The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (17 page)

After ringing off, he phoned his contact in the Naval Service about the search for the schooner and sportfishing boat.

“Nothing unusual—the Spanish tuna fleet is beginning to assemble in the Stream, three larger sailing craft, no schooners. There’s a Norwegian trawler and two draggers working a bit farther north off Donegal, and a fair few of our own boats plying coastal waters.”

MIRNA GOTTSCHALK WAITED until after dinner to tell her son about Clem Ford’s visit, the packet, and the cave. For good reason.

With the tide coming in, Karl would not be able to thrash off into the night and find the cave. Though an experienced climber, he would at least have to sleep on it, prudence dictating that he wait at least until morning or the evening of the coming day.

Better still, he might be satisfied with the photos Mirna had taken. She showed them to him in the studio. Breege’s portrait was still on the easel.

“It’s a complete cave in every sense with four galleries that I know of and what looks like an aven leading up into the mountain.”

“In addition to the cave entrance, the one you went in?” Karl was intrigued.

“Yes, I could feel a draft there, but my light only carried thirty or forty feet.”

“Meaning there could be a second entrance somewhere up on the mountain?”

“It would seem so, but where? I thought I knew every inch of that mountain.”

Karl nodded, being well acquainted with Croaghmore himself.

“Which brings me to what I discovered inside. Do you know that immense ring that Breege always wears?” Mirna pointed to the painting. “I always thought it couldn’t possibly be real.”

Karl nodded. “Because of its size.”

Standing beside the chair he had taken at the long drawing table, Mirna placed a Polaroid snapshot in front of him. “Here are the pieces that go with it—the earrings, the necklace, the brooch. The central stone in the necklace is the single largest diamond I have ever seen.”

Mirna waited while Karl studied the photograph and the eleven others that she had taken of the…treasure, it could only be. She had shot one Polaroid roll.

“My God, Mother. This stuff is magnificent. How do you know it’s real?” His dark eyes flashed up at her, but he knew it was. “Where could Clem have come by it? Was he a pirate with all his bother about the boats that put into the harbor?”

Mirna glanced at Clem’s packet on the other side of the table; she had not again opened the pouch with the memoir or explanation or apologia or whatever it was, not wishing to learn anything worse about Clem. His reputation was already being destroyed now by Fergal O’Grady and his toadies on the island. Also, Mirna’s head was still filled with the possibilities for doing good. And finally she suspected that Clem, by asking her to wait before reading the memoir, had wanted them to suspend judgment of him until they heard whatever the solicitors at Monck & Neary in Dublin would tell them.

Karl shuffled through the other photos: one British Navy ammunition box after ammunition box filled with heaps of gold jewelry encrusted mostly with diamonds, but with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and tourmalines looking like bright ribbons of golden Christmas candy. There was also a variety of metal-working equipment: cylinders of gas, torches, crucibles, ladles, and molds for creating ingots that were still lined with gold droplets and gold dust.

“What are those things heaped in that corner?” Karl asked, pointing to a pile of strange cone-shaped objects with propellers.

“I have no idea. There are ten of them, but I was so overcome by everything else, I didn’t pay them much mind.”

“And Clem said this was the
lesser
part? What you could
do
with this! I mean, in a positive way.”

Mirna squeezed Karl’s shoulder, who was surely her son right down to the way he thought.

His eyes darted at the packet on the other side of the table. “Is that Clem’s? Is that what he gave you? What’s in it?” His hand darted out. Mirna tried to stop him, but the flap of the packet popped open and the contents spilled onto the table. They both stared down at the two pieces of paper and the pouch with the red wax seal that was broken.

“I think we should respect what Clem asked of us.”

Karl glanced at the two sheets with the names and the map, then picked up the pouch. “But, look—it’s been opened. Did you open it?”

Mirna nodded. “After I heard what had happened at the Fords’, I thought I should know more about it. But I didn’t read much.”

“Oh please, Mother. I
know
you.”

“Well I didn’t, I read only a page.”

“And you
stopped
? Why?”

“Because I decided it was wrong. As I said, I decided that we should honor what Clem asked of me.”

“That wasn’t the reason.”

