The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (14 page)

“Clement.” Bresnahan lowered her head to examine the stones of the ring again in the bright light.

Ward kept his eyes on the woman; under the billowy dress she was still rather interesting, in spite of her age.

She tapped in the name, waited a moment, then shook her head. “When do you think we might have had dealings with him?”

“Hard to say, but he’s described as a man in his late seventies.”

“Then maybe my father dealt with him.” She turned to a wooden cabinet that looked like it had been a card catalogue in a library at one time.

“What was your father’s name?” Ward asked.

“Lou. Short for Aloysius. His mother was a gentile. I have a John Ford, a Reginald Ford, and a Maurice T. J. Forde with an
e
on the end. None from Mayo.” Closing the drawer, she yet again stared directly at Ward, a slight smile puckering her dimples. Her eyes were shining.

“Have you ever dealt with anybody from Clare Island? The man is described as tall and broad-shouldered.” Ward blocked them off. “Immense. Six feet six, twenty stone.”

The woman wrapped her arms around her back, and Ward could see that with even a slight attempt at stylishness she could be fetching. Her brow wrinkled, and she smoothed back her silvery hair. “Do you know—I seem to remember somebody, like that, coming into the shop. But it was years ago, back when I was only a girl. But he was an Englishman, as I recall. With a great beard and a big voice. Always laughing. You know, a ‘hearty chap.’”

“That’s just the person,” said Bresnahan.

“And his name was not Ford. It was—”

They waited, while she tried to recall, but after some time she said, “Sorry. I can’t come up with it now, but I will, if I go through the files. We have nothing to hide.” She pointed to her father’s catalogue. “Would you have a card or something, so I can get back to you?” The request was plainly aimed at Ward.

Said Bresnahan, “Say an ordinary customer walked in here with that.” She pointed to the ring. “Wanting to flog it, no questions asked. Would you buy it?”

“Of course. At my price. Or, at least, a fair enough price. Stones like that—” She shook her head.

“How would you go about it?”

“The same way we just did. I’d make inquiries via fax and modem. My service?”

Bresnahan nodded.

“It’s updated daily via the Internet with reports from most of the world’s major police agencies, including the Garda Siochana and the Interpol master list. For something of this worth I’d do what I just did—take some snaps and fax them out. If nothing came up, we could begin…negotiations.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Somebody with something like this? Never in my fourteen years. Somebody with something over, say, fifty thousand pounds? Once a year, or twice, depending on referrals. Usually, after the death of some rich individual.”

“Are you the sole proprietor here?”

“Since the death of my father.”

“Fourteen years ago,” said Ward. There was something definitely familiar about the woman, but he did not know what. “I wonder, is there any way you could begin the search now? Perhaps your father noted down Clare Island or Mayo on the cards in his files.”

The woman glanced at her wristwatch, then scanned the blotter calender on the desk. “Well, today is out. I have to drive to Cavan to value a number of items in an estate. I’ll try to set aside tomorrow or the next day, but it will take some juggling. You’re welcome to look yourselves. You might have some trouble reading my father’s handwriting,
but”—she paused, and her eyes widened—“I could provide you some help. My son can read his grandfather’s script, and he’s a great fan of yours.”

Of whose? Ward was tempted to look behind him. He waited.

“Hasn’t he followed your career in the ring since he was a wee lad? In fact, he’s a boxer himself now. Well, let’s say he’s learning. Do I call him? He’d be crushed, if he didn’t meet you.” She did not give Ward time to reply; turning, she vanished into the dark interior of the shop.

Said Bresnahan, “Well now—even if the investigation is a bust, at least you’ll come away with something.”

Ward waited resignedly, knowing he was about to be slagged.

“Proof positive of the detestable notion that some men have an hypnotic effect over certain women.” But not over herself went unsaid.

Or some women over certain men, thought Ward, shaking his head; it was as though he had lost his identity, the best of what he had known about himself in what now seemed like the distant past, after only two years with Bresnahan. What would any more permanent arrangement be like? he wondered.

The woman was returning. Behind her was a dark boy, tall and well-made for his age which was his early teens.

“Hugh Ward—this is my son, Lou.”

Ward reached his hand to the boy. “My pleasure.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” the boy blurted out. “I never thought I—” He blushed and turned to his mother.

