” he whined. “Ah, Jack—”

The slug seemed to take off the front of his head, like it was charged and exploded, and the door into which he was driven cracked.

Frayne moved down the stairs slowly, keeping the butt of the weapon in the crotch of his arm, grasping the long housing of the magazine in the other hand.

And everything seemed more real to him—the sunlight flooding through the begrimed stairway windows, stuck shut with grease and dirt; the stench of the latrines at the end of each hallway; voices from the other rooms, the sweet-sour reek of bacon and eggs and tea that wafted up from the dining room.

Frayne lowered the weapon as he turned the corner of the landing to the street floor, keeping it against the wall and his body.

Two men came out of the dining room, farmers by the look of their windburned faces, trying to save a few quid in a kip before the Horse Show, no doubt. Frayne hated that sort of niggardliness. They probably owned half a county between them. One of them glanced up at Frayne and nodded.

Frayne smiled.

“See your man about?” the farmer asked.

Frayne stopped and put his body between the man and the gun. What was two more? he thought, but he had to use the phone before he left. He hated those little kiosks; they were traps, and he wasn’t going to get caught in one.

“He stepped out to change a note for me. Maybe you can catch him. The bank’s just up the street.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The two men went out, and Frayne waited for the door to close on the sunlight again before he moved down the stairs, across the hall, and into the bar.

The barman was alone there and, looking up, he was surprised to see him. And frightened, there was that too.

Keeping him in sight, Frayne closed and locked the door.

The man was tall and thin with craggy features and gray hair cropped short along the sides, the rest of it a bushy spray.

Frayne didn’t raise the gun, only said, “Both hands on the bar and keep them there.”

The man complied, and his eyes watched Frayne move by and pull the phone onto the bar.

Frayne folded the struts of the gun butt back over the silencer and the barrel and laid it on the bar pointing at the man, his hand still on it.

With the other hand he dialed the number. When it answered, he listened for the sound of the voice. Satisfied, he said, “I’m here. I want the money.”

He heard a laugh that was deep and wet and winning. “Relax, Jack. I’ve got it, boy, and it’ll be in your pocket before the day’s out, just like we agreed.”

Then the voice dwindled to a near whisper. “Listen, Jack—they’re at each others’ throats, they are, and I’m only after leaving the Show Ground myself. The place is swarming with police.”

Frayne liked that even less. He’d dealt with finks before, and the bastard was trying to pull out on him. And after what had happened upstairs Frayne would need all the help he could get and money—more than he’d been promised by far—and a way out of the country. “Then you don’t want the horse either?”

The barman’s body was trembling now. He wasn’t looking at Frayne but out across the tables to the two windows that long, yellow shades covered. The sunlight made them brilliant. And Frayne could hear something like water dripping.

“Ah, Jack—she’s weak, so it’s said. We’ve done enough.”

“
We’ve
done enough?” Frayne roared into the phone. “You don’t know the half of what
we’ve
done.”

The barman was whining now, shaking all over. Frayne looked at the man’s trousers, which he could see down the length of the bar. They were sodden. The coward had pissed in them. Frayne had no use for cowards, not here, not anywhere.

“Listen to me now and listen good,” Frayne went on, not taking his eyes off the barman. “You set this thing up and it’s not done, not by half. You’ll be reading about what
we’ve
been up to while you’ve been out at the feckin’ Show Ground and all, and now I want double, cash, small notes, and a way out of the country or you’ll find yourself among what
we
can do.

“Do you get me?”

The man on the other end smiled. Frayne was predictable and thus controllable. He’d be stopped, of course, and that would be all to the good. “It can be arranged.”

“Double.”

“That too.”

Frayne didn’t care for the way he had agreed so quickly.

“I might be needing you again, you see.”

Nor that either, but he said, “Then be there with everything.”

“But it’ll take—”

“No buts, just be there.” Frayne dropped the receiver into the yoke.

