The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (23 page)

“How?” Rehm asked.

Dugald smiled. “Leave that to me. I’ll find you.”

“Do I see lights moving in the drive,” asked McGarr, speaking into his radio. Having to pick his way through the boggy headland in the dark, he had gained only a half mile. But he could now hear the cataract above the Ford cottage, somewhere off to his left. And he could still see the Gottschalk place about a mile away, whenever the clouds or fog or mist lifted.

“It’s the woman, Mirna. She’s pulled the van round to the front door, I think. I can’t see her because of the house.”

“Is she alone?”

“I couldn’t tell. Uh, there it goes again.” The car now moved away from the house but at a creep. McKeon switched off the infrared, but it was no better. He switched it back on, as the car topped a short rise.

And then he thought he saw some other movement near the house. Swinging the glasses back, he surveyed the entire cliff edge as far as the Ford cottage, only to decide it had probably been more vapor scudding by. Both boats were still
in place, although only the fishing boat off by Croaghmore was showing a light.

When he brought the glasses to bear on the drive again, he watched the van proceeding at the same snail’s pace until it moved down into a small ravine that had been cut through ledge rock. “Do you see it, Peter?”

“Only the glow from its lights. The soup here is thick.”

“Why is it moving so slowly? Could she be hurt? Or could it be a feint?”

Or a trap, thought McGarr. “How long did they have it there by the house out of our sight?”

“Two minutes, three tops.”

Plenty of time for an experienced bomber to rig a previously prepared device to a door. “How far until it reaches Ruthie’s position?”

“I can see it now, Chief,” Bresnahan replied, “coming straight at me about a quarter mile off. It looks like she’s stopped or is driving slowly. The road is poor here, and with the fog—”

“Mind yourself. If she’s alone, make her stop and tell you what gives.”

Standing in the middle of the boreen, Bresnahan scissored both hands in front of her, as she had been taught in traffic control when she had first joined the Guards ten years ago. If Mirna Gottschalk were not alone, she would ask her for a lift to the harbor.

But the van, still proceeding at a crawl, did not stop. Jumping from its path, she tried to peer past the glare of the lights through the windshield. As the driver’s side window approached her, Bresnahan’s right hand moved to her hip, closer to the 9 mm Glock that was concealed under her jacket in a holster at the small of her back.

But there was nobody in the car that she could see. Pulling out a pocket torch, she shined the beam directly down at the wheel that had been lashed in place by a web of shock cord. As the van jounced along the rutted road, the steering wheel could move, but the elasticity of the cord kept the car tracking along the ruts in the road.

“It’s a feint. There’s nobody in it, and the wheel’s tied
down,” Bresnahan said into her radio, as she watched the van roll away.

“Bernie, I’m going in,” said McGarr.

“I’ll join you.”

“No, you stay there. I’ll need eyes.”

There was a pause, and then, “Maybe you won’t. I think they’re already gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Gone on the dive boat. I don’t know how it happened, but one moment it was there, and now it’s gone. I think. There’s clouds.” A paused ensued, and then, “Yes, it’s gone. They didn’t even bother to take the rubber raft aboard. I can see it floating off toward Achill.”

“Can you see lights?”

“No, they must be running blind. The only light I can see is on the fishing boat, the one that’s anchored off the Great Cliff.”

“Bernie, ring up the Naval Service and see if they can track it. I’ll make sure the house is empty.”

It was the harsh squawk of the VHF radio, carried on the wind across the bog to the very edge of the cliff, that alerted Dugald Rehm to McGarr’s presence.

Squatting down and pulling Karl Gottschalk with him, Dugald waited until he heard the noise again and located the probable position. “You follow me and do what I do. And remember your mother.”

CLEM FORD WAS at a loss what to do. Anchored in Colm Canning’s fishing boat a good two hundred yards off the Great Cliff of Croaghmore, he could make out two figures climbing the cliff face toward the cave, now as day broke.