“I told him you might need his help, searching through his grandfather’s cards for…what was it again?” She too seemed to have lost her aplomb.

“I’ll write it all down,” said Bresnahan, taking a pen and notepad from her purse.

“And how do we get in touch with you—at Harcourt Street or the Castle or—”

“I’ll have that here for you too,” Bresnahan grumbled.

“I saw you defeat the Dane,” said the boy, “in the Utrecht games. For the first two rounds I thought you were a goner.”

“I did too,” said Ward, studying the boy. He rather re
minded Ward of himself at that age, with his slim, strong body and olive-toned complexion.

“How did you come back?”

“Luck. Your man got arm-weary thumping me. My head cleared, and by then he was tired.”

Said the mother, “Amn’t I after saying he’d tell you the truth?” And to Ward, “How can you take such punishment year after year and still…well, look the way you do? It’s such a brutal sport, wouldn’t you say, Inspector?”

Not brutal enough by half, thought Bresnahan, barely able to keep her temper in check. A breath of fresh air was in order.

“I’m not liable to continue for much longer.”

“Ah, don’t say that,” said Lou. “But I suppose you’ve your duties with the guards. You’re in charge of the Murder Squad now, aren’t you?”

Ward glanced at Bresnahan, before saying, “Well no. There’s a bit of an impediment in my way. Chief Superintendent McGarr.”

“Oh yes,” said the mother. “McGarr.”

“But, sure, he’s an old man.”

Ward laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that. He could still give you a few brisk rounds.” He turned toward the door. “Where do you work out?”

“At the P.A.C.” The Powerscourt Athletic Club was a new sports facility with every amenity. “And you?”

“The Irishtown Gym,” which was little more than an old industrial facility with a ring, a few weights, and occasionally running water in the showers. “Come round sometime, and I’ll introduce you to the lads. We might even go a few rounds. But you’ll want to be quick about it now, before you’re out of my weight class.”

“Sorry,” said Bresnahan to the mother, “I didn’t catch your name.”

But the woman seemed preoccupied. Her arms were folded at her waist, and her smile was masklike and her eyes ove-rbright, as she watched her son and Ward shaking hands.

“Excuse me. Hello. Your name, please, if you don’t mind. I need it for my report on the ring.”

“Oh, sorry—Leah. Leah…Sigal.”

“And this is also your residence?”

“Yes, we live in the back. I’m pleased to have met you.”

But enthralled to have met Ward, Bresnahan glowered. Taking his hand in both of her own, Leah Sigal looked searchingly into his eyes. “I’ll be in touch.”

Obviously the operative word. Stepping out into the sunlight, Bresnahan moved quickly up the narrow footpath of the traffic-busy street.

“You have a problem?” Ward asked, when he caught her up.

“Me? None. I’m not the one with the problem, it’s you.”

Ward thought he knew what was wrong. “Don’t tell me
you
, of all people, are jealous.”

Bresnahan stopped. “
Of all people?
What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Only that you have people—
men
—eating out of your…black glove, come day go day. And you obviously enjoy it. Look at the way you’ve got yourself up.”

“And which way is that?”

“Why, to be attractive. To men. If you were out in the desert, you could be seen at sixteen miles in that costume.”

“And to women. Women like to see other women—”

“Ah Jesus,” Ward cut her off. “Don’t give me that”—he decided against shite—“guff.”

“And who, may I ask, do you think I’ve been attractive to today?”

“Monck, of Monck and Neary. That’s who.”

“Sure, he’s old enough to be my grandfather.”

“And what about”—Ward waved his hand at the top of the street—“that woman in the shop? Leah Sigal.”

“That woman’s a well-preserved thirty-eight and not a day older. With a little care and that haughty nose and those eyes, she’d look like a younger, thinner, and”—Bresnahan swirled her hands in front of her chest—“more attractive Liz Taylor than Liz Taylor was at that age. And that’s going some.”

Maybe that was who Leah Sigal reminded Ward of. Stepping out into the street and around Bresnahan, Ward took note of the two bright patches on her cheeks. A full-blown Murphy was in the offing, he could tell. But he could not keep himself from muttering, “And the care you take of yourself, now—
who does it make
you
look like? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Like myself, of course, and nobody but. Unless you have some idea of who else. And if you do, I’d like to know who. Now.” She virtually chased him to her car, which was gone. Stolen. Garda shield on the visor, Garda radio, cellular telephone, and all.