The man on the other end paused before hanging up. Even so, he thought, perhaps it would be wise to take precautions, in case of contingencies. Only Frayne and one other could tie him to the whole bloody mess, and Frayne was too close, too available.

But it was nice the way he was playing Frayne. Dicey, to be sure, but with a certain control. It was that which he enjoyed most.

Back in the kip Frayne turned to the barman, who was wilting, head down, body shaking, tears streaming from his eyes, only his hands on the bar keeping him from falling.

Frayne walked by him toward the door. “You dirty, filthy, cowardly man, you. You probably cacked in your britches as well,” he muttered.

At the door he shouted to the man, “Did you?”

The man broke down, nodding his head, and something spluttered from his nose.

From the other end of the bar Frayne gave him a burst, all up and down his back, aiming at the pants. The man fell softly, crumpling down into his own filth.

Frayne waited to hear if the shots would bring some others. He then placed the Skorpion in the sling under the jacket, put on the sunglasses and cloth cap, and stepped out of the bar, locking the door behind him.

Out in the street he dropped the key in the gutter and began walking toward the library.

Watching the girl step down the stairs of the funeral parlor, Ward wondered how much love had to do with loneliness, the wanting to have a personal, an inviolable touch with another person and the…life force—children, family, a generational perspective, back and forward in time, one that helped you understand the process of birth, growth, aging, and death.

And he wondered how much it had to do with feeling a certain lack in oneself that the other person could and would fill. Take the way she moved—easily, fluidly—or the way she had been when she’d played for him, carried away, or her talent itself, the…artiness in her approach to the world that was so different from his own. She was everything that he was not, but there was a trap in that too—she’d be a concert pianist, traveling here and there, and he’d be a cop for the rest of his life, that much he knew was certain. And if she gave in, she’d be unhappy. And if he allowed his feelings to carry him away, he’d be unhappy.

But perhaps it was just the impossibility of the situation that made him watch her legs all the more closely, the narrowness of her waist in a pleated, flower-print dress that swayed with each step, her smile from under the flounced hat—full, holding nothing back. She swung the pocketbook like a little girl.

Ward forced himself to look away. Christ—.

He stepped out of the car, buttoning his jacket.

“You make me feel better already,” she said, lifting her head so the brim wouldn’t get in the way as she kissed him, full on the lips, their teeth colliding. Her cheeks were cold.

“It must be difficult.”

They were on St. Stephen’s Green, and she took his arm. They began walking under the shade of the tall trees that grew over the sidewalk and shadowed most of the street. And they had company, tourists mostly, who stared, seeing in them—Ward imagined—a young, handsome Ireland far different from the worn Georgian row houses, most now converted to offices, around the Green.

And she had pulled him close, her breast against his arm, their legs together, stepping down the patterned blocks of the sidewalk into the park.

“Not really. The coffin is closed because of the—” she looked away, squinting because of the patch of bright sun they had walked through, “—post mortem. But I’m not sure I’d want to see her again as she was in that chair or in some funeral director’s idea of high fashion.

“I know it’s callous of me, Hugh, but once you’re dead you’re just so much flesh and bone and it’s barbaric to have people linger over you.

“The old people had the right idea—to put the person away by sundown of the next day. But the waking, the sitting up the night long with the…cadaver, and the relatives who hadn’t given a tinker’s damn for you when you were alive, coming hither and yon to thank their lucky stars you went before them, it’s…savage, uncivilized.”

Ward had the urge to slip his hand around her waist, but he kept himself from it. Yes—he could love her, and—dammit—he probably already did.

“Can you imagine…” With one hand she reached up and slipped out the pin, removing her hat. She tossed her head, and the fine black hair struck the side of Ward’s face.

He was staring down at the rolled clay of the park path, ostensibly concentrating on what she was saying, but really watching her narrow legs and ankles and her feet, which were long but remarkably narrow inside Prussian-blue shoes with low heels.