Mirna sighed and looked away. She supposed that, in her heart of hearts, she had been thinking that here lay a glorious future for Karl. Without taking so much as a
sou
from the cave or the Trust, he would wield power and influence in matters architectural, social, educational, and moral even.

Life was short; Mirna had blinked, and here she was a middle-aged woman with a small business on a small island in a small country on the edge of Europe. In her youth, she had wanted so much else for herself—fame in the arts, notoriety, the haut monde of talent and achievement in some place like London or Paris—but now what she had was about as much as she could expect. In that way.

“But since you did open it, where’s the harm?” Karl’s finger slid under the flap, but he waited for Mirna’s permission.

“No—if we can agree that Clem knew what he was doing all these years, then we should follow his instructions to the letter.”

“But that’s a specious argument. He obviously didn’t know everything that he should, since the whole thing came acropper when he was elderly and least able to defend himself. It ended in disaster. A debacle.

“Also, from what you’ve told me and how Clem acted about the boats and all, I should think it had something to do with the origin of all this stuff.”

As did Mirna; it was the reason she had not read on, the reason she had closed the pouch up. She was just not being brave, and suddenly she remembered what the policeman had said to her about whoever it was—Angus Rehm—coming back on her.
He
had obviously killed Kevin and done whatever he had to three other Clare Islanders whom she had known all of her life.

Mirna sighed; she was about to violate a trust. It did not come easy, but at the same time she had Karl and herself to think of. “I think it’s wrong, considering what Clem asked of me—”

“But what he asked of you might well have been wrong in itself,” Karl quickly interjected. “Think, for a moment, what happened to them. Also, Clem told you they were coming for this, which we can well imagine.

“Shall I?” With his other hand, Karl reached for the flap.

Mirna hated herself, but she nodded. “Perhaps we should.”

For about an hour they read. Rapt. Engaged. Shocked. And ultimately dismayed. After Karl folded the yellowed papers and slipped them back into the pouch, he sat back in his chair.

Several long minutes elapsed before Mirna said, “This isn’t the Clem Ford I’ve known all my life. It can’t be. It’s like he was two different people, and the other one—” she shook her head. There was another pause. “Well, what do we do now?”

Karl sighed. “Certainly we can’t go to the authorities, given the state of leadership in Dublin.”

“Or even go public,” Mirna put in.

“Who knows how much of it would disappear.”

“Into the wrong pockets.” Mirna did not wish to sound
like Fergal O’Grady, but a good bit would surely be lost to “the State.” And doubtless there would be other “States” before any individuals were even considered. What with the courts and lawyers and judges, who would steal their share legally, Mirna could imagine the entire fortune—the Trust included—being wrapped up in litigation for years. And dissipated. Ireland’s legal system was as notorious as her lawyers were clever at “making a good thing last.”

“Tell you what—tomorrow night on the low tide I’ll go out to the cave and retrieve the other parts of Breege’s parure. In Dublin I’ll try to determine its provenance and value. I’ll also visit Monck and Neary, utter Clem’s passwords, and see what they say.

“In the meantime, I’ll make a copy of this to take back to Dublin and see if I can learn anything more about this Angus Rehm. Then we’ll put all of it”—Karl indicated the two sheets as well as the time-yellowed memoir—“back into the packet and back under the keystone in the hearth where none of the
seoinini
,” he said with a smile meant to calm her, “will think to look. And we’ll pretend we never opened the blasted box.”

Which scarcely contained hope at the bottom, thought Mirna. To her way of thinking, what she could now see in the pictures that were scattered on the table was no longer a cave of riches. It had become a cave of corruption, a contamination that Clem Ford had tried to bury and purge by establishing the Trust. But Clem had failed. And all these years later it had surfaced, more malignant still for the wait in a defenseless place like Clare Island.

WITH A CRASH and a curse Colm Canning arrived at the public dock in Killala harbor. It was a few minutes past 4:00 in the morning, and the sky to the east was just growing light.

Sixteen hours it had been since the phone call from Packy and Clem. Canning’s boat—bought with a generous stipend and a no-interest loan from the Clare Island Trust—made an easy twelve knots cruising. Granted he had had to feint into Roonagh Point, then motor due west round the island before heading north. But still the ninety-mile journey could have been covered in half the time, especially in an emergency, as Canning had known all along it was. And here he was hours late.