“Not to worry—it won’t be hard to find.” Ward pulled a trim cellular phone from a jacket pocket and punched up Auto Theft. “Just think if we’d left the
ring
in the car.”

Bresnahan looked down at it. “Shite on the ring. I’d trade it and you in a heartbeat for my bloody chariot.”

“Chop shop,” said the desk officer. “It’s probably being stripped down as we speak.”

THE TURRET ROOM of the Clare Island lighthouse was like a revelation to Bernie McKeon. When he awoke in the morning, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven, which was surprising of itself.

First came the voices—or, rather, a whole choir of voices singing, wailing, howling—even before he opened his eyes. When he did, he was treated to a panorama of shimmering clouds lit by a new sun; they were hurtling past the window, enveloping the turret in a quicksilver gauze.

Looking out the south-facing window, McKeon only occasionally caught a glimpse of the corrugated green sward with its countless sheep and the high rugged cliffs that plunged straight into the sea. Mirna Gottschalk’s compound of buildings was nowhere to be seen.

Clouds were not something McGarr or he had planned on. How could they have, being two city fellas? McKeon showered and shaved. He even pulled on a fisherman’s-knit jumper that he’d been given for Christmas some years past and now had occasion to wear. Alone, that is, where nobody he knew could see him. Plucking up the Zeiss binoculars, he sat himself down in a large stuffed chair by the window. To wait.

As the day wore on, however, the clouds seemed to grow lighter both in color and weight, and—fascinated—McKeon
watched them rise up and dissolve into the pale blue ether. Just as the sky cleared, Robert Timmermans, the great Belgian bear of a man who ran the place, arrived with a breakfast tray, again offering to help. “Anything you need, just ask. Did you bring any rain gear?”

“Well, a mac, and I have me hat.” McKeon pointed to his felt fedora.

“Useless here. I took the liberty of bringing you an anorak.” Timmermans tossed it on a chair. “I hope it’ll fit. And boots. Did you bring boots?”

McKeon shook his head.

“Try these. We’re about the same size.”

In my bravest dream, thought McKeon. The man was two of him.

“Remember,
anything
!” Timmermans closed the door, and as he moved down the lighthouse stairs, McKeon glanced out the east turret window at the rest of the lighthouse; it had been only partially visible on the night before.

What he saw amazed him. The entire complex of—how many?—a dozen buildings, some large, was perched on the very edge of the cliffs that formed the northwest corner of Clare Island. All had been painted a blistering white with doors and shutters bright blue or red or green so that, in the now brilliant sun, the entire place had a Mediterranean look. McKeon felt as though suddenly he had been transported to another land, different from any he had ever even imagined. He was enthralled.

Looking out the north window, he felt as though he were on the bow of a ship that was sailing the sky toward the mountains of Mayo where peak was stacked upon peak until the mountaintops were lost in the mist. There a new cloud system was marching in off the Atlantic, reinforced by phalanx after phalanx of deep blue waves that were attacking the pale green waters of Clew Bay. Farther to the east, the sun was a brilliant disk of hammered brass.

But it was mainly the silence that impressed McKeon the most. True, there was noise, in fact, an utter blather of wind song and occasionally birdsong. But there were no clamorous sounds, no human sounds, no
Dublin
sounds. McKeon never
until now realized how much he had needed a rest from that hubbub.

A baker’s dozen women now began arriving at the Gottschalk place, only to be sent back by Mirna Gottschalk—it could only be her with her braids, jeans, and moccasins. Through the binoculars he watched her shake her head, then hunch her shoulders, as though to say she did not know when they would work again.

Easing his back into the comfortable chair, McKeon turned the glasses toward the line of clouds that were following what he knew was the Gulf Stream—how many?—fifty, sixty miles offshore since the clouds were so tall and he was perched so high. Watching its slow, steady drift north northeast toward the Shetland Islands and Norway, McKeon asked himself how he could have allowed his life to have progressed this far without such simple and grand pleasure, so simply achieved, as sitting in the window of that turret. Or some other turret, or on some cliff, or some mountaintop or high perch.