His first thought was that Mirna and Karl had decided to view the cave together. But as the day wore on, he could see that the climbers were both men, who were knowledgeable and quick, wasting little effort as they scaled the sheer face of the headland. Could they have come off the boat that he heard start up and leave without showing any lights about an hour earlier? Could they be the Rehms? Not unless they had added to their number, since Ford was certain Angus Rehm could not negotiate the cliff at such speed.

Keeping himself in the cabin where he would not be seen, Ford pulled the binoculars from the clip by the wheel. With only one good arm, he had to struggle to focus in the pitching boat. As well, his old eyes were hard put to the task. But in the few glimpses he got of the two, he suspected the second climber was Karl, with his square shoulders and long thin legs. In fact, having taught more than a few generations of young Clare Islanders how to climb, Ford recognized some of the lower man’s moves as his own.

They were free-climbing with the exception of a single
chock or camming device that the lead climber had inserted in the last difficult rock passage just below the cave. That proved he had never climbed before with Karl, who could negotiate the hazard easily. But who could he be, with Karl climbing willingly behind him? Could he be the surviving Rehm son, tricking Karl into showing him the cave through some subterfuge? What was his name again? Dugald, he had heard Angus call him.

Ford kept trying to get a clear look at the man, whom he believed he would know anywhere now after the debacle at the cottage. But whereas the blocky, powerful shape resembled Dugald Rehm’s, the man was wearing a blue or purple climbing helmet and, of course, he kept his face to the cliff.

In any case, there was nothing Ford could do. The one hope was that Packy, who was now up in the cave, could keep rein on Colm Canning. Because of Packy’s bad hand, it had taken them most of the night to reach the entrance, and Canning had agreed to go along, only after being promised a bottle on top.

Ford despaired. How could two old men and one a drunk manage to confront the Rehms, who had obviously planned their attack to a fare-thee-well. He glanced at the Armalite rifle by his feet. But how could he aim and fire a weapon with any degree of accuracy when he could barely heft binoculars? All in a bobbing boat.

“
Breege!
” Ford moaned, his eyes again sweeping the dark cliffs, the flitting clouds, and the two figures who were nearing the entrance to the cave. “
Ah, Breege!
” That their life together was over and he had made such a cock-up of things was too much to bear.

Dugald Rehm smelled the stench of whiskey just as he was about to squeeze himself into the cave. On the still air, the reek was heavy, sweet and close.

Wondering who it might be—some errant O’Malleys who had blundered across the entrance to the cave and were now toasting their luck? Or perhaps Clem Ford and some friends—Dugald glanced down at Karl Gottschalk. He was some twenty feet below and still climbing the cliff. Dugald’s eyes
then swung to the boat that was anchored a few hundred yards offshore.

He had seen it there the evening before with two men in a dory working nets or pots close in to the cliffs. Now the dory was back on the boat, meaning that they had returned there. But Dugald could see nobody on deck or in the cabin, the windscreen of which had swung away now as the tide was turning.

Perhaps they had gone away with some other fisherman on some other boat. Or they could be below sleeping, waiting for the tide to carry the fish back in. In any case, whatever threat they posed was distant by several hundred yards of sea and sea cliff.

Not so Karl Gottschalk, now that Dugald suspected there was somebody in the cave. The young man was only fifteen or so feet below him, and, anyway, he had served his purpose, bringing him here. And climbing accidents were conveniently inexplicable for those who free-climbed alone.

Having secured the end of the rope to a rock horn, Dugald waited for Gottschalk to attach a carabiner and load his weight onto the tether. It was then Dugald jerked the rope up with all his strength and freed the camming device from the crack. Gottschalk plunged—not silently as Dugald would have wished—but, rather, screaming all the way down until his cries were drowned in the roiling sea three hundred feet below.

Dugald quickly climbed up onto the face of the large rock that shielded the cave entrance; that way anybody stepping out to look down would not see him. The sound had been unmistakably human and was bound to bring whoever was in there.

Now a head appeared in the cleft below Dugald. The man looked out. He was large and strongly built by the size of his shoulders, with curly hair streaked blond and a full beard that beat in the breeze. It was from him that the smell was coming. There was a bottle in his right hand.