Clem Ford—Canning could see from the size of his silhouette—snagged a scupper with a boat hook and pulled him back toward the dock. But Canning, trembling totally now that the boat had made the dock and he no longer had to force himself to stay awake, let his body slump down the companionway. In the fo’c’sle, he collapsed into a berth.

Already he could hear Packy roaring. “Where’s that cunt! He skite off, or he below?”

“Easy now, Packy. There’s nothing to be done about it now,” Ford counseled.

“You don’t think so? I’ll moor-door the scut! I’ll have his
guts for garters. He’s fecking dog’s piss, he is. Dog’s piss! What neck! I’ll put the bastard on the flat of his back, I will.”

Unless he was already there, the last of the new jar of
potín
that Canning had finished a half hour earlier made him think. Without it he would now be terrified; and without it he wouldn’t be in such a spot. But Canning could not imagine himself without it. If only he could get more.

And there Packy was, filling the hatch—short, broad, almost comically square and compact which, of course, only reinforced the sublimity of his name. But enormously powerful, even now as an old man.

“You hoor!” The boat rocked, as he forced himself down through the narrow companionway. “D’ye’ not know what happened to Kevin and Breege? Did we not make it clear? Where the
fuck
have ye’ been?”

Canning had never heard Packy utter an actual—as opposed to a euphemistic—curse, and the emphasis was not lost on him. Along with the thought, why answer? He’s going to beat me anyway, like the cop did in Packy’s house. But the difference is, this time I want it.
What?
another part of him asked.

Too late.

“Oh, aye—I see what it is.” By the craw Canning was plucked from the berth and shoved so high into the low cabin top that Packy could barely swing the stump of his mangled hand. But the arc was enough. Slaps, they were, back and forth, snapping Canning’s head from side to side.

“Ye’ bloody deceivin’ bastard. How many times have I told ye’—drink will be your ruination!”

And he didn’t know the half of the deception, thought Canning.

“Ye’re a drunk, yeh fuck. First, last, and always, it’s yehrself ye’ think of, and yehr gullet. And not like some—you got your chance. You had university, all expenses paid.”

My first mistake, thought Canning. No, not a bit of it—it was Clem Ford’s mistake, just because I could pass the exams. Him and his meddling Trust. Was I ever
asked
did I want to go? No. I did the subjects and passed the tests, the money was there so the parents said go. And I did, only to
end up back on the island but unsuited to it because of…expectations.

“But you failed that.”

Writers don’t need degrees; in fact, degrees had hurt the ones Canning knew of—himself included—just going for it!

“Then you dragged the wife out here where you no longer belonged, and you failed her and the kids and the fishin’, and now this. If we’ve missed those bastards because of you”—like a blow from a short flat bat, Packy knocked him clear across the cabin into the other berth—“I’ll feed you to the seals, piece by piece.”

Which was when Clem Ford intervened. “Packy—check the tanks. We should cast off immediately.” Pronounced imeejitly. The British prick.

“As a favor to me, please.”

Having bought him too, thought Canning, who was not angry with Packy. He’d only given him what he deserved; and more, if they knew the whole of it. Drunk, staggering,
hallucinating
even while still on Clare Island, he had loosened his gob to Fergal O’Grady. The
senachie
almost seemed to have been waiting for Colm there by the bog where Packy kept the guns. As Canning had told all to O’Grady, wraiths of people he had known or partially known in his life had flitted around them, shaking their heads, condemning Canning while the words spilled out.

Trembling more totally now, Canning tried to wipe away the blood that was tracking through his beard, but his hand flitted past his face. With a handkerchief Ford reached toward him, but Canning ripped it away. “I’ll do it myself
imeejitly
.” It was a poor jibe, but that was the
potín
again—you had no thoughts but
potín
thoughts and no thoughts that the
potín
would not say.

Only then did Canning notice Ford’s right arm in a sling.

“Have you been into the
potín
again, Colm?” Ford’s voice was deep and the tone friendly, fatherly even, as he looked down on Canning with his hoary beard and white mane. He was a gigantic man, easily two of Canning. “Is that what happened to the wife and children? Were you drinking
potín
?”