It was as though he were participating in one of the major events of nature and was a part of it, rather than continuing to be the pasty dodger who nipped from bus to office to pub to home. And staring out on the silent immensity of the Mayo coast, he began asking himself every eminently relevant question that he had stuffed down for…oh, a good thirty years, is all.

But not without guilt, given what Bernie McKeon—father of eleven children and a man so constant in his habits, both good and bad, that you could set your watch by him—allowed himself the liberty of imagining. He imagined what his life might have been like, living out here on this or some other island on the edge of the continent in the clamorous silence, watching the transit of wind and wave from an aerie such as this.

He supposed it was the human condition—locked in one body, the spirit yearning to soar. But he found the entire experience so seductive that he did not once desire a drink. Even through his lunch that was served with a bottle of wine, and his dinner, when Timmermans arrived with a bottle of malt in one hand and two glasses in the other. Why? He did not
know. But he could scarcely concentrate on the little work that he had been set, and now night was coming on.

He was shocked, therefore, when he suddenly caught sight of a figure about a hundred yards from the Gottschalk house. Snapping up the binoculars, he had trouble finding the person, but with relief he discovered it was she, the Gottschalk woman. But where could she be going now with the day winding down and the gloaming coming on.

With her braids flying to windward, she was wearing a brushed leather jacket with Buffalo Bill fringes and a rucksack was strapped over her shoulders. And she sure could shift, her thin legs and legging moccasins hurrying her along the rough path.

What to do? He could stay where he was, which was his first choice; from his perch he would only lose sight of her when she dipped down behind one of the ridges that rumpled the topography of the island, there at the edge of the cliff. That way, he could continue his blissful stakeout undisturbed. To the east the first few brilliant stars had appeared, and the westering sun had transformed the clouds over the Gulf Stream into a riot of fiery color.

But thirty-plus years of police work could not be squelched by a day of solitary reflection, and McKeon soon found himself on his feet and slipping his arms into Timmermans’s jacket, which fit him like a tent. The boots were only somewhat better. Strapping the binoculars over his neck, he snugged his Heckler & Koch automatic under his belt where he could feel its comforting weight.

The first maxim he had been made to shout in surveillance training with the Irish Army was “Never let a Mark out of your sight! Nor Matthew, Luke, or John!” Mirna Gottschalk, however, was nowhere to be seen.

She had spent the day at sixes and sevens with herself. Her first mistake was to have sent the women, who had come to work, home. She didn’t want it ever to be said (and it would) that, Jew that she was, she had made any of them work so soon after the murder of Kevin O’Grady and the disappearance of the Fords, who had been so good to her.

But had the women been there, she might have been able
to forget about the entire debacle and the packet that Clem had thrust upon her. Finally, she had decided—she didn’t care how much money was in the Clare Island Trust or what “good” she might do with it. So far, the blasted thing had succeeded only in ruining lives and now her own equanimity. She would see for herself if any of what Clem had told her was true. Her son, Karl, would be arriving in the morning for Kevin’s funeral, and she would not burden him with false stories.

An experienced climber—like her father and mother before her—Mirna had thought to pack climbing tools and several long lengths of rope, in case the location of Clem’s purported cave was higher on the cliff face than she thought. She had also brought along a bright electric torch and a down sleeping bag, since she would have to wait a full twelve hours to the next low tide before she could leave. And finally, she included her Polaroid camera. That way, if what Clem claimed was real, she would have proof to show Karl.

It was nearly dark when she reached the dingle near the Fords’ that led down to the ocean. During low tide, for just twenty or thirty minutes, the water ebbed enough to reveal a narrow fringe of beach along the cliffs. Mirna hoped she had timed it right; climbing in wet boots on wet rock could be dangerous, unless she fitted on crampons and spikes, which would take more time.

Now all that was left of the day was a thin blush of mulberry—her artist’s eye told her—tinting the horizon. Yet the phosphorescent wash of the waves, breaking for a good quarter mile past treacherous shallows, rocks, and sudden deep pools, guided Mirna along the cliff bottom. She paused when she believed she had reached the series of upthrust rocks that jutted out of the water, like teeth, and were repeated on the face of the cliffs of Croaghmore.

She even dug out the map from her rucksack to check. Mirna had brought along the entire packet, remembering what the policeman—McGarr—had told her of how Clem and Breege’s cottage had been sacked. She would not give up Clem’s secret just because she’d been careless and not until she saw for herself what it was.