“…a man called the funeral director purporting to be my Aunt Grainne’s husband. He said that as the nearest relative his wife wanted the body sent to Galway, where the funeral and burial would be arranged.”

And there was a certain way she put down those feet, the oval of white flesh at the top of the shoes flicking out, turning slightly and seeming to pause before she set them down. Softly. Ward wondered if she ever wore out a shoe.

And for her part, she enjoyed his quiet confidence. He was intelligent without being a bore, young without all the inane problems and aspirations of the others she knew, like Sean, and he was quite handsome. And last night she had gotten the feeling that he knew something about women and had had experiences with them, and that alone, in Ireland, was to be prized. But it was rather disturbing too, and she wondered who they had been and what he really thought about her, in comparison.

“I had thought that Aunt Grainne was—” she glanced at him; should she tell him? “—insane…”

He didn’t look up; he had known.

“…and not really marriable. At least Mammy always told me she was a ‘lost soul.’” She turned to Ward and smiled, seeing only the dark curls on his temple. “In Mammy’s inimitable way, best left forgotten, that whenever she saw any of the family it only made things worse for her. And now she turns up with a husband.”

Again she looked straight ahead. “What do you know about this, Inspector? And how is it coming along, the investigation and so forth?”

Ward smiled. “It’s progressing. Of course, I’m—” he hefted her arm, “—handling the most interesting aspects.”

“If indeed ‘handling’ you are.” She pretended to tug her arm away. “But continue.”

He glanced down at her legs again, pulling her close to him.

It wasn’t his place, as a detective, to reveal any information, and from what McGarr had said about his interview with Bechel-Gore, the girl was ignorant of her origins. “It’s known to us, of course, that you have an Aunt Grainne, but, as I said, you’re my area of responsibility. I’m to concentrate on you.”

He flashed a smile that she knew was self-consciously shy. His teeth were even, spaced rather far apart, and seemed very white against his dark skin. “How did the father respond to the—was it a demand?”

“Concentrating, are you?” She had noticed how he had been staring at her legs. Over Sean—who in many little ways, such as that, had made no pretense of his affection for her—she had felt a certain power, but with Ward it was different. He gave her the feeling that he was always in control, and she liked that. Control—something she herself could use a little of, now and then. “He told the man that I was Mammy’s closest relative and a legal adult and arrangements had been made to my wishes.

“They had a bit of an argument, it seems, and the man said he was going to take the matter to the courts, or so I gathered.”

“What did Father Menahan say?”

And her not being certain how much of his attention was because of her or his duty made Ward even more appealing to her. If he was making a pretense of his affection, he was very good at it; if not, she was flattered and could admire him all the more. For his reserve. “That he doubted it.”

“Doubted what?”

“That the matter would or could go to court.”

“The father’s very good for you.”

She wondered what that intended. Father John had been acting rather differently since—. Eager or something. “Yes. Our families have always been very close.”

“And what did he say about your aunt?”

“That he didn’t believe she could have a husband.”

“Then who could the man have been?”

“I don’t know.” It was that which had troubled Mairead most, but she put it out of her mind.

There was a man selling ice cream from an HB cart near the fountain, and Ward stopped. “Your favorite is chocolate on chocolate,” he said, remembering McGarr’s report of the contents of the fridge in her flat.

“How did you guess?”

“I’m a detective, amn’t I?”

McGarr felt a swell of pride in what he was seeing—the long reception room, all glass with a deep pile carpet, the low marble-top tables and designer lamps, the bustle below them in the work yard that stretched down to the quays where winches were lifting stacks of Norwegian and Finnish timber from the holds of two ships onto tall, fork-lift trucks that then scuttled the booty into warehouses—that the Michael Edward Murray he had known as a child, a friendless, disheveled kid and very poor, could have put the complex together, employing—what?—hundreds of people and providing the country with the building materials that were necessary to carry it into the twenty-first century.