Canning had begun to shake again, and he couldn’t answer.
Now that he no longer had to deal with the boat, the soul sickness—as he thought of it—had also come on. A world-darkening gloom that made him think, if he had the strength or the means, he’d kill himself there and then. It was the same self-loathing that seemed to feed upon itself, making him say and do things that caused him to hate himself all the more. Like blabbing to O’Grady. Christ—he might just as well have rung up the cop.

“Do you think you have a drink problem?”

Canning might have laughed, did he not feel like he was wearing every nerve in his body on the outside of his skin. Even the top of his head was burning. But the worst thing was the feeling in the pit of his stomach, the hollowness, knowing he was lost. His life was over at thirty-one. “Of course I have a drink problem,” he managed to say. “I don’t have any.” It was supposed to be a joke.

Ford did not laugh. Instead he moved aft to his kit bag and produced a large bottle. And it was not just any bottle but a bottle of fourteen-year-old Jameson Red Breast. Like a feckin’ miracle, thought Canning.

“I.R.A. anesthetic,” Ford explained. “The ‘doctor’ who tended my arm said it was the only prescription he could write that I could get filled.” Ford also produced a cup from the top of a thermos. “I could never drink whiskey straight, what about you?”

Canning could not reply. He was seeing something like birds or bats or bears moving through the periphery of his vision now that his eyes were fixed on the bottle.

“What’s the humorous line about Red Breast?” Ford asked, nearly filling the cup. “Drink too much, it’ll give you an inflammation of the chest.”

No, it’ll give you feckin’ brucellosis, Canning’s brain was screaming. Brucellosis was the punch line, you British prick. Fifty years here and he couldn’t even get that right.

“Water?”

Canning wrenched the red plastic cup out of the man’s one good hand, slopping most of it onto the berth. The whiskey stung the gash in his mouth where Packy had hit him and scorched down into his empty stomach. But—and here was the sad part, Canning thought—in mere seconds it also
soothed him more completely than Mother’s milk.

“Well—that’s for now.” Ford topped it up again. “Just to get you settled. You should sleep, if you can. After this thing is over, please God, I’ll help you get your wife and children back.” Placing the bottle on the floorboards between his feet, he tamped down the cork with his good hand. “I say this not because I just lost Breege, but because I’d like you to go on as you were—how Breege and I knew you when you first came back to the island full of hope and promise. And not how you now are. Maybe you could even get back to the writing?”

“How?”

“Well—first we’ll get you well. Then we’ll get you over to—where is it again, California? There you’ll have to deal with the decision of what’s best for the lot of you, remaining there or coming back here. But you’ll be able to decide that all the better without this.” He pointed to the bottle.

It sounded wonderful to Canning, in fact, too wonderful. He knew himself and knew it would never happen. Following his wife out to California would be just another admission of failure made all the worse by having to do it sober, repentent, and admitting he had “the failing.” The
disease
of alcoholism—Canning had read the pamphlets. And alcohol was so cheap in America; he had summered there once with some American cousins, disastrously as it had turned out.

With the bottle in his hand Ford shuffled toward the companionway, having to stoop nearly in two before mounting the ladder. “I’ll keep this up by the wheel. You did us the favor of coming to pick us up. We’ll do that back for you. But sleep, now that you have the chance.”

“Stuff California up your gansey!” Canning bawled, the malt now surging through him. “Money! I need
money
, like you promised. And whiskey! I know you have more than one!”

Packy’s puffy, windburned face appeared in the companionway. “One more squeak out of you, and I’ll toss your sorry arse over the rail. And that’s a promise.”

He knew Packy was serious, but Canning felt almost joyful that he was suddenly drunk. And out came “Ah, feck off, yeh big cheesy bollocks. See this?” From under his rain
slicker, he pulled out a large-caliber automatic, just like the two others that he had brought along with the Armalite assault rifles. “Yeh come down here again, I’ll put a bullet through yehr big pink puss.” And he would too; it was all he could do to keep himself from pulling the trigger right then.

But the gun drooped from Canning’s hand and fell onto his stomach, as his eyes closed.