Swinging his twenty-two-ounce ice ax on its thirty-two-inch aluminum shaft, Dugald plunged the sharp, wedged claw into the center of the man’s forehead. Holding him there erect, Dugald snatched the bottle away before it could fall and
break. With a tug he freed the ax and let the corpse slide away from him, over the edge of the cliff.

He did not hesitate. Dropping down onto the ledge where the man had been, he called out in his best Irish brogue, “That takes the biscuit, altogether. Oi’ve had enuff o’ this.” Moving quickly into the cave, he tossed the bottle in front of him, knowing that his body would be silhouetted in the bright daylight and his face virtually invisible to whoever was waiting in the darkness there.

The bottle landed at the feet of Packy O’Malley, who had been dozing under the painted warning of Peig O’Malley, his second cousin twice removed. Coming to with a start and wrath in his heart, he pushed himself away from the wall saying, “Colm Canning—yeh lout and yeh sot.
Yeh
’ve had enough? I’m sick to death of yehr antics.”

Exactly, thought Dugald, stepping quickly over to the old man before he could gain his feet.

“I told Clem it was not on—bringin’ this bottle up here, and now no more for you no matter how ye’ beg.” He reached for it, but Dugald kicked it out of the way.

Packy looked up; Colm had changed. He had shaved, and everything about him looked fresher, bigger, brawnier. It was not Colm. “Where’s Colm?”

The man smiled. Deeply tanned, he was wearing a blue and purple climber’s hat and a strange class of eye goggles. There were tattoos on either arm. Packy began pushing himself up, but a powerful kick, delivered to his shoulder, sent him sprawling into the fine sand on the cave floor. Like a dart through his spine, another foot was then punched down into the small of his back. “Feck ye’, ye’ pooling hoor’s melt!” Packy bawled. “Ye’ squid’s inky get! Clem Ford’ll do ye’, sooner or later. Don’t think he won’t!”

It was only then Dugald noticed that the man had lost all the fingers on his right hand, just like his own father, and he silenced him with a short, sharp kick to the back of the neck. Grabbing the body by the belt and the hood of the fishing jacket, he scuttled the heavy corpse to the entrance of the cave, and tumbled it over the cliff.

Would the three bodies be viewed as a multiple climbing
accident, he wondered? Only if they were not carried away by the tide, which was more likely.

In any case, he doubted an official would bother climbing up to investigate why they had fallen or to question the strange shape of the wound in the forehead of the drunk. After all, it was Ireland where details were ignored. Witness how easily they had got what they came for, this second time with him in charge.

From his pack, Dugald pulled out a halogen lamp and turned back into the cave to advance upon his fortune.

McGarr was tired. He had not slept the night long, and when in Mirna Gottschalk’s house he discovered the doors broken open and blood on the kitchen tiles, he felt beaten. More so when he found the keystone pulled out of the hearth and a metal box empty.

He had known the raiders were coming back, yet he had allowed them to waltz right in and take away what they were after, perhaps along with two more lives.

More out of force of habit than any real confidence that he could come up with a lead, McGarr began searching the house, then the shop, and finally the studio. There in a wastepaper bin beneath the photocopy machine, he noticed a sheet with Clem Ford’s handwriting.

Sure enough, it was a copy of a sheet of lined paper. It had not been centered high enough on the scanning bed and had lost the last few lines. It said it had been written by Ford here on Clare Island in 1947 and appeared to be the first page of a reminiscence of his war years.

Obviously McGarr had not searched as thoroughly as he should, and he began anew. But he found nothing. Anyhow, how could a half-century-old document help him locate the Fords, Packy O’Malley, and the Gottschalks, who had probably come to grief by now, given how the raiders had dealt with Kevin O’Grady.

Out in the yard, McGarr radioed McKeon and told him to pack in the surveillance effort. “Get some sleep.”

“What about yourself?”

“I’m going to wander over to the Ford cottage and look round.”