Satisfied that she had reached the spot, Mirna replaced the
map, then trained the beam of the torch on her feet. Fortunately, her climbing shoes were still dry, but the cliff face was dripping wet both from waves and the dampness that was leaching from the mountain after the storms of the days before.

But she was a careful climber who had all night. She would anchor a rope at the mouth of the cave, wherever it was. It would make the descent quick and easy and leave the cliff face unmarred.

With the rucksack again on her shoulders, Mirna started up slowly, having to feel her way. It would have been so much easier, of course, in the daylight. But she wished to honor what Clem had asked of her, and the cliffs hereabouts often had divers off them, fishing boats, and lobstermen tending their traps.

Bernie McKeon did not know what had happened to the woman and could only assume that she had been lost. The only place she could have gone was the cliff face, and surely the pounding sea would have swept her away.

Bucking the wind, which was as fierce as any he had ever felt, McKeon had followed her to the cut in the cliffs near the Ford place, only to see her in the last bit of light that was left at a bend maybe two hundred yards ahead of him. And rounded it, she did. He saw her.

But when he got there himself, not only was he slogging through a foot of wave wash, utter darkness had also descended, and he could scarcely see his hand in front of his face.

Worried now—about her, about getting back himself—McKeon called out, “Hello! Hello there! Miss Gottschalk! Hello!” But the roar of wind and wave, boiling across a long low tide terrace and through cuts and rocks, made his voice sound pitiful in comparison.

Frightened for himself, he turned and waded through the now knee-deep frigid water. He only just made the cut at the Ford place—the binoculars raised above the chest-high water in one hand, his automatic in the other.

Perhaps three hundred feet up the cliff face, Mirna came upon a curious geological structure where, it appeared, a shard of some dense metamorphic rock had become wedged against the cliff face. Taking out her pocket torch, she discovered it was yet another of the “teeth” that were situated both lower on the cliff and out into the water. Behind it she could see a cavity where a wide band of limestone had been eroded, either by some stream or by waves before that part of Croaghmore had been thrust up.

A cave had been created, she could see, but one that was not visible from below because of the metamorphic shard. In fact, there was only a narrow notch through which a person could fit. But the moment Mirna squeezed through and found herself on the other side, she knew it was the cave that Clem had meant.

First, it was wide, high, and deep. When Mirna pointed the halogen torch with a full sixty thousand candlepower and new batteries at the entrance gallery, her beam was stopped dead by the deep, dustless darkness about forty feet away. The cave was dry and still. The floor was covered by fine washed beach sand that undoubtedly had been trapped there for however long it had taken the cave to be lifted from the surface of the sea. Thousands of years, perhaps even millions.

Yet there were footprints. Because of the protecting veil of rock, it was utterly still within the cave, and the footprints in the sand of the last persons to step there were still as complete as the day they were made. And most could only have been made by Clem Ford. Who else had feet that big? Here and there were some others of either a small man or a large woman.

Breege? No—she was a fine-boned woman with narrow feet. And because of her blindness, she undoubtedly would have never been there.

The answer to who it had been was printed on the wall about twenty feet in. What looked like an animal—an elk or a deer stylized in the manner of the ancient Celts—had been chipped into a flat surface. Near it somebody else had written in Irish, in faded reddish-colored paint, “
Gearoidi Vairnh
.” It meant “Gerard’s Cave.” Clare Island, however, had not been a stronghold of the Irish language, and even at the turn
of the present century there had been few Irish speakers, which rather dated the graffiti.

Finally, large white letters announced,

“2 SEPT, 1916
TOUCH NOTHING OR YOU’LL HAVE
PEIG O’MALLEY TO DEAL WITH
UP THE REPUBLIC!”

Tucked into the wall were stacks of empty, wooden rifle crates stenciled “Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass.” Guns from America. Peig must have hidden them here after the ill-fated Easter Rising at the Dublin GPO when the British scoured the country for caches of arms.

Mirna thought she should go on, having come this far. But she was exhausted from all her worrying and the long dark climb. Also, the torch seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, the farther she got away from the mouth of the cave. And finally she came to an aven that plunged sharply to what could only be some other, deeper gallery.