“Again? There’s not a thing in that place you haven’t looked at twice.”

“And, worse, I’ll be making you feel guilty.”

“Don’t count on it. I’m only a short stagger from the bed.” He signed off.

The wind had eased, the sky was bright, the day would be fair. Already, fearless O’Malleys were returning from whatever shelters they had found for the night to pitch tents again on the rolling, treeless greensward. To the south beyond the harbor, he could see more boats advancing upon the island from Roonagh Point.

On the north side of the island—directly below the cliffs—there was none, not even the fishing boat that McKeon had reported as working the waters on the day before. McGarr asked himself why he had not put a watch on the few that had gathered there? Because of the height and the steepness of the cliffs. And in his own defense, he actually had. McKeon, who was his best.

Granted, the weather, the darkness, and the sheer number of O’Malleys near Mirna Gottschalk’s house had conspired against him. But the long and short of it was—he had simply been outwitted. Stopping by the cataract near the Ford cottage, he dug out a cigarette.

One thing, he should have been better informed about the practices of the “Rallyers” the whole scene had taken him by surprise. And two, he should have recruited some of the locals to act as spotters with binos and VHF radios. Like Paulie O’. But thinking of Fergal O’Grady, he wondered how possible that would have been, McGarr being a
seoinin
and all.

McGarr took a puff or two. The roar of the tannin-rich bog water, surging into the dingle, was soothing to him, and he squatted down to rest, his eyes following the second trail leading away from the Ford cottage. It weaved back and forth, climbing the mountain, as though it had been used, say, by a donkey bearing a burden rather than a person who could save steps by climbing straight up.

What possibly could Ford have been carrying down from the top of the mountain? Turf? It was a possibility, since peat existed in virtually every setting in the West of Ireland. Also,
Fergal O’Grady—who had climbed that way—had been carrying a slane on his shoulder when he surprised McGarr on the night before. On his way, said he, to do McGarr’s job of work for him. McGarr bristled to think of how completely the man had got the drop on him. And lucky he didn’t get a bullet in return.

McGarr now wondered if the old man could have stayed up there. If so, he might have seen the direction that the dive boat was headed when it left the island from its anchorage below the cliffs. Jumping across the sluice, McGarr began climbing the mountain straight up. The sun was warm on his back, the air crisp and storm-scoured clean; at the very least he’d get some exercise.

Dugald Rehm could not believe his luck. First, there had been the easy way that he had dispensed with the opposition. True, they had been a yuppie, a drunk, and an old man, but there might not even be an inquiry, if and when the bodies were found.

Second was the plunder, and it certainly was. Rings, brooches, diamonds, emeralds; there was a tourmaline that scarcely fit in his palm, and great round slices of solid gold with six-inch-diameter holes in the middle, looking like glittering cangues. Ford had either tired of melting them down or had decided that he already had enough in Dublin. Why bother.

Bottom line: His father had not lied. It was a magnificent treasure in every way, and he only wished Malcolm were there to share it with him. Dugald would carry it away, backpack load by precious backpack load, which, of course, would take some time. He’d buy a house somewhere on the mainland where he could hide the booty. He’d tell the islanders he was studying gannets or puffins or choughs, so none of them would question his frequent visits to Croaghmore. They were used to their island being studied.

Dugald found his third piece of luck in the chimney that the woman had mentioned; he knew then that he had been destined to take control of the fortune. Not only were there bolts and pitons fixed into the wide barrel of the stack, there were also runners, carabiners, and sturdy Enduro climbing
ropes that were in excellent condition, here where the elements were not a problem. The line rose at least as high as Dugald’s excellent light could shine. When he struck a match, the flame flickered slightly. There was a draft, which meant there was a hole at the top—the second entrance.

After loading up his pack with a few of the choicest pieces that included an actual crown, Dugald began his ascent of the chimney. He would return to the harbor and mingle with the O’Malleys until he could catch a boat back to Roonagh Point. If he moved fast, he might even meet up with his father and sister in Dublin and relieve them of their obligation to join him in partnership.